BlogmyQuery – BMQ

In today’s competitive marketing landscape, quality content is more important than ever. Your target audience has thousands of brands to pick from. If you want them to choose you over the competition, you need to find ways to engage them online. 

Educational content is one of the most effective ways to improve audience engagement, drive sales, and ultimately grow your business. Outlined below are seven methods to educate and engage your target audience through content. 

1. Optimize Your Blog for SEO 

Blogging is one of the most popular forms of content marketing. Blog posts help drive high-quality traffic to your website and build trust with prospective buyers. 

Typical business blog content covers topics that interest your clients and provides answers to commonly asked questions. To make the most of your blogging efforts, it’s important to follow a few best practices for search engine optimization. These SEO tactics will help drive more traffic to your website. 

When creating content, include relevant keywords that your target audience is searching for. Avoid “keyword stuffing,” though — it’s off-putting to the reader, and it won’t fool Google. Rather, strive to incorporate keywords in the most organic way possible. To help keep people on your site and increase the chances of turning readers into leads, incorporate internal linking into every blog post. 

2. Provide Guides 

Think of guides as longer, more in-depth blog posts. Guides provide your readers with a detailed description of a product-related topic. For example, Gabb Wireless, a wireless communications company that developed a safe phone for kids, has created detailed guides for its site. These guides focus on the topic of phone safety and offer advice for parents on how they can set tech boundaries with their kids. 

When creating a guide, you must first understand your audience’s concerns and challenges. If you’re unsure what these pain points are, reach out to your sales team and ask what questions they hear most from prospects. These questions are all potential topic ideas for your next onsite guide. 

3. Offer White Papers 

White papers and guides are often discussed interchangeably. However, there are some key differences that make white papers their own thing. While guides provide a detailed overview of a topic, white papers spend more time focusing on research and data. If your company has conducted primary research, white papers give you the opportunity to establish yourself as a thought leader within your field. 

Since white papers are data-focused, they can sometimes get the reputation of coming across as boring. But they don’t have to be. Use colorful charts to display data and avoid using a stuffy tone. Instead, keep the vibe conversational, as if you were presenting findings to a work colleague. 

4. Create Infographics 

Many people are visual learners and struggle to understand topics from blog posts alone. Infographics can be helpful tools that cater to different learning styles and provide information in an easily digestible format. An infographic is a visual representation of information designed to be understood quickly. This information may be represented in the form of graphics, pictures, charts, or a combination of the three. 

Because infographics are visually appealing, they lend themselves well to social media. But since many infographics contain a hefty amount of information, you don’t want to post the entire thing at once. Instead, break your infographic down into chunks. This makes it easier for social media users to consume and provides your social media team with more content for their content calendar. 

5. Send Newsletters 

Having a comprehensive collection of onsite content is great. But what’s the point if no one ever sees it? 

To help make sure your blog content doesn’t go unread, consider adding newsletters to your content strategy. Email newsletters help you get content to interested prospects and customers. This allows you to build credibility and authority with your target audience. 

One of the keys to a successful newsletter is keeping it simple. Your audience doesn’t have 10 minutes to spend reading your newsletter, so make it easy to skim. Check out The Hustle as an example. This daily newsletter provides readers with quick updates from a variety of industries, including tech, business, and finance. Most of the newsletters include a few short features that take less than a couple of minutes to read. 

6. Partner With Influencers 

In today’s digital age, your company’s social media presence is essential. But almost as important is who is using your product. Partnering with social media celebrities (aka influencers) can help expose your brand to new audiences. Influencers are naturally charismatic and engaging — that’s why they have huge followings. Working with these professionals aligns your brand with theirs, building a positive reputation. 

When seeking influencers to partner with, it’s important to look beyond their follower count. Scroll through their page and see if they’re engaging in meaningful conversations your company wants to participate in. Both parties’ brand values should align before you begin creating content together. 

