editor, Author at Mediastreet

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Business Leaders: New Survey Finds Digital Performance Gap And How To Overcome It

July 11, 2018 No Comments

Digital and the delivery of digital services has become business critical. We see this across every industry, and in a new survey Riverbed conducted with 1,000 global business leaders, almost all were in agreement that implementing a digital strategy, maximizing its performance and doing it sooner, rather than later, is critical to their future success. In fact, the vast majority of respondents (91%) agreed that a successful digital experience is even more critical to the company’s bottom line than it was just three years ago.

Riverbed

The survey found that in order to maximize performance, companies need visibility into the full digital experience so they can monitor, measure and proactively address issues.

Download: Free Copy of Riverbed Digital Performance Global Survey 2018

Business leaders are aware of the benefits around digitization—including increased revenue, stronger brand perception and improved employee productivity. And while the resulting rush toward digital transformations will push markets to adopt new, innovative products and services, a significant digital performance gap exists. Nearly 80% of business leaders reported that critical digital services are failing at least a few times per month and impacting employee productivity and the end user experience.

And 95% of these same business decision makers say that major barriers—including budget constraints, legacy networks and lack of visibility into the digital experience—are holding them back from advancing digital strategies and delivering the performance and customer experience required in today’s digital world.

The performance of a digital service or tool—whether an online retail interface, digital health service or a mobile banking app—can define the end-user experience as either good or bad and any gap between its potential capabilities and its actual performance is critical to overall business success. The survey found that in order to maximize performance, companies need visibility into the full digital experience so they can monitor, measure and proactively address issues. Additionally, business leaders must ensure that they have a modern IT architecture in place to adequately support and capitalize on these new digital technologies.

In fact, 99% of business leaders say that visibility across the digital experience is critical to measure and manage it successfully; and 98% of global business decision makers believe that a modern, next-gen infrastructure that delivers greater agility is important to improving digital performance.

And business leaders are making it clear that the time to act is now. Among the respondents:

77% believe that it’s critical for their companies to invest in an improved digital experience for users or customers within the next 12 months
with 95% adding that those who don’t act in the next 12 months believe they will face negative business consequences—such as a loss in sales and revenue, delayed product launches, loss of customers and brand loyalty, and a decrease in employee productivity.

Companies that are rolling out full digital strategies, including full visibility into their digital environments and next-gen infrastructure as a way of maximizing performance, will be the ones who set the stage for the next wave of technology and will reap the benefits of integrating emerging digital technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning into their solutions. They’re the ones that will disrupt markets, open new product categories and send the digital naysayers searching for relevance.

At Riverbed, we understand that digital performance impacts all aspects of a business because it goes to the heart of the end user and customer experience. It’s why we’ve invested in a Digital Performance Platform to help our customers in their digital journeys, so they can turn digital strategies into performance, and fundamentally rethink possible.

Get a copy of the Riverbed Digital Performance Global Survey, which includes additional insights on digital trends, challenges, and opportunities for organizations to maximize digital performance. With a comprehensive approach to digital, the future is very bright.

By Subbu Iyer , Riverbed

Sourced from Forbes

In News

How to Use Facebook Groups for Business Growth

July 10, 2018 No Comments

By Baishali Mukherjee

It is now a reality to use groups for positioning yourself, acquiring new customers, and many things more

Today, most of us are part of one Facebook group or another. But have we considered using the groups for business growth? Probably not! But it’s high time we start doing it effectively. Leveraging a Facebook group for business can yield delightful results. But before you create a group and start inviting others; it is important to know certain things, so that the group and its activities, create desired impact.

Wondering how to promote your brand in Facebook groups? You can do it either by creating your own Facebook group or by joining one managed by others. It is now a reality to use groups for positioning yourself, acquiring new customers, and many things more.

Scroll down to know more from experts about how to use Facebook groups to support and market your business.

According to Skannd Tyagi, founder, E Info Solutions, Facebook groups are a pool of people with common interest areas. “By joining such a group you have access to people who match the profiles of your target audience. These groups will provide numerous opportunities to create awareness about you and your brand simply by being proactive and helpful. To explore such opportunities, just write the keyword in the search section at the right-hand menu of the group’s page, and get going,” he shared.

Pramod K Maloo, founder Kreative Machinez, a digital hub for business promotional and marketing, believes, there are multiple benefits for entrepreneurs who are part of Facebook groups. He enumerated six of them-

Discussion – Facebook groups are sort of like the new kind of online forum. They have great features like polls, and large-format status updates to encourage group members to interact with your content. You will get regular updates on what is going on in the page, other social media handles.

Polls – Polls can be used to get customer insights and to understand what the customer wants and to receive immediate feedback from polls. Groups are a great source of immediate feedback, and if you build a niche group from the beginning, the feedback you receive will be extremely valuable.

Selected People, group – People who have been in constant interaction with a business page are definitely the ones who are interested in the services they provide. Therefore, making a group of those selected people and giving them the required content and information for what they usually look at. Drive these people to get engaged with the call to action, via campaigns, contests, takeaways etc.

The credibility of the brand – Having groups can help increase the credibility of the brand. The discussions that happen in the groups can also be used as answers or questions in Quora. By doing this we will increase engagement and presence on other social media handles.

Reach – It’s a viable way of building a highly engaged community of individuals who are likely to be interested in your business. You can reach out to masses without spending on Facebook ads.

Economical– If you can reach out to the masses plus targeted masses without pinching your pocket, it`s a great deal. So remember to always provide value to the customers and give them reasons to stay in the group.

Maloo also advised against talking about one’s business and products every time. “Sometimes small talks are important to make your products worthy. If you keep on talking about your products, things will be monotonous and people will lose interest. Also add company employees in the group, to increase the number of positive reviews about the services/ product offered,” he advocated.

Potential to Attract Future Customers Absolutely Free

Ajay Mittal, Founder, Kolkata Clean Air and Mera Workshops, has over the last few months, spent time talking to individual business owners to understand about how they generate business. Interestingly, one of the top platforms for them was Facebook and Whatsapp groups which were helping them attract more customers. He found that these groups can really help grow all business, be it, small or large, B2C or B2B.

The point Mittal wants to make is the sheer potential of Facebook group in attracting thousands of members, many of whom could be your customers, absolutely free. “If you compare this with any other marketing techniques, and the cost of reaching out to 10k eyes balls which are mostly targeted as potential audience having one or more common factors, and you will understand the immensity of the potential. That is not all, Facebook group posts allow easy communications and response which results in much higher engagements,” he opined.

Another interesting thing is that the posts stay in the groups forever so many people who view these posts can always search back when they are in need of the requirement, even months after the post was made.

Starting a Facebook group could be a great strategy if you are ready to do some hard work in building a successful group as Facebook Group Admin has much higher visibility and privileges than any other members. Mittal maintained that if you are into a business that has potential to take a community along you, should start building a group today.

Engaging successfully in a Facebook group

To engage successfully in a Facebook group you must make interesting posts. Now, what is engaging to a Facebook group might be very subjective and it depends on the target audience. It also matters what is the time you have made that posts.

There is no real secret to what makes a post successful, but a few things that you can consider as tips from Mittal’s observation:

1) Keep it short, easy to understand and very clearly highlighting the value proposition.

2) Most responsive posts are that are linked to a current event for e.g. Posts on beautiful hampers on Valentine’s Day or Mother’s Day will attract more response around those days.

