editor, Author at Mediastreet

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The Future of B2B Content: Data-Informed, Interactive, and Influential

June 26, 2019 No Comments

By Lee Odden

Before starting on any new marketing initiative or trying a new tactic, B2B marketers need to answer and essential question: Why?

While most B2B marketers won’t admit it, many still practice some “spaghetti/wall marketing” wherein each year they throw new digital tactics “against the wall” to see what sticks without really knowing why a tactic would work for their audience over another.

This is not to say that you should slow down on innovating and trying new things. But it’s important for success to be strategic and test. I challenge marketers to do more research around customer insights and preferences so that any changes they make are driven by data and informed hypothesis—rather than simply trying new things just to see if they will work.

Focusing Your Data Lens

For content, we focus on three types of customer data:

Discovery: Where, when, and how buyers find information that helps them identify a solution.
Consumption: Preferences for channels, content types, topics, formats, devices, and experience.
Action: What triggers will motivate the desired action.

With buyer discovery, consumption, and action metrics, you’ll know how to create awareness, great customer engagement, and compelling offers that matter to your customers. And you’ll always know which approach to use to improve your marketing because it will be customer driven.

A New View of Content

What does that customer driven content look like in today’s landscape? It’s data-informed. It’s interactive. It’s influential.

For example, client Prophix provides Corporate Performance Management (CPM) software in an industry not known for exciting marketing. With an understanding that B2B buyers are also consumers, they decided to launch campaigns that would go beyond educating buyers to “info-taining” them.

To create a standout content experience for their annual report for the financial planning and accounting industry, they brought together financial industry influencers with an interactive online game. The quiz-themed game asked questions using data from the report as well as from the influencers who were represented as avatars within the game.

The creative element to the content plus the collaboration with trusted industry experts drove performance of this program above and beyond expectations, beating the benchmark for asset views by 600%.

With a taste for what interactive content and working with industry influencers for content and promotion can do, Prophix followed up with another campaign featuring a simulated voice assistant named Penny.

An interactive microsite highlighted the intersection of finance and artificial intelligence with Penny as the guide. By interacting with Penny, users were able to access a group of influencers that provided their expertise via audio and text. The microsite had 189% more views than the benchmark and 642% more engagement.

By taking what is often called “boring-to-boring” content and packaging it as an interactive experience with trusted experts providing useful information, Prophix was able to realize their “new lens” of marketing as something that was beyond a shiny object. It was effective marketing.

An Eye to the Future of B2B Marketing

B2B brands are increasingly investing in interactive influencer marketing to engage with industry influencers and co-create content that is packaged with brand content in an experience that is engaging for influencers and buyers alike.

The sheer volume of information and media that confronts people in the business world is overwhelming and often pretty boring. Creating compelling experiences with interactive content is one way to stand out, differentiate, and optimize for effectiveness. At the same time, buyers don’t trust advertising or brand marketing messages. Co-creating content with trusted experts brings credibility and interest to the brand message.

My upcoming presentation at the 2019 Clever Content Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark will help B2B marketers understand how to “break free of boring marketing” by exploring the top interactive formats, best practices for influencer engagement and case studies featuring mid-market and large enterprise B2B brands doing interactive influencer marketing right. Learn more about my Break Free of Boring Marketing presentation here.

By Lee Odden

@LeeOdden is the CEO of TopRank Marketing and editor of Online Marketing Blog. Cited for his expertise by The Economist, Forbes and the Wall Street Journal, he’s the author of the book Optimize and presents internationally on B2B marketing topics including content, search, social media and influencer marketing. When not at conferences, consulting, or working with his talented team, he’s likely running, traveling or cooking up something new.

Sourced from Top Rank Marketing

In News

Most Effective Social Media Marketing Tactics for Small Business in 2019

June 26, 2019 No Comments

By Stephen Forde

Social media has turned out to be a powerhouse for the data on the internet. Social media marketing as a concept is getting popular and trending day-by-day. It enables small businesses to engage their customers, interact with them, and reach a vast network of potential customers in lesser time.

The majority of businesses do social media marketing on an ad-hoc basis. They know they should do something engaging about social media, but they really don’t understand where they exist and what they should do. If you are not attracting the desired customers, sales and leads even by using social media, then there may be the reason behind you’re not using the right social media strategies. So, in this article, we’ve summarized the most effective social media trends, strategies & tactics that will help you grow your small business in 2019.