Once you’ve chosen which influencers you’d like to work with, it’s time to make your pitch. To increase your chances of nailing a partnership, create a customized pitch for each influencer you contact. 

7. Go Live on Social Media 

Onsite content like blog posts and guides are an essential component of a successful content strategy. But your customers also want to see your products in action. 

Since COVID-19 flipped the world on its head in 2020, live streaming has risen in popularity. Research by Livestream and New York Magazine found that 80% of consumers prefer watching a company’s live video over reading a blog post. This is because live streaming gives customers the feeling of participating in an event or conversation. Pre-recorded videos don’t have that same effect. 

One simple way companies can incorporate live streaming into their content marketing strategy is by hosting weekly Instagram live videos. When creating an Instagram live video, the goal is to both educate and entertain your audience. Live Q&As lend themselves well to this format. 

Creating quality content isn’t optional. It’s essential. If you want your company to thrive, you need to look for unique ways to educate and engage your target audience. If you’re not sure where to start, try implementing the strategies listed above.

The post 7 Ways to Engage and Educate Your Target Audience appeared first on noupe.

Web designers and developers have figured out that collaboration is critical to producing a great product. The designers have the visuals, and the developers have the skills to translate them into form and function. One team can’t complete a project without the other.

Bringing a successful product to fruition involves a lot of other people as well. There are team leaders, product developers, client services, and marketing, to name a few. It takes a village of diverse talent.

Remote and hybrid work arrangements, varying areas of expertise and job descriptions, and dramatically different roles make collaboration challenging. But if you fail the challenge, you’ll likely end up with a disjointed product that makes no sense. In other words, collaborate effectively or die.

Set yourself up for success by increasing collaboration within and across teams. Here’s how.

Reach Across the Aisle

There’s a lot of lip service paid in politics to “reaching across the aisle” to pass legislation. In reality, little of that is actually done, so little policy is actually made. It’s an unfortunate impasse that renders productivity impossible.

Companies can’t afford a lack of productivity just because of the people who need to achieve it happen to have different perspectives. In fact, it is precisely the differences in perspective, skill sets, talents, and experience that generate stellar products. The key is to find a way for unlike-minded team members to work together toward a shared goal.

How does that come about? It happens with effective cross-team collaboration. And that requires that members of every team speak and be heard by every other team from start to finish.

The communication and feedback loop required for collaboration benefits from tools that encourage it, like an intuitive project management solution. You’ll need one that accommodates remote and in-house employees, real-time meetings, and asynchronous work, dreamers, and doers.

Cross-team collaboration should empower everyone to participate, monitor progress, solve problems, and weigh in with their opinions. Everybody plays. Everybody wins.

Crush Cubicles and Squash Silos

Imagine an office where every individual is working in a cubicle on one piece of a project. The seclusion inhibits the exchange of ideas, brainstorming, and team problem-solving. Even with the most talented people inhabiting each of those cubicles, the end product would feel cobbled together.

In reality, those cubicles are more likely to be home offices and asynchronous work schedules. But the same analogy applies. There is a risk of performing work in a vacuum rather than across teams.

Project management software breaks down walls real and virtual, allowing teams to collaborate in real-time. But it’s just as important for teams to be using the same project management tool rather than multiple ones. Otherwise, there will be an accumulation of information, input, and data in silos.

Data silos are problematic if not downright dangerous. Over time, they can create competition rather than collaboration among teams clinging to their “secret” data. 

A single project collaboration tool will bring every team into the same space, no matter what each team’s role is. If you want teams to talk to one another and share information, walls and silos need to be eliminated. Using one project management tool will make silo demolition a breeze.

Learn New Languages

Teams tend to speak their own languages. The lingo, jargon, and acronyms used among developers are going to broadly differ from those used by the marketing team. Additionally, if the native national languages of various team members differ, you’ll need to find a way past that barrier.

To improve cross-team collaboration, every team needs to speak the language of every other team. Fluency isn’t a requirement, but a basic understanding is. And it’s up to teams and their members to be both students and teachers in creating a shared vocabulary.

