We’re all familiar with traditional brainstorming as a way to produce new ideas. You sit in a room with a whiteboard and work with whatever comes to mind. Maybe you play a few rounds of word association to strengthen your ideas, or pull up Google and use research to flesh them out.

But there are many alternative exercises for tackling problems and developing new ideas, both individually and in a group setting.

Ranging from structured to silly, here are 15 creative brainstorming exercises and techniques to help you get your problem-solving juices flowing.

Visual Activities

1. Storyboarding

If you’re trying to design a process, storyboarding can help you see where your collective understanding of a problem supports or conflicts with a proposed solution, and where more thought/research is needed. By developing a visual story to explore the problem at hand as a narrative, your team will be able to see how ideas interact and connect to form a solution.

Sticky notes are your friend. Take a few minutes to have everyone on the team write out their ideas as individual notes. These don’t have to be complete thoughts — physically pinning up quotes, pictures, user info, and the like can help you see new relationships between different components.

Once you have a group of sticky notes to work from, start arranging them on the board as a progression: first this, then that. Organizing your ideas as a continuous series will help you see new connections and eliminate extraneous material that doesn’t support your end goal.

2. Mind Mapping

Mind mapping is a fairly common term nowadays — in fact, many types of software provide automated mind-mapping templates so you can better organize your data. Well, it also happens to be a great way to organize your ideas.

• To create a mind map for creativity purposes, write down the task or problem you’re trying to solve at the center of your idea sheet (feel free to do this on your computer, but whiteboards are ideal).
• Then, expand on this problem by surrounding it with terms that better describe what you need. If your problem is low website traffic, for example, some terms to write around this phrase might be “organic traffic,” “trusted content,” “SEO,” and “video strategy.”
• Once your mind map has this first layer, add a second layer to each of your needs describing how you might be able to solve for these individual challenges. Around “SEO,” you might write “topic clusters,” “dedicated SEO strategist,” and “video marketing course.”

Keep adding to your mind map using the steps above until you’ve sufficiently broken down your problem into manageable parts. It’s a fantastic problem-solving technique that fosters creative answers to subjects that might otherwise seem uninspiring.

3. Group Sketching

You don’t have to be an artist or a designer to benefit from sketching. Visual thinking can help to trigger and develop ideas that discussion and writing might otherwise leave unturned. Similar to brain-writing, group sketching involves participants building on each other’s ideas.

Each member of your team will sketch an image related in a central way to a concept, idea or topic you want to explore further. Each sketch is then passed to someone else, who sketches another related image on the same piece of paper. This is repeated multiple times around the group. The final images are then reviewed and discussed with the aim of discovering connections that individuals hadn’t spotted on their own.

Idea Sorting Techniques

4. Word Banking

If you assume “work banking” is a fancy term for “word association,” well, you’re right. But in a word banking session, what you do with the words you come with is much more sophisticated.

While word associations often focus on pairs of words, word banking asks you to form big groups of terms that all describe just a few themes or topics. Creating word banks in a business setting can help you dismantle a project into manageable parts — kind of like a mind map, as described in technique #2 earlier in this article.

Then, when your work bank is complete, you can retroactively form connections between the terms you came up with, and use those connections to craft ideas that are guaranteed to include all of your most important characteristics.

5. S.C.A.M.P.E.R.

S.C.A.M.P.E.R. is essentially a process for expanding and improving upon ideas by testing and questioning them from different angles. For each letter of the mnemonic, ask yourself a related question about your project or the problem at hand:

• Substitute, e.g.: What would happen to the project if we swapped X for Y?
• Combine, e.g.: What would happen to the project if we combined X and Y?
• Adapt, e.g.: What changes would need to be made to adapt this project to a different context?
• Modify, e.g.: What could we modify to create more value on this project?
• Put to another use, e.g.: What other uses or applications might this project have?
• Eliminate, e.g.: What could we remove from the project to simplify it?
• Reverse, e.g.: How could we reorganize this project to make it more effective?

This method forces you to approach your project or problem in unexpected ways. Each question asks you to dig a little deeper into the issue and consider new possibilities.

6. S.W.O.T. Analysis

Entrepreneurs and business leaders know exactly what a SWOT analysis is. Well, it also happens to be a helpful brainstorming exercise.

S.W.O.T. stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. And when launching a company, it’s your textbook starting point (literally — there isn’t a single business school textbook in the world that doesn’t have a version of it).

But while a company’s founder might use a SWOT analysis to create his or her business model, brainstormers can use the same diagram to better organize their ideas.

Your SWOT analysis doesn’t have to be all that complicated when brainstorming. In fact, it can simply be four columns on a whiteboard during your average “shout it out” ideas meeting. When thinking of a new logo design, for instance, ask yourself what you like most about your current logo (strengths). What do you dislike about it (weaknesses)? What should it have more of (opportunities)? What other company logos should you be mindful of (threats)?

7. Six Thinking Hats

There’s a whole host of problem-solving exercises and tools that help participants to put themselves into the shoes of another. This particular tool was invented by Edward de Bono, a psychologist, author, and consultant who pioneered the technique in his 1985 book Six Thinking Hats. The method involves breaking down ideas into six areas of thought:

When approaching a new problem or project, have each member of your team put on one of these different “hats” for the discussion. Each “hat” represents a unique set of priorities and perspectives that will help focus your discussion and consider the project from a wide variety of angles.

For example, if you’re wearing the “Devil’s Advocate” hat, it’s your job to consider the project’s limitations and challenges. It may feel uncomfortable at first to temporarily adopt a very narrow form of thinking, but the extremes can help teams fully explore a project or idea.

Creative Exercises and Games

8. Zero Draft

The Zero Draft is an ideation technique for individuals often used by writers and is essentially a form of focused free-writing. For marketers and agency professionals, it can help focus the first stages of a new project by establishing what you currently know and getting your initial ideas out of your brain and onto paper.

Taking your central theme or topic:

1. Write down everything you currently know about the subject.
2. Write down what you need or want to know about the subject, but don’t currently know.
3. Reflect on why the subject is important.
4. Add anything else that takes your fancy — this is a chance to get whatever’s floating around in your head out into the world.

The Zero Draft method is all about getting everything you can think of relating to your topic down on paper, so don’t be concerned if it looks messy and unfocused. The goal is just to get past the initial block that often plagues creative professionals in the early stages of a new project.

9. Brain Netting

Creative exercises and ideas meetings always go better the more people you have in the room. Unfortunately, that means remote employees might not be solicited for their input as much as they should be. Brain netting is the act of connecting with folks electronically to make sure everyone can offer their input and feedback on a project.

Brain netting doesn’t just have to be a group phone call, though. Company messaging platforms like Slack are the perfect way to get everyone into a chatroom to spill their ideas. As ideas are submitted, each chatroom member can even vote for their favorites and combine the best qualities of multiple concepts.

10. Questioning Assumptions

We all carry assumptions with us — assumptions about what is and isn’t possible, about what people want, what will work, and what won’t. This exercise forces us to challenge these and put everything on the table.

Draw up a list of all the assumptions you can think of about your currently project — true or not — and discuss the list as a group, questioning each one. Doing this at various stages in your campaign development can spark fresh ideas, as well as identify knowledge gaps.

11. Wishing

This technique encourages your team to let imaginations run wild. Ask participants to dream up the most unattainable, extreme, and impractical solutions they can think of to a given problem. Create a list of a few dozen wishes pertaining to the task at hand.

Focusing on a selection of wishes, consider and discuss the ideas in detail, with the aim of triggering new but more realistic concepts to pursue. What makes them so impossible? How can that idea be scaled down? Which features of that wish could we integrate into this other approach? You might be surprised to discover applicable, real-world solutions among your team’s wildest wishes.

12. Alter-Egos / Heroes

This is a fun exercise where small groups imagine how they would go about solving a given problem if their team were led by a famous character, fictional or real. How would Cat Woman go about positioning your brand as a thought leader in virtual reality? What would Steve Jobs do to improve your latest communications package? How would Don Draper get your core messages across to millennials?