Boost Your Small Business in 2019:

Before we move ahead, it’s worth pointing out there is no fixed approach that will work for everyone. The key is in finding the right one for your business. The one that is more likely to align with your targeted audience in a limited period of time is social media marketing. Social media marketing is not as complicated as it seems if you know the right strategies and tactics.

If you can master its insider secrets, you are good to go. Using social media to market your small business will not only help you get more money from your existing customers but also help to acquire new ones. However, failures to have an effective social media strategy can be harmful to your small business.

While you may not think of the lack of social media presence is always having a great impact on you today, it will eventually be laid down your business to a distorted path. So, don’t wait until it’s too late, get started today with the latest social media trends & tactics.

Follow Social Media Marketing Tactics we’ve outlined below & set your small business up for sustainable growth.

Create Engaging Profiles on Different Platforms:

If you have an account on Facebook, that you are headed in the right direction. But Facebook alone won’t be enough to grow your small business. You need to make a strong social media presence on top-rated platforms, including Instagram, Snapchat, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, etc. Before you rush to create profiles on these channels, it’s important you understand your targeted market analyzes the latest Social Media Trends.

Regularly Post Content:

Once you have made an engaging profile of the different social media, your next task is to post quality content on a daily basis. Suppose if someone stumbles upon your page and your recent posts about 2 weeks ago, then they for sure no longer will follow you on that platform. So, you have to do regular social media optimization as it is the best opportunity for you to stand out from the crowd. Each time you update new content, it reminds your follower that where your brand exists and how it can be so helpful for your small business

Build Relationship with Social Influencers:

When it comes to social influencers, celebrities & athletes will quickly appear in your mind. But partnering with athletes or celebrities may won’t fit within the marketing budget for your small business. So, you should search for social influencers who are more cost-effective than an athlete or a celebrity like micro influencers. Micro influencers have stronger engagement matrices with their followers and can increase productivity in an enhanced and faster manner.

Employ Automation Tools:

We know how you are feeling right now that everything we discussed above is time-consuming. But as an owner of small business, you need to manage multiple tasks throughout the whole day. And at the end of the day, you’re left with no more working hours to plan for the next day. This is where automation tools can help you out. Automation tools will enable you to schedule your posts in advance. You just need to take time once at the start of your week to set the date and time for your posts in the future.

Motivate User Generated Content:

This Social Media Marketing trend will help you build a strong presence and optimum brand awareness in a few clicks. Your small business can be exposed to a wider audience. Anybody who follows people who enter the contest will see your brand/products being promoted, even though if those people don’t follow you. So, user-generated content is the best way to get more followers and then turn those followers into potential buyers.

Give People a Reason to Follow you:

In order to run a small business, you need to have strong social media visibility and followers. Without these two, nobody is going to follow you. Once you made your strong social following, it will be easier for you to convert your followers into potential customers. Because people are more likely to buy things, that they follow on social media. So, organize a contest, give discounts and promote flash sales.

Conclusion:

To stay at the top of the competitors, you need to make use of social media marketing tactics, no matter your business is small or large. Just having a Facebook account isn’t enough to boost your small business worldwide. It requires a strong web presence on highly usable platforms that people like to use. So, you just need to post fresh content daily on your social media accounts, give consumers the discount, sales offer and maintain relationships with the industry’s leading influencers. Best of all, following the right trends can give your small business a good turnover and excellent ROI.

Feature Image Credit: LoboStudioHamburg / Pixabay

By Stephen Forde

Stephen Forde is the CEO of Media Fortress, a digital marketing & web hosting firm. He helps clients grow their web visibility through all aspects of digital marketing.

Sourced from Irish Tech News

In News

Quartz is shutting down its Quartz Brief mobile app July 1

June 25, 2019 No Comments

By Max Willens

Quartz Brief, the award-winning news mobile app, is being put out to pasture so the digital news publisher can focus more on a newer one launched in the fall.

Digiday has learned that Quartz plans to shut down the Quartz Brief, the chatbot-style mobile app launched to great acclaim in 2016. The app will shut down July 1. Adam Pasick, who headed up editorial operations for the app, as well as the Quartz Daily Brief, one of Quartz’s flagship newsletters, left for a job at The New York Times in May. A spokesperson said Pasick’s departure had no bearing on the decision to shut down the app.