The solution is to create a glossary everyone can reference quickly and discreetly if they feel left out of the conversation. Teams should know their APIs from their KPIs and their word count from their bandwidth. Definitions should be as plain-spoken as possible.

Non-native speakers struggle with idioms, like “beat around the bush” and “think outside the box.” Include such sayings in the glossary, and make sure the global employees include theirs as well. Rather than leaving anyone out of the conversation, everyone can learn a little something new.

For teams to collaborate, they must be able to communicate, pure and simple. No one should feel confused, overwhelmed, or clueless in the process. Project-speak should be universal.

Help Others Tech Themselves

Cross-team collaboration is also strengthened when capability differences are reduced, notably where technology is concerned. The ability of some teams to use tech comfortably and fearlessly will be far different than for other teams. Those who can easily catch on the need to stop long enough to assist and support those who can’t.

If you’re a web developer, joining that first Zoom meeting during lockdown was probably no big deal. But it might have been for employees accustomed to doing business with handshakes rather than keystrokes.

Tech-savvy teams need to resist the temptation to talk over or get exasperated with other teams when using technology. If you don’t, you’ll just get frustrated for the hold-up, and they’ll get frustrated because they feel incompetent.

The disparities are more challenging now that more teams are working remotely and with more technology than ever. Before, someone struggling with software could ask a coworker down the hall to help. Now there must be a different way to troubleshoot problems and teach those employees so they can be more independent.

Tech-ableism has no place in a collaborative workplace. Those who struggle need to feel comfortable asking for help. Those who can provide it need to do so with patience and without judgment.

Break It Down

Teams share the overarching goal for a project. However, each team’s role in achieving it will look quite different, involve vastly different timelines, and require unique resources. Those varying means to an end need to be broken down into manageable chunks.

Breaking down a project in this manner accomplishes two things. First, it makes the project seem less onerous than it might otherwise appear. Second, every team’s chunks are more approachable for them and more comprehensible to other teams.

Great cross-collaboration doesn’t require every team to know how to do every other team’s tasks. What it does require is for every team to have a working knowledge of what another team has to accomplish. Moreover, every team should understand the challenges other teams will need to address to get their part done.

For example, the marketing team needs to understand, in layperson’s terms, when a project entails more complex programming. If marketing knows that, the team can have realistic expectations for when the development team’s work will be done. That also means marketing can set realistic timelines for itself.

Solid collaboration demands good timing. To get it right within your own team and across them, every team needs to serve up bite-size pieces.

Increase Collaboration, Increase Success

Empowerment, understanding, total participation, and the free flow of ideas are hallmarks of collaboration. Encouraging those among members of the same team is challenging enough. Making collaboration happen across teams is even more so.

Leveling the project field despite the myriad differences between teams is the best way to remove all barriers to success. And no barriers mean every member of every team can pull in the same direction.

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Digital calendars, while extremely useful, can be underutilized. This is largely due to there being an overwhelming amount of digital calendars, each with their own uniquely efficient features. These features may include software integrations, personalized customizations, automated scheduling and shared calendars.

The efficiency features below are discussed in detail to give you a better understanding of just how helpful each of them can be. Besides easing the stress that busy schedules can cause, these features will also help you get more out of your digital calendar. After all, spending less time on scheduling gives you more time to do the things you love. So, here are a few simple ways to use your digital calendar more efficiently.

Utilize Software Integration Features

Software integration features are a must if you want to make the most of your digital calendar and free up some time. In a world of software integrations, why not utilize all that is available at your disposal? The more you can take advantage of automation, the more time you can free up for yourself and others.

Let’s say the calendar you use is Outlook Calendar. Microsoft Cortana, an AI software that is included in many Microsoft devices, integrates with that. Furthermore, by integrating Cortana, you can verbally schedule events to your Outlook Calendar. There are many other software integrations that are compatible with Outlook Calendar as well, like ScheduleOnce, Calendar, and QuickBooks. 

