1. Know what you’re doing before you worry about how you’ll do it.

We jump to thoughts of implementation so often in our work, and that tendency creates several problems. We may not know exactly what we’re implementing, why we’re implementing it or how much is possible. By skipping ahead to the details, we begin work that may not make sense—and we unnecessarily constrain ourselves. This year, be mindful about each idea you’re pursuing and determine its larger purpose before running forward with activities. It’s not about what you’re doing but why you’re doing it.

2. Spend at least 15 minutes a day in deliberate thought about something bigger than your to-do list.

This is critical. I believe in mornings – but for some people, it works best to do this exercise at the end of the day to prepare for the next morning. What larger purpose defines you right now? One year from now, what will you be glad you did tomorrow? Ten years from now? What are the big things that need to happen to advance those aspirations? I believe the sum of our efforts each year reflects the rigor we apply to these larger questions. Take a few minutes each day to ask them. You may not have every answer, but you’ll make smarter choices along the way – and let the little crap go more easily. For me, five minutes at the start of my workday plus nightly blogging are tools I use in trying to step out of everyday to-do lists and think about what ideas matter most each day. What tools can you put into place to schedule reflection?

3. Think about what unites your colleagues rather than what’s in it for you.

The best workplaces in the world have something in common: Colleagues embrace a collective vision, and they’d do anything for each other. I’d always prefer to be in that kind of culture than a dog-eat-dog slugfest because it’s better for me and better for my organization. Try to set a course toward that kind of camaraderie. Define what you all want to do together. Along the way, share credit. Recognize the achievements of others. Sacrifice something selfish if it yields a greater good. If you are a manager, you have the chance to transform the experience of those who report to you. Seize it with a spirit of selflessness. In the end, it’s the fastest way to achievement – and happiness – for everyone.

Right!

BIG reveal. Big. Huge.

Here’s the Top 10 Instagram spots of the year:

• Suvarnabhumi Airport (BKK) in Bangkok, Thailand
• Siam Paragon (สยามพารากอน) shopping mall in Bangkok, Thailand
• Disneyland Park in Anaheim, California
• Times Square in New York City
• AT&T Park in San Francisco
• Los Angeles International Airport (LAX)
• Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles
• Eiffel Tower in Paris
• Staples Center in Los Angeles
• Santa Monica Pier in Los Angeles

.
Okay, not bad. I finally feel like I’ve contributed to the zeitgeist!

Are you all loving Instagram or do you think you’re losing steam? I gotta be honest and say I think I’m just getting started! The Thai teenagers and other cool kids can move onto the next big thing and leave me here. I really don’t care.

I WOULD however like to propose a new Instagram rule for 2013: NO INTERNET SCREENGRABS. Gah, they’re almost as bad of photos of my TV.

Now if you’ll excuse me I need to book a trip to Thailand to try and get more followers.

What was your most-Instagrammed place of 2012? Don’t say your computer!

Great Article on EW.com!

One obvious motivation for formalizing a company’s social media programs and policies is to avoid a social media disaster. If you remember a video entitled “Dirty Dominos Pizza,” you know just how dangerous the combination of social media and the workplace can be. The two Dominos Pizza employees who joke in this video while  tampering with food –claimed afterward that they were just having fun when they posted this footage to YouTube.  The result? Both were fired and sent to jail on charges of food tampering. And three years later, when you conduct a Google search on Domino’s Pizza, this awful video is still the fifth result!

Companies like Unisys, Sprint and HP are creating social media training programs to avoid these types of social media crises, but also, just as importantly, to show employees how using social media can be a valuable business tool which can increase their performance and productivity.

As Sara Folkerts, social media manager at Sprint, said, employees are often confused about how to properly use the company’s internal social network. In some of her experiences with Sprint Space, Sprint’s internal social networking tool, Sara noticed employees seemed to lose sight of the standard rules of engagement once they got online.

Some Sprint employees revealed their social-media blind spot when called out for inappropriate online behavior. They immediately asked whether they were in trouble with Sprint Space or Sprint HR, not realizing they were one and the same. Because of this disconnect, Sprint realized it was important to establish specific social media guidelines, even if a thorough policy of employee conduct already exists.