The Brief, which earned the adoration of media watchers but never managed to grow a large-scale audience, is being shut down at a moment when Quartz is devoting more resources to driving consumer revenues; Quartz launched a membership product in November, which costs $14.99 per month or $150 per year, as well as a new mobile app modeled after NewsPicks, the mobile news app owned by Uzabase, the Japanese firm that acquired Quartz in July.

“As we prioritize some exciting changes ahead for the main Quartz app and Qz.com, the Quartz Brief app will shut down on July 1,” a Quartz spokesperson wrote in an email. “The Quartz Brief has represented many of Quartz’s best qualities, with groundbreaking product design and new forms of writing, and the lessons and spirit of the idea will always be at the heart of our product offerings as we grow and evolve.”

The Quartz Brief made a big splash when it first launched. Originally built around a chatbot-influenced user experience, Quartz Brief served users a mixture of stories published by Quartz and third parties such as The Washington Post, summarized with a mixture of text and gifs. Apple named it one of the ten best iPhone apps of the year, and publishers ranging from Business Insider to CNET to GQ declared it among the best mobile apps available.

As the years wore on, Quartz added a number of different features to the Brief, ranging from an augmented reality section to a “Trump snooze” button, which would automatically take Trump-related content out of the app for 24-hour periods. Quartz was able to monetize all of those features, a spokesperson said, distributing sponsored content through many of the features.

“The Quartz app was always an experiment. And it was a good one,” said David Ho, former executive mobile editor at The Wall Street Journal. “Quartz tried new things with notifications, with chat, making news a conversation.”

“Even more than the experiments themselves,” Ho went on, “Quartz’s willingness to try something different out in the wild is a legacy all by itself.”

But the accolades did not lead to sustained audience growth. Since the beginning of 2017, the Quartz Brief app has been downloaded 1.3 million times across both iOS and Google Play, according to Apptopia data, with monthly downloads trending downward over that time. Through the first half of this year, the Brief was averaging 23,000 downloads per month across both mobile app stores, according to Apptopia data. The Brief app has spent most of 2019 ranked outside the top 100 news apps on both stores, according to App Annie data. This week, the Brief was not ranked within the top 200 free news apps available in either store.

“Some people loved it!” one former employee said. “Just not hundreds of thousands of people.”

Once the Brief disappears, Quartz will focus more attention on its newer app, which foregrounds community and is designed to stimulate conversation among users. That app, launched in November 2018, has been downloaded more than 500,000 times across both app stores, according to Apptopia data. A Quartz spokesperson said the number of active users of the new app is “on par” with the number of active users of the Quartz brief, without sharing a specific number.

By Max Willens

Sourced from DIGIDAY UK

In News

Popular audio ripping site Convert2MP3 shuts down after lawsuit

June 25, 2019 No Comments

By Dani Deahl

And has surrendered the domain

Global recording industry organization IFPI has confirmed in a statement that popular audio ripping site Convert2MP3 is shutting down as part of a settlement from a 2017 lawsuit. Convert2MP3 allows people to download audio files from YouTube links and other sources, and according to the IFPI, had 684 million visits from around the world over the past year.

The IFPI has marked piracy as a threat to the music industry for a number of years. Its 2018 Music Consumer Insight Report said that 38 percent of people globally consume music through copyright infringement, and for those who infringe, stream ripping sites like Convert2MP3 are the most popular option.

The 2017 case was coordinated in part by the IFPI, and filed by German record labels against Convert2MP3 in the company’s home country of Germany. According to Billboard, the labels said the site supported large-scale and sustained copyright violations by letting people extract downloadable audio files from things like music videos. In order to avoid litigation in court, Convert2MP3 has now agreed to shut down the site, any of its associated sites, and will also surrender the domains to the IFPI. Financial compensation is included as part of the settlement, and the site’s operator agrees to “not to infringe copyright or circumvent technological protection measures in relation to recorded music in future.”

The music industry has had Convert2MP3 in its crosshairs for some time. In 2017, the RIAA submitted a list of prominent piracy websites to the US government which included Convert2MP3, along with sites like Newalbumreleases, Rnbxclusive, and Youtube2mp3, which was forced to shut down in late 2017 after being sued by a group of record labels. That same year, the US government mentioned Convert2MP3 in its annual review of “notorious markets” — a term for locations where large-scale IP infringement takes place.