You can either chose someone you think embodies the right qualities for the job to help develop your vision, or someone at the opposite end of that scale, to explore less conventional ideas.

13. Forced Connections

This exercise involves bringing together ideas that serve very different needs or interests to form a new concept. You see this sort of thinking all the time in products like the Apple watch, the Swiss Army knife, smartphones, or even sofa beds.

To put this method into practice, bring a bag of random items to your next meeting, or draw up two lists of unrelated items on the board. Ask team members to pick two or more items and explore different ways they can be connected. This technique can produce some silly results, but it’s ultimately a helpful way of getting your team out of a creative rut.

14. Reverse Brainstorming

In certain corporations and government entities, data security is the highest priority. So high, in fact, that these organizations have been known to hire hackers — many of whom have committed internet crimes — to hack their systems and find out where the weaknesses are.

This “reverse” approach to security, wherein you hack your own company, is considered one of the best ways to secure a server from intrusion. And for us, it’s the inspiration behind this fourth brainstorming technique.

When you reverse brainstorm, you essentially work to create problems rather than solutions. ‘Why on Earth would you want to do that?’ You might ask. Creating problems teaches you what not to do so you’re more intuitive to the needs of your project. Think of it like hacking your company to find out where the weaknesses are.

Say, for example, you want to drive awareness to a new product. As a marketer, you have many promotional channels at your disposal, but you don’t know how to use them or where to start. In a reverse brainstorming session, you might come up with the following:

• Avoid hyperlinks to the product’s purchase page
• Don’t tweet about the product
• Criticize the features of your product

Obviously, these are all horrible ideas if your goal is to promote the product. But, take the reverse of these ideas, and you’ve effectively created three excellent starting points for a supportive campaign: Link to the product in a series of blog posts, develop a Twitter campaign around the product, and identify specific features of the product that prospects would be most interested in reading or hearing about.

15. Brain-Writing

In this exercise, participants simply write down a few rough ideas for solving a particular problem on a piece of paper. Each piece of paper is then passed on to someone else, who reads it silently and adds their own ideas to the page. This process is repeated until everyone has had a chance to add to each original piece of paper. The notes can then be gathered, ready for discussion.

The big advantage of brain-writing is that it makes sure everybody is given the opportunity to have their thoughts and ideas thoroughly considered by the group. This avoids the loudest or most extroverted people unintentionally dominating the sessions.

This is a modified excerpt from Creative Ideation for Digital Marketers: Theory to Practice by Dani Mansfield.

Telling your boss that you’re leaving the company is never an easy conversation.

But a respectful resignation letter can mean the difference between an awkward goodbye, and a chance for a long-term professional connection.

Ideally, you’ll provide a resignation letter two weeks before you leave the company. A resignation letter lets you officially announce your termination at the company, and also provides important housekeeping information, like your last day and other details about your departure.

Arming yourself with a powerful resignation letter helps you ensure a positive conversation with your boss, and a smooth transition to your next journey.

But how do you write a good resignation letter? What should you include, and exclude?

Writing a resignation letter can feel like a daunting task, so we’ve created a professional resignation letter template to get you started, and included examples for inspiration.

How to Write a Professional Resignation Letter (Template)

Below is a professional resignation letter template. Remember, your letter should be brief, and only include relevant and helpful information. Don’t focus on the advantages of your next role. Instead, take the time to reflect on any appreciation you feel for the company you’re leaving behind.

 

Your Name

Your Address

Your City, State, Zip Code

Your Phone Number

Your Email

 

Date

 

Name

Title

Organization

Address

City, State, Zip Code

 

Dear Mr./Ms. Last Name:

 

I would like to inform you that I am resigning from my position as X for Company A, effective December 21.

I appreciate the opportunities for professional development that you have provided me over the past two years. I have enjoyed my tenure at Company A, and in particular feel honored to have been apart of such a supportive team.

If I can be of any help during this transition, please let me know. I am available to help train my replacement, and will ensure all my reports are updated before my last day of work.

Thank you again for the opportunity to work at Company A. I wish you all the best and look forward to staying in touch. You can email me at X.

Sincerely,

Your Signature (hard copy letter)

Your Typed Name

 

Paragraph 1: Identify yourself.

Begin your letter by stating your position, and the company. This might seem superfluous if you work at a small company and your boss knows you well, but since the letter is your official termination, it’s important to include. Then, quickly follow this information with a simple statement of your resignation.

Also, providing an end date in the first body paragraph is helpful, since that’s one of the first questions your employer is going to have.

Paragraph 2: Reflect on the positives.

Take the time to consider how you’ve grown, or what you’ve appreciated most about your time at the company. Be as specific as possible — perhaps the company provided professional development opportunities, or maybe you’ve appreciated the climate the company fostered, and the supportive atmosphere. It’s nice for your employer to receive a thank you for the time and resources she’s used to support your career growth.

If you’d like, you can include where you’re headed next, too. If you’re switching industries to pursue a passion, or going to graduate school, it might be appropriate to include. However, if you’re leaving the company for a competitor, you might feel it better to omit.

Paragraph 3: Offer to assist in the transition.

In the third paragraph, mention your willingness to make the transition easier. I’ve written, “I am available to help train my replacement, and will ensure all my reports are updated …” This sentence might look different for you; regardless of what you write, it’s impressive if you include specific details regarding how you’ll help.

*Paragraph 4: Outline your workload.

As an optional follow-up paragraph, briefly review the work you’ll be surrendering when you officially leave the company. Although it is technically your manager’s responsibility to pick this work up and determine how it will continue, it’s helpful to list all the projects and tasks you’ve been in charge of to make the transition even easier on the company in the interim.

This is especially true if you managed any direct reports or collaborated with other departments.

*Paragraph 5: Provide personal contact information.

Lastly, I’ve written, “You can email me at X.” This is optional, but if you truly want to keep in touch with your old employer or use her as a resource, it might be a good addition.

*These two paragraphs are optional sections. Depending on your position and your relationship with the company, you might not need to include.

Resignation Letter Samples

With the above template in mind, let’s take a look at a few sample resignation letters for different positions, each of them taking a slightly different but amicable tone to their resignations.

Sample 1

Focuses: Gratitude, new opportunity, contact info

Dear Mr./Ms. Last Name:

I would like to inform you that I am resigning from my position as Data Analyst for Company A, effective January 3.

I appreciate the opportunities for professional development that you have provided me over the past four years. I have enjoyed my tenure at Company A, and feel grateful to have started my career alongside such a dedicated team.

I have accepted a teaching position in Virginia. While my experience at Company A was rewarding, I’m excited to pursue my passion for teaching.

If I can be of any help during this transition, please let me know. I am willing to help out with freelance work until you find a replacement.

Thank you again for the opportunity to work at Company A. I wish you all the best and look forward to staying in touch. You can email me at X.

Sincerely,

Caroline

 

Sample 2

Focuses: Brevity, Gratitude

Dear Mr./Ms. Last Name:

Please accept this letter of resignation from my position as content creator at Company Y. My last day of employment will be June 1.

It has been a pleasure working with you and the team for the past two years. In particular, I’ve enjoyed tackling extensive copywriting projects as the business has grown. I’m very appreciative for the opportunities to develop my skills in the field, and want to thank you for all your guidance and insight. I wish your company much success.

Please let me know if you need any assistance with the transition.

Sincerely,

Caroline

There are some days that make us want to escape reality. And it could be said that there’s no better place to do that than a conference dedicated entirely to virtual reality (VR). 

This week saw the fifth occurrence of Oculus Connect: Facebook’s annual VR conference. And while this year was a bit skimpy on flashy product announcements, it did see the debut of the latest in the company’s line of VR headsets, the Oculus Quest.

A natural skeptic, I wondered what made the Quest so special. What merited its $399 price tag (as opposed to the $199 Go, an earlier wireless Oculus headset)? And why did Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg describe it as “just wonderful” during the event’s opening keynote?

FB has been prototyping this for a while under the code name Project Santa Cruz. Now it’s an official consumer product.