Implement Customizations

For the same reasons we adjust our rearview mirrors, we should also adjust our calendars so we can see what we need to in order to navigate successfully. Calendar customizations are a creative way to combine your schedule with your personal preferences so you can have what you need to be successful. 

Many digital calendars offer unique customizations; like being able to set color themes, customize notification settings, and even view the weather. These are just a few of the many customizations a digital calendar could offer. Honestly, customizations can really be a game-changer.

Consider Collaboration Options

Collaborating with others by means of sharing your schedule, for example, allows you to dodge the communication mishaps altogether. When you share your calendar, others can see your availability, and vice versa. Shared calendars are great for large-scale scheduling purposes, like work meetings, sporting events, class schedules, and other recurring events that thrive on successful collaboration.

Shared calendars are also useful for the times you’re only scheduling events with one or two other people. This is because you can simply see when they are busy and won’t need to ask. Just as you can see when they are busy, you can also see when they are free. This way, you can easily coordinate events with them during a mutually convenient time slot to avoid scheduling errors. Being able to share your calendar enables planning to go so much more smoothly.

Wrapping Up

No matter which type of digital calendar you decide to use, there are always some hacks to help you streamline events with ease. Moreover, by implementing the seemingly endless quantity of features available to you, you will be well on your way to utilizing your digital calendar more efficiently.

Overall, just know the impact your calendar has on your time, and understand what it is capable of when used to its fullest. While there are many digital calendars available to choose from, the most important thing to consider is how to choose one that will enable you to be as efficient as possible with your time. 

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As a consequence of understanding the dollar value of their time, many company leaders and CEOs can gradually acquire an unspoken air of unapproachability. Of course, most do not consciously keep their employees at an emotional distance. Instead, they unwittingly project an aura that can cause others to think twice before opening their mouths or sending an email.

This was true long before anyone knew anything about Covid-19. Sadly, when employees began to flee office buildings and take up a lifestyle of remote work, the problem of perceived management unapproachability in many cases only got worse.

As more and more businesses move into 2022 by adopting a hybrid model of in-person/remote workforces, business leaders are increasingly in need of inviting — and even welcoming — a restructuring of their communication practices. If that causes some to balk at increased expense, it might help to remind them that Covid-19 only exposed a pre-existing problem.

As you consider the ways in which your company may need to retool its management practices so that in-person and remote workers are on level terrain when it comes to their own perceived value, here are four categories to help you discern where a tune-up is recommended.

1. Project confidence in all of your employees.

The first barrier to break down is any perception that management places primary value on its in-person workers, over and above their remote workforce. If anything, many business leaders found that their employees became even more productive once they were freed of commuting, cubicle farms, and office politics.

Send out brief, encouraging messages to all of your employees, regardless of location. If one of your remote workers brought in additional business, send them a quick thank-you card by mail. The extra effort required to send out a personalized greeting card means more than you might imagine. Celebrate your in-person wins in person, perhaps by briefly calling staff together and setting up a Zoom call for interested remote workers to join in.

Above all, be on the lookout for any signs that your workforce is splintering along in-person/remote lines. When you convey an equitable approach as you celebrate, coach, and yes, discipline, you are setting the tone for others. You’ll have solid ground upon which to stand if you do find that remote workers are being marginalized or left out of decision-making.

2. Make yourself readily available, albeit with good boundaries.

Sometimes it helps to attack the problem of perceived unapproachability by dismantling in advance the possibility of someone claiming that you weren’t available. At a basic level, ensuring that you have secure home wifi is a good first step. Add an email signature to “broadcast” to every employee the best ways to reach you, but remember points of contact with employees should never be a “one and done” sort of practice.

In addition to making your availabilities widely known by all, you might consider dropping a personal line to one or two employees each day. Something short and simple —  “Hey, I know that client deadline is coming up and I just wanted to make myself available to you if needed.” — can make all the difference. Employees stay motivated when they perceive that you are not only aware of their pressures but checking in to make sure they’re OK.