3) Ensure you have a completely updated and active Facebook profile as that is important for people to trust you before enquiring or buying from you. Most people after reading a post will visit your profile before connecting with you to buy.

4) Make sure you engage in other posts but somehow connecting your comment with the post and not randomly posting your comment on every post. Best is to read through comments and reply to people who you see as your target audience.

Isn’t it a great opportunity for business owners to grow their business using these free techniques? All one needs is to be consistent and explore more and more groups to discover platforms that help to generate business, find ways to engage with target audience. What is even more interesting is that it is not limited to just B2C business; in fact B2B businesses have much higher potential but with a totally different strategy of selling directly but through education based marketing and engaging communities by sharing tons of value to appear as an expert in your domain.

Feature Image Credit: graphicstock

By Baishali Mukherjee

Sourced from Entrepreneur

In News

How to become a LinkedIn influencer

July 10, 2018 No Comments

By Gwen Moran

Here’s where to start if you want to build your following and raise your status on the business social media platform.

Jim Keenan says he’s probably on LinkedIn more than he should be—at least a few times a day. But if the measure of where professionals should spend their time is looking at what helps grow their businesses most, Keenan is exactly where he should be.

The founder of sales consultancy A Sales Guy and author of Not Taught: What It Takes to Be Successful in the 21st Century That Nobody’s Teaching You has amassed more than 20,000 followers on the business-focused social media platform, and routinely books speaking engagements and gets inquiries from new clients. His articles attract anywhere from 700 to 7,000 page views on average, he says.

Keenan is the embodiment of a LinkedIn influencer, says LinkedIn expert Viveka von Rosen, author of LinkedIn Marketing: An Hour a Day. While the focus of influencers on other social media platforms is often comprised of follower totals, charisma, and luck, LinkedIn and its focus on business, professional networking, and sharing expertise creates some natural checks and balances for influencers, she says. “It’s harder to fool people on LinkedIn as an influencer or to get people to believe that you’re an influencer than it is on some of the other sites,” she says.

Each year, LinkedIn publishes its “Top Voices” list of influencers who have the most engagement. But you don’t have to be a prime minister or world-famous CEO to create your own sphere of influence on the business-focused social media site. Here, influencers and experts weigh in on what it takes to have an impact on LinkedIn.

Build trust

On LinkedIn, like many places, the basics are the basics for a reason. Your first step to influencer status is to ensure the foundational elements of your profile are there. That includes a well-written bio that spells out who you are and what you do, a photograph, and some background on your experience and professional affiliations, von Rosen says. These all tell people who you are and why they should put trust in what you say.

“It’s all about building that trusted adviser-type persona on LinkedIn,” she says.

Building trust also requires taking a thoughtful approach to what you post. Because the environment is more business-focused, users are typically more strategic about what they post on LinkedIn than other platforms, focusing on value to their audiences, von Rosen says. That also creates somewhat of a safety net, von Rosen says. While some content may be controversial or provocative, “you’re not likely to post one thing that destroys 10 years of work, because I think people are just more intentional and strategic on LinkedIn,” she says.

Set yourself apart

The quickest way to build influence on LinkedIn is to become a reliable and steady source of good and useful information, says Wayne Breitbarth, author of Power Formula for LinkedIn Success. Figure out their “pain point” or what they want to learn about from you, and provide a mix of created and curated information to meet those needs, he says.

But that doesn’t mean just posting a steady stream of the same-old, same-old. You’ve got to find a way to differentiate yourself, he adds. One of his viral posts, entitled “Protect Yourself Now Because LinkedIn Is Making Big Changes,” reached 2,100 shares and 113,000 views because he used the “fear factor,” he says. He advocates using the multimedia options on LinkedIn to deliver content in a variety of formats, including articles and posts, video, and slide decks via SlideShare.

Keenan says counterintuitive content works, too. A video he posted called “Relationships Don’t Matter in Sales” was viewed roughly 500,000 times, with 1,100 comments and 5,000 likes. “People came out of the woodwork to either say, ‘He’s right, we’ve got to stop thinking we have to be liked by other people,’ or just losing it. ‘How dare you, people buy from people they like and trust,’” he recalls. And that type of rigorous debate isn’t something to be avoided, he says. Challenging conventional wisdom can yield important insights, he adds.

Connect passion to profit

Fintech writer Amy Buttell dealt with many millennials and thought this generation was unfairly maligned. On Christmas Eve 2017, she wrote a post about her “crush” on millennials and her respect for the attributes that others often criticize.

She has been active on LinkedIn for about six months and had connected with about 2,000 people. But her millennial post struck a nerve. It was shared roughly 400 times, garnered nearly 6,000 likes, and had more than 600,000 views. She spun off a new business venture as an expert in engaging millennials, and the experience elevated her profile among her fintech clients, many of whom are millennials, she says. She’s built relationships through the engagement with that post and others.

“If you come into LinkedIn thinking, ‘I just want to build my business and make more money,’ you’re not going to, because everything is about building relationships,” she says.

Keenan uses simple videos and an edgy style to help his audience learn about selling effectively. It doesn’t matter that his videos don’t have high production value, he says. It’s about the message and style. “My personality is very energetic, very confrontational on purpose, very engaging. I don’t produce the videos, I look like I’m talking right to you. I educate and teach. Even my rants are teaching,” he says. “People learn that they come to be entertained, inspired, educated, and that combination of three is valuable,” he says.

Engage regularly

A critical component of being an influencer is maintaining engagement with your audience, Keenan says. With the response volume he gets, it’s impossible to respond to everyone, but he tries to respond to at least one-quarter to one-third of those who contact him, he says. He comments on others’ content and shares content he finds valuable, usually tagging the creator to create further engagement. Breitbarth recommends keeping tabs on your notifications and posting new content at least once a week. (He’s careful to tag creators when he reposts their material to generate additional engagement.) Other influencers, like Keenan, interact on the platform daily.

Keenan also creates a “New Friend Friday” post where he encourages his contacts to interact with and help each other. “I’ve already seen these mini-ecosystems where all these people met through my network and the videos I’ve put together,” he says. Being able to create that kind of opportunity for people to connect is exciting, he says.

Have fun

All work and no play can make your LinkedIn content dull. Von Rosen advocates having fun. She points to a playful “fight” that Mario Martinez Jr., founder and CEO of sales and marketing consulting firm Vengreso, and Gabe Larsen, vice president of Inside Sales Labs, had about inbound versus outbound marketing. The two posted video and text about their “duel” that attracted hundreds of comments about the benefits and disadvantages of each.

Being an influencer on LinkedIn is a balance of strategy and authenticity, Breitbarth says. “If you read LinkedIn’s research, and LinkedIn’s research is all based on data, they say that the formula is consistency, depth, and the authentic desire to create conversations,” he says.

Feature Image Credit: [Images: davide ragusa/Unsplash (crowd); simo988/iStock (avatar)]

By Gwen Moran

Gwen Moran writes about business, money and assorted other topics for leading publications and websites. She was named a Small Business Influencer Awards Top 100 Champion in 2015, 2014, and 2012 and is the co-author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Business Plans (Alpha, 2010), and several other books. More

Sourced from Fast Company

In News

Creating Content Connections: 10 Lessons in Resonance from Content Marketing Pros

July 10, 2018 No Comments

By Caitlin Burgess

Spot on.

Exactly.

Truth.

Accurate.

Yaaaaaaaaaas!