“It’s just wonderful,” Zuckerberg says https://t.co/CJbZrTIAkE

— Kurt Wagner (@KurtWagner8)
September 26, 2018

To find out, I decided to take it for a spin.

The Oculus Quest Experience

Whenever I try a new VR headset, I immediately have to warn the person running the demo that I historically get motion sickness from the technology.

I’m not alone (that’s probably why they keep a bowl of ginger candies at the demo stations) but with the Oculus’s two existing headsets, the Rift and the Go, I’ve had to end the demonstrations after only a few minutes.

But the gentleman running this demo, Thomas, told me that this experience might be different. “A lot of people have told me that,” he said, “and then tell me they don’t have that experience with the Quest.”

Sure, Thomas. I’ll believe that when I see it.

Oculus Quest controllers

As I put on the headset and controllers, and the game commenced, two things were immediately apparent to me: 1) how much more intuitive the hand controls felt, and 2) how much more realistic the visuals seemed.

The game was Superhot: an almost dystopian-like scenario in an airport setting, where the player has to destroy her enemies (which come in the form of opaque red, mannequin-like creatures) by punching them, or grabbing and throwing whatever nearby objects she can find at them.

Source: Oculus

It felt less like I was in a game — and more like I could actually walk around the environment portrayed, duck for cover, and hide when my enemies where coming for me (I was sweating by the time my demo was over). Throwing virtual clay pots at my adversaries felt quite natural — so much, Thomas told me at the end of my seven minutes, I won the game. 

The coolest part about this game in particular was how it forced me to slow down. The faster the player moves, it turns out, the faster the enemies move toward her. Not only was it actually fun for a non-gaming-enthusiast like myself, but it was also a bit of an exercise in self-moderation.

Even better: No motion sickness. 

But what was to explain for these three stark distinctions — the ease of the controls, the natural feel of the environment and movement through the game, and the lack of motion sickness? What differentiated my Oculus Quest experience from those with the Go and Rift?

To find out, I spoke with Allison Berliner, a product marketing manager for the Oculus Quest, and Andrea Schubert, the company’s product communications lead.

The Tech Behind the Experience

First of all, I had to know: Why was my motion sickness non-existent while using the Quest?

Berliner explained that it all comes down to Oculus Insight: the headset’s four wide-angled sensors, which understand the user’s physical environment, and where she is within that space. 

“The tracking is super accurate and super reliable,” Berliner said, “and that’s why it feels really comfortable.”

I wondered if that had something to do with the green grid that would pop up whenever I was about to crash into a wall. It did.

As it turns out, the folks at Oculus were able to “tell” the headset and the game what that physical player environment looked like through a system called Guardian, which lets users know when they’re about to step out of the game’s bounds.

The Oculus boundary system. Source: Oculus

And once the Oculus Quest ships this spring, users will be able to dictate their own environments in the same way.

Then what’s to explain for the natural feeling of the movement? I asked Berliner if it had something to do with the somewhat elusive concept of “six degrees of freedom” (6DOF): the ability of a single, physical body to move freely throughout a three-dimensional space.

“Exactly!” she told me. “The reason it feels really fluid and free is because you have the six degrees of freedom, which is all about the kinds of movements you can do while you’re being tracked” by the VR platform.

Why the Oculus Quest Is a Game-Changer

Since the physical and emotional experience of using the Quest was so saliently different from those I had with other headsets — no motion sickness, intuitive movement, and actual fun — I wondered how else it might be put to use. Could this platform be a game-changer for those in marketing or non-gaming sectors?

“We’re seeing a lot of interesting use cases for VR in general — for healthcare, for education, for training,” Berliner said. “I think it’ll be great to see how the same partners and consumers using the Oculus Go and Oculus Rift for those other industries can do with the Oculus Quest.”

The area of healthcare was of particular interest. With the ease of movement on the Oculus Quest, perhaps it could be used for things like rehabilitation or injury recovery.

It reminded me of something that a gentleman named Steve from DrashVR — which develops educational programs and curricula in VR — told me on day one of Oculus Connect.

“You can cram a lot more information that’s ‘learning by accident’ or ‘learning by play’ when it’s in VR,” he said. “That’s the feedback I’ve heard first-hand: that people can learn more from 10 minutes of VR than in a semester of classes.”

So if VR for educational purposes could be that effective on earlier, less precise platforms, was their potential on the Quest even greater, especially with such freedom of movement?

“We’re all really interested to see how Oculus Quest changes not only how people play games and people build games,” Berliner said, “but also how people learn and communicate, and connect with each other.”

Kind of like reenacting Gettysburg, without actually visiting the battlefield?

Berliner laughed. “Virtual field trips are super exciting.”

But as admittedly remarkable as the Quest experience is, I did wonder if it was enough to make VR go mainstream. As Zuckerberg himself acknowledged on day one, the company is less than 1% of its way to the goal of getting one billion people in VR.

Zuck is feeling funny today. Here’s a graphic showing the progress to his projection/goal last year of getting 1 billion people into VR #oc5 pic.twitter.com/hsHmmIo0s9

— Amanda Zantal-Wiener (@Amanda_ZW)
September 26, 2018

So what will make VR go mainstream? Ask Berliner, and she’ll tell you — it’s offering options to all users, no matter which industries they’re in.

“The combination of completing this first generation of products means that now we have a great set and a great portfolio,” she said. “Anybody who wants to do something in VR should be able to find the product for them.”

So there’s the marketing lesson — not just the principle of offering options for your audience, but in a way to leverage VR for your overall strategy. What does your audience want to do in VR, or where could VR enhance an already existing experience, and how can you create that experience?

Berliner encouraged leaning into the narrative — and Oculus’s own credo — of breaking down distance barriers. Put the user somewhere they want to be, she emphasized, especially when they can’t get there without your help.

“It comes down to our vision of defying distance. There are moments when you just can’t be [somewhere],” she said. “That’s where virtual reality can play such a huge role.”

When it launched in 2014, Twitter Analytics marked a solid (if long overdue) move toward greater transparency and measurement abilities for all its users.

Since then, Twitter has continued to make upgrades to the tool, having created a standalone analytics app called Engage in 2016 and launching analytics for Twitter Moments.

Though users now have more insight into their Twitter account metrics, you might not be using this data to its full potential.

Perhaps you’ve poked around the Twitter Analytics homepage and figured out you can track impressions and metrics by promoted or organic activity … and that’s about it. The good news is there’s much more you can discover in your Tweet activity dashboard — you’ve just need to know where to look.

Beyond the basic metrics, here are some incredibly important things you can discover about your Twitter account and audience using Tweet Analytics.

How to Use Twitter Analytics

You can access Twitter Analytics by tapping your profile and selecting “Analytics” from the dropdown menu:

1. See Which Content Resonates With Your Audience

Understanding which types of content and topics your audience members most enjoy can help drive your social marketing and content strategy. What’s the point in sharing content no one cares about or enjoys?

On the “Tweets” tab, you can see Impressions, Engagements and Engagement Rate (Engagements divided by Impressions) for each tweet, for paid and organic posts. Engagements include all activity on the tweet: retweets, follows, replies, favorites, and all clicks on the tweet, link, hashtag, etc.

For a more granular view of the volume of each type of engagement, you can click on the specific tweet:

Understanding which content items get the most engagement on Twitter is huge. If you can even commit 10 minutes a week to recording your top five or ten tweets by engagement so you can start seeing trends over time — and then applying those insights to future tweets — you’ll be able to better connect with your audience.

2. Understand How People Interact With Your Tweets Over Time

This is a really common question among social media marketers and brands: What made my tweet take off?

Some tools can analyze your Twitter followers and recommend the best day of the week for you to tweet. There’s also research out there showing when people are most likely to be active on Twitter. But of course, the best way to get to know your own audience is from your own account data.

On the Tweets dashboard, you can customize the date range you want to analyze to see when you published your highest-performing tweets:

Twitter used to allow you to view a tweet’s engagement over the course of a day, and I personally think it was a mistake to remove that feature. I hope they bring it back in an update soon so users can analyze the best time of day to tweet from their account.

