“Creativity is an advertising agency’s most valuable asset, because it is the rarest.” – Jef I. Richards

Whether you are in advertising, content marketing, or any other marketing service, one of the greatest values you can bring your clients is creativity.

Compared with 2016, 70% of B2B organizations say they will produce more content in 2017. That means more and more businesses will be looking to agencies and freelancers to create an increasingly diverse spectrum of quality content.

When clients enlist your agency to develop fresh content, it usually means their own team is running out of new ways to engage their audience. At the outset of your agency’s relationship with a client, the new content ideas will likely flow easily.

But as clients continually demand new ideas to meet their content goals, your team might need to introduce some fresh minds to the account. If you see your internal team as the only source creative ideas, you could be setting your agency up for creative burnout and stagnant growth.

If you work with freelance writers, you already have a team itching to provide you with creative assistance. The use of freelancers offers you a community of writers and with key experience in your clients’ industries, providing your team with a steady supply of creativity.

Far too often, freelancers are primarily used when your agency’s “to-do” list is overflowing. They are seen as a tactical resource, when they should instead be viewed as a creative and strategic resource.

So why don’t agencies see freelancers as capable of contributing to the creative talent pool? The big problem is that agencies are generally not great at enabling freelancers to do their best work.

Here we’ll explore some tips to get freelancers more effectively involved in the creative process at your agency — and why their participation is necessary for business growth, client satisfaction, and preventing burnout in your creative department.

How to Outsource Creativity at Your Agency

Give Freelancers the Tools They Need

The most obvious objection to using freelancers to come up with creative ideas for your clients is that they just don’t know your clients well enough. To effectively create a content calendar for your clients, your team likely spends a lot of time carefully researching past content, discussing goals over the phone and in-person, and eventually agreeing on a tone and strategy that suit the client’s unique needs and goals.

The question is, after your team has gone through all of this work, why aren’t you sharing it with your freelancers?

Your freelancers need the necessary tools to make informed decisions about the content they’re creating. Like your own team, freelancers are concerned with developing a better understanding of their audience, and learning what types of content this audience likes to consume. Make sure you answer these questions in advance by providing your freelance writers with:

• Your client’s buyer personas: This will help your freelancers better understand your client’s audience. If your client doesn’t have buyer personas, consider helping them set some up.
• The stage of the buyer’s journey they’ll be creating content for: Content needs to be optimized for the stage of the buyer’s journey your client wants to target.
• Relevant keyword research: Use a keyword research tool to inform the specific keywords ideas should be optimized for.
• Content analytics on how past content has performed: A record of your past successes and failures will inform your freelancers what ideas perform best.

Make your Content Calendar Accessible

By opening up the floodgates to allow freelancers to send you content ideas, you’re going to end up with plenty of high quality content pitches that fit your client’s audience. But how can you be sure they’ll fit the content strategy you’ve laid out?

Whether you employ freelancers or not, using a content calendar to manage your client’s content creation is the best way to organize the delivery and publishing schedules of everything you’re producing. While you don’t need to fill this content calendar out 100% for the next year, it absolutely pays to plan ahead. Click here to download a free editorial calendar template for Google Calendar.

By sketching out at least a rough outline of your content strategy for the next 6-12 months, you’ll be much better equipped to request and accept content pitches from your freelance community. Organize your calendar around larger content pieces such as whitepapers and webinars in addition to any events your client will participate in or products they’ll be launching.

When you inform your freelancers of your long-term goals, they can pitch you content ideas that fit your current goals. Plus, if they send an idea that won’t fit for another 2 months, you’re able to save it instead of rejecting it outright.

Provide Clear Feedback

As a chance to earn more work, your freelancers will jump at the chance to pitch you their own content ideas. However, if the response is poor or if there is little feedback, they could easily get discouraged.

Just as it took time for your agency to figure out the right content to send your clients, it will take your freelancers time to get the hang of pitching you valuable content ideas. This process can be sped up considerably if you are open and clear about what pitches are worthwhile and why.

While there are always more freelance writers who are willing to pitch your business, the real value is in building a content community of writers whose ideas will continue to get better as the relationship matures. View this small group of freelancers as internal employees, nurture their creativity, and you will end up with a much larger pool of creative ideas to provide your clients with.

Don’t Underestimate the Value of Good Freelance Talent

Companies that foster creativity are three times more likely to see 10% growth in revenue year to year compared to companies that do not.

If your agency is valued for its creativity, it’s your job to put processes in place to ensure creativity can be sustained. Don’t disregard your greatest source of potential content ideas: freelancers. Instead, give your freelance writers the tools, information and feedback they need to provide a much larger contribution to your business. Your clients, your freelancers, and your agency will thank you for it.