It’s hard to contain the excited, “uh huh” head nodding when you read, watch, or listen to a piece of content that really hits home … strikes the right chord … illuminates something deep inside your soul.

And for us marketers, these moments should remind us of an important digital marketing truth:

Creating content that resonates is key to building rapport, credibility, and trust with our audience, and, ultimately, driving marketing results.

When a piece of content connects with a customer or buyer, it makes them feel like you get it, that you understand their point of view or struggle—and that you may be worth paying attention to.

In my time at TopRank Marketing, I’ve had the pleasure of reading, watching, listening, and talking to some of our industry’s brightest minds as they share insights or tips that really resonated with me as a content writer and strategist—teaching me and reminding me of the importance of resonance in the content we create and how we share it with our audience.

Below I share some of those lessons that you can hopefully use to create more meaningful connections across channels with your content.

#1 – Comedy creates some of the most intimate connections.

As part of our Behind the Marketing Curtain series, I was lucky enough to speak with Tim Washer, a comedy and marketing genius as well as Cisco’s Creative Director of SP Marketing.

As he shared his story and his perspective on comedy in marketing, his lesson in resonance was quite simple: Comedy demonstrates empathy—and empathy creates connection.

Let’s face it, a lot of true comedy comes from pain. So, when we can come out and touch on a customer pain point, we show them that we understand their point of view. When we do something that is self-deprecating, when we look vulnerable, and when we let our guard down a little bit that’s when we make a connection.

These days, there’s so little content out there that truly connects with people. … So much of marketing is telling people how great we are. But with comedy—especially in the form of video—we can show them that we’re not always going to tell you how great we are. And if you can make someone laugh, that is the most intimate connection you can make.

Marketers need to let their guard down if we want our customers and buyers to do the same—and you can do this “on brand.” Good comedy is certainly an art; you don’t just throw “something funny” at your audience. Use your audience and their pain points as your guide to thoughtfully create content that will connect and make them giggle.

Read my full interview with Tim.

Follow Tim on Twitter or LinkedIn.

If you can make someone laugh, that is the most intimate connection you can make. – @timwasher #LessonsInResonance #ContentMarketing Click To Tweet

#2 – If you want to connect with your audience, be dedicated to helping them learn.

A common goal for many brands want to build thought leadership by creating authoritative, credible content. But pushing your amazing product or service is not how you get there, as Mina Seetharaman, Executive Vice President and Global Managing Director of Content and Marketing Solutions for The Economist Group, told us in our interactive, supercharge your digital marketing infographic.

Thought leadership is about solving, not selling. People wake up thinking about their problems, not your product. In our research, Thought Leadership Disrupted, only 28% of marketers cited helping their audience become more knowledgeable as a primary objective. True thought leaders don’t push product, they understand their audience and share ideas to help them tackle issues.

People are constantly searching for answers to their burning questions and resources that will help them learn and find ways to solve their problems. When you make it a point to be the best answer for their inquiry, you have the opportunity to make a real impact.

Find more tips for supercharging your digital marketing.

Follow Mina on Twitter or LinkedIn.

True thought leaders don’t push product, they understand their audience and share ideas to help them tackle issues. – @minaseeth #LessonsInResonance #ContentMarketing Click To Tweet

#3 – Less is often more.

2017 marked my first trip to one of the industry’s biggest events: Content Marketing World.

While there, I attended the incomparable Ann Handley’s session. There she revealed five “radiant” writing secrets inspired by the classic novel Charlotte’s Web.

The MarketingProfs Chief Content Officer’s session was designed to help content writers become more thoughtful in how they approach content and make an impact on their audience. Ann challenged us all to:

Think of how Charlotte was able to save a life with just [a few] words. How can we use our words more intentionally? How can we make a difference?

It’s certainly no secret that we’re living in a world of content abundance. But if we want to create content that really resonates and makes our audience feel something, we need to remember that less is often more.

#4 – When it comes to social content, don’t let your personal brand get in the way of your brand’s message.

Once again, our Behind the Marketing Curtain series gave me the honor of speaking with social, content, and customer experience wiz Beverly Jackson, now Vice President of Social Portfolio Strategy for MGM Resorts International.

When asked about a bad social media habit marketers needed to drop, her immediate response was: Too much self-promotion that gets in the way of a brand’s story:

The great thing about social media is that it allows brands to create one-on-one relationships with their customers and prospects—not the marketers. And the bottom line is: marketers should never get in the way of that relationship.

Your brand needs to own the relationship with the audience if you want to make an impact. Of course, you should do what you can do evangelize your brand, but don’t confuse your audience by using your brand and its content to propel your profile. It can backfire.

Read my full interview with Beverly.

Follow Beverly on Twitter or LinkedIn.

#SocialMedia allows brands to create one-on-one relationships with their customers and prospects. Marketers should never get in the way of that. – @bevjack #LessonsInResonance #ContentMarketing Click To Tweet

#5 – Don’t settle for crappy content—your audience (and search engines) certainly won’t.

In the fall of 2017, my talented colleague Joshua Nite made his speaking debut at a local bloggers’ event. During his presentation, he declared that it was time to flip the script on how we craft content.

With search engines getting smarter and our audience being more self-directed in research than ever, Joshua said making the switch from SEO-driven content to content-driven SEO is the key to resonating with both readers and robots.

There’s never been a better opportunity to write great content that people actually want to read and that will get seen in search results. So, go forth and be awesome. And please, please—don’t settle for writing crappy content.

While seasoned marketers may say “duh” to this little reminder, I’d wager we all have room for improvement here. So here it is: We can’t settle. We need to innovate. We need to be thoughtful. And above all, we need to create content that our audience will actually enjoy reading.

#6 – Your audience is already telling you how to connect with them.

Another pro I had the pleasure of interviewing for the Behind the Marketing Curtain series was author, customer experience and social media expert, and marketing veteran Dan Gingiss, now the Vice President, Strategic Group for Persado.

While much of our conversation focused on social customer care, Dan said something simple—and perhaps even obvious—but it’s a good lesson nonetheless:

Always be listening. People will generally tell you everything you need to know about your business—what’s working, what needs fixing, and what could be your next big hit. Marketers need to embrace the feedback, including compliments, questions, and complaints.

From social media comments to customer surveys to inquiries or sales calls, brand or company has access to direct feedback from their ideal customers or buyers. They’re giving you an opening to make a connection. Use it to create content that answers their burning questions, quells their top concerns, or empathizes in a way that sparks agreement and head nodding.

Read my full interview with Dan.

Follow Dan on Twitter or LinkedIn.

Always be listening. People will generally tell you everything you need to know about your business. – @dgingiss #LessonsInResonance #SociaMedia Click To Tweet

#7 – “Story” is everything—and influencers can be compelling characters.

My most recent interview introduced me to Ursula Ringham, SAP’s Head of Global Influencer Marketing. As we chatted, a constant reference point was what she called her “love of story”—something that’s guided her throughout her career and something all marketers need to reinvest in. And influencers can help.

In marketing, story is everything. But in order to tell a compelling story, you have to be immersed. Bring empathy and understanding, bring purpose, and bring insight—the latter of which influencers can certainly help with.

At a time when content is absolutely everywhere—and consumer trust is diminishing—marketers and brands need to be in the business of storytelling if you want your content to resonate, inspire, and build trustful connections with our audience. You need to commit. You need to be thoughtful. And you need to consider who (e.g. internal or external thought leaders, current customers, prospects, employees) can help you tell that story.