3. Get to Know Your Followers

Twitter’s audience data in the “Followers” tab contains a ton of valuable and useful insights. This is where you can really get to know the people who follow you.

You’ll find answers to questions like: Are your audience members more likely to be male or female? Which countries and cities are the majority from? What are their top interests? You can also see who your followers follow as well as your follower’s top five most unique interests. Answering these questions can help you better identify what content to create and share on Twitter — and when to share it.

You can also compare your Twitter followers to different segments — for example, to all Twitter users total:

4. See Whether Your Follower Base Is Growing (or Shrinking)

I’d call myself a Twitter power user now, but it wasn’t always so. For several years, I slowly grew my following up to about 8,000 followers. In the past few years that I’ve really focused on my Twitter presence, I’ve picked up another 704,000.

Now, Twitter allows you to track your follower growth. Twitter Analytics shows you how many followers you had on any given day with the interactive timeline pictured below. Hovering over various points on the timeline will show you the exact follow count on that day. It dates back to the day your account was started.

If you’re seeing blips in your follower count over time, it’s important to revisit your activity in those periods and see if you can learn from it. How often were you posting then — and what were you posting about? Were you taking the time to reply to folks, too? Answering questions like these can help you explain these blips — and avoid the same mistakes in the future.

5. Determine If Your Twitter Ads Are Worth the Money

I’ve been experimenting recently with paid promotions on Twitter. After reviewing my own data in Twitter Analytics, I realized my ads weren’t as effective as I thought they would be.

In the Tweets tab, right at the top, there’s a chart that gives an overview of your paid and organic tweet performance. Like other Twitter Analytics charts, this one is interactive, so hovering over specific parts will show you more precise numbers, as in the example below. Keep in mind that the data only goes back 91 days, so take advantage of the ability to export it regularly. You can make comparisons over longer periods of time in another program.

I’m not spending a ton on paid promotions — around $100 a day when I use them — but at a glance, I can see that compared to organic posts, they’re not having a huge effect. If I were running specific promotions, I’d be interested in the Conversions information available in Twitter Analytics. But for getting more impressions on my content, it doesn’t seem worth it because I could get that exposure for free by just tweeting a few extra times per day.

Obviously, this will vary for every user, but this panel in Twitter Analytics is a pretty simple way to see what you need to make that decision.

Just below that chart, you can click “Promoted” to see all of your paid promotions in chronological order. This shows you how many engagements and impressions each one earned, helping you pinpoint which paid promotions are working (and which ones aren’t).

Still other third-party analytics tools can help you do a deeper dive into content properties that Twitter Analytics won’t give you as much data on. Want specifics on hashtag performance? Maybe you want more information on the most influential Twitter handles in your industry. These are the metrics you’ll need outside help to find.

Below are some of the most widely used Twitter analytics apps and the types of data they’re best for reporting on. Although most of them have paid plans that afford you multiple features, each of these tools offer free services that can give your Twitter game a boost of intelligence.

TweetReach

User, Keyword, and Hashtag Analytics

TweetReach is a free reporting tool that allows you to see how far your tweets and hashtags have traveled and who’s engaged with them. You can also get “snapshot” reports of any user, hashtag, or tweets with certain keywords in them so you can understand what’s being talked about in your industry in real time.

Klear

Influencer Analytics

Klear focuses specifically on influencer marketing, tracking Twitter’s most influential users and helping you determine who’s making the most noise and greatest impact on certain topics of conversation. Compatible with Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter, the tool makes it easy to find, analyze, and manage your relationships with the people you want your brand to be associated with on social media.

Keyhole

Hashtag Analytics

Keyhole takes Twitter users on a deep dive into the hashtags and topics they might like to create entire social media campaigns around. Start by performing free searches for hashtags, accounts, and topics you want to track. Then, for a paid subscription, use these insights to set up monitoring programs so you can find out who’s saying what about you, your event, or your market.

Twitonomy

User, Keyword, and Hashtag Analytics

Twitonomy offers a full portfolio of data about the content you tweet and the users you follow. Most of this data is completely free, and you have multiple ways to visualize and report on this information. You can track posts from specific users, get smarter insights about your own followers, and more by signing into Twitonomy through Twitter directly.

Tweet Binder

Campaign Analytics

Tweet Binder is a campaign-focused analytics tool that allows you to view activity behind any hashtag, user, or keyword for free. Under its paid plans, the product gives you both Twitter and Instagram “walls” where you can see the impact of your own campaigns, making you a smarter promoter and event marketer over time. Tweet Binder’s free hashtag report, shown above, gives you an idea of just how easy it is to see the data behind various Twitter trends.

RiteTag

Hashtag Analytics

RiteTag doesn’t just give you engagement metrics behind a hashtag — it uses that data to give you real-time suggestions for which hashtag to use in each tweet you create. The platform integrates with a variety of marketing tools and social networks, allows you to create “tag sets” to refer back to, and recommends hashtags based on both text and visual media you want to post.

Mentionmapp

User, Mention, and Hashtag Analytics

Mentionmapp is one of few Twitter analytics tools that presents conversation data in “map” form. Most of the tool is free to use under the “Seeker” platform, showing you not just who’s talking to whom, but who’s expanding on which topics and where a topic began. The map you create stays updated to Twitter trends as they happen.

Hashtagify

Hashtag Analytics

Hashtagify, as you might’ve guessed from its name alone, is a hashtag analytics tool that serves up a dashboard of information related to any hashtag you search. The product works for both Twitter and Instagram, organizing its data into various visual categories so you can properly decide with hashtags and topics you should get in on. As with each tool on this list, the free version of Hashtagify offers the dashboard above and a lightweight version of the full suite of analytics — which is available through paid plans.

Exporting Data: How to Discover Even More Trends in Twitter Analytics

Twitter Analytics is great as an interactive dashboard for accessing increasingly granular data about your Twitter account performance.

The most useful feature I’ve found is the ability to export data from the Twitter API as a CSV file. Even power users with a ton of account activity can fairly quickly export their Analytics data.

To export your data, select the timeframe you’d like to use, and click the “Export Data” button in the top right corner of your Twitter Analytics Dashboard.

You can then sort through your exported data using Excel in ways not possible within the platform itself. For example, I extracted the time of day of my last 2500 tweets and plotted the tweet engagement rate vs. time of day, as shown here:

What I found was that the engagement rate (i.e. the # of engagements/impressions) held steady (on average) regardless of the time of day — possibly because I have a ton of international followers. It got me thinking that I really ought to be scheduling my content for all hours of the day, not just during business hours in my local time zone. Sure, fewer people will see my updates at 2 a.m. local time, but those who do are just as likely to engage with the content as those who see it during business hours.

There are so many other columns of data in the CSV export, including the number of favorites, retweets, link clicks, replies, URL clicks, follows, etc. So you can do this kind of customized analysis on whatever metrics you care most about.

Ultimately, the best data is your own, so make time to check out Twitter Analytics and see what you can learn and do with it. Figure out which tweets resonate and why. Then, work those insights into your social media marketing strategy for a more successful way forward.

For more ideas, download HubSpot’s guide to getting more Twitter followers.

If you spend time optimizing your blog or website’s content, headers, subheaders, and meta descriptions for search engines, the following image should alarm you:

Today, Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs) deliver just as many image results as they do text-based results. The screenshot above is the first SERP Google produces for the search term, “email newsletter design.” Notice how, in addition to the “Images” tab at the top, Google pulls in a substantial pack of clickable images to the beginning of the main results page — before any organic text results are even visible.

Despite your best SEO efforts, you could still be missing out on another source of organic traffic: your website’s images. How do you get in on this traffic source? Image alt text.

More and more, the topics that many businesses and publishers create content on require images to accompany their words. If you’re writing about photography, for instance, photographic examples of your insight are crucial to your visitors’ reading experience. When explaining how to use a certain type of software, screenshots of that software are often the best way to demonstrate it.