Halloween is a fun holiday, and it doesn’t get the attention it deserves. Halloween doesn’t have recognizable songs or vacation days associated with it, and it falls on a busy time of year for most people in the workforce. (For example, here at HubSpot, we’re currently gearing up for INBOUND 2016.)

But that doesn’t mean you should skip the festivities at your office Halloween celebration. How many days of the year are you encouraged to dress up and goof around at work? Probably zero.

We want you to have fun this Halloween, so we’re taking the work out if it for you. We’ve compiled a list of DIY Halloween costume ideas that are easy to put together, inexpensive, and work appropriate. As a bonus, many are marketing and technology-themed, so even if your family and friends don’t get your costume, your colleagues definitely will.

26 Last-Minute Office Halloween Costumes for Marketers & Tech Geeks

Evergreen Office Costumes

1) Alt Text

This was our Director of Content Corey Wainwright‘s office Halloween costume a couple of years ago. It’s great because you don’t even look dressed up if you have a casual office dress code, so you can just blend in.

All you need is to dress in 90s alternative garb — she went with black jeans, combat boots, and a flannel — and tape a piece of paper to yourself that says something like img2017.jpg. Or if you want to follow best practice for good alt text, you can put something more descriptive, like “alt_text.” Your choice, you SEO rebel you.

2) SEO Ninja

Speaking of dorking out on SEO, you could be everyone’s favorite LinkedIn title — the SEO ninja. Dress in all black, put on a black ski mask (kinda creepy if you already have one, but we don’t judge here), and tape keywords all over yourself.  

3) Mobile App

Wander around holding an appetizer — candy, cheese and crackers, chips and dip … whatever you have on hand. Boom. You’re a mobile “app.”

This costume also doubles as a great way to introduce yourself and make friends at a party.

Source: Opportunity Max

4) Instagram

Another way to turn handing out food into a costume: Dress up like a hipster and hand out graham crackers.

5) Ghostwriter

Grab a white sheet and cut a hole for your head and arms. Dob some black ink spots on the sheet, get a book and one of those feather quills (or just get a feather, I suppose), and you’re a ghostwriter.

6) White Space

Dress in all white — add white face paint and a white wig if you’re ultra-committed. Then add a hint of color somewhere on the outfit, like a colored tie or scarf, or even a paint splotch. That color splotch will make the white space more prominent, transforming you into “white space.”

7) Error 404 Page

You’ve most likely encountered a funny error 404 page before, and you can make it a funny costume, too. Grab a sheet of paper, write “Error 404: Costume Not Found,” and tape it to your outfit.

 

A photo posted by RachAel Klopfenstein (@theklopf) on Sep 5, 2015 at 12:33pm PDT

8) (Monty) Python

If you’re into programming code, British comedy, and low-effort costumes, being (Monty) Python is perfect. Dress up in anything remotely snakelike in your closet: olive green clothing, snakeskin accessories, and fake vampire teeth that can serve as your fangs.

Then, to amp up the dork factor on this costume, add two coconuts or a gold chalice to embody Monty Python on his quest for the Holy Grail. 

9) Facebook

Grab face paint or eyeliner and write “book” across your cheeks. Just like that, you’re the world’s biggest social network for Halloween.

And for your sake, we hope your colleagues actually get it:

10) Unicorn

Here’s another tech-friendly, double-entendre costume: Be your own version of a tech unicorn. Here at HubSpot, we love this tech icon, and you can easily make your own version of a unicorn horn with help from this article.

 

A photo posted by Claudia Valles (@clapvalley) on Feb 12, 2016 at 6:05am PST

11) Phishing Emails

Phishing emails are nothing to joke about — they can seriously threaten your technology and data security. But on Halloween, you can dress up as a play on phishing emails for an easy DIY costume. All you need are a stick, a piece of string, and an envelope. Bonus points if you own a bucket hat and vest to complete the ensemble.

12) Copycat

Here’s a technology spin on a classic Halloween costume. All you’ll need are cat ears, eyeliner-drawn whiskers, and a sheet of paper. Write “Control + C” on the paper, tape it to your outfit, and you’re a copycat.

Source: BuzzFeed 

13) Fully Vested

If you work in a company where people would get the joke, put on a bunch of vests (at least three, but even more is encouraged) and that’s about it. You’re fully vested.

14) Nerd

What I love about the nerd costume is that it’s effortless and always unique — there are many ways to be a nerd in this day and age. Are you a tech nerd, a video game nerd, or a book nerd? The sky is the limit with this costume. Show up wearing glasses with your favorite accessory, such as a magic wand, book, or lightsaber, to complete the effect.

