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SEO Audit Checklist – A Step-by-Step Guide in 17 Stages

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By James Hubbard

An SEO audit is an essential starting point for any new activity around a website, where the aim of that activity is to improve organic search performance. Some people say that SEO is to marketing what accountancy is to finance, in terms of the level of “dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s” required. Nowhere is this more true than it is at the audit stage, where it is imperative to ensure that no stone is left unturned. Missing even relatively minor technical or on-page issues with a website could result in the client being left at a competitive disadvantage. I have created the following SEO audit checklist to help you avoid this scenario.

I have assumed that some readers might have limited SEO knowledge, so I have written this for beginners but also with more advanced SEOs in mind too.

Contents of this post

With this post my aim is to provide a definitive list of audit check points for 17 key stages of analysis. Similar to my post on technical SEO audit tools, this guide is a work in progress. There may be check points that I have forgotten or missed in my brainstorm. If I have missed an obvious check point, feel free to send me a message and I will add it to the list. You can use the jump links below to navigate to each stage of the audit process.

  1. Google check points
  2. Market research check points
  3. Crawling, indexing and ranking check points
  4. Crawler error check points
  5. Page rendering check points
  6. Essential technical SEO check points
  7. Website performance check points
  8. Website security check points
  9. Site architecture check points
  10. Structured data check points
  11. Consistency and compliance check points
  12. On-page SEO check points
  13. Website accessibility & W3C Standards check points
  14. User Experience and CRO check points
  15. International SEO check points
  16. Local SEO check points
  17. Off-page SEO check points

1. Google check points

Google checklist

Ensuring that the client is set-up correctly with Google is always my first priority when working with a new client. If the client has failed to verify Google Search Console, for example, then that has to be a priority fix before starting the work. Check points at this stage include the following.

  • Is Google Analytics installed correctly?
  • Are goals set-up and are the funnels correct?
  • Has eCommerce tracking been set-up?
  • Is conversion data showing and is it correct?
  • Is Google Tag Manager installed correctly?
  • Is the GA script firing via GTM?
  • Is event tracking in place?
  • Is event data pulling through to GA correctly?
  • Has Google Search Console been verified?
  • Are there any Manual Actions showing in GSC?
  • Have sitemaps been submitted in GSC?
  • Are there any coverage errors or warnings?
  • Has the URL Parameters tool been configured?
  • Is International Targeting set correctly?
  • Have there been any sudden drops in traffic, rankings and or CTR?
  • Is Google My Business set-up correctly for all locations?
  • Are GMB listings fully complete with descriptions, images and video?
  • Are the listings correctly categorised?
  • Does each listing have generally favourable reviews?
  • Are the listings kept up to date with frequent posts?
  • Is Google Optimize installed via GTM?
  • Are any GO experiments currently running?

Recommended tools

BuiltWith is useful for quickly seeing what is installed on a site. Otherwise, the checks at this stage need to be done manually.

Further reading

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2. Market research check points

Market research checklist

Understanding what the client is up against is arguably the next most important phase of the audit process. Your analysis here might not appear at the start of the main audit itself, but it will help to define your recommendations to the client. You might want to consider creating a separate Excel sheet containing key competitor analysis information, and details of how the client fares in comparison to those competitors.

  • Who are the top 5 competitors and what do they rank for?
  • What is the DA / DR score for the top-ranking sites?
  • Do the top-ranking sites have industry and media backlinks?
  • Have competitors invested in good web design and UX?
  • Do competitor sites demonstrate high levels of E-A-T?
  • How do competitor sites fare in terms of value proposition, sales messaging, branding and pricing?
  • Are landing pages on competitor sites above average in quality?
  • Are competitors investing in a mix of online and offline marketing channels?
  • Do any competitors appear to be over reliant on organic SEO?

Recommended tools

SimilarWeb offer powerful tools for analysing the competition, especially when it comes to figuring out the channels they are investing in. However, their software may be prohibitively expensive for some. Cheaper alternatives include ahrefs.com, SEMRush, Majestic and Moz.

Further reading

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3. Crawling, indexing and ranking check points

The audit of the client’s website itself begins with various checks to determine how easy it is to crawl and if there are any indexing or ranking issues. At this stage you will need to consider the following check points.

  • Are there any noticeable issues when carrying out a Site:Search?
  • Are any important landing pages not showing in Google’s index?
  • Does the site rank for brand search terms?
  • Do sitelinks show when searching for the brand?
  • Does the site rank well for long-tail phrases?
  • Are any non-secure HTTP pages still showing in the index?
  • Is the staging site indexed?
  • Have URL Parameters been indexed?
  • Have any subdomains been indexed and do they present an issue if so?
  • Is there an excessive amount of ‘thin content’ in the index?
  • Has an excessive amount of non-HTML based content been indexed?
  • Have any pages containing ‘Lorum Ipsum’ placeholder text been indexed?
  • Have multiple versions of the homepage been indexed?
  • Has the ‘print’ version of the site been indexed?
  • Have any test URLs or empty template pages been indexed?
  • Does the site contain crawler traps?
  • Is crucial content loaded in an iFrame, Flash or other obstructive formats?
  • Is there a robots.txt file?
  • Are there any errors or issues within the robots.txt file?
  • Is there an xml sitemap or sitemaps?
  • Are there any errors or issues with the xml sitemap(s)?
  • Does the robots.txt file reference the location of the sitemap(s)?
  • Are robots meta directives in place on individual pages and do they present an issue?
  • Have unnecessary blog archives & taxonomies been removed from Google’s index?
  • Is old, low performing content using up crawl budget?
  • Does a review of log files highlight any crawl issues?
  • If the site is JavaScript based, can Google fully render the content?

Recommended tools

You will need to understand advanced search operators to perform several of the checks above (see the BuiltVisible link below). At this stage you will also want to initiate a site crawl using a good quality crawler tool such as Screaming Frog, SiteBulb or DeepCrawl. For log file analysis you will need to ask the client to provide the data via their web host, then you can use Screaming Frog’s Log File Analyser to check crawl issues.

Further reading

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4. Crawler error check points

Crawler errors checklist

An excessive volume of internal redirects, 404s or server errors wastes crawl budget and provides a bad experience for the end user. Fixing these issues will provide a better user experience and ultimately should lead to improved website performance, particularly for large websites with many errors.

  • Are there any internal 301 redirects that need to be fixed?
  • Are there any 302 redirects that need to be replaced by a 301?
  • Are there any 404 errors that need to be fixed?
  • Are there any 500 server errors?
  • Are there any orphan pages that can only be crawled via xml?
  • Does log file analysis highlight crawl budget waste?
  • Does log file analysis highlight any issues with the crawl frequency of key category pages?

Recommended tools

See above but also check Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools to view any errors detected by these search engines.

Further reading

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5. Page rendering check points

Does Google see what the end user sees after the page is rendered? For HTML based sites sometimes Google is unable to access critical CSS and JS files, perhaps because they are blocked by robots.txt. For JavaScript based sites it’s common for the source code to contain none of the content that appears on the actual page. So checking if a prerender solution has been configured correctly, and if there are no differences between the prerender and rendered page, is an important first step to troubleshooting any issues.

  • Are there any differences between un-rendered and rendered content?
  • Are there any issues in how content is rendered across different devices and browsers?
  • What is the outcome of page rendering tests?

Recommended tools

At this stage you will want to run some tests using the URL Inspection Tool in Google Search Console, Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test, and the Fetch & Render tool by technicalseo.com.

Further reading

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6. Essential technical SEO check points

Technical SEO is a big topic and it’s not possible to list every single aspect of it in one checklist post. Some clients may have technical issues which are wholly unique to their web property and will require more in-depth auditing of the issues. However, in terms of technical SEO basics you will want to consider the following check points.

  • Are there any canonicalisation issues?
  • Are canonical tags correctly used across the site?
  • Are there any duplicate pages without a canonical tag?
  • Is the correct markup in place for paginated series pages?
  • Does the non-trailing slash 301 redirect to trailing slash?
  • Are there any unnecessary 301 redirects in place?
  • Is there any issue with redirect chains?
  • Are expired pages incorrectly redirecting to the homepage or a category page?
  • Are error pages returning a 200 status (soft 404)?
  • Is .htaccess configured correctly?
  • Does an HTTP headers check return any issues?
  • Does the site adhere to mobile-first best practice?