If you’re creating content on a topic that requires the support of visuals, consider how your audience might prefer to find answers to their questions on that topic. In many cases, Google searchers don’t want the classic blue, hyperlinked search result — they want the image itself, embedded inside your webpage.

One of the most important things image alt text can do for you is turn your images into hyperlinked search results — giving your website yet another way to receive organic visitors.

Whether or not you perform SEO for your business, optimizing your website’s image alt text is your ticket to creating a better user experience for your visitors, no matter how they first found you.

How to Add Alt Text to Your Images

In most content management systems (CMSs), clicking on an image in the body of a blog post produces an image optimization window, where you can create and change the image’s alt text.

HubSpot users: Here’s what this image optimization window looks like in the CMS inside your HubSpot portal:

Your alt text is then automatically written into the webpage’s HTML source code, where you can edit the image’s alt text further if your CMS doesn’t have an easily editable alt text window. Here’s what that alt tag might look like in an article’s source code:

The most important rule of alt text? Be descriptive and specific. Keep in mind, however, that this alt text rule can lose its value if your alt text doesn’t also consider the image’s context. Alt text can miss the mark in three different ways. Consider the examples below.

3 Image Alt Text Examples (the Good and the Bad)

1. Keyword vs. Detail

Bad Alt Text

alt="HubSpot office wall Singapore inbound marketing workplace murals orange walls ship it"

What’s wrong with the line of alt text above? Too many references to HubSpot. Using alt text to stuff keywords into fragmented sentences adds too much fluff to the image and not enough context. Those keywords might be important to the publisher, but not to Google.

In fact, the alt text above makes it hard for Google to understand how the image relates to the rest of the webpage or article it’s published on, preventing the image from ranking for the related longtail keywords that have higher levels of interest behind them.

Good Alt Text

With the bad alt text (above) in mind, better alt text for this image might be:

alt="Orange mural that says 'ship it' on a wall at HubSpot's Singapore office"

2. Detail vs. Specificity

Image by Winslow Townson

Bad Alt Text

alt="Baseball player hitting a ball at a baseball field"

The line of alt text above technically follows the first rule of alt text — be descriptive — but it’s not being descriptive in the right way. Yes, the image above shows a baseball field and a player hitting a baseball. But this is also a picture of Fenway Park — and the Red Sox’s #34 David Ortiz clocking one over right field. These are important specifics Google would need to properly index the image if it’s on, say, a blog post about Boston sports.

Good Alt Text

With the bad alt text (above) in mind, better alt text for this image might be:

alt="David Ortiz of the Boston Red Sox batting from home plate at Fenway Park"

3. Specificity vs. Context

Image via UCLA

Both images above have clear context that can help us write good alt text — one is from a HubSpot office, and the other is Fenway Park. But what if your image doesn’t have official context (like a place name) by which to describe it?

This is where you’ll need to use the topic of the article or webpage to which you’re publishing the image. Here are some bad and good examples of alt text based on the reason you’re publishing it:

For an Article About Attending Business School

Bad Alt Text

alt="Woman pointing to a person's computer screen"

The line of alt text above would normally pass as decent alt text, but given that our goal is to publish this image with an article about going to business school, we’re missing out on some key word choices that could help Google associate the image with certain sections of the article.

Good Alt Text

With the bad alt text (above) in mind, better alt text for this image might be:

alt="Business school professor pointing to a female student's computer screen"

For a Webpage on Education Software for Business School Teachers

Bad Alt Text

alt="Teacher pointing to a female student's computer screen"

The line of alt text above is almost as descriptive and specific as the good alt text from the previous example, so why doesn’t it suffice for a webpage about education software? This example dives even deeper into the topic of business school, and specifies that the ideal audience for this webpage is teachers. Therefore, the image’s alt text needs to reflect that.

Good Alt Text

With the bad alt text (above) in mind, better alt text for this image might be:

alt="Professor using education software to instruct a female business school student"

Alt Text Best Practices

Ultimately, image alt text needs to be specific but also representative of the topic of the webpage it’s supporting. Get the idea so far? Here are a few important keys to writing effective image alt text with SEO in mind:

• Describe the image, and be specific. Use both the image’s subject and context to guide you.
• Keep your alt text fewer than 125 characters. Screen-reading tools typically stop reading alt text at this point, cutting off long-winded alt text at awkward moments when verbalizing this description for the visually impaired.
• Don’t start alt text with “picture of…” or “Image of…” Jump right into the image’s description. Screen-reading tools (and Google, for that matter) will identify it as an image from the article’s HTML source code.
• Use your keywords, but sparingly. Only include your article’s target keyword if it’s easily included in your alt text. If not, consider semantic keywords, or just the most important terms within a longtail keyword. For example, if your article’s head keyword is “how to generate leads,” you might use “lead generation” in your alt text, since “how to” might be difficult to include in image alt text naturally.
• Don’t cram your keyword into every single image’s alt text. If your blog post contains a series of body images, include your keyword in at least one of those images. Identify the image you think is most representative of your topic, and assign it your keyword. Stick to more aesthetic descriptions in the surrounding media.

So, where do you start when developing alt text for your blog posts and webpages? Consider performing a basic audit of your existing content to see where you can incorporate alt text into previously untagged pictures. Watch to see how your organic traffic changes among the pages that you give new alt tags.

The more images you optimize, the better your SEO strategy will be moving forward.

You’ve heard it before — forms are the gold standard when it comes to capturing leads, learning about industry trends, doing market research, and even just getting some customer feedback. It might be one of the older methods in the book, but old is gold.

Before we dive into the best form builder tools for 2018, though, let’s talk about what a form builder exactly is.

With no shortage of options, the best form builder apps tend to be quite similar and user-friendly. Whether you want to make a contact form, a sign-up form, or a survey, form tools are the easiest way to create web forms, with drag and drop questions, multiple form fields, and different color and structure options.

Once your responses start coming in, most forms will also import each entry into a spreadsheet or centralized database and send you notifications when people complete them.

Form tools today usually offer many different features too, like progressive profiling, smart fields, and interactivity.

Easily build and embed forms on your site. Try HubSpot Forms for free!

Ultimately, there’s a form for each of your business’ needs and goals — and we’re here to help you pick the best-fit tool specifically for you.

20 of the Best Form Builder Tools for 2018

1. HubSpot’s Free Online Form Builder

HubSpot’s online form builder is one of the most powerful form builder tools available. The tool combines the foundations of form creation with cutting-edge technology to give you much more capability than a normal online form builder can — and it’s also free.

Even though it’s one the more advanced form builder tools, you don’t need any technical expertise when you use HubSpot’s form builder. You can quickly create forms with the drag-and-drop form builder and convert anonymous website visitors into leads with unlimited forms, fields, submissions, and custom forms that all connect to your contact database.

Once someone fills your form out, they’re automatically routed to HubSpot CRM. Once they’re in your CRM system, you can set reminder tasks, call them, and send them one-to-one personalized emails, letting you better manage and nurture relationships with your contacts.

HubSpot’s form builder also has data enrichment for contact profiles and deep integration with HubSpot’s marketing hub, making it a good option for teams who want a single system to manage their forms, contacts, and marketing efforts.

2. Google Forms

Google Forms’ unique selling point is that it’s fast, free, and easy to use, with unlimited forms and entries. It’s also built into the Google Docs suite, so it automatically pulls your data into a Google Sheet for you to analyze.

While Google Forms’ design may not be customizable, this form tool is best for quick market surveys, rather than a professional survey or lead capture form placed on your website.

Image Source: Google

3. Typeform

Typeform takes an innovative approach to the world of form building. With an intuitive design, the tool guides you through the form creation process one question at a time and makes the experience of building a survey fun and interactive.

Typeform is also great for customer surveys and user research — you can create and send standalone survey links out to your list. If you want to try something with an engaging, straightforward user experience, the tool is a solid option.

Image Source: Typeform

4. Microsoft Forms

Microsoft Forms is a simple, easy-to-use form creator that integrates with the Microsoft Office suite. With full customization options, users can quickly make surveys, feedback forms, quizzes, and lead forms.