In 2018, Torrent Freak reported that Convert2MP3 was declared unlawful by a Danish court, and the court issued a global order for ISPs to block it. “The result of the case is historic,” said anti-piracy firm Rights Alliance, who shouldered the fight on behalf of the IFPI and other organizations. “It is the first time worldwide that a stream-ripping service has been ordered to be blocked.” Shortly after, Convert2MP3 popped up again in another federal court document, this time in Australia where several film companies sought an injunction against the site and others like it.

Users that now try to visit Convert2MP3 are met with a message from the IFPI that says: “This site has been shut down following legal action for copyright infringement. Stream-ripping sites, which convert licensed streamed content into unlicensed downloads, are illegal. Willful, commercial scale copyright infringement could lead to criminal conviction. Illegal music services exploit the work of artists and pay nothing to those creating and investing in music.”

Feature Image Credit: Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

By Dani Deahl

Sourced from THE VERGE

In News

25 Google Search Statistics to Bookmark ASAP

June 24, 2019 No Comments

By Meg Prater

In many ways, marketing is a game of trend watching. The marketer who’s best at spotting and using trends earns their business market share, brand recognition, and ultimately, revenue.

But how do you search for trends? And where do you start? Well, since they own about 92% of the global search engine market, the answer to both of these questions is, “Google.”

Click here to get everything you need to get your website ranking in search.

How many people use Google?

Google has 92.42% of the search engine market share worldwide. That breaks down to approximately 72% of the desktop market and 92% of the mobile search engine market share. The United States leads with the most users. 27% of Americans use Google.

So, let’s look at a few of 2019’s top Google Search statistics and take a deeper dive into the trending searches that guide your marketing strategy.

Top Google Search Statistics in 2019

Now that we know how to search for trending topics, let’s look at how Google influences search with these latest statistics.

How many Google searches per day?

Google does not share their search volume data. However, it is estimated Google processes approximately 70,000 search queries every second, translating to 5.8 billion searches per day and approximately 2 trillion global searches per year. The average person conducts between three and four searches each day.

1. The top five Google searches in 2018 were “World Cup,” “Hurricane Florence,” “Mac Miller,” “Kate Spade,” and “Anthony Bourdain.” (source: Google)

2. 8% of search queries are phrased as questions. (source: Moz)

3. The typical user crafts searches that are about three words long. (source: Moz)

4. As of February 2018, 62.6% of web users conduct their searches on Google — up from 53% in 2015. (source: SparkToro)

5. 79% of keywords and 47% of keywords in positions 1-20 rank differently on mobile and desktop. (source: BrightEdge)

6. In 2018, Google Images accounted for 22.6% of all internet searches and Google Maps accounted for 13%. (source: SparkToro)

7. Compressing images and text could help 25% of web pages save more than 250KB and 10% save more than 1 MB. These changes reduce bounce rates and increase page rank on Google SERPs. (source: Google)

8. In 2018, Google properties owned over 90% of all searches. (source: SparkToro)

9. In 2017, 50.3% of web traffic took place on mobile phones. (source: Statista)

10. Branded searches have higher click-through rates on the first half of the first page of Google. (source: Internet Marketing Ninjas)

11. The average click-through rate for first position on a Google search query is 19.30% and the click-through rate for second position is almost half at 10.57%. (source: Internet Marketing Ninjas)

12. The average click-through rate for first place on desktop is higher than that of mobile, at 31.52% and 24.05% respectively. (source: Advanced Web Ranking)

13. Four times as many people are likely to click on a paid search ad on Google (63%) than on any other search engine — Amazon (15%), YouTube (9%), and Bing (6%). (source: Clutch)

14. Videos appear in 6.3% of results, but YouTube drew only 1.8% of all search clicks. (source: Moz)

15. 55% of people clicking on Google search ads prefer those to be text ads. (source: Clutch)

16. For every $1 businesses spend on Google Ads, they make an average of $2 in revenue. (source: Google)

17. The average click-through rate in Google Ads across industries is 3.17% in the search network and 0.46% on the display network. (source: WordStream)

18. 66% of distinct Google search queries resulted in one or more clicks. 34% of searches result in no clicks. (source: Moz)

19. The average cost-per-click in AdWords across all industries is $48.96 for search and $75.51 for display. (source: WordStream)