But companies have found that guidelines are only the first step. What they really need is  a formal social media literacy program, which offers a certification so that employees can share their progress and practices both on their employee directory as well as on LinkedIn, Facebook and even theirTwitter profile.

Taking the right steps in this arena can produce dramatic benefits on the business side. As Gloria Burke, Director of Knowledge & Collaboration atUnisys  told me, offering social media training creates a team of advocates who are equipped to represent their employer online. “When you give them that training, you’re empowering them to be more confident and effective in what they’re sharing,” Burke said. That means they will not only share news about your company but also feel confident they know how to do this in a safe and responsible manner while building their personal brand.

But implementing social media training isn’t a simple process, so here are five guidelines for doing it right:

1. Start early

At Unisys, new hires are briefed on social media policies practically before the ink on their contracts is even dry. It is literally one of the steps necessary to activate new hires’ employment. “We start at the very day of hire with our social media policies and will soon be incorporating a new video on how to engage with social media into the new hire process,” said Gloria Burke. Creating this training for new hires sends a message to employees that the company’s emphasis on social media is not just lip service; it is a legitimate focus for all employees and needs to start on your first day.

2. Create a branded program for social media training

Employees will aspire to amazing things when they feel aligned to a brand. This includes the company brand as well as the brand associated with employee training.

At Sprint, the social media-training brand is called Sprint Ninja, named after a type of warrior originating from feudal Japan. Ninjas specialize in unorthodox warfare. Sprint has taken many of the actual principles used to train Ninja’s, like self control, moderateness, and courtesy and built this into the Ninja brand of social media training.

Sprint employees who volunteer for the Sprint Social Media Ninjas program (currently 2,400 have completed this training) complete a two-hour workshop to receive their Ninja certificate, but the training doesn’t end there. They then become part of a community that is continuously engaged in discussion about how best to use social media to advocate for the company. What’s next? Sprintis working to develop an online version of this training and offer it within Sprint University of Excellence.

3. Be specific and explicit about what you want

For many people, the thought of fusing “social” with “work” conjures a hazy gray area intimidating in its impreciseness. Sprint found that to be true; even after creating the Ninjas, some of its employees still wondered what exactly to say. So help out employees by guiding them through their first few experiences.

Sprint posts suggested tweets and status updates regularly through its internal site’s blog, which the Ninjas and other employees access throughout the day. The example tweets ensure that employees new to social feel supported in their attempts to break that seal.

Also helpful: when employees tweet on behalf of the company, they are encouraged to use the disclaimer “donating my status to sprint” ahead of the tweet. Employees find this reassuring, Folkerts said, as it helps them mix social with work while keeping them distinct. An example of this appears below when Sara Folkerts links to a Sprint press release and tweets that customers in Wichita, KS and neighboring areas now have access to the Sprint new 4G LTE network.  This may seem restrictive, but according to Folkerts it helps employees feel secure that they are doing the right thing when they pass along information to friends and family.

4. Include game mechanics to engage and reward employees

At the end of the day, companies must recognize that even though social media engagement is fun, it does represent an added responsibility for employees. So they must consider how gamification –  the addition of game-like mechanics – can be used  to engage, recognize, and reward the achievements of those who complete – and then use – their social media training. Badgeville andBunchBall are two examples of firms that help companies achieve that end by applying gamification to learning & development. Badgeville’s client Deloitteprofiled in this blog earlier in the year, Gamification: Three Ways To Use Gaming For Recruiting, Learning & Health/Wellness believes the ability to have employees sharing their badges on LinkedIn and in their company directory is a huge motivator to engagement and a personal brand builder for them as well.

Alex Flagg, Social Media & Digital Content Lead at HP, believes the success of HP’s social media training is owed in large part to its use of gamification.“The addictive nature of gamification, with badges, points, a leaderboard and ways to share all of this inside and outside the company, is highly motivating and quite honestly needed to encourage our employees to complete this type of mandatory social media training.”