Since Microsoft forms doesn’t integrate directly with an online CMS, the tool might not be the best option for lead generation. But the form builder can collect data in real-time and import all your responses in an Excel spreadsheet, so you can perform powerful yet simple analysis with Excel filters and pivot tables.

Image Source: YouTube

5. Form Crafts

Form Crafts is a basic form builder tool that has a user-friendly interface and simple design.

The WordPress plugin allows you to create moderately customizable lead capture forms, email sign-up forms, surveys, and feedback collection forms. One of Form Crafts’ best features is that it’ll send you email notifications about your lead generation process, so you don’t need to constantly monitor your results anymore.

Image Source: WordPress

6. FormTools

FormTools is a flexible form creator that focuses on feedback, data, insights, and beautiful form building.

The form builder tool allows you to create most types of forms and tracks your results on a visually appealing dashboard. FormTools also give you an option to integrate their app with a third party provider of your choosing, like Salesforce or Dropbox.

Image Source: Form Tools

7. Wufoo

Part of the SurveyMonkey family, Wufoo is one of the oldest form tools in the space. You can design some appealing online forms with it and it’s super easy to use.

The app also allows you to embed forms on your website, set up payment fields that are compatible with a number of payment processing services, and turn on automatic email notifications to alert you when someone fills out your form.

Image Source: WuFoo

8. Ninja Forms

Ninja Forms is a powerful WordPress form tool that’s used by wide range of marketers, from novices to gurus.

The tool is free, integrates quickly and easily with a number of different tools, and it can greatly boost your marketing efforts. Ninja Forms also offers unlimited forms, fields and submissions. But, sometimes, the tool lacks clear documentation and can be difficult to use when you want to customize your forms.

Image Source: CodeCanyon

9. Cognito Forms

If you’re looking for a form builder with sound logic branches and robust payment fields, Cognito Forms is for you. The form tool also offers calculated fields, conditional logic, repeating fields, and more, making it easy and simple to create advanced forms.

Cognito Forms integrates with Stripe, PayPal, and Square and offers a free version that includes unlimited forms with 500 entries per month.

Image Source: Microsoft Store

10. FormStack

FormStack is mostly focused on building business and professional style forms. The tool’s best features include intelligent forms, built-in workflows, and seamless integrations with Google Sheets, PayPal, and MailChimp (and others through their API).

One of FormStack’s more sophisticated features is an A/B testing tool that can compare different versions of your forms and tell you what performs better.

The tool also offer electronic signatures and payments, and users can save their form drafts and return later to finish them.

Image Source: GetApp

11. FormSite

FormSite has all the essential features you need for cranking out some quick “prototypical” web forms. As one of the more basic form builders, it’s often used for simple contact or feedback forms.

The tool also has a number of pricing plans that can suit your specific business needs. The free version offers 5 forms each month with 10 results per form.

Image Credit: FormSite

12. Clearbit Forms

Clearbit Forms lets you leverage smart forms and flexible data enrichment technology to automatically collect specific user information. This lets you create shorter forms with less fields, and, in turn, produce happier customers (because who doesn’t love a short survey?)

With two plans designed for startups and enterprises, Clearbit can definitely meet your modern marketing needs.

Image Source: Clearbit

13. FormKeep

FormKeep is a tool unlike most on this list — it’s an easy-to-use tool that finds a happy medium between coded and drag and drop forms.

With FormKeep, you have the option to code your own form, style it according to your brand guidelines, and integrate it with Zapier to manage your submission data.

Image Source: Intercom

14. Gravity Forms

Another WordPress-powered plugin, Gravity Forms helps you create amazing forms with the help of multi-page/multi-step forms and a number of time-saving features.

With this tool, you have access to a variety of integration options and add-ons for email software, messenger platforms, payment options, and automation software. You can also create advanced forms, but, for non-techies, they can be a little complicated to set up.

Image Source: WPML

15. Jotform

Jotform is an online form builder with an intuitive visual editor, known for making form building faster than ever.

The tool has all the normal form building capabilities as well as unique fields to customize your own forms. It also integrates with almost every marketing platform.The free plan caps out at 5 forms, with up to a 100 entries per month.

Image Source: Weebly App Center

16. SurveyAnyPlace

SurveyAnyPlace has proven that surveys don’t have to be boring. With their gamification elements, interactive features, and incentives like coupon codes, you can make all your surveys and quizzes fun and enjoyable.

By leveraging SurveyAnyPlace’s unique approach to form building, you can easily collect leads, information, and insights from visitors.

Image Source: GetApp

17. Contact Form 7

One of the most popular WordPress plugins, Contact Form 7, has upwards of 5 million active installations on the CMS.

A free tool for everyone to use, it’s a super simple and basic form creator with a heavy focus on contact forms. But it’s also important to note that the tool has some limitations, especially with its customization options.

Image Source: WordPress

18. Conversational Form

An open source platform, Conversational Form lets you transform your web form into a simple chatbot.

By using a novel and clever way to gather data, this form builder is bound to drive user engagement. At the same time, though, due to its new entrance into the marketing space, it might be difficult to learn your way around the tool.

Image Source: Pagely

19. FormBakery

As one of the easiest drag and drop form tools out there, FormBakery lets you build professional forms in the most straightforward way possible.

For those looking to build a super simple form in under 5 minutes, the tool is a great choice. You can quickly customize forms with your own designs, with no coding necessary. If you’re looking to build a more advanced form, though, FormBakery may not be the right choice for you.

Image Source: AppStorm

20. DeviceMagic

DeviceMagic is a mobile form solution on a mission to ditch all paperwork, automate lead generation processes, and enhance data collection.

Since the tool solely focuses on building mobile forms, it has a number of great benefits over other form builders, like quick and accurate data collection, lower operations costs, and less time wasted on administrative work.

Image Source: Device Magic

The options are endless for form builder tools.

Most form builders offer all the essentials needed to make a basic form, but your options start to narrow down when you want better customization and deeper data analysis. Ultimately, for you, the best form tool depends on your team’s purpose and particular business needs.

In the past few years, the U.S. has made some small but mighty strides towards inclusivity, and language plays a big part in that.

We’ve become rightfully cautious when we label other people, and are learning the importance of asking permission before identifying someone as a certain gender.

In my English class in college, for instance, my teacher was progressive enough to say, “Please let me know which pronoun you’d prefer I use for you.” While this might seem arbitrary or unnecessary, it’s not — everyone has the right to self-identify with whatever pronoun they feel comfortable (or, to avoid identifying altogether).

To avoid accidentally offending someone at the office before you know their preferred pronouns, it’s important to use gender-neutral pronouns in your workplace conversations.

Since gender-neutral pronouns have only recently become more commonplace, it’s likely you aren’t sure how to use them, or even what they are. Here, we’ve provided you with a list of gender-neutral pronouns and examples of how to use them, so you can begin creating a more inclusive workplace.

Gender-neutral Pronouns, and How to Use Them

There are a few benefits to using gender-neutral pronouns. First, in the English language, “He” has often been used as an automatic fill-in for generic individuals. By using gender-neutral language, you’re ensuring your sentences are inclusive for everyone.

Second, “he and she” are two extreme binaries that don’t leave room for other gender identities. This can be hurtful for individuals, such as transgender or gender queer communities, who don’t identify with “he” or “she”.

Ultimately, you don’t want to make incorrect or hurtful assumptions about someone’s gender. Just because someone appears feminine or masculine doesn’t mean they are a man or woman — they could be agender, nonbinary, or uncomfortable identifying with “he” or “she”.

Here is a list of gender-neutral pronouns:

• He/She — Zie, Sie, Ey, Ve, Tey, E
• Him/Her — Zim, Sie, Em, Ver, Ter, Em
• His/Her — Zir, Hir, Eir, Vis, Tem, Eir
• His/Hers — Zis, Hirs, Eirs, Vers, Ters, Eirs
• Himself/Herself — Zieself, Hirself, Eirself, Verself, Terself, Emself

Typically, you won’t use one of these gender-neutral pronouns unless a colleague asks you to identify them as such.