20. 53% of users will abandon a page if it takes more than three seconds to load. (source: Google)

21. 18% of searches lead the searcher to change their query without clicking any results. (source: Moz)

22. The average Google search session is just under one minute. (source: Moz)

23. The average conversion rate in AdWords across all industries is 3.75% for search and 1.77% for display. (source: WordStream)

24. Image blogs appear in 11% of Google results and earn 3% of all Google search clicks. (source: Moz)

25. When Google opened its proverbial doors in September 1998, they only averaged about 10,000 daily search queries. (source: “The Search”)

How To Find Trending Searches

Google Trends
Think with Google
Twitter
BuzzSumo
Feedly
Reddit
Ahrefs
Pocket
Quora

1. Google Trends

Review the year in search, take Google Trends lessons, and see what’s trending now. You can also view the peaks and valleys of topic interest over time, which uncovers seasonality and allows you to plan your marketing calendar accordingly. Plus, find related topics and queries, and identify sub regions your topic has been trending in to better target your campaigns.

Source: Google Trends

2. Think with Google

Discover articles, benchmark reports, and consumer insights that keep you up to speed on search. From ad bidding strategy to brand jingles, you’ll find interesting content that helps you think bigger while staying educated on how to leverage Google search for your business.

Source: Think with Google

3. Twitter

Sign on to Twitter for more than vaguely hostile political debates. Use the “trends” feature to uncover what’s trending in your state, country, or around the globe. When you click into a trend, you’ll see top tweets about the topic, relevant news stories, and live responses as well.

Source: Twitter

4. BuzzSumo

Identify the most shared content in the previous 12 months or the last 24 hours. BuzzSumo allows you to drill down and analyze the topics that matter to your industry, your competitors, and the influencers you learn from.

Source: BuzzSumo

5. Feedly

This RSS feed aggregator allows you to follow your favorite brands and see their most recent content in once place. Add your favorites and discover new publishers by searching your industry, skills, or — you guessed it — trending topics. Feedly also allows you to set up keyword alerts, so you’re always tracking the latest trends on topics you’re interested in.

Source: Feedly

6. Reddit

Freshness and user-based voting determines how content is prioritized on Reddit. A quick visit to the homepage shows you trending or popular posts. And you can filter by country or recency for a more relevant feed.

Source: Reddit

7. Ahrefs

Conduct competitive research, home in on a keyword, or search for trending topics. Ahrefs helps you identify trending content and shows you what to do to outrank your competitors.

Source: Ahrefs

8. Pocket

Pocket allows you to save content from anywhere on the web. Review your content whenever you wish and head to the Explore page to find trending topics that are relevant to you.

Source: Pocket

9. Quora

Sign up for Quora and select topic areas that interest you (e.g., “startups,” “marketing,” and “economics”). Quora will stock your feed with questions relating to your content interests. This gives you insight into what your customers are asking, real-time debates about competitors, and even allows you to answer questions about topics you have experience in.

Source: Quora

Want to dig a little deeper into search? Check out this article by HubSpot’s Dharmesh Shah on how to search on Google.

By Meg Prater

Sourced from HubSpot

In News

WhatsApp Repairs Serious Security Breach, Culprit May Be Foreign Government

June 24, 2019 No Comments

By Gavin O’Malley

Marking WhatsApp’s greatest security breach to date, the Facebook-owned messaging service just repaired what it’s calling a “serious security vulnerability.”

Although the timeline of the breach remains unclear, the vulnerability apparently allowed bad actors to install high-end spyware on the phones of WhatsApp users.

The spyware — NSO Group’s Pegasus — is popular among government spy agencies, according to a report in the Financial Times.

Partly due to the sophisticated nature of the operation, Facebook has referred the breach to the U.S. Department of Justice, along with a number of government regulars around the world.

Reached for comment, a WhatsApp spokesperson said user security is a top priority for the Facebook unit. “We are constantly working alongside industry partners to provide the latest security enhancements to help protect our users,” the spokesperson said.

WhatsApp is not ready to estimate how many of its roughly 1.5 billion users might have been impacted by the vulnerability.

Pegasus, NSO Group’s flagship spy software, has the power to activate a phone’s microphone and camera, search through emails and messages, and even track location data.