Recommended tools

Some manual checking of the site’s source code and the .htaccess file will be necessary at this stage, together with insights pulled from Google Search Console and your preferred web crawler.

Further reading

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7. Website performance check points

PageSpeed Insights checks

Having a consistently served and fast loading website has been a ranking factor for a number of years but has become increasingly important in the mobile-first era. At this stage you will want to check that the site performs well for both desktop and mobile users.

  • Are images on the site optimised for the web and under 100kb?
  • Are images served in next-gen format?
  • Have CSS & JS files been minified?
  • Is there an issue with render blocking CSS?
  • Is there an issue with render blocking JavaScript?
  • Are CSS & JS served in as fewer files as possible?
  • Are the number of resources making HTTP requests kept to a minimum?
  • Are there any issues with server location or quality?
  • Has a CDN been set-up?
  • Is HTTP/2 in use?

Recommended tools

Best tools for this stage of the audit include: Google PageSpeed Insights, Google Lighthouse for Chrome, GTMetrix and WebPageTest.

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8. Website security check points

Website security checks

A hacked website can have potentially catastrophic consequences in terms of organic search performance. Google, as well as other search engines and websites, want to be sure that they are not referring their users onto a site that is riddled with malware or that is serving critical content in an insecure format. An example would be an eCommerce site taking card payment details over HTTP rather than HTTPS. Ensuring that the client’s site is as secure as possible is an important component of an SEO audit.

  • Is there any evidence to suggest the site has been hacked?
  • If the site has been hacked, what attempts have been made to clean it?
  • Is HTTPS configured correctly across the site?
  • Are any resources accessible via HTTP?
  • What is the quality score for the SSL certificate?
  • Is there a HSTS policy?
  • Is two-factor authentication in place for entry to the CMS?
  • Is adequate security software installed within the CMS?

Recommended tools

GeekFlare offer an HSTS checking tool. For correct HTTPS configuration you will need to refer back to the crawl results from your favourite crawler tool. There are many website security plugins; Wordfence among the most highly rated for WP sites. You can check the SSL certificate for a site using SSL Labs.

Further reading

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9. Site architecture check points

Website architecture checklist

A site might have exceptional quality backlinks from top tier websites but if the structure of the site and its internal linking is not optimised well, it will likely not reap the full benefit of those links. At this stage of the audit you will need to consider the following.

  • Is there a logical hierarchy to URL structures?
  • Are static rather than dynamic URLs predominently in use?
  • Are URLs short and without capitalisation, underscores or non-ASCII characters?
  • Is the main menu system coded well?
  • Does the main menu system only contain followable links to important landing pages?
  • Is the order of the links in the main menu system logical for users and search engines?
  • Have Login, Basket and other similar pages had ‘nofollow’ applied?
  • Does the internal link structure reinforce the importance of key category pages?
  • Is there good vertical linking between category and sub-category pages?
  • Is there relevant use of horizontal internal linking within the body copy of web pages?
  • Is breadcrumb functionality in place?

Recommended tools

A manual review of the site’s code is necessary at this stage. A review of the web crawl results from step 3 will also help.

Further reading

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10. Structured data check points

Structured data testing checks

Structured data helps search engines to better understand what a web page is about, it helps to improve the appearance of search results and it can be used to reinforce entity targeting. At this stage of your audit you will want to consider the following.

  • Are there any errors or warnings relating to structured data across the site?
  • Is important business data marked up with LocalBusiness schema on relevant pages?
  • Is Organization schema firing on a suitable page?
  • Are FAQ pages marked up with FAQPage schema?
  • Are important people in the business marked up using Person schema?
  • Does the client have reviews that can be marked up using aggregrateRating schema?
  • If the client sells products, are the products marked up using Product schema?
  • Are breadcrumbs marked up using Breadcrumb schema?
  • Is the sameAs schema property used for social media links and other identifiers?
  • Are there any other types of structured data that could be applied, relevant to the client?

Recommended tools

Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool will be your main requirement at this stage.

Further reading

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11. Consistency and compliance check points

GDPR Compliance checks

Inconsistent details within a website or across the web can contribute to diminishing the trust Google might place in a web property. Trust signals around a site can be heightened by ensuring that business details are the same across all pages, in citations elsewhere across the web and through high-quality, compliance and company information pages.

  • Is the company address, telephone, email, and other contact details, consistent across the site?
  • Are important business details such as the Company Registration No, copyright and compliance information up to date and consistent?
  • Does the site have a unique, GDPR-compliant Terms & Conditions page and Cookies page?
  • Can the end user opt out of unnecessary cookies?

Recommended tools

You’ll need to flex your advanced search operator skills again here (see part three above). Cookiebot offer a useful GDPR testing tool, with optional on-going compliance services.

Further reading

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12. On-page SEO check points

On-page SEO checklist

Similar to technical SEO, a website may have exceptional quality backlinks but if the on-page optimisation is not configured well, it may be unlikely to rank well. A common on-page error is the use ‘Home – [Brand Name]’ in the homepage title tag. Key considerations at this stage are as follows.

  • Does the site have good title tags and meta descriptions, based on kw research?
  • Do meta description tags contain good call to action messaging?
  • Does the call to action messaging in meta data match up with the landing pages?
  • Do the tags contain keyword modifiers?
  • Are the tags under the recommended character count?
  • Does the meta keyword tag need to be removed?
  • Has semantic markup been applied well across the site’s web pages?
  • Does each page feature just one, unique H1 tag?
  • Are H2 and H3 tags used for sub-headings?
  • Are appropriate file names and alt tags in use for images?
  • Do pages across the site feature useful, relevant outbound links to authoritative sites?
  • Is there an excessive number of internal and/or outbound links on important landing pages?
  • Are ordered and unordered lists marked up correctly?
  • Is any content hidden or contained behind tabs?
  • Is the homepage well-structured with clear in-content links to important category pages?
  • Does the homepage feature enough text?
  • Are high quality, original images & graphics used rather than stock?
  • Is the web copy across the site written well and devoid of spelling or grammar issues?
  • Do important landing pages feature multimedia, PDF downloads and other useful resources?
  • Do important landing pages have low TF-IDF for key terms?
  • Does the optimisation of page content match with user intent?
  • Do FAQs appear high up and marked up on key landing pages?
  • Have keyword stuffing techniques been used on any web pages?
  • Are there any doorway pages or near identical geographic pages?
  • Is the content on the site user-focused and easy to read/access?
  • Does the client have a content hub featuring expert information on their topic?
  • Are there any content gaps and do content hubs need building out?
  • Has entity targeting been considered in the content creation process?
  • Is the content across the site unique to the client’s domain?
  • Do individual pages on the site feature a lot of “boilerplate” duplicate content?
  • Do important eCommerce category pages feature a unique, well-written description?
  • Is the text on product pages copied from the manufacturer’s website?
  • Is the blog updated frequently with good quality content?
  • Are the blog tag and category archives optimised?
  • Does long form content on the site feature jump links?
  • Does the sidebar or footer of the site feature any keyword-heavy anchor text links?
  • Are there an excessive volume of links in the footer or sidebar area?
  • Does the footer contain links to Privacy & Cookie policies?
  • Is the copyright statement and current year showing in the footer?
  • Do any advertising links have ‘nofollow’ applied to them?
  • Is ‘nofollow’ used correctly on other internal links?
  • Is sharing across social networks encouraged?
  • Have tags for Facebook Open Graph and Twitter Cards been applied?
  • Is rel=author or rel=publisher attribution in place?
  • Are high quality information pages in place such as About Us and Meet the Team?

Recommended tools

There are hundreds of tools you could use to help assess the quality of a site’s on-page SEO. There are too many to list here, so take a look at my guide to audit tools for inspiration. That said, many of the checks above either need to be carried out manually or with assistance from your preferred web crawler.

Further reading

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13. Website accessibility & W3C Standards check points

W3C Logo

Whilst W3C compliance is not a ranking factor, it’s important to fix any issues that may be causing page rendering issues. In addition, ensuring that a site is accessible to all users, regardless of any impairment they may have, is both good practice and should contribute to improved engagement metrics.