Read my full interview with Ursula.

Follow Ursula on Twitter or LinkedIn.

In marketing, story is everything. But in order to tell a compelling story, you have to be immersed. – @ursularingham Click To Tweet

#8 – Invite your audience to be part of the content creation process.

When most modern marketers think of content co-creation, they likely think of partnering with industry thought leaders. Of course, this is a method we at TopRank Marketing absolutely believe in.

But one co-creation opportunity marketers may not take advantage of, is partnering with your audience, as Dave Charest, Director of Content Marketing for Constant Contact, shared in Content Marketing Institute and TopRank Marketing’s “The Ultimate Guide to Conquering Content Marketing” eBook.

When it comes to content creation, far too often content is created in a meeting room with a bunch of marketers without any thought for the day-to-day reality of the person consuming it. BIG mistake.

Level up your approach by creating content in partnership with members of your target audience. By including your audience in the creation process you’ll better understand what you need to create and how you need to create it. You’ll no longer be working in a vacuum and your content will better resonate with those you’re trying to reach.

There may be no better way to ensure a direct connect with your audience than asking them to be apart of your content process. From social media polls and other UGC to spotlight interviews or guest posts, there’s a range of ways you can include your target audience in the content creation process.

Follow Dave on Twitter or LinkedIn.

By including your audience in the content creation process you’ll better understand what you need to create and how you need to create it. @DaveCharest #LessonsInResonance #ContentMarketing Click To Tweet

#9 – Marketing integration is a must to deliver the best answer.

As a digital marketing industry veteran, perhaps one of TopRank Marketing CEO Lee Odden’s most famous lines is: “Be the best answer for your audience wherever and whenever they’re searching.”

When you become the best answer, you become sticky for your readers—and integration is key to achieving best-answer status. This quote sums it up well:

With content marketing so popular among brands and content high in demand from customers, why are many B2B marketers so challenged to stand out and be effective? One reason is that the inherent pressure to produce can result in content that does not resonate. …

The best content isn’t really that great unless it can be found, consumed, and acted upon by buyers. That is why an effective content marketing program is customer-centric and incorporates data from SEO, insights about format and topics from social media, topical relevance of content from buyer persona research, and awareness of what effect media and influencers can have on buyers’ research and purchasing decisions.

Follow Lee on Twitter or LinkedIn.

The best content isn’t really that great unless it can be found, consumed, and acted upon by buyers. – @leeodden #LessonsInResonance #ContentMarketing Click To Tweet

#10 – Resonance is rooted in long-held content marketing best practices.

No marketer has been untouched by the teachings of Joe “The Godfather of Content Marketing” Pulizzi. As someone who was relatively green in digital marketing when I joined TopRank Marketing back in 2015, Joe and the Content Marketing Institute (CMI)—along with my in-house team—were incredible resources as I learned the ropes.

One of the first pieces I read featuring Joe’s insights was from a session we covered at Social Media Marketing World back in 2014. His message was simple, but it’s something we all need a little reminding of from time to time:

If we only talk about ourselves, we’ll never reach customers.

Content marketing evolved out of the need to meet our audience where and when our audience is searching—and at whatever point they may be in the buying cycle. And ensuring that we’re answering their questions and educating them—not just pushing our product or saying how great we are—is a basic yet still-relevant best practice we should never lose sight of if we want to connect with our audience.

If we only talk about ourselves, we’ll never reach customers. – @JoePullizi #LessonsInResonance #ContentMarketing Click To TweetFollow Joe on Twitter or LinkedIn.

Go Forth to Create and Resonate

Another incredible marketing mind, Jay Acunzo, recently shared this go-to, “classic content marketing combo” tip. And it pretty much sums everything up:

Prioritize resonance over reach, and the latter (everything else you seek do do as a marketer) gets far easier.

Audiences want to connect with brands and companies that “get it.” So, give your audience great content. Give them guidance. Give them insight. Give them answers. And give them resonance.

Ready to create content that resonates? Take a cue from TopRank Marketing Nick Nelson and Honest Abe. Read our post on how to build trustful connections through storytelling.

Disclosure: SAP and Content Marketing Institute are TopRank Marketing clients.

By Caitlin Burgess

Sourced from Top Rank Marketing Blog

In News

CRUCIAL EU COPYRIGHT REFORM OBSTRUCTED BY EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT

July 9, 2018 No Comments

In Strasbourg on the 5 July 2018, MEPs voted to obstruct a crucial EU Copyright Reform from progressing to the final legislative stage.

Chairman of Magazines Ireland, Ciaran Casey said, “We are very disappointed with the vote but we will fight on and ask MEPs to do the right thing when it comes to Plenary in September. Four European Parliament committees have already scrutinised, clarified, amended and approved the EU Copyright Reform over the past two years and, unfortunately now those efforts to create a fairer, more sustainable digital ecosystem for the benefit of creators, distributors and consumers have been jeopardised.”

MEPs will now be asked to make further amendments to the report that was approved in JURI (Legal Affairs Committee) on 20 June. The amended report will be presented in Plenary in September for the full Parliament to vote on again.

Grace Aungier, CEO, Magazines Ireland said, “We encourage the MEPs to think about the impact their next decision will have on our free press, on the future of professional journalism and what message they want to communicate to the world about democracy and fairness in Europe.”

THE PUBLISHERS’ RIGHT:

gives publishers the legal standing already enjoyed by music, film and broadcasters which the press needs to assert its copyright online
encourages companies that wish to re-use and monetise publishers’ content to negotiate licences
excludes individuals from the scope of the right – their right to share links will remain untouched
entitles journalists to a fair share of any additional licence revenue granted by the Right
specifically excludes hyperlinks from the scope of protection
is essential for small newspapers and magazines with their numerous journalistic digital start-ups across Europe who have even greater challenges than large publishing groups when attempting to exercise their rights against US corporations.

Magazines Ireland is the association of Irish magazine publishers and represents 39 Irish publishers who together produce over 185 magazine brands, both consumer and business to business titles in print and digital.
Grace Aungier, Magazines Ireland, Tel 01 667 55 79 [email protected] www.magazinesireland.ie

In News

How to Design a Logo You Love—With Less Stress

July 9, 2018 No Comments

By Katy French

When most people think of a brand, they think of a logo. A brand is much more than that, but a logo is certainly one of the most prominent pieces of a visual identity. Creating the perfect logo (or redesigning your logo) is also one of the biggest creative challenges—beyond coming up with a brand name. How do you brainstorm? How do you iterate? It’s a delicate mix of instinct, skill, and creativity.

We’ve helped many brands bring their logo to life (or give their logo new life), and each project has us starting from square one—the scariest square. But over time we’ve developed a logo design process that makes it easier, even enjoyable, for everyone involved.

If you need to design a logo, try this step-by-step guide to stretch your creativity, use your team’s collective brainpower, and find something that truly reflects your brand.

But first, let’s discuss the word “logo.”

What Is a Logo?

Most people use the word “logo” to mean the visual stamp of a brand: the symbol, word, or both.

However, there is actually a specific distinction:

Logomark: The simple image that represents a brand (think Nike’s swoosh or Apple’s apple). For Column Five, it’s this:

Logotype/wordmark: A brand name in a styled font (think Coca-Cola’s elaborate script or Gucci’s clean font).

Combination mark: Both the image and the styled brand name together (think Puma).