Security blunders have become a regular occurrence for Facebook and its network of platforms. Most recently, the tech titan admitted the passwords of millions of Instagram users might have been exposed to its own employees.

Yet, the idea that foreign governments might be using WhatsApp to spy on users makes Facebook’s other security breaches appear quaint by comparison.

Making matters worse for Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg just recently unveiled an ambitious plan to redefine private, encrypted messaging platforms.

Still in development, the new offering will “focus on the most fundamental and private use case — messaging — make it as secure as possible, and then build more ways for people to interact on top of that,” Facebook’s cofounder-CEO said at the time.

The announcement confirmed a recent story in The New York Times, which reported Facebook was integrating the infrastructures of Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp in order to enable end-to-end encryption across its network of properties.

This latest security snafu doesn’t bode well for the future of such an integrated service.

By Gavin O’Malley

Sourced from MediaPost

In News

The Forbidden Truth Regarding Marketing Consultant Revealed by an Expert

June 24, 2019 No Comments

By [email protected]

Marketing consultant must be in a position to take care of any issues or problems that may come up during your advertising campaign quickly and efficiently.

Marketing consultant must be in a position to take care of any issues or problems that may come up during your advertising campaign quickly and efficiently. You want to discuss with a professional marketing and advertising consultant who can help you find your own strengths and weaknesses and help you position yourself in the industry. An excellent marketing and advertising consultant must be a specialist in many different advertising and marketing practices and strategies. An advertising consultant is a person who truly understands that marketing is vital to business success and penetration. He is the person who can helps a company decide how to best engage existing clients. A growth promoting consultant may be a great idea for your company.

Online marketing is a multifaceted game and societal media is part of the entire game. The Marketing Process An advertising consultant will use a step-by-step procedure to help create a productive advertising plan. Plenty of search engine marketing requires the utilization of relevant keyword phrases as well as the usage of relevant backlinks.

To get the most out of your associations with copywriters and consultants, you want to understand what they both do best-and when you require each. You should first assess the consultant’s experience so as to guarantee superior support. Now, an individual cannot just assume he or she is able to turn into a Multi Level Marketing consultant. It is essential that as a Multi Level Marketing specialist, you will have the ability to advise people or other network companies on how they’ll have the ability to meet success and how much time it will take.

Marketing consultants provide valuable insight into your company. Moreover, your advertising consultant personally designs an approach to fix your problems. An advertising consultant looks at the present business model and after that, using analytical tools, considers the industry potential and develops a strategy to attain larger goals. He can help your business create marketing plans and marketing strategies. Business advertising consultants are usually talented enough to think of a business plan which will attract attention and will guarantee potential clients. They can be a great service to your business. When hiring business advertising consultants, make sure to assess your candidates thoroughly to make sure you’re choosing the very best person for the job.

In the event the consultant isn’t asking questions, there is an enormous chance he isn’t understanding your problem. He will also discuss how your marketing ideas will affect your business and which parts of the plan you should fine-tune. So before you employ any sort of SEO consultant ask for a completely free site audit. A search engine optimization consultant will look after the entire course of action. If you’re going to employ a professional search engine optimisation consultant, make sure you check his credentials carefully. The very good search engine marketing consultants will also let you know what you have to ask a search engine optimization company so you will not to be fooled into paying too much. Timing A superior local search engine optimisation consultant will always complete his job punctually and won’t extend the time limits to provide you your preferred service.

By [email protected]

Sourced from Thrive Global

In News

New Google Search Commands – Before: and After:

June 21, 2019 No Comments

By Roger Montti

Google’s Danny Sullivan today announced new search commands, the before: and after: commands. The new commands allows users to restrict searches to specific dates. The new search command is something Google is testing.

How do the Before/After Commands Work?

The commands accomplish the same functionality as the date range tools for restricting searches to specific date ranges.