Topical Office Costumes

15) Pokémon GO Trainer

Pokémon GO had roughly 45 million people walking around in cities glued to their phones in summer 2016 (and I was among them). To pay homage to the explosion of this tech trend, you’ll need a t-shirt that’s red, yellow, or blue. Using fabric paint or permanent marker, write Valor (for red), Instinct (for yellow), or Mystic (for blue) on your shirt. Spend Halloween walking around pointing your phone at objects, and you’re the spitting image of a Pokémon GO trainer. Gotta catch em all, right? 

 

A photo posted by Odinia (@marshmallowsie) on Aug 9, 2016 at 4:44pm PDT

16) Beyoncé Singing “Hold Up”

If you work in content or social media marketing, you’ve probably read by now that video is growing in popularity among your audience. Beyoncé knows it too — she released her second visual album, Lemonade, earlier this year. Channel Queen Bey in her video featuring the song “Hold Up” by wearing an all-yellow outfit and carrying a toy baseball bat around.

Source: SheFinds

17) Peach

Peach was introduced in early 2016 and never really took off. Pay tribute to the social networking app that experienced the circle of life more quickly than some others by dressing up as a peach. If you don’t have an all-orange outfit on hand, print out this picture of a peach emoji that served as their logo, and you’re done.

Source: The Next Web

18) Barb from Stranger Things

Here’s another Netflix costume idea. Barb from Netflix’s hit new series Stranger Things is universally beloved, and it’s a bonus that her signature look is a comfortable and easy-to-assemble costume. Rock your best Barb with your finest plaid tucked into high-waisted jeans, glasses, pinned-up hair, and a notebook.

Source: Bustle 

Group Office Costumes

19) Google Algorithm Update

Find a couple of office buddies for this one — one panda, one penguin, and one pigeon. You might be thinking, “what the heck is the pigeon algorithm update?” 1) It’s a thing, and 2) we checked Amazon for hummingbird costumes and there aren’t any cheap ones available. 

Source: Opportunity Max

20) Black and White Hat SEO (aka Westworld‘s Man in Black and William)

This is another SEO-related costume, and I think you can figure this one out on your own. I recommend an all black outfit for one, and all white for the other — but the hat’s the most important part.

If you’re a TV nerd like me and want to make this costume work on two levels, make sure your black and white hats are western hats to pay tribute to two big characters on HBO’s popular new sci-fi show, Westworld.

21) Dancing Girls Emoji

If you’re the owner of one of the nearly 600 million Apple iPhones sold worldwide, you’re probably familiar with the girls emoji:

Source: Brit + Co

The easiest version of this costume is to find a buddy and dress all in black together. If you’re committed to emoji authenticity, buy black bunny ears to complete the look.

22) Series A Round of Funding

Get a bunch of people together, write the letter “A” on your shirt, and line up. (You could do subsequent funding rounds using the same principle, too.) 

23) Snapchat Filters

Here’s another group costume idea that pays tribute to Snapchat’s filters feature. 

There are numerous options that you and your team can choose from to embody this costume. You could dress up as vomiting rainbows, cat and dog ears, a flower crown, or a face swap, and this could be as DIY or store-bought as you’re interested in pursuing. For example, here’s some inspiration for a couple of the dog filters:

Source: PopSugar

24) BuzzFeed Reactions

Here’s an easy group costume for a big crew. Everyone dresses in yellow and writes one of the following in big black letters on their shirt. 

Just be sure to sign up for a reaction fast, or you’ll be dressing up as “fail” this year.

25) Snapchat Ghosts

Snapchat has exploded in popularity this year, so put a marketing spin on a classic Halloween costume by arriving as a Snapchat ghost. You’ll all need a white sheet and to pick which ghost you like the most. 

Source: YouTube

26) Instagram Filters

For this group costume, you’ll need white t-shirts and fabric markers. Draw an Instagram photo frame on the front of your shirts, and each teach member can write a different Instagram filter‘s name inside the photo frame. Or, create frame props with different filters on them like the group did below:

Source: Nails Magazine

Is your office dressing up this year? What costume will you be sporting? Share with us in the comments section below.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in October 2013 and has been updated for freshness and comprehensiveness.

Tracing the history of SEO is kind of like trying to trace the history of the handshake. We all know it exists, and we know it’s an important part of business. But we don’t spend a ton of time thinking about its origins — we’re mostly concerned with how we use it day-to-day.

But unlike the handshake, SEO is fairly young, and changes frequently. Quite appropriately, it appears to be a millennial — its birth is predicted to fall somewhere around 1991.