Now that there are more opportunities for visual branding, from favicons to Facebook cover photos, it’s more common for companies to have all three. For the purposes of this blog, we’ll talk about logomarks and logotypes, with the assumption that you will be designing a combination mark logo. So, on to the process.

How to Design a Logo

Designing a logo relies on team collaboration and communication. The steps outlined here are meant to maximize your creative output while moving through the process in an intuitive way. Depending on your team, you may require more rounds of feedback in between, so feel free to tweak as needed.

1) Fill Out Your Brand Identity Survey

Whether you’re collaborating with an agency or creating a logo in-house, this is the first step in the logo design process. A brand identity survey is an articulation of what your brand is or what you hope it will be. It basically works as the foundation of your creative brief.

This type of survey is there to help designers understand the brand essence. If you haven’t done one before, here are the questions to answer:

Organization name (The way you want it on the logo and any other derivatives)
Tagline (if applicable)
What does your organization do (succinct, objective description)?
What is your core identity (vision, mission, and values)?
How is your organization currently perceived? Does that align with the organization’s character/values?
How does your organization want to be perceived?
How has your organization changed over time? Where is it now, where is it going?
Who is your audience?
Who are your competitors? How does your brand fit into the landscape?
How does your organization differentiate itself?
What is your organization’s current “character” or “personality” (e.g., reliable, fun)?

Current Visual Identity

Objectively describe what your brand is/what it looks like (e.g., logo, color, font)
Subjectively describe what you think it communicates (e.g., friendliness, strength)
How does the visual identity align or misalign with the organization’s values?
What do you like/not about the current visual identity?
How has the visual identity changed over time?
Are there different geographical teams or divisions to account for within a variation of the logo?
How do you feel about your logo?
- Where will this logo be used? (Print, web, social media)
- Why are you creating a new and unique logo? Why now?
- Should your new logo be “evolutionary” or “revolutionary”? (Is it updating the current identity or starting completely new?)
- Why type of “character” or “personality” would you like the new logo to have?
- What type of logo are you more drawn to: logomark, logotype, or combination mark?

Articulating this foundational thinking is crucial to keep your team on the same page throughout the process.

2) Write the Creative Brief

A creative brief is a distillation of your brand survey, translating those answers into actionable design directions. A creative director or project manager is usually the person who creates the brief, but everyone involved with the logo design process should be well versed in the creative brief.

Here’s everything to include in your brief. You should also choose 5-7 words that describe the brand, as these will guide your brainstorm.

3) Host a Free Association Brainstorm

Brainstorms can be the best part of the process, or they can be brutal. To help reduce the chaos, we recommend several brainstorms—each with a specific purpose. (You can also see our tips for conducting a better brainstorm to start off on the right foot.)

For this brainstorm:

Your goal is: To create word clouds of brand descriptors that are inherently visual. (There’s no sketching at this phase.)
Your team should include: Your creative director(s), project manager, designers, and anyone else with knowledge of the brand, particularly if you are designing in-house. That can include anyone from your accountant to your receptionist. The more minds the better.
What you’ll do: Gather your team and a white board. Put 5-7 brand descriptors up on the board (e.g., friendly, helpful, enthusiastic, etc.). Hand out markers, then have the team do a free association exercise to come up with similar words or words inspired by any of your existing descriptors (e.g., friendly = kind, nurturing, generous, etc.). Have people list out as many as they can.

Once this exercise is complete, your creative director or project manager will identify the words that inspire the most visualization. These will be used in the next brainstorm.

4) Have a Free Sketch Brainstorm

If your first brainstorm was fruitful, you should have a curated list of inspiring words for designers to work with. Now it’s time to start sketching a logomark. (You want to focus on your logomark first, then incorporate wordmark later.)

Your goal is: To translate concepts into visualizations.
Your team should include: Creative director(s), project manager, and designers.
What you’ll do: Print out your bullet point list of inspiration words and put them up on a corkboard (or list them on a whiteboard). Roll out a bunch of paper and have your designers start sketching visual ideas inspired by the words (e.g., “helpful” might look like hands shaking, people hugging, or even a tow truck pulling something). Don’t be self conscious. You want as many visual ideas on paper as possible, no matter how ridiculous or off the wall.

At the end of the session, the creative director should identify 25-30 concepts. You should also be able to group these visual concepts into 4-5 categories or themes. As you get feedback, you’ll likely see people gravitate toward a certain type of theme/category (e.g., “motion” or “human interaction”).

5) Turn Sketches Into Vectors

This is where you start to see what type of logo will work in the real world. Have the design team design turn those 25-30 sketches into simple black-and-white vectors.

You want to work in black and white for two very important reasons:

The logotype/logomark should have a strong design foundation. Basically, it should work without the added dazzle of color.
Color sways opinion. As you solicit rounds of feedback, color can distract or doom a perfectly great logo just because someone couldn’t see past that obnoxious orange.

Also, keep in mind that logomarks need to be legible in many applications (especially in tiny renderings, such as a favicon).

This simple exercise will likely exclude a few visual concepts, which is good. Your goal is to continue to narrow.

6) Narrow It Down for Feedback

Now here’s the fun but tough part. The more options you give, the more overwhelmed people get. You want to distribute 3-5 truly workable options for feedback to necessary stakeholders. You’re still only working on logomark at this point.

Distribute these options, gather collective feedback, then iterate for your next round.

7) Present Your Frontrunners

After you edit and iterate, you should be able to identify your top 3 logomarks. Only then do you start to explore wordmark options (we say start with 10, which can be mixed and matched with all three logomarks). You can also incorporate color for both.

8) Test, Test, Test

With your top 3 frontrunners, it’s time to get even more feedback (yes, it can feel relentless) and test mockups: think packaging, landing pages, ads, etc. If you want an easy way to test, you can adapt Steven Cook’s smart idea (originally for testing a brand name):

Build a branded landing page for each logo. Use identical copy and only change logo.
Run a highly targeted FB ad to your target customers for a week.
See which page got more conversions.

Don’t Get Discouraged If You’re Back to the Drawing Board

No one said designing a logo is easy, and there are times when the process can feel overwhelming. If you find yourself heading back to the drawing board one more time, there are a few things that can help you:

Get inspired by the awesome examples of logo design in our roundup of branding tools.
Try these tips to get creatively unstuck.
Learn how to work with the 4 types of creative thinkers if you feel like your team is having communication issues.

By Katy French

Sourced from Business 2 Community

In News

Microsoft relaunches its news app to take on Google and Apple’s offerings

July 9, 2018 No Comments

By Abhimanyu Ghoshal

Remember MSN.com? It’s still around – and Microsoft is trying to bring it back by relaunching its mobile apps with a new moniker.

Available for Android and iOS, Microsoft News brings you stories from the company’s MSN News effort, that’s been online for several years – with a modern interface that should be familiar to folks who’ve tried Apple News and Google News.

The service brings curated news from more than 1,000 publishers and 3,000 brands. Microsoft says that its AI scans more than 100,000 pieces of content each day, and has over 800 human editors across the globe to select the top stories that its app will surface on your device.

This effort also “powers news on Microsoft Edge, the News app in Windows 10, Skype, Xbox and Outlook.com.” To that end, signing in with your Microsoft account syncs your news preferences across all the devices you’re logged in on.

I spent a few minutes with the Android app, and found the interface to be simple enough to navigate. You’ll initially be prompted to indicate your interests to aid curation, after which you can browse through stories sorted into the categories you selected.