According to Danny, the commands are:

“The before: & after: commands return documents before & after a date. You must provide year-month-day dates or only a year. You can combine both. For example:

[avengers endgame before:2019]
[avengers endgame after:2019-04-01]
[avengers endgame after:2019-03-01 before:2019-03-05]”

Old Way of Searching By Date

The old way of searching was by using the date search tool:

How to Use Before/After Search Command:

This is a screenshot provided in official announcement by Google:

screenshot of a Google search result page showing the before: after: Google search command in use

This is a screenshot of provided by Google of the Before/After Search Command in practice, how to use the Google search command

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Danny Sullivan also provided power user tips:

“Power user note! If you provide only a year, before: & after: translates those into full dates that work, such as follows:

[before:2018] =
[before:2018-01-01]

[after:2018] =
[after:2018-12-31]”

Danny also indicated that you can use dashes or slashes in the dates and that single digits were ok to use ( 5 instead of 05)

Here is what he tweeted:

“2018-12-31
2018/12/31

You can also use a single digit for month or day, so all of these are valid:

2019-3-1
2019-3-12
2019-03-01”

Other Features of Before/After Commands

The publication date of the search result pages will not always be shown. But this is subject to change. Search results shown in the News tab will always feature a publication date.

Curiously, Danny stated that it is difficult for Google to know when a document was published. Thus, the date notation is not to be taken for an absolute but rather Google’s estimation.

“This leads to another power user note about dates. It can be difficult for us to know the exact date of a document for a variety of reasons. There’s no standard way that all site owners use to indicate a publishing or republishing date….”

Using the date tool could sometimes be awkward because it involved a lot of clicking around and filling out input fields. This new feature makes it easier to find information that was published within a specific time period.

Read the official Google announcement on Twitter here.

By Roger Montti

Sourced from Search Engine Journal

In News

Nine Personal Branding Questions To Ask Yourself

June 21, 2019 No Comments

By William Arruda

Personal branding is a lot more than updating your LinkedIn profile or posting tweets to Twitter. It involves a much deeper, more personal, almost existential activity. Over the decades, as a pioneer in personal branding, I’ve developed nine powerful questions to clarify your brand. Use them to uncover and communicate your unique promise of value.

1. What makes me stand out from my peers?

When answering this question, think beyond your work activities. What are the things that make you interesting – the weirdest or quirkiest thing about you? Maybe you speak four languages or you’ve climbed three of the world’s tallest peaks or you have a giant collection of maps of national capitals. Those things may not be essential for doing your job, but they do make you interesting to those around you. And we all want to be connected to those we find interesting.

2. Who needs to know me so I can reach my goals?

Personal branding is not about being famous, it’s about being selectively famous. You need to be clear about whom you’re seeking to influence. All of the personal branding activities on which you’ll embark will be directed at this community. It would exhaust your resources to try to communicate the world at large, and it would likely have little impact. Get clear about your brand community.

3. What are my values?

Your values are your operating principles. I think of them as your non-negotiables. They impact how you feel, behave, and react. When you’re clear about your values, you can make sure to keep them in alignment. When you’re living your values fully, you’re fueled up and ready to deal with whatever comes your way. When your values are being violated by you or others, you start to exhibit negative emotions. You become the person no one wants to be around.

4. What’s my ultimate career goal?

All great planning – including your personal branding strategy – starts with the end in mind. Knowing where you want to go with your career will point you in the right direction when you start implementing brand-building activities. If you are unclear about what you want to do, your brand will flail about like a half-raised sail billowing in the wind.

5. Who makes up my support system?

Strong personal brands don’t go it alone. They have a community of mentors, sounding boards, emotional support friends, etc. to help them get clear, stay positive, make impactful decisions and ultimately achieve their goals. The digital age has made it easier than ever to grow a strong support system.

6. What brings me joy?

When you connect what you do with your passions – even if they aren’t the same thing, you’re putting fuel in your tank – giving you the energy to achieve your goals. And as an added bonus, when you’re connected to your passions, you exude a positive and engaging energy – one that makes you attractive to those around you.

7. What’s my superpower – the thing I do better than anyone else?

Strong brands take the things that they’re great at and they integrate it into everything they do. When you maximize your superpowers, you become known for them. You deliver value on a much higher scale, and become revered for your excellence. People will start using superlatives to describe you.

8. What’s my favorite way to communicate?

You likely won’t engage in personal branding communications if you despise the form itself. I get energized when delivering keynotes, but you might abhor public speaking. If that’s the case, simply pick another medium; don’t make it the center of your personal branding activities. Choose something you actually enjoy doing – perhaps that’s long-form writing like creating well researched white papers, or maybe you like to write brief, pithy, witty quips (if that’s the case, Twitter might be the best tool for you).