At Unisys, a planned “Recognition and Rewards” program will give ‘spotlights’ and ‘badges’ to employees who contribute their knowledge to the company’s internal social media platform. This platform is where colleagues can ask each other for advice, leads, or contacts, and can seek out experts in particular fields (who are identified as such by hashtags in their profiles.)

Employees who consistently contribute will earn various icons and badges,Gloria Burke says, and if their contribution is leveraged into a larger-scale achievement, that fact will be noted as well. Then, in performance reviews, supervisors can consider those contributions as part of their evaluation, because “we want our employees to be contributors of knowledge, not just consumers.” says Burke

5. Create a vehicle for continuous improvement

Make sure there is a way for employees who are “trained” to easily connect to celebrate successes, ask questions and share best practices with others.

And precisely because it is social, managers must allow for – and encourage – conversation and feedback in the training process. Management must listen to employees’ experiences with what is and isn’t working in the social realm and what customers are saying about the product or service. And they must be willing to adapt based on that feedback.

This is why it’s so important that companies to expand social media training into a social media community, which engages continuously through an online platform. That way, the training doesn’t end when the workshop does,  but continues organically as a collaborative process.

If the success stories coming out of companies like Unisys, Sprint and HPdon’t convince you of the importance of social media training, consider this; your future employees will demand it. Millennials are already accustomed to the ease that social media brings to collaborative work; they do group projects via Google Plus, share documents in Google Drive, discuss and  debate topics via closed Facebook groups, and search for ways to improve their projects by using relevant hashtags on Twitter. In other words, Millennials are using these social tools anyway, and forward-looking companies must recognize this and stay ahead of that trend.

As Gloria Burke said, “there’s been a big shift in the market.” Whereas employers once scoped out applicants’ social profiles as part of the recruiting process, today prospective employees have their own set of expectations regarding what their employer should deliver in that department. “Now you’ve got Millennials coming in and interviewing the company, saying, what type of social platform do you have that’s going to help me connect, succeed at your company, and advance my career?” Burke said.

So, how are you going to answer that for your company?

Content Creation

In order to reach potential leads and capture their attention, you need content. Furthermore, you need good content. The point of content marketing is to attract leads that are qualified in order to convert them to loyal customers. You must create interesting, unique content in order to get these leads to fill out landing pages. For B2B marketers, blogging is still the main source of content (81% of B2B businesses have a blog), but you can also publish case studies, whitepapers, and ebooks, host webinars, and create videos. The possibilities truly are endless. You must also remember to post and promote content frequently to ensure maximum exposure. If you’re stumped, check out our free Content Creation Kit for ideas and tips!

Optimizing Your Lead Generation Pages

Landing pages can be tricky, but there is always room for improvement. A/B testing and conversion rate optimization are crucial to your landing page success. It’s also important to remember that every business is different. For example, sometimes directing leads straight to a signup form isn’t the answer. Vendio, an online eCommerce business, actually saw a 60% increase in signups after removing a signup form from their landing page. Rather, they had a landing page filled with information and a link to a second page where interested leads could fill out a form. Another factor to consider is mobile landing page forms. If your B2B business has a strong mobile presence, you may want to optimize your signup forms for people on-the-go. The key is to find what works for you.

Entering the Mobile Market

As we’ve suggested above, optimizing your website and landing pages for mobile devices could increase the chance that a lead fills out your forms. 72% of the US workforces uses a mobile device and 64% of decision-makers check their email via mobile devices (according to Unbounce), so if you’re marketing through email (which you should be) this is definitely something to consider.

Nurturing Your Leads

Without lead nurturing, the chance that a lead converts to a sale is significantly lower. According to Unbounce, 79% of leads never convert to sales. A lack of lead nurturing definitely contributes to this poor performance. In order to re-market and nurture your leads, you can do some of the following: actively post and promote content, use social media, and market through email. The more frequent and informative your blog posts are, the more RSS subscribers you’ll gain. Companies with active blogs report 67% more leads than those without. Social media can help your B2B business, too. Companies that use Twitter get 2X the number of leads per month, and 41% of business report getting leads from Facebook. Email marketing ins’t dead, either. Although conversion rates for email marketing are lower, it is a great way to keep leads interested and informed.
Read more at http://www.business2community.com/b2b-perspective/lead-generation-for-b2b-businesses-0319644#b1P31rz78EDBxQlz.99

Searches on tablet devices continue to grow, accounting for 42% of total Mobile searches in Q3, up from 40% in Q2 2012, and the total search volumes from overseas consumers rose by 33% in Q3 compared with the previous year.