  • Do pages on the site pass W3C markup validation checks?
  • Is there high contrast between the colour of text and the colour of the background?
  • Does the alt tag for images adequately describe the image?
  • Are written transcripts of video and audio content available?
  • Can text be enlarged without impairing the function of the page?
  • Are hyperlinks clearly visible and distinct?
  • Can all parts of the website be accessed without a mouse?
  • Is it easy to find the contact page?

Recommended tools

W3C Markup Validation Service and AChecker are useful for this stage.

Further reading

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14. User Experience and CRO check points

A technically sound website with strong on-page optimisation is no longer sufficient for maintaining high visibility on Google and other search engines. Sites must demonstrate expertise in their field, provide exceptional quality content and intuitive user experience. Considerations at this stage of the audit include the following.

  • Are content and navigation elements clear for users?
  • Is the quality of the content generally outstanding?
  • Is the page both useful and unique for the end user?
  • Is the quality of the web design of a very high standard?
  • Does the layout of pages facilitate ease of scanning?
  • Are there any mobile usability issues or errors?
  • Is clear call to action messaging showing, above the fold?
  • Is it clear what the primary action a user should take is?
  • Does the site have a clearly defined user journey?
  • Is the quality of experience comparable on desktop, tablet and mobile?
  • Are there easy to complete forms on key landing pages?
  • Is there good use of CTA buttons and panels?
  • Do product pages feature clear ‘add to basket’ messaging?
  • Are product page images of a high standard with zoom functionality?
  • Has one-step checkout been set-up for eCommerce websites?
  • Is there a clear and intuitive basket to checkout process for eCommerce sites?
  • Is there a minimal amount of advertising banners above the fold?
  • Does the site avoid oversaturation of text ad links?

Recommended tools

If the client has Hotjar or a similar type of heat mapping software installed, you will want to request access to that for this stage of the audit. Tools such as mobiReady are good for checking how a website looks and performs on different types of devices. Otherwise, the steps to this stage are mainly manual checks.

Further reading

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15. International SEO check points

International SEO checks

If a client has attempted to target users in multiple countries, or is looking to do so in the future, your audit will need to assess the current set-up and how it can be implemented or improved. This will involve assessing the following check points.

  • Has the client attempted to implement international SEO activity? If so…
  • Are the correct language and country codes used for regional variation pages?
  • Are foreign language versions translated well without errors?
  • Has hreflang been implemented correctly?
  • Is X-default in place on all pages and correct?
  • Are SEO-friendly navigation links to regional variations of the site in place?
  • Are there any forced redirects in place based on IP / location?
  • Is OG:Locale set correctly?
  • Are there any backlinks pointing to international versions?

Recommended tools

Again, your preferred web crawler tool will assist you with this stage of the audit. You might find the hreflang testing tool by technicalseo.com useful too.

Further reading

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16. Local SEO check points

Local SEO checklist

If a client has multiple shops, factories or offices within a certain territory, local SEO will invariably be an important component of the SEO strategy. If this is the case, you will need to consider the following check points in your audit.

  • Is the client using P.O Boxes or virtual office addresses?
  • Is the client using 0800 or premium rate phone numbers?
  • Is GMB set-up and complete (see Google Check Points)?
  • Are NAP details consistent across the web?
  • Has the client moved address recently?
  • Are unique, well-written pages set-up for each of their locations?
  • Are the above pages interlinked to the relevant GMB profile and vice versa?
  • Are the tags for their location pages optimised for the relevant town, city or county?
  • Does each location page provide genuine value to the end user?
  • Does each location page feature important information such as opening hours?
  • Is the information on location pages marked up (see Structured Data check points)?
  • Are URL structures for location pages over-optimised?
  • Does the client have a plan for gaining more reviews?
  • Are there any deep links pointing to the location pages?

Recommended tools

BrightLocal, Whitespark or Moz Local will come in handy here. As with most stages in an SEO audit, you will need to manually review many of the steps above.

Further reading

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17. Off-page SEO check points

Off-page SEO checks

Whilst many SEOs are predicting the increasing power of entity associations, backlinks are still likely to remain an important ranking factor for years to come. Understanding what good and bad backlinks look like is essential to this step of the audit. You’ll want to consider the following.

  • Are the backlinks pointing to the site generally of a high standard?
  • Are the backlinks generally earnt or built?
  • Is the rate of link acquisition steady?
  • Is there a good level of domain diversity in the backlink profile?
  • Is there a diverse range of backlink types linking to the site?
  • Is the anchor text distribution balanced well?
  • Is there any evidence of spam links or link exchanges?
  • Are there any broken inbound links?
  • Are they active on social media with an engaged audience?
  • Is there any evidence of PR, outreach and offline marketing?

Recommended tools

Already mentioned earlier in this guide: ahrefs.com, SEMRush or Majestic.

Further reading

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Whether you are new to SEO or a seasoned professional, I hope this checklist helps you with your audit. Remember the purpose of an audit isn’t just to assess if a website passes or fails each of the check points. The purpose is to meaningfully prioritise what the core issues are and then suggest a possible strategy for solving them. The summary and conclusions section of an audit is the most important part, as this is where you get to outline what the client should do based on your insight and experience. If you are struggling with any aspect of this, I am happy to help!

 

By James Hubbard

Sourced from James Hubbard Marketing

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Creativity Is a Muscle, Not a Skill. Here’s How to Build Yours

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By Quora

We were all creative as children.

How can people become more creative in their everyday lives? originally appeared on Quora: the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world.

Answer by Christina Wallace, Author, “New to Big“, VP Growth, Bionic, Host, TLDNE, on Quora:

I believe creativity is a muscle, not a skill. That is, you get more creative by building a practice of being creative. It’s not a thing you either are or are not. (Related: I believe that’s also true of athleticism. I was told my entire childhood that I was not athletic, so I didn’t try to be. Then in my 20s I decided to try and what do you know? I ran 3 marathons, climbed Kilimanjaro, learned to ski black diamonds, etc.)

We were all creative as children: we invented friends, wrote stories, drew monsters and flowers and families on any surface we could find, and many of us growing up in the 80s and 90s learned to entertain ourselves for hours on road trips or lazy Saturday afternoons before smart phones and other technology came along to distract us. Yet as we grew up and began to focus our time and attention on a career much of that creativity fell to the side. Unless we chose careers in the arts (and I define that broadly: storytelling, design, performance of all kinds, etc.) we probably don’t get to exercise this muscle on a daily basis.

So the simplistic answer is to build a daily practice of creativity back into your life. That can look like a lot of different things. Perhaps you start every morning writing 3 pages on whatever comes to mind for (best to do this longhand, in a notebook, vs typing on a screen). This is a practice called “morning pages” that was made popular by Julia Cameron in a fantastic book called The Artist’s Way. (It’s basically canon for anyone who considers themselves to be creative.)

Of course, if writing isn’t your jam, there are other options. Take yourself on a solo date to a museum or gallery once a week with a sketchbook and draw what you see. Or keep something handy to draw on so that instead of scrolling mindless on social media when your friend is running late, you can sketch the stranger sitting at the table across from you.

Reading long-form fiction (also known as books) is one way I counter-program the steady diet of 280 character blips I ingest on Twitter all day long. I workshop new jokes at networking events and cocktail parties that aren’t particularly exciting otherwise. And I created a side hustle (my podcast, The Limit Does Not Exist) out of a desire to both connect with other creative folks and to have a format and a deadline to make new work on a regular basis.

Speaking of which, accountability is the easiest way to build a practice of creativity. Having a writing partner that you just check in with every Sunday night with your word count for the week is an incredible forcing function for you to make the time to write. Sharing designs in progress with someone whose opinion you trust helps you get things out of your head and onto paper. The challenge for probably all of us, is that the first draft of anything is only a crude approximation of what is in our heads and it can be hard to see that when we are used to being good at whatever it is that we do. But that’s the creative process. And the more you practice it, the stronger the muscle. Good luck!

This question originally appeared on Quora – the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world. You can follow Quora on Twitter and Facebook. More questions:

Feature Image Credit: GETTY IMAGES

Sourced from Inc.

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Personal branding for people who hate personal branding

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By ANA ANDJELIC

Self-promotion might not come naturally for some, but less outgoing people can use their natural strengths to create an authentic online presence.

Psychologist Carl Jung popularized the terms “introvert” and “extrovert” back in 1921, but he didn’t think anyone was solely one or the other. “There’s no such thing as a pure introvert or extrovert,” he wrote, and yet, nearly a hundred years later, we still love to use these terms to explain our behaviors.