In addition to short, employee-specific notes, emails, texts, and phone calls, consider setting up an advanced calendaring app and allow others to grab snippets of your time as they feel they are in need. If an employee is struggling in isolation, you want that to be something they themselves chose rather than a byproduct of them not being able to interact with you as needed.

3. Train yourself to distinguish between a failure and a snafu.

Did that client deadline get missed because a staff member did not bother to attend a critical Zoom call…or because no one thought to make sure that a remote employee was invited? Obviously, in our new era of managing a hybrid workforce, business leaders must be more diligent than ever in terms of conducting a thorough, accurate post-mortem on company failures.

This one is admittedly tough. When things go wrong at work, many of us experience a sudden adrenaline rush of negative emotions. It can be tempting to think that we know exactly why something went haywire and act quickly. However, it’s only common sense to think that dispersing our workforce between a central location and all over the internet might bring some previously unconsidered factors into play. Best to move slowly with any after-action.

The two primary things any savvy manager will do is to 1) invest adequate time in finding out what truly happened, and 2) determine if processes and procedures need to be tweaked. Many may resist the investment of time, but failing to uncover the root cause is more or less an invitation for the problem to recur. Where did the project fall apart? Who (or what) bears primary responsibility? Honest mistake…or something that requires disciplinary action?

4. Initiate shorter points of contact, but more of them.

Finally, the development of a well-oiled in-person/remote workforce will require more frequent interaction with staff but each of those interactions will need to be targeted, concise, and straight to the point. It’s commonly accepted that you will get more accomplished in a meeting of four to five people than you will in a room of 20. Instead of working a 40-point agenda once a month, set up times for five-minute phone calls to individuals or a 15-20 minute meeting online with three or four.

Similar to making yourself more available and approachable for employees to initiate contact, you will want to “force your newfound approachability on them” with brief points of contact throughout the workweek. Doing so will require sensitivity to the needs and personalities of your staff, of course. Some will welcome seeing you every day, others will max out their comfort level talking to you once a week.

As you intentionally interact more frequently and for shorter intervals of time, you’ll save money on widely-attended staff meetings and get to know your people better over the course of time. As you begin to appreciate each employee better, you’ll develop a keener sense as to how you can make them feel more valued and appreciated. Whether remote or in-person, everyone wants to feel important. When they do, productivity tends to gain even more traction.

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Sometimes the simplest tools can be deceptively tricky, even dangerous. For example, the lowly calendar can cause everyone — business people, students, and homemakers alike — incredible inconvenience when poorly managed.

Fortunately, the calendaring solutions on view today are far more advanced than those available to us even just 10 years ago. Not only are there more electronic tools than ever before, but people are beginning to discern where a laptop or smartphone should be the tool of choice vs. when it’s time to break out nothing fancier than a pencil and piece of paper.

8 Ways to Sharpen Your Personal Calendaring Skills

1. Stop relying on your power of memory.

Perhaps you take pride in your exceptional power to remember people, places, and things that cross your path, but keep in mind that pride often precedes a fall. The truth is that writing something down reinforces an already-strong ability to remember. If you pay attention, you’ll notice that the people with the best memories tend to only take notes as needed, rather than obsessively jotting down everything. Being intentional about selecting what you want to remember and writing it down on your calendar will free you up to think clearly.

2. Pick the view that works for your lifestyle and temperament.

Have you ever looked at someone else’s calendar and felt like you might have a panic attack? When you are building out your preferred calendaring system, don’t be overly influenced by what anyone else does. The trick to long-term success with calendaring is to pick out a tool that provides the view you want to see as you make decisions and plan your week. Some people prefer to use an Outlook calendar synced to all of their devices. Others will pull out a leatherbound book and a fountain pen. The point is to keep trying tools and systems until you find what works best for you, not what works for that entrepreneur you’re trying to emulate.