There’s also a section for local news; testing it in my hometown of Bangalore, India, I was served up stories from various outlets covering my city. However, these articles were displayed in an in-app browser, as opposed to the native view.

You can choose between a light and dark theme, and opt to receive notifications for breaking news stories. One feature I missed from Google News is the ‘Full Coverage’ button, which brings up multiple publications’ perspectives on the same topic or event in a single list.

Microsoft says it supports publishers by offering them channels to earn revenue, but it didn’t exactly how that works. It’s likely through partnerships and a bespoke advertising platform (you can see ads in the app which aren’t present in the articles’ original web view); the company noted that it’s “delivered more than $600 million back to our publishers” in the past four years.

While I prefer Google News’ UI, Microsoft’s offering is a formidable rival that arguably does a better job of surfacing local content. You can try it now by grabbing the free app from Google Play and the App Store.

Feature Image Credit: Microsoft

By Abhimanyu Ghoshal

Sourced from TNW

In News

Social media is making you miserable. Here’s how to delete your accounts.

July 9, 2018 No Comments

By David Nield

In theory, social media promises to connect you with the world. In practice, it compromises your personal privacy, puts you at risk of online abuse, and makes you unsatisfied and unhappy with your real life. If you’re irritated by Twitter or depressed by Facebook, you don’t have to stick around.

We’ve previously discussed a few methods to help you avoid social media for limited periods of time. When you’re ready to say goodbye for good, it’s time to delete those social apps from your phone—and shut down your accounts entirely. Here’s how to do it, one network at a time.

First steps

Before you start erasing all of your content, you might want to download some or all of it. This will let you preserve a personal copy for posterity. To do this for the biggest social networks—Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat—follow our guide to saving social media posts.

Next, make sure you’re deleting your account for the right reason. If you’re ready to bid farewell to the whirlwind of social media, that’s fine. But if you’re only closing down your current social media account so you can create a new one for a fresh start, hit pause. Your first step should be to check the do-over options the network gives you. On Instagram, for instance, you can change your username without shutting down your existing account. Once you’ve exhausted the existing options, you can move on to deactivating or deleting your account.

Facebook

When you get fed up with Facebook, you have two ways to remove yourself from the giant network: deactivation or deletion.

Let’s start with the less extreme option. If you deactivate your account, it will disappear from Facebook, but you can bring it back at any time: The network retains all of your data, which will be waiting for you if you decide to go back. Simply log in to your account again, and Facebook will reactivate it.

To deactivate your account from a web browser, visit the site and click the drop-down arrow on the top right of the screen. Choose Settings, then General, and look for the Manage account category. Next to it, you should see an Edit option. Click Edit and choose Deactivate your account. Next, Facebook will prompt you for your password and ask you to give a reason for leaving, such as privacy concerns or wasted time. Make your choice, click Deactivate, and you’re done.

You can also deactivate your account through a mobile app. On iOS, open the app and hit the menu button—a grid icon—in the lower right corner. Then tap Settings, Account Settings, General, Manage account, and Deactivate. On Android, you follow the same process, but the menu button looks like three horizontal lines and you can reach Account Settings from the first submenu.

Deactivation is a good way of testing the waters to see if you can live without Facebook. Give it a few months and see how you feel. When you’re ready to say goodbye to your account forever, it’s time to delete it. To do so, you have to visit this page in a web browser and click Delete my account. As far as your friends are concerned, you will disappear immediately. However, Facebook may take up to 90 days to fully erase all of your data. Once you do that, there’s no going back.

Twitter

If you’ve had all you can take of hashtags and tweetstorms, you can deactivate your Twitter account. For a set period, the social network will hang on to your data, but after that, it will permanently get rid of your account.

To get rid of Twitter, you need to visit this page in a web browser and scroll down to the Deactivate your account option. Read the information that Twitter provides, then click Deactivate. You’ll receive a prompt to enter your password and to confirm that yes, you really do want to deactivate your account.

Once you do so, the process of erasing your Twitter presence starts. As far as other users can see, your profile and tweets will vanish immediately. However, Twitter hangs on to your data for a grace period of 30 days (verified users get a full 12 months) to make sure you don’t change your mind. During this time, you can still log back into the site, an act that will restore your profile and all of your tweets from the digital grave.

After that 30- to 365-day period ends, Twitter will officially delete your data and you will lose it forever. So if you repent your decision and decide to return to Twitter, you’ll need to sign up for a brand new account.

Instagram

Nothing instills FOMO quite like your friends’ smug Instagram photos. Remove them from your life by either deactivating or deleting your account.

To deactivate, you have to go through the Instagram website rather than the mobile apps. Log in, click your profile icon on the top right, choose Edit Profile, and select Temporarily disable my account. Once you do that, you have to decide on a reason why you no longer feel the Instagram love—options range from Just need a break to Too many ads. Finally, enter your account password and click Temporarily Disable Account.

Much like Facebook’s deactivation option, this choice will put your account on hold. As far as other users know, your Instagram page is gone, but the social network will hang on to your photos, comments, and other data. Log into the site again, and it will instantly restore your account.

For a more permanent fix, you need to go to the dedicated Delete Your Account page online. Log in, give a reason for your defection, and enter your password. Finally, click Permanently delete my account. This will wipe all traces of your Instagram life from the network’s servers, including the likes and instant messages. If you decide to come back, you’ll have to start again from scratch.

Snapchat

If Snapchat loses its appeal, have your account disappear like the vanishing photos that made the social network a hit.

To do that, you need to open your web browser and head to this page (yes, Snapchat has a website too). Sign into your account if necessary, then enter your username and password again on the subsequent screen. (Why sign in twice? You have to prove that it really is you and express your determination to get rid of Snapchat.) Click Continue, and the process of removing you from Snapchat begins.

From this point on, your friends won’t be able to contact you on Snapchat, but as with Twitter, you get a grace period before permanent deletion occurs. Over the next 30 days, you can decide whether you really do want to depart from the world of Snapchat or not. If you log back into the network before that time is up, your account will reappear and you can carry on as before with the same username and contacts list.

After the 30 days pass, Snapchat will permanently erase your account from its network. To come back from that, you’ll have to start adding friends and collecting Snaps all over again.

Other networks

Although Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat currently dominate the app charts, they’re not the only social networks out there. Still, you can always find the option to close your account.

While these networks will let you delete your account, they won’t always make that option easy to find. So if you get stuck, check the support pages for that network, which should point you in the right direction. (To deactivate Tumblr, for example, you simply scroll down to the bottom of the settings page.) Support pages should also provide details about exactly what happens to your data when you click “delete” and how quickly it disappears from existence.

Feature Image Credit: Ditch your social apps—for good. Rahul Chakraborty via Unsplash

By David Nield

Sourced from Popular Science

In News

7 Important Digital Marketing KPIs for Small Business Owners

July 6, 2018 No Comments

By Derek Miller

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are measurable data that companies use to track and evaluate strategic activities and business objectives. KPIs are important to businesses because they provide context to organizational goals and place accountability on those tasked with achieving those goals.

While small business owners usually have no problem creating KPIs for sales and production, deciding how to track and measure digital marketing initiatives can be more cumbersome.

As technology becomes more integrated into our lives, so too is the importance of having KPIs for your small business’ digital marketing.