There’s a reason that these simple dichotomies can be useful: Organizing people into categories helps us quickly orient ourselves in the world. They also let us make a point quickly, as author Susan Cain demonstrated in her exploration of the benefits of introversion in the Western world. Much of what Cain describes is internet culture, which is noisy, crowded, and interactive by design. It requires constant self-promotion, inspires oversharing, and rewards the loudest of voices.

Internet culture shapes our ideas of diversity, representation, and empowerment. For a woman to win, she needs to “put herself out there,” act fearless, be a “superwoman” and a “girlboss.” Boldness, loudness, fierceness are mandatory. Even our fight for equality is made for those drawing energy from being around others.

Today, this culture is at its fever pitch. But there’s also been a backlash: There’s increasingly talk about the millennial burnout, the dangers of hustle porn, the warnings about our ever-shortening attention spans, and about the benefits of unplugging. We all need some quiet time.

This emerging cultural shift asks for the nuance. It gives us an opening to question the accepted norms when it comes to professional advancement and to desirable work practices, including building a personal brand. It offers us an opportunity to examine the stereotypes and to undo the old narratives.

The first step in this process is to recognize that craving constant social interaction is a personal tendency, but also a currently dominant social, organizational, and business ideology. In the same way that we pushed ourselves to be constantly “out there,” we can flip the script and turn the traits of unplugging into our collective aspiration.

We can all strive to communicate less, but deeper and more meaningfully; to prioritize listening and observing over speaking; to be less motivated by ego and more by larger purpose; and to focus on self-expression over self-promotion. In the age of overstimulation, there is much to be said for the ability to focus, work autonomously, spend time alone, and nurture independent thinking.

Enjoying time alone and having a personal brand was once considered a contradiction in terms. Today, it may be the winning approach. In practice, this means playing up on the benefits of recharging solo, regardless of where you are on the introversion-extroversion continuum. It also means decoupling social interaction and social media. If you are a person who draws energy from spending time alone, one or more of these personal branding styles may resonate with you. And if you are a person who is energized by social interaction, you can use these methodologies to infuse more nuance into your own personal brand.

THE LEADER

We have been primed to think of leaders as fast-charging pep talkers, but it turns out that introverted leaders deliver better results than extroverts, according to research by psychologist Adam Grant, a management professor at Wharton.

“I know it’s fashionable now to call yourself an introvert,” says Chapin Clark, executive creative director at an advertising agency R/GA, and the voice behind its popular @RGA Twitter account. “Being too visible, too exposed, makes me uncomfortable,” says Clark, who instead says he’s worked to be receptive to ideas of others, making them more motivated to participate. “In working with junior creatives, I like to step back and give them more space than other people might to pursue their ideas. That goes for presenting work, as well. I like to make it a shared responsibility.”

According to research published in Harvard Business Review, when leaders are open-minded and supportive, employees are also more inclined to step up their game, knowing their ideas will be heard and implemented. If success of startups like Glossier, Tracksmith, or Outdoor Voices is any indicator, modern entrepreneurship emphasizes crowdsourcing, invites customers in the brand, and fosters a feeling of fandom and community. Introverted leaders have proven that they go beyond their ego and craving for spotlight and work toward a larger goal; this purpose-driven approach gives them the power and authenticity that inspire a following—and a personal brand worth cultivating.

THE CURATOR 

Introverts are able to spend a lot of time with an area or activity of interest. They are repositories of specific knowledge, ready to travel the world to obtain a coveted item or experience, and passionately talk about their latest acquisitions. Born in Vancouver, Kevin Ma says he grew up far from the hubs of youth culture. He started Hypebeast as a sneaker blog from his bedroom in 2005. Fast forward to 2019, and the company, now publicly traded and with diversified revenue streams, is the ultimate global destination for streetwear, fashion, and culture.

Hypebeast’s site enjoys 46 million page views a month, and has more than 660,000 Twitter followers and 7.9 million Instagram fans, but Ma’s profile is decidedly low. “Curators are often playing the long game, slowly building up knowledge, sharing it, improving upon it,” says Colin Nagy, head of strategy for advertising agency Fred&Farid. Because curators are able to focus and dig deep, and because they are highly selective in how they socialize, they regularly build influential cultural niches around themselves—whether that be sneakers or denim or food—and often become a source of inspiration for wider trends. Their identity is often deeply tied to the subject matter, which makes them stand out in the vortex of speed, superficiality, and newness.

THE OBSERVER

Introverts’ inclination is to listen rather than speak. This makes them sensitive to the nuance and complexity of life situations, and it gives them time to think and process aspects that may go unnoticed by extroverts. Their comfort zone is writing vs. talking, and social media offers them a platform to build a personal brand around their astute and often witty observations. It gives them the ability to reach a number of people on their own terms—in the solitude of their office, for example—without having to be physically present and active in large social groups.

“The advent of social media, Twitter in particular, has been a blessing for me. I have always felt confident expressing myself in writing, and Twitter, the way it works, felt like it was made for me,” says Clark. “It allowed me to express myself in a public way … that at the same time feels safe. That’s because it has allowed me to create a persona that is me but also not me. … There is a distance, a buffer, that allows me to say things in writing that I wouldn’t out loud.”

THE EXPERT

Kawhi Leonard is a three-time All-Star and a two-time NBA Defense Player of the Year. He’s equally famous for his reclusive behavior, monosyllabic press conference answers, and avoidance of social media. He built his brand thanks to mass media and thanks to his single-minded focus on honing his skills.

Exposure, self-promotion, and amassing a large following is never going to compensate for the lack of willingness to invest time and energy to become good at what you do. Obsessive preparation, time spent thinking and honing one’s craft, evaluating and constructing a solution, and not giving up easily are critical to building one’s name in any profession. If you are an expert in your area of work, others will take notice—with or without your social media presence.

Feature Image Credit:[Photo: Timon Studler/Unsplash]

By ANA ANDJELIC

Sourced from FastCompany

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Learn Internet Marketing Strategies To Increase Your Profit

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By Rolf Joho

There are many web marketing tips that can be employed depending on what you’re able to do technologically.

Affiliate promotion is not spamming everyone on the Internet. It takes a lot of understanding and strategy.When taking a chance on affiliate marketing, it will be beneficial to seek out and sign up with affiliates that will provide you with the products and service you will be selling.

Try to have multiple affiliates. This will give you a variety of income feeds. Research the affiliate programs thoroughly before working with them. You need to know that you will feel comfortable promoting their products.See how a company tracks outside orders when choosing an affiliate company. You might lose a lot of commissions if those outside sales are made by mail or on the phone.

In order to make sure the money gets where it needs to be, you need to consider affiliate companies that provide different payment options. There are companies that require you to make a certain amount of money before they will pay you, but there are also those that direct deposit funds into your bank at your discretion.

A lot of affiliates end up losing valuable time by having to re-read emails that contain instructions for tasks in their email and then check them.

This is a great way to save time as you will have all the important information in one document.

When searching for an affiliate marketing partner, find companies that continuously make new products. Go with a solid reputable company and one that is constantly coming out with many new products, this way you can get repeat business. You may not succeed with the new hot product.

You should choose an affiliate that has a lot of different options when it comes to getting your payments.

People who access a themed website, like sports, are already thinking about sports. Placing a link for an affiliate website won’t give you any benefit unless it is related to sports. Links that have some pertinence to what is on the mind of your visitors will provide you with the most benefit.

Only partner with reliable affiliate companies. You should look for less than 20% or higher on their products.The best affiliates offer high percentages to their business.

Think carefully about the products that you want to link to before you do it. You will see money roll in when you know how to put your links in the right places.

Carefully consider which products you put on your site. It is crucial to strategically place your affiliate links in order to ensure profitability.

When doing affiliate marketing you should never be deceptive about what business you are in. If you are endorsing a product that you are profiting from, let the audience know and don’t attempt to mislead their choices. If a visitor thinks there is any dishonesty going on with your site, they will go instead to the merchant site for their purchase.

There is a variety in affiliate programs. Each one is unique in it’s product and level of flexibility.

Look for affiliate partners with a high ratio of customers to visitors. A 1% transformation equation is a favourable gauge.Knowing what is going on in real time is essential. This lets you know how many users have been to your site and the number of sales conversions.