In the third quarter, total search volumes grew fastest for health and beauty items, up 15% year-on-year. For Mobile, growth in search volumes was highest for food and drink, up by 144% year-on-year.

Stephen Robertson, director general, BRC, said: “The popularity of tablets is the driving force behind strong growth in mobile searches. Two in five of all mobile retail searches are now undertaken on tablets despite them being far outnumbered by smartphones. Consumers find it the most convenient way to browse retailer’s websites, whether they’re on the move or at home. 

“Food and drink was the fastest growing sector for mobile searches, demonstrating that hard-pressed customers are increasingly keen to use new technology for finding groceries at the best possible value.

“Most non-food areas saw strong growth in overall searches, with health and beauty performing particularly well. The signs are, the combination of limited spending power and faster, easier access to information will drive an even more competitive Christmas for retailers.  And with 4G looming, this trend is likely to accelerate.”

What’s an ad impression? For those who need a quick refresher, impressions are the number of times an ad appears on a web page. Therefore, your AdWords ads will always have more impressions than clicks. Impressions don’t have very much to do with the success of your ad, but they are an important measurement of how many eyeballs your ad is reaching.

If you aren’t getting many clicks on your ads, maybe you aren’t getting enough impressions. If you have plenty of impressions but still don’t have many clicks, that may be a hint that your ads themselves need some work. Low click-through rates contribute to a low Quality Score.

How Many Advertising Impressions Are on Google AdWords Per Day?

According to our recent Google statistics research, Google AdWords serves an average of 29,741,270,774 impressions per day (nearly 30 billion!).

This number is a combination of impressions from Google Search and the Google Display Network:

• Google Search has 5,570,808,015 impressions per day (5.57 billion).
• Google Display Network has 24,170,462,759 impressions per day (24.17 billion).

Why Does the Google Display Network Have More Advertising Impressions than Google Search?

You may be wondering, Why does the Google Display Network have so many more impressions than Google Search? Over 18 billion more impressions per day, to be exact. The main reason why this happens is that Google Search ads are limited to the Google Search site. While Google is always experimenting with how many more ads they can fit onto one Google search results page, there is a limit.

On the other hand, the Google Display Network has the power to place ads on all Google web properties, including Gmail, Blogger, YouTube, and Google partner sites. The Display Network can put ads across a larger number of sites, leading to more daily ad impressions.

Ad Impressions vs. Clicks: How Many Clicks on Google AdWords Per Day?

Google AdWords gets an average of 237,914,225 ad clicks per day. This number is a combination of clicks from Google Search Ads, generating 193,232,044 clicks, and Google Display Network ads, with 44,682,181 ad clicks. Google Search ads get considerably more clicks per day than advertisements on the Google Display Network as illustrated in the infographic.

Why does Google Search receive more ad clicks than the Google Display Network?

The fact that Google Search ads receive more clicks per day than Google Display Network ads may seem surprising considering that Google Display Network dominates the number of ad impressions per day. One might think that more impressions should naturally lead to more clicks, but this isn’t a given. Internet users interact with Google Search ads very differently than they do with ads on the Google Display Network.

• Using Google Search: Google Search is used by people who are often farther along in the buying process. They are usually searching with a specific intent in mind, making them more likely to click a promising ad. It’s also possible that they don’t realize the search ads are ads rather than organic results.

• Using Google Display Network: With Google Display Network, your ad is reaching people in a very different setting. When your ad shows up in Gmail, for example, you are entering a user’s home turf, and they are rarely in the mood for ad browsing when trying to stay in touch with family and friends. On Google partner sites, your ad is also probably competing with photos and content on the partner site.