Here are seven of the most important digital marketing KPIs:

1. Email Open Rate

Measures: The number of email recipients who opened an email.

Calculating Open Rate: Most email marketing platforms provide open rate statistics on each email campaign. If you want to track open rates on individual email correspondents, try using a tool like Yesware.

Why it’s important: Understanding and using email open rates can help you improve your email marketing activities and discover trends that lead to more email engagement.

2. Cost Per Click (CPC)

Measures: The cost you pay for each unique visitor from an online paid media ad.

Calculating CPC: Most paid media platforms (Google AdWords, Facebook Ads Manager, Outbrain, etc.) have an analytics report that shows your CPC. You can also use Google Tag Manager and your digital marketing budget report to assess CPC from other paid strategies.

Why it’s important: Knowing your CPC and creating goals using this marketing metric can help you optimize your paid media activities.

3. Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)

Measures: The cost you pay for each conversion or acquisition. A conversion or acquisition could include activities like: calling your business, completing a lead form, downloading an eBook, purchasing a product, or any other number of user actions.

Calculating CPA: Where CPC calculates traffic, CPA measures activity. To calculate CPA, you need to track conversions either through the paid media platform, web analytics software, or manually. You will then take the total amount spent on advertising that campaign and divide it by the total users converted.

Why it’s important: Understanding your cost per acquisition and creating a targeted average CPA will help you assess the return on investment from your advertising activities.

4. Click-Through Rate (CTR)

Measures: The percentage of people who see your advertisement, inbound link, post, or search result snippet and then clicks it to navigate to your website.

Calculating CTR: Most communication channels will provide a CTR for each marketing activity you execute. If a platform doesn’t, you can look for the total impressions received, and use Google Tag Manager to calculate the traffic from that link.

Why it’s important: A low CTR indicates that people see your post or ad, but are not compelled to act. By measuring your CTR, you can adjust ad copy and marketing messages to entice more people to click on your links.

5. Inbound Links

Measures: The number of internal links pointing to your website from another site.

Calculating Inbound Links: Use an SEO tool like Ahrefs or SEMrush to crawl the web for links pointing to your domain.

Why it’s important: Inbound links are one of the most powerful ways to grow your online presence. You should be working to grow the number of links pointing to your site by creating link-worthy content and conducting link earning/building outreach. By tracking and creating goals for total inbound links, you can help improve your organic rankings and drive more traffic to your website.

6. Monthly Website Traffic (Channels)

Measures: The number of users who visit your website through organic search, referral links, direct URLs, or paid channels.

Calculating Monthly Website Traffic: Use Google Analytics to calculate your website’s total monthly visitors. You can also drill down to specific acquisition methods to determine what channels drive the most traffic.

Why it’s important: Knowing the total amount of traffic you receive every month and the channels they used to find your website provide you the insight needed to measure the effectiveness of your different marketing campaigns. It also helps you find opportunities to increase the amount and quality of your visitors.

7. Bounce Rate

Measures: The percentage of users who leave your website after only visiting the page on which they landed.

Calculating Bounce Rate: Use Google Analytics to track the bounce rate across your entire site and on the specific pages for which you are running targeted marketing campaigns.

Why it’s important: Bounce rate indicates the user-experience on your various pages. If visitors are leaving your site after only visiting one page, you need to assess whether that page is under-optimized, if you’re bringing the wrong audience to your site, or why visitors are not engaging with your other pages.

Working With Digital Marketing KPIs

Every small business should use digital marketing KPIs. While every company will have their own digital marketing KPIs, understanding some of the most popular ones can help you get started with tracking and measuring your digital marketing initiatives against your business goals.

Feature Image Credit: Getty Images

By Derek Miller

Sourced from the balance small business

In News

A UX review framework anyone can use

July 6, 2018 No Comments

By Vernon Joyce

As connected products are integrated into more aspects of our day to day lives, UX will be responsible for translating strategy into intuitive experiences.

Forbes

The demand for UX has become clear as organisations rush to create products that put client needs before business needs. These organisation often have large UX and design teams who focus solely on providing the best possible experience to their customers.

But what if you or your business cannot afford to hire a UX designer to review your product or service?

My goal for sharing this framework is to allow anyone to do a UX review; whether you are a UX designer or not. You can use this framework to analyse a product or service* or analyse a piece of work for a potential client. You could even use this to review your own work as the tools and techniques I use leave little room for bias.

*Although this framework can be used for any type of product or service, it will primarily focus on web.

**There are plenty of dev goodies in this article – it’s not purely meant for designers.

Objectives of the review

It’s important to start your review by positioning your objectives. This sets the tone and ensures that both you and your stakeholder have the same expectations — whether you are presenting your review or sending it via email.

Some objectives or outcomes could include:

Identify opportunities
Substantiate design changes
Identify technical issues
Discuss UX improvements

These objectives will mostly relate to your initial briefing — why did your client want you to do a UX review in the first place?

Business objectives

Business objectives are what your client is trying to achieve. Sometimes objectives can easily be ascertained by yourself but they could also require additional research. In the case of research it depends on your client — sometimes their objectives are obvious but often there are deeper needs that need to be brought to the surface through further inspection.

Unpacking these objectives is important — let’s take *increasing sales *as an example. Are they trying to sell more of a specific product or perhaps drive in-store traffic? These details are important as it makes your outcomes much more tangible and measurable. It is much easier to credit a sales increase of a specific product to a UX improvement, than to match a sales increase of a thousand products to an objective that has not been properly defined.

These objectives can be unpacked by conducting interviews with your client and their stakeholders and additional objectives could also be identified through market research. A simple survey through Survey Monkey can provide valuable insights if you have access to your stakeholder’s clients.

Lastly, state these objectives in your review to remind your client of the problems you are trying to solve. This will reaffirm your thinking throughout the review and give your ideas credibility.

Personas and userflows

Now that you understand the business’ needs, it’s time to look at the user’s needs. A popular way of unpacking user needs is by creating personas or persona sheets. In short a persona is a fictional user with needs, aspirations and desires that are usually linked to objectives within their lives.

Take Sandy for example. She is a middle-class professional female with a family of two. She likes learning about technology, watching documentaries and spending time with her children. Sandy is an ideal customer for a geeky toy shop, where she can purchase an electronic toy that both her and her children can enjoy.

Creating personas can be daunting but become an invaluable tool. Personas can be set up through research along with a firm understanding of you or your stakeholder’s business objectives. Shane Williams offers a comprehensive look at creating personas in Getting started with creating personas — questions to ask.

Now that we know who your users are, it’s time to look at the steps they would take to achieve their goals. This can be done by creating userflow diagrams. These diagrams demonstrate sample user journeys based on your user’s objectives and can often be combined with business objectives for a full client experience view.

Example of user flow diagram

There are many ways to create these diagrams, whether using sticky notes or an online tool like Draw.io. There are no rules when it comes to designing these diagrams — but it is important that your diagrams are easy to follow and read-able.

Working with data

Data is the cornerstone of a good UX review and without it you might find it difficult to back up your findings. Google analytics offers a great starting point for user interaction data, provided you know what you are looking for.

Something as simple as a drop in traffic on a given day could indicate a problem — perhaps users had a negative reaction to a new feature or maybe you posted something on social media that got negative press.

Device information (such as mobile vs desktop traffic) could also be meaningful when deciding on which device to focus your usability assessment.