Offering a product for only a limited amount of time can be an effective affiliate marketing strategy. If your customers see there’s a small window of time for them to purchase your product, it may give them a push to purchase it. This extra push can be a terrific way to maximize the volume and efficiency of sales.

Be honest with readers about your audience when you have affiliates. Being honest shows that you respect your customers and they can trust you.

Tell your readers information about your affiliations. Being honest shows that you respect your customers and they are sure to appreciate that.

Make sure you attract a good audience for the products you are going to market. When you have a product that is costly, more direct targeting is necessary.Putting a trivia question in a banner ad can intrigue your visitors to want to answer it by viewing your site. Curiosity is a powerful motive and can add many clicks to your banner ad. Sweeten the pot by offering discounts to visitors who got the question right.

Do not rely on just a small number of affiliate partners to make up the entirety of your internet marketing campaign. Have a large variety of products in your inventory. A spread out group of affiliates will prevent you protected from large losses when you cut out one that have become unprofitable. If you are not advertising just as many products as you can comfortably handle, seek out more.

The most sought after commission in affiliate marketing enterprises is known as a lifetime commission. Lifetime commissions are very difficult to find. They amount of money you can generate however, means that they are still worth looking for. Vendors pay the webmaster a commission for purchases made by the customers steered to them by the webmaster. Usually, the commission is given only if a buyer buys within a time period after they click on the link. The potential rewards are so great that it is worth it to find the rare lifetime commissions out there.

Even a slight negative connotations are not good.

Back-links are a great way to attract more visitors, but you should always make sure your back-links describe your content accordingly. If your customer comes to your site looking for an HP tablet, they won’t be able to see iPads. It takes an extremely compelling marketing effort to overcome the mistrust that such deceptive backlinks foster in your would-be customers.

It is important to always be honest with anyone reading your clients in online marketing. Honesty is the key to having a loyal user base.Keeping your affiliate marketing techniques relevant and timely is one of the most crucial elements to success. Take the time every few months to look at new programs your affiliates may be offering. New tools are currently being implemented to maximize the usability of affiliate programs to make ads appealing to readers.

You should do your web marketing in the same manner you would any other business. You want your links that do not directly mention the real seller.You want your customers to get the impression that you are closely connected to the product you are selling.

57e7d0454854a414f6da8c7dda793278143fdef85254774e742b7ed19f4e 640 2 - Learn Internet Marketing Strategies To Increase Your Profit

When you use affiliate marketing you should use your products personally. Placing reviews and articles about the product online is a great way to let people know how useful you find the product to be. In addition, you can post on a number of forums and discuss the ways in which the product has been beneficial to you. Each time you post anything, remember to link back to your site.

All good affiliate marketers should be aware that pay-per-sale plan can be risky. It can also be quite lucrative if done properly. Do your homework and look into the affiliate’s background to determine if it will be a good partnership before you might be interested in.

Do not put an excessive amount of banners on your site. A website stuffed with advertisements is not one that welcomes visitors. You will drive away potential business and appear unprofessional if you load your pages down with too many ads. Make sure that there is an abundant amount of content on your website. Design your website so that when someone visits it, their attention is immediately focused on the content, and not the banners.

Affiliate marketers who reside in California have been resolved so accounts suspended in 2011 can now replace the links that they lost. The law that made Amazon drop their clients has been edited so that they can participate again. Be sure to sign up for the program if affected.A person going into affiliate marketing has to realize that working with a pay-per-sale company, through affiliate marketing, can be a risky undertaking. But if it works well, they can lead to a great deal of money. Look into how the affiliate performs for others and how well the product would fit your site, and make a careful decision.

Join an online web marketing forum to get fresh ideas and advice. There are a number of different online forums on the internet that allow you to exchange ideas and help each other.If isn’t broke, don’t fix it; sell what is already sought after instead of coming up with something new. Some affiliate marketers will stay away from the popular categories because of the increased competition. It is easier to persuade visitors to your site to buy things if you are selling a popular product. You should remember that the popular niches have a buyer pool that is already primed for the products and connecting with them is the only challenge. You have to create a marketing plan that gets you noticed.

Back-end sales are necessary in order the maximize the success of web marketing campaigns. You should get commissions on the sales that result from referrals you refer customers to. Get everything you deserve by being involved with businesses that give you a percentage for these back-end sales.Become a member of some of the reputable online affiliate forums to learn new tricks and share what has worked for you. There are a huge number of affiliate marketing forums where you can get help, as well as tools and programs to make your affiliate site even better.Use paid advertising to increase the sales and profits on your campaigns. Buying ads focused on the right keywords will create sales and sales. The numbers of prospective buyers will increase when doing this.

Set yourself small goals every single day to aid you in your affiliate marketing strategy. Motivation remains as long as there are unfinished tasks visible in the task bar.

Tracking Service

Try converting customers into affiliate partners. People that actually use and like the products are going to be better at selling it. By recruiting customers to be affiliates, you can greatly increase the number of sales you make. You can increase your gain and you will have another outlet for new customers to visit.

Use a reputable tracking service you are owed. If an affiliate doesn’t calculate your sales correctly, it will be your bank account that suffers. Avoid this by using a reliable tracking service at all times. Paying for a small fee is worth finding a reputable service.Use a reputable tracking service that provides accurate reports of what you are owed. Affiliates have been known to incorrectly track sales, which can cause a loss of profits for you. A reliable tracking service will protect you from this let down and inconvenience. This service will be a very practical investment that will protect your profits.

Consider creating an e-book to post on websites that share documents. This helps highlight your expertise and also attract those that are searching for information that is similar to content on your website. Do not be shy about promoting yourself and your website links in the document.Know your niche when you pick affiliates. You should make sure that your affiliates are promoting products and services that are compatible or complementary to what your website offers. The clients come to your website for a particular product and have particular ideas in mind ahead of time. Always offer advertisements that will meet the needs of your clientele.

Use a multitude of advertising to spread the word about your affiliate product. A lot of your customer base will prefer online shopping. Some customers prefer to receive brochures and fliers. Some people might respond well to a special deal or savings coupon. You will draw a wider audience by employing several venues to advertise your product.You need to think about how your article affiliate marketing is leveraging the power of social media. Social media is certainly considered important to Google. Social media is a large factor in how market sites are booked and how search results are produced through Google. The tendrils of social networks like Twitter and Facebook grow deep, touching nearly every page on the Internet.

You need to invest some money in online marketing before you see the profit you want to garner. Reinvest in web marketing profits by advertising to new venues. Many major sites, Yahoo, which can draw a lot of traffic with the right ad.Make education into the best ways to market product a priority if you wish to be a profitable affiliate marketer. Some affiliates use whatever they can find for free. It is true that you have nothing to lose if you find a program that is free; however, it is crucial to keep your goals in mind and chose ones that will get you there.

Try to mention different uses for the products if you can. For instance, if you have a shoe mat, post a video to your site of using it as a dog water and food tray, or putting one under a candle to prevent wax dripping everywhere.This will greatly appeal to an older audience, like baby boomers. Design your website for this audience. You could for instance make your font a few points bigger to make it easier to read.It is common to see newcomers to internet marketing jump at the first option that is offered free offering. Free methods are not necessarily bad; however, but you need to focus on effectiveness.

If you use these ideas, you will be able to find how to get the right people and make a good profit. Your skills may advance past those in this article through practice in this field. It’s always key to remember the fundamentals and keep your marketing campaign as simple as you can.

By Rolf Joho

Sourced from https://duracmarketing.com

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How to Balance Marketing Automation and Personalization

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Brands have embraced automation to help them carry out a spectrum of everyday tasks. According to a recent survey published by Social Media Today, 75 percent of marketing teams use some form of an automation tool. However, with growing popularity, there are growing concerns. The same survey reports that 61 percent of marketers are concerned about the lack of personalization due to automation. Likewise, a global study by PWC found that as technology advances, most consumers want brands to use technology as a tool for increasing personalized support. Put simply, customers want more human interaction, not less.

That’s why it’s vital that today’s businesses find the right balance between automation and personalization. Companies that go overboard on automation can come across as detached and generic. On the other hand, those that get too personal with customers can come off as intrusive and creepy. Brands need to get it right to maintain a trusting relationship with their customers.

Here are ways marketers can successfully balance automation and personalization.