However, there are more traditional gender neutral pronouns you can introduce into your everyday conversation, regardless of the individual. These include “Them”, “They”, “Their”, “Everyone”, and “That Person”.

When in doubt, refer to someone by their name, rather than “him” or “her”.

“They” is one of the more common gender-neutral pronouns, and it’s easy to incorporate into your daily conversations. Here are some examples of how to use it:

• “I spoke to the marketing director and they said they’d get back to me.”
• “I think someone left their laptop behind.”
• “Who’s in charge of that campaign? I’ll email them.”

You probably use “they” “them” and “their” often in your everyday language, even when you know someone identifies as “he” or “she”. It’s a natural substitute, but can go a long way towards creating a more inclusive office culture.

Finally, when addressing people in a meeting, it’s best to say, “Hello, everyone,” or “Hey, team.” You’ll want to avoid “Hey, guys”, or similar phrases, since “guys” is typically masculine.

How to Learn Someone’s Pronouns

When you first meet someone, you don’t want to ask about their pronouns. This could make them feel like you’re asking them to out themselves as transgender, agender, or nonbinary, which they might not want to do, particularly if you work in a conservative office.

Instead, introduce yourself with your pronouns: “Hi, I’m Caroline, and my pronouns are she/her.” By sharing your own pronouns, you’re allowing the other person to share theirs, but not forcing them to.

Additionally, avoid saying “preferred” pronouns. Despite the popularity of the term, it’s incorrect, since “preferred” implies someone’s gender is a preference.

Ultimately, using gender-neutral pronouns doesn’t require too much effort on your part, but it could make a huge difference in creating a warmer, more inclusive workplace environment for everyone. 

Ask any professional athlete or business executive how they became successful, and they’ll tell you they mastered a process. By figuring out which of their habits led to success, which didn’t, and learning from past successes and failures, they could improve their efficiency, effectiveness, and productivity at work.

But implementing a process into a business, department, or even a team is a completely different animal than honing your own personal process. With so many moving parts, how do you track each aspect of your process, and, more challenging yet important than that, how do you refine it?

For almost 50 years, data flow diagrams have been one of the most simple and effective tools for organizations to understand, perfect, and implement new processes or systems. They’re visual representations of your process or system, so they make it easy to understand and prune.

Before we dive into how data flow diagrams can help you refine any of your business’ systems or processes, though, let’s go over what it exactly is.

DFDs became popular in the 1970s and have been able to maintain their widespread use by being easy to understand. Visually displaying how a process or system works can hold people’s attention and explain complex concepts better than blocks of text can, so DFDs are able to help almost anyone grasp a system or process’ logic and functions.

There are two types of DFDs — logical and physical. Logical diagrams display the theoretical process of moving information through a system, like where the data comes from, where it goes, how it changes, and where it ends up.

Physical diagrams shows you the practical process of moving information through a system, like how your system’s specific software, hardware, files, employees, and customers influences its flow of information.

You can either use logical or physical diagrams to describe the same flow of information or you can use them in conjunction to understand a process or system on a more granular level. But before you can use a DFD to understand your system or process’ flow of information, you need to know the standard notations or symbols used to describe it.

Data Flow Diagram Symbols

Data Flow Diagram symbols are standardized notations, like rectangles, circles, arrows, and short-text labels, that describe a system or process’ data flow direction, data inputs, data outputs, data storage points, and its various sub-processes.

Yourdon & Coad and Gene & Sarson are the two main methods of notation used in DFDs, and they both use shapes and labels to represent the four main elements of a DFD — external entity, process, data store, and data flow.

Picture Credit: Lucidchart

1. External Entity

An external entity, which are also known as terminators, sources, sinks, or actors, are an outside system or process that sends or receives data to and from the diagrammed system. They’re either the sources or destinations of information, so they’re usually placed on the diagram’s edges.

2. Process

Process is a procedure that manipulates the data and its flow by taking incoming data, changing it, and producing an output with it. A process can do this by performing computations and using logic to sort the data or change its flow of direction. Processes usually start from the top left of the DFD and finish on the bottom right of the diagram.

3. Data Store

Data stores hold information for later use, like a file of documents that’s waiting to be processed. Data inputs flow through a process and then through a data store while data outputs flow out of a data store and then through a process.

4. Data flow

Data flow is the path the system’s information takes from external entities through processes and data stores. With arrows and succinct labels, the DFD can show you the direction of the data flow.

But before you start mapping out data flow diagrams, you need to follow four rules of thumb to create a valid DFD.

1. Each process should have at least one input and one output.

2. Each data store should have at least one data flow in and data flow out.

3. A system’s stored data must go through a process.

4. All processes in a DFD must link to another process or data store.

Level 1 DFDs are still broad overviews of a system or process, but they’re also more detailed — they break down the system’s single process node into subprocesses. Level 2 DFDs dive even deeper into detail by breaking down each process into granular subprocesses. Any DFD that goes past level 2 is rare — there would be too much detail, which defeats its original purpose of being easy to understand.

DFD Example

Professionals in various industries, like software engineering, IT, business, and product management & design, can use DFDs to better understand, refine, or implement a new system or process.

 And to help you develop a concrete understanding of what a DFD looks like and how it can simplify your organization’s complex systems and processes, here’s an example of a context level data flow diagram of a DVD borrowing system, like Redbox.

In this DFD, the customer is the source of information, the DVD borrowing system is the process, data flow, and data store, and the shopkeeper is the destination of information.

Picture Credit: Lucidchart

Perfecting Your Process

Every great athlete, executive, business, or service are not only focused on following a stellar process, but they’re also obsessed with perfecting it. That said, creating and honing an effective process is one of the most challenging tasks in the working world. But if you can evaluate your organization’s process with data flow diagrams, your company will have a firm grasp on how to master it.

Welcome to The Science Behind Success — a new blog series that explores the best ways to help our brains perform better at work. With psychological research and interviews with leaders in the field, we’re showing you how psychology can help you overcome workplace obstacles and excel in your career. Because a little mindset change could go a long way.

If you’re anything like me, you don’t feel like the day is over until your to-do list is complete.

You wake up in the morning with a long list of everything you need to get done, and you move on autopilot throughout the day, checking off tasks as you go.

When you feel you’ve hit a good spot to pause (after a few hours laboring away), you eat a quick meal and maybe grab a second cup of coffee. Then it’s back to work.

You finish most days around 5 or 6 PM, wishing you had more hours to tackle your projects. You hit the gym for an hour, and then head home for a quick dinner and maybe some TV.

Oftentimes, the only real break you give yourself is when your head hits the pillow.

Sound familiar?

Here’s the problem — in our quest for optimal productivity, we often ignore our body’s needs. But, unbeknownst to most, that actually makes us far less productive.

Josh Davis, Ph.D., the Director of Research and Lead Professor at the NeuroLeadership Institute, addresses this very paradox in his international best-seller, Two Awesome Hours: Science-Based Strategies to Harness Your Best Time and Get Your Most Important Work Done.

In his book, Davis writes, “Staying on task without a break and working longer hours are wonderful solutions for a computer or machine. But … We are biological creatures. Continually demanding one kind of work — and a consistent level of effectiveness — from our brains is like continually demanding the same speed from a runner under any circumstances.”

Davis argues we don’t take our biological factors into consideration enough when making decisions regarding our efficiency and productivity at work.

He’s not wrong — when was the last time you stopped and said, “Hang on a minute, I bet I’d be better in this meeting if I got my blood sugar levels up with a snack?” Or, when was the last time you considered jogging in place at your office desk, just to relieve some stress? Probably never.

Davis’s research is based on the theory of embodied cognition, a psychological phenomenon that suggests our biological needs should be considered more prevalently when we structure our days.

Essentially, Davis surmises that if we can change how we treat our bodies at work, we can change how our brain functions as well.

I spoke with Davis to gain unique insights into his research regarding how our bodies affect our productivity.