Event tracking in Google Analytics provides another helpful source of information assuming it has been set up correctly. CrazyEgg is a great alternative should you not have the expertise to set up event tracking in GA as it offers heatmaps for both clicks and scroll on different devices.

The behavior flow report is also invaluable and offers insights into the journey users take in the form of a flow diagram. It provides data on drop-offs, sessions and more with the ability to highlight or analyse specific user paths.

Example of Google Analytics’ behavioural flow diagrams

Conducting System Usability Scale (SUS) surveys is also a handy way to quickly gauge the usability of a system through user feedback. SUS tests can be conducted on products, websites, apps or software and provide a scaled result regardless of the volume of feedback. The SUS survey’s data is also useful going into the usability review.

Lastly the persona sheets you set up in the previous section are also an excellent source of data. Keep your user objectives in mind when examining any of these data sources and you might find behavioural patterns that indicate a gap in the user’s journey.

You or your client might not always have data tools set up. In these cases my advice would be to postpone the review until you have meaningful analytics to work with. Installing GA is quick and easy and should give you relevant insights after only a month.

Usability review

Usability rules the Web. Simply stated, if the customer can’t find a product, then he or she will not buy it.

Jakob Nielsen

Usability speaks to the core of the review — is the product usable?

It’s time to make some assumptions about the usability of your project based on business and user needs. Step into the shoes of your users using your persona sheets, userflows and analytical data. Start using the application or service on different devices, browsers or operating systems while following your userflows. You will quickly pick up on journeys that are possibly frustrating or pieces of functionality that do not help you achieve your objective as the user.

You might also come across design flaws, broken or confusing components or responsive issues. Jot all of these potential problems down while taking screen shots. Once you have moved through the project as a user, step into the shoes of the product owner and go through the same process.

Your next challenge is making the feedback easy to understand when consolidated. Remember — your client might not have any understanding of UX or design and it is your job as a UX reviewer to make the feedback concise. Explain your thinking verbally in detail if necessary, but keep your written feedback short and to the point. It is also very important to make sure that the feedback is not seen as a list of problems or issues but rather as opportunities for improvement.

Lastly, do not go into solution mode yet. At this point you are only identifying usability problems. I like to consolidate my feedback into buckets:

1. User journeys

This should cover any problems relating to a user’s journey. If you have trouble convincing your stakeholder of these problems, try placing them in the user’s shoes. Some examples of user journey flaws could include:

Information needed by a user is too low down a page
Important pages are hidden too deeply within the information architecture
Information is unnecessary and does not provide value to a user
Too many clicks are required to make a purchase
Inconsistent user journeys
Important information sits below the fold

2. General

What are the consistent problems across the product or service? List anything that is not specific to a journey or device.

3. Design

Having a design background is very useful in this section of the review, but is not necessarily a requirement. There are some aspects of design that are generally obvious to spot:

Design inconsistencies (i.e buttons are different sizes on different pages)
Problems with alignment
Poor page hierarchy

4. Mobile

The accuracy of your mobile review is very dependent on the different types of devices you use to test (both tablet and smart phones). These issues could include:

Responsive problems (i.e not mobile friendly)
Scale problems such as fonts being too small
Pinch or zoom is required on some pages

5. Desktop

For the most part you would have covered any issues on desktop in the other sections, but from time to time there might be issues that are desktop specific. Also keep your analytics in mind — if your traffic is primarily mobile you might want to skip over this section.

Accessibility review

Accessibility is often overlooked by both developers and designers — I am guilty of this myself. It has however become increasingly important to consider disabled users as we become driven by digital. Something as simple as green text on a red button could completely ruin a colour-blind user’s experience and result in a lost sale or lead.

Accessibility covers several aspects including colour, font size, font types, descriptive text or alt tags. It is important to consider all these design and technical aspects as they might affect the user’s experience.

A tool I often use for testing accessibility on the web is Google Lighthouse. Lighthouse is available via Chrome developer tools and offers detailed feedback on the speed, progressive web app features, accessibility, best practices and SEO of a website.

Google Lighthouse results

Not only does it offer solutions, but also substantiates suggested changes making it a powerful tool in a UX reviewer’s arsenal.

When a button doesn’t have an accessible name, screen readers announce it as “button”, making it unusable for users who rely on screen readers.

Example of Google Lighthouse feedback

Eightshape’s colour contrast grid is a useful tool for analysing the accessibility of a digital colour palette while Colorsafe offers an easy way to find passable colour combinations.

Results of Eightshapes’ color contrast test

Technical review

Whether or not you include the technical review in your presentation depends on the way you position it as well as how technical your audience is.

What makes the technical review helpful is that more often than not small code changes can make a big difference in conversion rates and overall user experience.

1. Performance / speed

A score from Google Page Speed Insights

A great tool for analyzing website speed is Google’s better-known Page Speed Insights. PSI offers some quick tips for improving your page speed which includes caching of assets, optimizing images and more for both desktop and mobile. The suggestions can at times become a bit technical, but Google offers links to helpful articles that explains each suggestion in detail.

Performance can also be analysed using Google Lighthouse (mentioned earlier). Lighthouse provides a lot more detail than PSI and also makes suggestions based on newer technologies (like the HTTP/2 standard).

2. Best practices

Best practices deal with whether or not a project is following standards for a given device or medium. A good example of this is when print standards creep into the web, such as forcing line breaks in headlines, which is bad practice for responsive web projects.

Lighthouse is also a good tool for best practice suggestions; but knowing what is considered best practice often comes down to your experience with the channel or device you are reviewing.

3. SEO

SEO is not often considered when looking at the user experience of a web product— but it should be. SEO deals not only with your rank, but also your search appearance. If your page does not have an enticing title and description you lose every opportunity to bring that user into your website. Often some of the problems you solve for when it comes to accessibility will impact your SEO as well (such as making alt tags more descriptive).

Lighthouse provides some high level feedback on SEO, but for a more detailed view I would recommend Moz.

SEO Software, Tools & Resources for Smarter Marketing\
Backed by the largest community of SEOs on the planet, Moz builds tools that make SEO, inbound marketing, link…moz.com

Opportunities

The next step is to look at how you or your client can close some of the gaps in their user’s experience using the wealth of data gathered from the review. These suggestions could be based on feedback from your review or opportunities you identified while using the product, for example:

Adding related articles to existing pages will allow a user to continue his journey through the website once they finish reading an article
Reducing the length of the form could improve its usability which might lead to additional leads

Be careful of making swooping statements like “Adding a banner area will increase traffic*”. *An opportunity should imply the possibility of improvement and not a promise thereof.

Metrics

Implementing a solution to an identified UX problem might not be enough — you also need to be able to measure its success. This can be done by setting metrics for specific action points.

A good metric needs to be tangible and achievable. “Increase sales” for example is not a tangible metric. How would you accurately measure that and more importantly correlate it to a UX change?

Break your metrics down, give them a deadline and bring them back to your objectives and identified opportunities:

Decrease the bounce rate of X page by 5% by adding related articles
Capture 5 more leads on X page per day by making the form easier to use

Your client might also want to set their own metrics. In these cases make sure that their expectations are reasonable and achievable.

Next steps

Discuss next steps with your client even if you might not be responsible for implementation. Without actionable points the review is bound to become a coffee-stained desk-drop. Creating a list of actions or tasks along with their priority and metrics is a good starting point and will provide your stakeholder with enough guidance to start implementation on their own.

Who knows, you might even become that implementation partner or a UX designer within their team.