Offer Timely, Valuable Content

Email campaigns are an effective, low-cost way to leverage automation and personalization, but marketers need to be careful not to clog consumer inboxes. Instead, they should focus on offering relevant and valuable content that doesn’t involve using intrusive data.

Most consumers are familiar with receiving personalized content based on an action, such as an online purchase, that features a related product or service. Using transactional data to send automated, personalized emails can be less intrusive since it’s a natural, and at this point expected, component of the relationship.

Marketers can also use geographical data, such as a customer’s zip code or address, to deliver personalized content, like creating a segmented list of customers and offering them discounts to nearby events. Although consumers dislike when brands bombard them with irrelevant, generic messaging, they also don’t like overly personal messages that infringe on their privacy.

Respect Consumer Privacy

Research shows that 81 percent of consumers want brands to get to know them and understand when to approach them, but not at the expense of their privacy. There is a fine line between highly relevant content and tactics that take marketing personalization too far.

For example, sending mass emails to consumers with the same promotions or offers isn’t an effective strategy. Consumer interests vary significantly. Marketers should pay attention to their target audience and consider whether the interaction will make them feel special or unsettled. Customer data can be used effectively, but content that’s too personalized can disturb customers, thus putting them off the brand.

Enhance the Customer Experience

It’s crucial that marketers use technology to improve the consumer experience, rather than eliminate the human touch. For instance, British grocery chain Sainsbury’s delivered an exceptional customer experience with its “This Time It’s Ultra Personalized!” campaign. The store used smartphone location data to provide personalized offers to customers through their mobile devices as they walked around the store. Not only did the campaign promote in-store offers, but it helped the company gain insights about how people navigated the aisles. As a result, Sainsbury’s was able to make better merchandising decisions and improve its in-store customer experience. Marketers must remember that relationships are crucial in business and that automation tools provide additional support.

Combine Automation and Human Touch

There are many ways marketers can mix automation and personalization, such as inserting tags to add customers’s names in emails to make them feel like the message addresses them individually. Going a step further, marketers can encourage team members to interact with potential customers by making calls, sending emails or requesting a connection on social media.

For example, if a visitor downloads content from the brand’s website, it’s a good idea to have someone on the team reach out personally, immediately. According to an oft-cited Lead Response Management Study, waiting more than 10 minutes to follow up decreased the odds of securing a lead by as much as 400 percent.

If automation and personalization are going to be effective, it’s important to find a way to balance the two. Overdoing automation can make brand messages seem robotic and irrelevant. Likewise, getting too personal can overwhelm consumers. A successful relationship between consumers and brands ultimately relies on the right blend.

Feature Image Credit: Maskot | Getty Images 

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Co-Founder and CEO of Gain

Sourced from Entrepreneur Europe

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Why Criticism Is Good for Creativity

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By Don Norman

Roberto Verganti and I published an article in the July 2019, Harvard Business Review on the virtues of criticism (Verganti, R., & Norman, D. (2019, July 16, 2019). Why criticism is good for creativity. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2019/07/why-criticism-is-good-for-creativity. May require registration or payment.)

Here is the basic argument

One of the most popular mantras for innovation is “avoid criticism.” The underlying assumption is that criticism kills the flow of creativity and the enthusiasm of a team. Aversion to criticism has significantly spread in the last 20 years, especially through the advocates of design thinking. (In 1999, in the ABC Nightline video “The Deep Dive,” which ignited the design thinking movement, criticism was stigmatized as negative.) In IDEO’s online teaching platform, the first rule of brainstorming is “defer judgment.” To make this rule even more practical and straightforward, others have reworded it to say: “When a person proposes an idea, don’t say, ‘Yes, but…’ to point out flaws in the idea; instead, say, ‘Yes, and…’” — which is intended to get people to add to the original idea.

We challenge this approach. It encourages design by committee and infuses a superficial sense of collaboration that leads to compromises and weakens ideas. Our view, the product of years of studies of and participation in innovation projects, is that effective teams do not defer critical reflection; they create through criticism.

The secret of criticism in innovation lies in the joint behavior of the participants. Those offering criticism must frame their points as positive, helpful suggestions. Those who are being criticized must use critiques to learn and improve their ideas. When conducted with curiosity and respect, criticism becomes the most advanced form of creativity. It can be fascinating, passionate, fun, and always inspiring. Let us combine “Yes, and” with “Yes, but” to create the constructive and positive “Yes, but, and.”

By Don Norman

Sourced from LinkedIn

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If You’re Not Using a Password Manger, You’re Putting Your Data at Risk

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By Franco Movsesian

RememBear help generate, store, and auto-fill strong passwords to keep your info save.

Coming up with strong passwords is hard. Remembering them all is even harder. That’s why you need RememBear password manager to make things simple.

Just about everything you do online requires you to register and create a password. In fact, some experts estimate that the average consumer has over 100 different online accounts with banks, email providers, online retailers, social media sites, credit card companies, newspapers, telecom providers, airlines, travel fare aggregators, video and music streaming services, cloud services, food delivery services, employee portals, online classified advertising services, and pretty much every single app on your phone.

In order to keep all these accounts secure and safe from hackers, each one should have a unique password that’s at least 12-14 characters in length and includes uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols. You should also change your passwords once or twice a year and avoid saving them online.

So, do you have a strong unique password for every single one of your online accounts? And do you change them all every six to twelve months? Probably not. And you’re hardly alone.

According to one recent study, 82 percent of U.S. adults use the same password for different accounts, 61 percent say they use the same password it at least half the time, 22 percent say they use the same password all the time, and 45 percent say they save passwords online. No wonder an estimated 60 million Americans have been the victims of identity theft.

If you want to keep your online data secure, starting taking your passwords more seriously and sign up for RememBear.

RememBear

RememBear is like a lot of other password managers—only it’s a lot easier to use, with a more advanced security architecture and way more bear puns.

RememBear makes your online life simpler and more secure by generating, storing, and autofilling strong unique passwords for all of your online accounts. It also has support for face and fingerprint ID, and can store payment information so you don’t have to get up off the couch and grab your wallet every time you want to buy something. Once your account is set up, you only have to remember one password. RememBear takes care of everything else.

To keep your passwords secure, RememBear uses end-to-end 256AES encryption. That means your passwords are encrypted by you, on your device, before they are sent over the internet and stored on the RememBear servers. But the security doesn’t stop there. To ensure that only you can retrieve your encrypted information, RememBear uses a form of cryptographic key exchange called Secure Remote Password. This allows them to verify your password without their servers ever knowing what your master password is. In short, in the event that the RememBear servers were ever hacked, there would be no way for the hackers to decrypt and exploit your information, giving you complete peace of mind.

RememBear Premium

RememBear comes in both free and premium versions. The free version generates, stores, and autofills all your passwords, and offers the same level of security. It also features the same easy-to-use interface. However, it only works on one device, and does not include sync or backup.

The premium version of RememBear allows you to sync your information across all your devices and comes with priority customer service. And you can get it for as little as $3 per month when you sign up for a one-year subscription.

That’s a very small price to pay for a service that makes your online life easier and more secure. So click here to learn more about RememBear, today.

Inverse may receive a portion of sales from the post above, which was created independently from Inverse’s editorial and advertising team.

Media via RememBear, Unsplash

Sourced from Inverse

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Food Leads The Way As Private Label Flourishes

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From Amazon to Target and beyond, there seems no end to the proliferation of private-label brands competing for consumer dollars. Throw in services like the online startup Brandless, and it’s virtually a free-for-all for both established and emerging CPG brands.

The most-purchased private label category is food, with 58% of adult shoppers saying they purchased such items in the last 30 days, according to consumer research provider MRI-Simmons.

From a retailer perspective, this is very appealing given the economics of the grocery business. According to CB Insights, while the average profit margin on grocery store goods is about 1.3%, retailers earn 25% to 30% higher gross margins on private labels compared to manufacturer brands.

Citing one example, CB Insights notes how Kroger has long used shopper analytics to guide investments in its own manufacturing facilities and now has a portfolio of over 40 plants processing everything from Big K Cola to spaghetti sauce. Kroger’s Our Brands line comprised nearly 30% of the company’s unit sales as of March 2018, the research firm says.