He told me, “The more we can all become educated about what really leads to being most effective, the more we can create work cultures that support the right behaviors. Rather than reinforcing cultures that reward trying to be busy all the time, we can support one another in becoming our best, most effective selves.”

Here, we’re going to dive into Davis’ tips for learning how to use our biology to achieve better results in the workplace. But first, in order to fully grasp the concept of Davis’ research, it’s critical you understand what embodied cognition is, and how it affects the decisions we make every day.

Embodied Cognition — What Is It, and How Can It Help You?

Embodied cognition is essentially the idea that our bodies can influence our minds just as much as our minds can influence our bodies.

Rather than assuming your brain is the center of all knowledge and command, embodied cognition proposes that any solution we come up with when we’re decision-making includes elements from our physiological and neurological systems, as well. In other words, our brain isn’t solely responsible for our thoughts and behavior — our body’s play a part, too.

There have been numerous studies to support the notion that our body influences our thoughts. For instance, the way you sit can increase your testosterone levels, a concept known as “power posing“. You might think your confidence and assertive behavior comes solely from your brain, when really, your body language and hormones have a lot more to do with it.

In another example, John Bargh, a social psychologist at Yale, conducted an experiment and found participants who interviewed job candidates took their roles more seriously if they held a very heavy clipboard, versus a light one.

Ultimately, understanding your environment’s impact on your body is critical for knowing when and how you’ll perform best at work. Productivity isn’t only a matter of willpower, or telling yourself, “Come on, I’ve got to focus now.” It’s more than that — it’s linked to your body, and how your environment affects it.

Davis’s Tips for Tricking Your Brain Into Working Better in Less Time

The premise of Davis’ book centers around the notion that staying on task and working long hours without breaks is a fundamental misunderstanding of how our brains work.

We don’t need more hours in the day, or to work faster. We simply need to create optimal conditions for our bodies, and brains, to function at peak efficiency for shorter periods of time.

When I spoke with Davis, he mentioned a familiar scenario — “There is a culture in many places where people try to impress one another with how exhausted they are from work. Endless hours, no down time. They pride themselves on being responsive to every email within minutes at any time of day. It helps them look and feel busy, and the culture of many workplaces rewards them. Coworkers are impressed by it and often feel embarrassed that they have not done the same.”

But, he goes on to note, “I can usually correctly expect that those same people who are constantly working and are primarily being reactive are feeling like they are treading water and hardly get a chance to come up for air.”

Ultimately, the solution for feeling overworked is simple. If you learn how to listen to your body, and use your natural biological needs to your advantage, you can structure your day to ensure you’re working when your body’s at its peak efficiency level, and taking breaks when it’s not.

Let’s dive into some examples of these strategies to see how you can put them to use immediately.

1. Exercise for immediate, daily benefits.

We often think about exercise in the long-term: “I want to live longer, I want to lose weight, I want to lower my cholesterol”.

This type of thinking makes us feel like exercise must happen, but it can happen after work. We compartmentalize our lives — we tell ourselves we can exercise at 6 PM, after our workday.

While there’s nothing inherently wrong with this way of thinking, Davis explains it can cause us to miss a more immediate benefit of exercise.

“The cognitive and emotional benefits include reducing anxiety and making it easier to focus or be present. Various studies put it around 20 minutes, and some as little as about 10,” Davis told me, adding, “It was surprising that moderate, rather than intense, exercise was actually better for the cognitive and emotional benefits.”

There are plenty of short-term benefits of exercise for daily productivity. A brief, 20 minute workout, like walking up and down the stairs at your office, can decrease your stress hormones, and allow you to think more clearly.

Next time you have an important meeting or upcoming deadline you’re stressed about, give yourself some time for moderate exercise. Take a walk, jog in place, or walk up and down the stairs to reap the benefits. While it might make you feel like you’re procrastinating or wasting time, remind yourself you’re not — you’re actually setting yourself up to perform better.

2. Eat and drink for increased productivity.

While you might not think about it a lot, food is critical for stable blood sugar, which is necessary for productivity and focus.

If you don’t believe me, consider this: in one 2012 study, employees with unhealthy diets were 66 percent more likely to report losing focus.

If you think of food as the fuel for your career success, it might increase your motivation to eat small, healthy snacks throughout the day. Rather than waiting until you’re starving at lunch and then quickly eating a Chipotle burrito, Davis recommends potentially splitting up a healthy lunch into two parts, and eating them at different times. By splitting up your food breaks, you’re more likely to reap the benefits all day long, rather than only right after lunch.

If you don’t want to split up your lunch, Davis also recommends eating snacks to maintain energy, like a handful of nuts. When you’re losing focus at work, it’s critical you consider eating food that can help you get back on-track. Rather than considering food a nuisance to your productivity, you should begin viewing it as a necessary component to your efficiency.

Davis also urges people to stay away from too much caffeine. Your third cup of coffee might make you feel like you’re a superhero, but in reality, the increased caffeine could distract you and make you less focused.

3. Use mindfulness to assess your body’s cognitive energy.

In his book, Davis describes a situation where a man is sitting at his desk with ten minutes until an important meeting, and he knows he should be preparing for the meeting, but then he sees an email in his inbox.

The temptation to feel accomplishment is too much — he ends up wasting time trying to respond to the email, and before he knows it, he only has one minute until the meeting, he hasn’t finished the email, and now he’s rushing off, frustrated and unprepared.

We’ve all felt this similar desire to check things off our list for the sake of checking them off. That sense of accomplishment can make you feel productive, but in reality, it’s not important enough to necessitate time during your peak productivity window.

Davis’ advice for combatting this is relatively simple, but it requires practicing mindfulness when making decisions, and assessing how your body actually feels. He says we often behave on autopilot — we respond to that email because that’s what we do whenever we see an email in our inbox.

As Davis described to me, “What is absolutely key [ … ] is pausing. For example, I know I can easily tell myself after working for two hours, ‘I still feel energetic. I’ll just keep going.’ But most of the time, when I pause and walk away for a minute or two, I realize how much harder it is to think than when I’m fresh.”

If the man sitting at his desk who received an email took a moment to intentionally connect with his priorities, he’d recognize that the email could wait until after the meeting. That action — pausing — could be the difference between wasted time and ultimate productivity.

4. Let your mind wander.

In his book, Davis writes, “Our attention systems are designed to regularly refresh — to be ready to discover what is new in the environment and help us navigate a constantly changing world.”

You can’t fault yourself for losing focus when you hear colleagues chatting behind you, or when a car drives by the window. Those are primitive and healthy responses. Biology has given us the advantage of awareness to the outside world.

It’s important to recognize how biology might work against our preconceived notion of what it means to be productive. We might feel frustrated when we are distracted by our environment, believing it to reflect a lack of focus or willpower — but it’s our body’s natural response, and doesn’t need to be fought.

When you’re distracted, Davis says it’s important you let your mind wander. Then, when you return to your work, you will be cognitively refreshed from the momentary distraction.

5. Create an ideal physical environment.

In his book, Davis talks about how the mood we set can genuinely affect our performance. There’s a lot of research to support your environment’s impact on your productivity.

You’ll want to create a restorative rather than distracting workplace environment. Choose bright and cool lighting (rather than warm and dim), keep your desk clean, and whenever possible, find a quiet place to focus.

Ultimately, the benefits of tricking your brain into working harder aren’t just obvious in the workplace. Increased productivity can lend itself to a happier lifestyle overall, as you make space for hobbies, passions, and people.

Davis writes, “We must choose to either enjoy life or succeed. The good news is this is a false choice. We feel pressured to choose when we mistakenly assume that productivity depends on finding enough hours in the day.”

Hopefully, his research gives you hope that productivity and career growth don’t have to come at a cost to your passions, family, or genuine enjoyment. If we learn to work with our biology, rather than in spite of it, we can become more efficient at all facets of our life, in far more balanced ways.

Raise your hand if you’ve heard of the Internet of Things (IoT).

I’m guessing most of you have your hand up.

Now, keep your hand raised if you understand how the Internet of Things (IoT) actually works.