3. Pick a color-coding scheme that makes sense to you.

Some people use color-coding notes and events to draw a sharp distinction between work commitments and lifestyle. Blue for work, green for leisure activities. Others use the color-coding functionality to toggle back and forth quickly between multiple views of their various commitments. Whatever color scheme you choose, adopting some format for quick visual distinction is probably the single most important means you can use to bring sanity to your schedule. Spend a bit of time on the front end thinking carefully about how you’d like to get started so you’re not making a lot of color-coding adjustments further down the road.

4. Do not tolerate ghosting from anyone…especially yourself.

Let your word be your bond. Show up when you say you will. Under-promise and over-deliver. When you adopt a code such as this for yourself, you silently convey to others that you carry an expectation for them as well. Get in the habit of showing up to in-person meetings at least 10-15 minutes ahead of the start time. That way, you’ll have plenty of time to plug in your laptop, get coffee, and shuffle your papers. If you simply must stay in a relationship with someone who “ghosts” others, make a habit of confirming meetings and deadlines at regular intervals.

5. Use labels that make sense at a glance.

Words matter. Where color-coding can help you quickly distinguish between categories, effective meeting labels may take a few extra seconds of thought on the front end but will save you missed cues and opening up a reminder multiple times to check for more information. For example, “Meeting with Jeff” is a good start for your meeting label, but “Meeting w/Jeff: Quarterly Sales Numbers” tells you a lot more when you see it pop up on your laptop or look at your weekly planning. The additional information might spur you to move the meeting whereas a less-informative label passes quickly through your awareness unnoticed.

6. Share your calendaring data across all platforms.

Perhaps the single greatest advantage to electronic calendaring is that, when configured properly, you can access your information from anywhere in the world, using any device. While the smartphone seems to be the weapon of choice for many, it won’t do you any good should the battery die. Furthermore, many of us spend a good portion of the workweek with a computer keyboard at our fingertips. Using the “tool of the moment” while being confident that your saved data will be available anywhere, anytime, frees you up to focus intently on the task at hand.

7. Pay attention to recurring “time management hand grenades.”

Over time, you may notice that some of your calendaring habits cause problems for you. The typical example is scheduling one meeting from 9:00 to 10:00 and another from 10:00 to 10:30 on the same day. This practice allows no time for moving from one location to another or for a meeting to unexpectedly run long. Many online apps now permit users to factor in travel time. Even if you don’t have to drive anywhere, consider using this feature to give you some cushion of time to “travel” to the bathroom or the coffee machine.

8. Be intentional with your use of calendar notifications.

Many calendaring systems default to a setting of sending out a notification 10 or perhaps 15 minutes ahead of every meeting you schedule. This is a great feature, of course, but many of us have noticed that our productivity is being “notified to death.” Again, a few seconds on the front end thinking this through will pay dividends later on. Maybe you don’t want to be notified of anything and everything. Perhaps you’d rather not have yet another device interrupting your thought processes. Of course, be certain that you aren’t missing important events and deadlines simply because you’ve chosen to shut off various notifications.

Give grace where needed, yes…but always follow up.

Life is unpredictable. Unexpected things happen, and we must allow “space and grace” in our lives to accommodate interruptions, unanticipated events, or even the occasional traffic jam. If you construct your weekly calendar and then demand that life cooperate, you are headed for a lot of emotional angst and perhaps even some serious health issues. Additionally, you are likely to cause damage to all of your relationships, personal and professional.

While it is important to allow some margin for error and miscommunication, it is equally important to hold people accountable. When, for example, a colleague consistently arrives late to meetings, or misses them entirely, don’t allow yourself to get overheated. Simply open up that meeting on your personal calendar (not the shared meeting invitation) and make a non-judgmental notation of the fact.

Over time, you’ll begin to use your time more wisely as you take multiple factors (such as consistently-unreliable colleagues) into account. The simple act of note-taking will help you develop a keen eye for spotting time management hand grenades and tossing them back before they blow up your week.

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