In the food and beverage space, purchasing private-label products is the No. 1 money-saving tactic among adult shoppers across all income segments, according to a report from IRI for the first quarter of 2019. That tops trying new, lower-priced brands; visiting multiple retailers; downloading coupons from a retailer/manufacturer website and comparing prices on area retailers’ websites. Those money-saving tactics appear in the exact same order when it comes to the purchase of private-label non-food items, IRI says in a separate report.

These insights have not been lost on Target, which generated headlines this month when it announced a major expansion of its private-label offerings. In addition to the youth-oriented, non-edibles branded More Than Magic line (everything from sportswear to electronics and stationery), Target unveiled plans for its own food and beverages under the Good and Gather tag.

“We know that food and beverage is a big reason our guests like shopping at Target, since nearly three quarters of our baskets have at least one food item in them,” Executive Vice President and Chief Merchandising Officer Mark Tritton said while explaining the company’s second-quarter 2019 earnings. “And driven by the improvements we have implemented over the last two years, we have been seeing consistent growth and market share gains in food and beverage for well over a year.”

While Target is aiming to stock some 2,000 private-label items within a year, Amazon Basics is already there and then some, with more than three times as many items, according to data company ScrapeHero. Even though Amazon’s aggressive embrace of its own products — particularly as regards to which brands show up in on-site search results — has angered many of its longtime brand partners, the digital behemoth continues to plunge full-speed ahead.

Then there is Brandless, the online startup that sells food and personal care products, (many priced at $3), which clearly has Amazon in its sights. Launched in July of 2017, Brandless this month landed $240 million in a funding round led by SoftBank Vision Fund. It represents SoftBank’s second large ecommerce investment in the U.S. (sports-apparel company Fanatics was the first).

Still, according to MRI-Simmons, younger shoppers are the most skeptical of private-label offerings. Those in the 18-34 cohort are more likely than all adult shoppers to agree that private label products are less trustworthy than name brands and that they feel “cheap” when they buy them.

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Marketers need to focus on authenticity to beat influencer fraud

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By Aaron Brooks,

The Times recently reported that influencer marketing fraud costs sponsors, on average, £1 billion each year. This waste is attributed to social creators with inauthentic audiences. Brands are pouring their marketing funds into influencer collaborations which are broadcast to bot accounts, rather than receptive, engaged social audiences.

For anyone close to the influencer marketing industry, fake followers are old news. They are the unfortunate but inevitable hangers on that come with large social followings. Respectable influencers will regularly and ruthlessly delete them, knowing what a negative impact silent and inactive followers can have on the performance of their posts and their reputation. Manually checking new followers and gauging their authenticity is necessary admin for a social content creator – and the only way to keep the value in their followings.

On the other hand, some influencers still intentionally buy fake followers to enhance their follower count. It’s something that content and influencer marketing platforms – and Instagram themselves – have been cracking down on for years. The fact that someone has slapped a valuation on its impact has brought it back to focus.

Looking beyond reach 

The practise of buying fake followers originated with brands’ obsession with reach. The bigger audience an influencer had, the more interest they got and higher fees they received. Attempts to ‘game the system’ were made by smaller influencers trying to get a crack at the big brand endorsement deals.

It didn’t take long for the wheels to come off this half-baked plan. As marketers realised engagement (likes and comments) was actually more valuable than reach, influencers realised that high volumes of silent and inactive followers were in fact causing their engagement rates to plummet. Fake followers can’t mimic the same engagement as a loyal and genuine following, built up over years of posting.

Despite this, some marketers remain hopelessly devoted to reach. I have no doubt that those still ploughing their budgets into influencers with large followings, without doing due diligence on whether they are actually real, are losing money.

Luckily there are no shortage of amazing influencers to partner with. There are just as many creative, professional and authentic influencers that will deliver results, as there are wannabes with falsely inflated followings. A considered selection process is key.

Focussing on solid ROI

A genuine following should be the minimum requirement for brands partnering with influencers.

Advanced analytics can now tell a brand where an influencer’s following is based and how old they are, so marketers can target their customers with precision. Relevancy is essential for an effective campaign. The focus shouldn’t be how many people see the posts, but rather how many of the right people see the posts.

Brands should also be aiming higher when it comes to the results of an influencer marketing collaboration. Reach and engagement should come as standard, a natural byproduct of a campaign that achieves solid return on investment, sales uplift or app downloads. These are far more valuable metrics to focus on and diverts attention away from the size of an influencers following.

The end of Instagram likes?

As the influencer marketing industry matures, Instagram is moving the goal posts too. Their recent trial to hide likes from public view caused a stir in the marketing press. While it’s only being tested in a selected number of countries, many asked whether it was ‘the end for influencer marketing’. But I believe it will make for a more authentic practise.

Firstly, it will force agencies and campaigns that have pinned their success on empty vanity metrics, such as likes, to up their game. Visible engagement can not and should not be used to justify an influencer campaign. Let’s look at the real, transparent return on investment.

I think it will also place a renewed focus on quality and individuality. Creators will no longer feel constrained by pressure to chase likes and will be free to make content that feels more authentic. Content that’s braver and doesn’t follow a tried and tested aesthetic. This renaissance in creativity is likely to spark a surge in engagement across the board. Weary social users – increasingly feeling as if they have seen it all before – crave this authenticity. They want to see something new.

Keeping the industry authentic

Brand ambassadors have been – and will always be – an effective marketing tactic. Thankfully software is becoming much more sophisticated and adept in spotting fraudulent accounts. But to preserve the power of the channel, all parties involved must uphold their responsibility to keep the industry clean. Just as influencers monitor their followings, brands must be just as diligent with their choice of partners. Do your background checks. Make sure that their engagement rate correlates with their following, or enlist the help of a platform.

With more conversion functions from Instagram – like shoppable tags and ‘swipe up to buy’ –  the potential for influencer marketing is huge. Prioritise authenticity, practise due diligence and you can be sure your efforts will be rewarded.

By Aaron Brooks,

Co-founder of mobile content and influencer marketing platform, Vamp

Sourced from Global Banking & Finance Review

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The man who worked with Steve Jobs, Michael Dell, and John Chambers reveals why innovation is the cornerstone of startup success

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By Rashi Varshney

Dr Vivek Mansingh, partner and mentor at Gurugram-based early-stage VC fund YourNest, has had a long and successful journey. In an interview with YourStory, he speaks about the importance of innovating, and why startups and companies should ‘think of innovation as oxygen for their organisations’.

“I believe that innovation is a skill, a combination of art, science, and creativity that can be learned by individuals and companies,” says Vivek Mansingh, a partner and mentor at Gurugram-based YourNest, an early-stage venture capital fund.

Based in Bengaluru, Vivek Mansingh has had an incredibly successful global career of more than 30 years across two continents. He began his career in the US as a scientist at Hewlett Packard in Cupertino, and then moved to Fujitsu in 1991 as a Director of Marketing & Sales in California. In 1997, he founded ATTI, a subsidiary of Aavid, and then sold the successful company in the Bay Area. Upon returning to India in 2001, he worked at two US and India startups that exited to Philips and Oracle, headed Dell’s research and development centre, and served as President for Cisco Systems’ Collaboration and Communications Technology Group managing global teams. During his stint, he worked directly with the likes of Steve Jobs, Michael Dell, and John Chambers on innovation among other things.

Vivek holds six US patents and is a gold medal-winning engineer from NIT Allahabad. He obtained a PhD from Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada, in 1986 and completed an Executive Business Management Program at Stanford University in 1996. In an extended interaction with YourStory, Vivek reveals how critical innovation is for startups in India and why the next unicorns will come in the B2B space.

Vivek Mansingh
Vivek Mansingh has worked directly with the likes of Steve Jobs, Michael Dell, and John Chambers on innovation among other things.

Edited excerpts of the interview:

YourStory: Can you take us through your innovation journey?

Vivek Mansingh:  My innovation story is very personal and interesting. My tryst with innovation started just after my PhD while I was in Silicon Valley. I gave myself a goal to be financially independent by the age of 40. The path I chose to achieve this goal was innovation. After a lot of hard work, I invented an instrument, used for hardware system design, patented it and licensed it to a Boston company. The instrument was sold to literally every company that designed electronic systems around the world. Thanks to the patent protection, I earned royalty on this invention for 17 years, and became financially independent.