Why Advertise on the Google Display Network if My Ads Aren’t Clicked?

You may be asking, is it even worth advertising on the Google Display Network if users aren’t noticing my ads? After all, what good are impressions without clicks?

Is certainly is worth advertising on the Google Display Network, despite lower click rates than Google Search. For one, display advertising is great for raising brand awareness. Even if users claim they aren’t noticing your ads, they absolutely are to some degree, whether they realize it or not. The higher number of impressions on the Display Network ensure that your ads are being seen by people across a wide variety of networks. These impressions aren’t worthless, even if they don’t all result in clicks.

While a user might not click your ad the first time they see it, brand trust is being built with every ad impression. When users see your ad in various Google partner sites, YouTube, and even Gmail, they are becoming more familiar with your business. This brand trust continues to build so that one day, when a user’s intent matches with your ad, they will be more likely to choose your business because they have seen you ‘around town’ previously.

Google remarketing takes this to the next level by using a cookie to follow a visitor after they leave your site. Who knows why they left – maybe they got distracted by an incoming email message, or accidentally clicked off. The generated cookie remembers what page someone visited on your site, and through the Google Display Network, places your ads related to that page across Google partner sites. Remarketing tends to be very successful because visitors continue to see your ad related to an offer you already know they are interested in, while simultaneously building trust through familiarity.

As seen in our Google Search Revenue Infographic, the number of clicks and number of conversions have risen on both Google Search and Google Display Network since the previous quarter.

Currently, the average number of clicks per day for Google Search ads is 193.2 million. This is a 21.6% increase from Google search ad clicks in Q2 2012. The average number of clicks per day for ads on the Google Display Network is 44.7 million, which is a 29.1% increase from clicks per day during Q2 2012.

While the number of clicks and conversions have increased, the average cost-per-click has decreased significantly. The average cost-per-click for Google Search ads in $0.53 cents, which is a %16.5 decrease since Q2 2012. The average cost-per-click for Google Display Network ads is $0.35, which is a %18.2 decrease from the previous quarter.

With higher total clicks, a higher number of conversions, and lower CPCs across both advertising networks, this is a great time for businesses who have been holding back to begin advertising with AdWords. The recent changes in the Google economy benefit both Google and AdWords advertisers – Google gets to increase revenues, while advertisers get more impressions, clicks, and conversions at lower costs.

First the actual news. Previously, there was no way to search in Facebook’s App Center. The best approximation was searching in the site-wide search engine which would pull up app profile pages in App Center as results. Today Facebook added an internal search typeahead to App Center that lets you search for apps by name or by keyword like “fitness”, or “cars”. There’s no results page, though, just a drop-down of options.

That sets the stage for ads within App Center. This prediction falls right in line with Facebook’s strategy to become the leading source of app discovery outside of the official Apple App Store and Google Play marketplace — where no ads appear. It believes that with social recommendations and quality ratings based on how often people actually use an app, it can help us find apps better than simple ranked lists based on downloads.

Along with organic discovery, though, Facebook is getting serious about paid discovery. That’s a huge industry where developers pay massive sums to appear in ad networks and drive installs.

Facebook dove head-first into paid discovery the last few months. On October 17 it officially launched its mobile app install ads in the news feed that link to the app stores. In September it alsolaunched Sponsored Results ads in the site-wide search typeahead. These let developers choose a competing or similar app, and when it’s searched for, their app or Page shows up above it in the search typeahead. There’s no keyword ads, though.  Devs have to pick a certain Page or app they want to be advertised next to.

Those work fine but there’s a missing piece. If someone’s browsing the news feed they might not be in the mood to download apps. And if they’re searching for a specific app, ads for competitors might just be a distraction. But when people are on Facebook’s App Center they’re clearly trying to discover apps, and when they make a keyword search for something like “puzzle game,” “tower defense,” or “photo editor,” they’re open to suggestion about which app to download.