9. What’s my why?

We are all focused on what we do, and some of us are clear about how we do what we do – what makes our approach different. But few people are really clear about why they do what they do. When you have the “why” – your potent purpose defined – you have a sense of direction and a way of knowing what to pursue and what to ignore.

When you’re clear about the answers to all those questions, you have what you need to build a strong, authentic, and compelling personal brand.

Feature Image Credit: Getty

By William Arruda

William Arruda is the cofounder of CareerBlast and co-creator of the free video course: The Insider’s Guide to Getting Noticed and Promoted.

Sourced from Forbes

In News

Facebook is overrun with fake accounts impersonating tech execs like Tim Cook, Elon Musk, and Sundar Pichai

June 21, 2019 No Comments

By Rob Price

Facebook has a fake account problem — and the Silicon Valley elite aren’t going to like it.

The California tech giant’s social network is overrun by fraudulent accounts impersonating high-profile technology industry executives like Apple CEO Tim Cook, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Business Insider has found.

There are dozens of personal profiles on the platform purporting to be tech luminaries ranging from YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki to Evan Spiegel, head of Snapchat’s parent company Snap — often misleading ordinary, actual Facebook users who have crowded onto their profiles to ask questions, complain, and otherwise try to interact with them.

The existence of these accounts — some of them years old — raise new questions about the diligence with which the $531 billion company patrols its social network for fake accounts, especially given the blatant nature of their attempted deception. Facebook itself has previously estimated that it has as many as 116 million fake accounts on its platform.

jack dorsey sundar pichai facebook fake accounts — Various accounts on Facebook purporting to be Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Google CEO Sundar Pichai. Users are only allowed one personal account each on Facebook.

Back in 2018, The New York Times reported that Facebook was teeming with fake accounts pretending to be CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg. The company has since removed with these accounts — but these new impostors show the company has not managed to effectively police itself for fraudulent activity relating to non-Facebook technology executives.

A Facebook spoksperson said they were working to find and take down the fake accounts identified by Business Insider. In a statement, they said: “We use sophisticated technology and reporting tools to detect accounts set up to impersonate other people. That’s a clear violation of our policies and our teams are continually improving our technology and processes to keep imposter accounts like these off Facebook.”

The accounts make no attempt to hide

The fake accounts are easy to find: Just search for them.

By using Facebook’s search tool, Business Insider was easily able to surface numerous accounts pretending to be Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, and Snap CEO Evan Spiegel.

Even Peter Thiel, a Facebook board member, had at least one seemingly fake account.

elon musk fake account — An account purporting to be Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.

Some of these accounts seem relatively inactive, while others post regularly about their target. Some were created as early as 2013, and have managed to evade Facebook’s fake account detection systems for more than half a decade.

Facebook users have flocked to some of the profiles to try and talk to the apparent owner. A Tim Cook profile has numerous complaints about Apple’s customer service, for example; one for Susan Wojcicki has been targeted with anti-Semitic abuse.

The existence of these accounts aren’t just embarrassing for Facebook — they could put unwitting Facebook users at risk. When The New York Times discovered the fake Sandberg and Zuckerberg accounts, it also reported that some were being used to scam Facebook users out of cash via a hoax called the “Facebook lottery.”

Business Insider hasn’t seen any evidence that the fake tech executive accounts are being used for criminal or otherwise fraudulent ends, but it’s not implausible: Scammers frequently purport to be representatives of companies like Apple and Google in attempts to steal from people.

fake facebook accounts evan spiegel tim cook — Some of the search results for accounts purporting to be Snap CEO Evan Spiegel and Apple CEO Tim Cook. (Seemingly real and unrelated accounts have been blurred out.)

Impersonation isn’t allowed

Facebook has a real-name policy that requires all users to “use the name they go by in everyday life,” unlike other social networks like Twitter and (Facebook-owned) Instagram that allow for pseudonyms or parody accounts, as long as they’re clearly labeled as such. It also provides a blue checkmark graphic on the pages of verified, high-profile users — Peter Thiel’s official profile, for example, has such a blue checkmark, as you can see in the screenshot below.

acebook’s policy is designed to “keep you and rest of our community safe from impersonation, scams and phishing,” it says. Facebook also allows users to create groups and fan pages for public figures — but these accounts are all personal profiles, governed by the real name policy.

Some other top tech leaders have seemingly managed to avoid being targeted by impostors. We found no fake accounts pretending to be Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, or Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, for example.