My other five patents came from HP and Fujitsu while I was working at the Silicon Valley. After that, I moved to a management role, and though involved with leading large innovation programmes at Dell and Cisco, and engaged with engineers at nuts-and-bolts level on innovation, decided not to file patents in my name. Otherwise, I would have at least 30 patents.

If I look back at the biggest achievements of my life, innovation will be very much on top.

YS: Looking at the startup ecosystem and its changing landscape, how does innovation play a critical role? 

VM: Innovation has been a fundamental part of economic growth in the last 100 years. Umpteen successful companies have been built on the foundation of innovation; a large number of very successful companies have been destroyed by the lack of innovation. Ensuring the DNA of innovation in their companies is the highest priority for 92 percent CEOs.

Big or small, every company needs the magic of innovation. In terms of startups, there is always some innovation in the organisation itself as a startup provides a better solution for an existing problem. The innovation can be technology-based, business model-based, process-based, or in any other form. But there has to be some kind of innovation. The critical question is: does this innovation provide the startup a sustainable and BIG competitive advantage to build a successful company?

In B2C startups, India has done fairly well with examples like Flipkart, Paytm, MakeMyTrip, Naukri, Ola, and many others. These companies have done a great job. However, by and large, these startups have relied on a successful global model. But they have done an amazing job of innovation in their ability to compete with the best in the world with solutions built from India. In addition, there has been good innovation in optimising the solutions for India.

When it comes to B2B, there are a few differences and this is the space where YourNest largely focuses. In the B2B space, the Indian market is not large enough, so startups have to look at global markets and eye a globally sustainable competitive advantage from day one. They may start by selling the product in India and later to the US and the rest of the world. But from day one, their thinking – in terms of product, technology and business model – has to meet global standards.

If you take India-based successful B2B companies like inMobi, Freshdesk, Zoho, Dhruva, and upcoming startups like Uniphore, KaHa Technologies (YourNest portfolio companies), to name a few, all these companies are designing solutions to address global markets from the early stage. Hence, the value proposition of the product and solution has to be based on deep innovation.

Another class of B2C startups is where they are offering products to global markets. YourNest portfolio company Miko is a good example. They are building AI-based learning and companion robots for small kids. The product already has traction in India and the Middle East, and will be launched in the US and the UK soon. Again, the innovation quotient for this product is world class from the early stage.

Therefore, deep innovation is critical for startups, but even more so for B2B. Of course, these innovations, when properly packaged and filed, become patents.

YS: What are the gaps that India faces when it comes to the patent ecosystem? 

VM: Countries like the US, China, and Japan file around 50,000 patents in a year while India files somewhere around 2,000 patents per year. Therefore, at this moment, we are far away from any of these leading countries. The good news is that we are now moving in the right direction and our innovation ecosystem is much stronger than reflected by the number of patents filed in India.

In my opinion, both startups and large companies in India need to start deep innovation and patent these. We have a healthy ecosystem of about 20,000-30,000 startups. If half of these file even one patent each, we should see 15,000 patents filed in India in the next few years. Our large companies should seriously consider innovation as oxygen for their organisations. If they do, thousands of patents can come from them.

Another important point to understand is that a patent is country-specific and needs to be filed country by country. So, if a large market for a product is in the US, even an Indian company may first file a patent in the US rather than India, hence reducing the number of patents filed in India.

Another factor, most MNC R&D centres in India file patents in their own respective countries for innovation coming out of these centres. These could be several thousand patents every year alone.

Hence, one should not judge India’s innovation prowess by looking at patents filed in India. The ecosystem is much better and bigger.

YS:  What is your view on patents for startups? Realistically, at what stage should they file for a patent?

VM: I strongly believe that startups need to innovate hard and file patents as early as possible. They need to focus on filing patents in their core areas. A patent allows protection for about 17 to 20 years, after which, patents come into the public domain.

Since patents are country-specific, my suggestion to founders is to file a patent in the country where the innovation was done in addition to countries that are large markets for their products.

YS:  A lot of startups believe that filing a patent is not a strategic decision but a financial decision. What do you have to say about that? 

VM: As mentioned earlier, patents are granted country by country. So, if your market is in the US, Germany, the UK, Japan, China, and India, one has to file a patent in each country. Although in India patent cost is a couple of thousand dollars, in the US and other countries, it is around $10,000 for each country. If one has to file multiple patents in multiple countries, the cost can become prohibitive for a startup.

My suggestion to startups is to not go by the number of patents, but file patents in the core area of technology that differentiates their solution and gives them a significant and sustainable competitive advantage.

A good patent with solid claims can become an invaluable differentiator and one such patent can be better than 10 ordinary patents. To elaborate on claims, a patent claim is the most important part of a patent. It defines exactly what is claimed by the invention and therefore what is sought to be protected.

In addition, patents make startups more valuable in the eyes of investors and partners.

YS:  Can you provide some examples of how have you helped your startups innovate?

VM: During my stints as head of R&D at Dell and Cisco, I drove innovation across these companies. These practices were so successful that they were adopted globally. I understand how innovation DNA can be institutionalised and that is what I do with portfolio companies of YourNest. 

The first step is to encourage our founders to take innovation seriously from early stages of the company and file patents.

I am a big believer in collaborative innovation. We engage with startups to identify their core technology areas, go deep in competitive solutions, do out-of-the-box thinking to bring new ideas to the table, brainstorm on each potential idea vigorously, and finally come up with some unique innovative ideas.

People sometimes associate innovation to a single person; however, collaborative innovation is much more productive.

For instance, one of YourNest’s portfolio companies is Golflan.  They are developing deep technology products to improve the golf experience. It shares a full 3D map of the golf course with golfers to enhance their game. In addition, their AI-driven features increase efficiency of golf courses. It is a fairly complicated hardware-software deep technology product where innovation was done together by Golflan team, myself, and a YourNest technology director. It is a very successful and amazing product installed across some top golf courses around the world.

As many golf courses do not use a cart, Golflan wanted another handheld product with the same features. After understanding various factors like the product requirement, competition, our core competencies to name a few, we came up with a mobile product with a competitive pricing. Again, this was true product innovation done collaboratively by Golflan and YourNest teams. I see phenomenal success for this product around the world.

Incubator

Miko is a beautiful innovation from India and is now heading for the global market. One of our associates at YourNest has worked closely with CTO and CEO of Miko to innovate and patent some key technologies. As the product is ready to be launched in the US, I have worked closely with the founders to drive innovation that helps in localising the product for US markets.

Another portfolio company Lavelle Networks is working in the SDN area (software-defined network). We are working closely with the founding team to help them innovate and patent some critical pieces of technology that can give them a sustainable technology edge.

In a SaaS startup, Wolken Software, working closely with the founders, we were able to innovate on a strong base platform makes the product stand out in terms of new features, scalability, and deployment agility. This company has been able to win global customers at this early stage due to this hardcore innovation.

At EnCloudEn, I have asked the CTO to not come to office for a week and dedicate the time to innovation. We will spend time to go deep into core technology and competitive state-of-the-art technologies, and then bring out-of-the-box ideas for their product. The goal is to come out with a couple of patentable ideas in that week that can be drilled down further to come up with solid patents.

Many YourNest portfolio companies have done tremendous innovation, acquiring multiple patents even at their early stages. KaHa Technologies (23), Uniphore (19), Orbo (10), Miko (1), (5 more in the pipeline) and SSTS (4), to give a few examples.YS:  What do you think is the next big thing for India’s startup ecosystem?

VM: India is on the right path. In phase one, companies like Infosys and Wipro established themselves as global companies of magnificent size. In the second phase, our B2C companies like Flipkart, Ola, and Paytm have set global standards by becoming very successful unicorns. We will continue to see B2C successes, but I think India is now ready for good number of B2B successes. I believe you will see 30 B2B unicorns from India in the next 10 years. These companies will be globally successful based on deep innovation done right here in India.

YS: You have had a long career and are now extensively involved with startups. What are you planning next?

VM: My personal goal is to help create at least three B2B unicorns from India in the next few years. I would also like to see YourNest become the best deep tech Indian fund in early-stage funding, and nurture some global successes.

On the nonprofit side, I am on the board of Janaagraha and Dream A Dream, have adopted a hospital and built ICU and maternity wards there, run a school for handicapped children, a school for less privileged, and a free programme for corrective surgeries for handicapped children.

Lots to do!

By Rashi Varshney

Sourced from Your Story

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