That was a lot of build up, but essentially what I’m saying is that Facebook’s App Center is ripe for search keyword ads that either show up in the App Center search typeahead or as full entries on an as-yet-unlaunched search results page. Devs could pick a keyword, bid a price they’re willing to pay, and Facebook could show the ad from the highest bidder in the typeahead or results page, just like Google AdWords.

That bidding competition could make this a huge revenue driver. Think how many tower defense games or photo editor apps might all vie for those keywords, bumping up successful bid prices and earn Facebook lots of money.

There’s plenty of App Center traffic to monetize. It launched in early June and by mid-August had 150 million monthly visitors. As of the beginning of October it had 220 million, showing rapid growth. No need to ignore the other 780 million Facebook users either. Facebook could easily bring keyword ads to its site-wide typeahead results, even if someone searching for “photo editing” outside of the App Center might be looking for a local business.

Investors surely want Facebook to break into all-out web search advertising, but that’s going to take time. It needs an all-out web search engine first. No, Facebook’s little-used web search integration with Bing doesn’t count. It’s buried, offers nothing unique, and Facebook has to split the revenue.

App search on the other hand is something special that Facebook already has humming. It’s got qualified leads, ample traffic, a model proven by Google, and a huge base of developers/advertisers to tap. Those could make App Center keyword search ads a staple of paid discovery budgets, a portal to the growing app economy, and a new way for Facebook to rake in the cash.

So here are a few of the algorithm updates for 2012 that you might have missed.

Page Layout: Top Heavy

On the 9^th October for the first time Google officially confirmed (via Twitter) changes to their page layout algorithm. This algorithm change targeted pages with too many advertisements above the fold in their latest attempt to cut down on spam.

The update focuses on penalizing pages that are top heavy with ads. The update comes from users complaining about sites bogged down with top heavy adverts make it hard to find the actual content they were looking for when clicking on a site. Users are unhappy with the experience and want to see the content they were looking for straight away without having to scroll past various ads.

Sites with a lack of content above the fold will be affected as they are not providing the user with a very good experience and may not rank as high from now on.

Third Penguin Update

The Penguin update numbering was updated on the 5^th October. Google launched their latest data refresh of its Penguin algorithm to again cut down on spam. This is the third Penguin update Google have done and will affect multiple languages across searches.

The update will only be minor though after the initial suggestion that it could be greater. The update will affect 0.3% of English language queries compared to a 3.1% from the first Penguin update back on the 24^th April. Google also announced that the update may also have minor affect on a small percentage of other language queries such as Spanish, French, and Italian.

When the Penguin updates launched back in April, they had an initial focus on cutting down overall web spam. It appears now that the updates have had a greater impact on websites with too many low quality inbound links.

65 Updates for August/September 2012

On the 4^th October Google announced the list of updates they had made for the August/September period. Google’s updates focused on improving their search quality with a host of new features.

Their 65 updates in this period included expanding the Knowledge Graph globally in English, updating how they calculate page quality, updates to how they determine local results, and many more. Their updates looked at how they can help their users find more top quality content from trusted sources from a list of their projects including quality, ranking, user content, and answers.

If you would like to find out more of their updates for the August/September period click here.

Exact-Match Domain [EMD]

Google announced on the 27^th September that they will have an exact-match domain update. Google’s algorithm update has reduced low quality exact-match domains showing up highly in search results for their users. The change affects 0.6% English-US queries to a noticeable degree.

This update arrives as Google look at why exact domain matches ranks really well, but should not. Sites that ranked well in the search results based on an exact-match domain may no longer rank as high in Google’s search result. This can make it hard for SEO marketers to improve search, as content now has to have a certain level of quality content in order to rank higher rather than just creating links.

It’s also hard because Google defines quality, and this can make the updates appear unpredictable or even malicious.

Google’s main goal is to create the best possible experience for their users. These changes will have a certain effect on websites search which SEO marketers need to be aware of to ensure they get the best possible SEO for their company/client. Google’s updates such as Panda aimed at stopping low quality content and Penguin aimed at spam control are really changing the way SEO works and marketers need to constantly strive for innovation in how they operate.

Do you think Google’s updates are good for users? Or gradually making SEO near impossible?