And in its relatively short life, it’s matured and evolved rather quickly — just look at how many changes Google’s algorithm alone has gone through.

So where did SEO begin, and how did it become so darn important? Join us, as we step back in time and try to figure this out — as it turns out, it’s quite a story.

But First, a Look Back at Search Engines

Source: Wayback Machine

The first idea for creating a common archive for all the world’s data came to fruition in 1945. That July, Dr. Vannevar Bush — then director of the now-defunct Office of Scientific Research and Development — published a piece in The Atlantic proposing a “collection of data and observations, the extraction of parallel material from the existing record, and the final insertion of new material into the general body of the common record.” In other words, we believe, today’s Google.

Several decades later, in 1990, McGill University student Alan Emtage created Archie, which some say was the very first search engine — though that remains up for debate, according to research from Bill Slawski, president and founder of SEO by the Sea. However, Archie was what Slawski called the “best way to find information from other servers around the internet at the time,” and is actually still (very primitive) operation.

The next decade saw several pivotal developments, with the more commercial versions of search engines we might recognize today taking shape.

• February 1993: Six Stanford students create Architext, which would later become the search engine Excite. Some, like Search Engine Land (SEL), say that Excite “revolutionized how information was cataloged,” making it easier to find information “by sorting results based on keywords found within content and backend optimization.”
• June 1993: Matthew Gray debuts World Wide Web Wanderer, which later became known as Wandex.
• October 1993: Martijn Koster introduces ALIWEB, which allows site owners to submit their own pages (unbeknownst, sadly, to many site owners).
• December 1993: At least three “bot-fed” search engines exist — JumpStation, RBSE spider and World Wide Web Worm — which likely means they were powered by web robots to crawl both servers and site content to produce results.
• 1994: Alta Vista, Infoseek, Lycos, and Yahoo search engines all come to fruition.
• 1996: Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin begin building a search engine that they initially call BackRub.
• April 1997: AskJeeves is introduced, later becoming Ask.com.
• September 1997: Google.com is registered as a domain name.

It’s worth noting that nearly twelve years later, in June 2009, Microsoft released Bing — its previous editions were also known as Live Search, Windows Live Search, and MSN Search.

But here’s where SEO itself comes in. As search engines became more mainstream and widely used, site owners started to get wise. As SEO community Moz puts it, “It was discovered that by taking some rather simple actions, search engine results could be manipulated and money could be made from the internet.”

Those results, though, weren’t exactly quality ones. And that, dear readers, is where the SEO story begins.

A Brief History of Search & SEO

The ‘90s

Source: The Daily Dot

With search engines becoming household names and more families becoming connected to the Internet, finding information came with greater ease. The problem, as noted above, was the quality of that information.

While search engine results matched words from user queries, it was usually limited to just that, as an overwhelming amount of site owners took to keyword stuffing — repeating keywords over and over again in the text — to improve rankings (for which there was no criteria), drive traffic to their pages and produce attractive numbers for potential advertisers.

There was also a bit of collusion going on. In addition to the keyword stuffing, people were using excessive and “spammy backlinks,” according to SEL, to improve their authorities. Not only were there no ranking criteria at the time — but by the time search engines fixed algorithms accordingly, there were already new black hat SEO practices taking place that the fixes didn’t address.

But then, two kids at Stanford got an idea.

Source: Stanford InfoLab

When Page and Brin set out to create Google, that was one of the problems they wanted to solve. In 1998, the pair published a paper at Stanford titled “The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine,” where they wrote:

…the predominant business model for commercial search engines is advertising. The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users.”

It was in that same paper that Page and Brin first mentioned PageRank, the technology that Google uses to help rank search results based on quality, and not keywords alone. Some might say that thesis cleared the path for SEO as we know it today.

The Early 2000s

Source: Wayback Machine

The early 2000s saw the beginning of the Google takeover. In the process of making search engine technology less advertising-centric, Google began to provide guidelines for white hat SEO — the kind that the “good guys” stick to — to help webmasters rank without any of the common fishy behavior from the 90s.

2000-2002

But according to Moz, the guidelines didn’t yet have an actual impact on ranking, so people didn’t bother following them. That’s partially because PageRank was based on the number of inbound links to a given page — the more of those, the higher the ranking. But there wasn’t yet a way to measure the authenticity of those links — for the early part of the 2000s, Marketing Technology Blog says it was still possible to use these backlinking techniques to rank pages that weren’t even related to search criteria.

But in 2001, Brin and Page appeared on “Charlie Rose,” when the host asked them, “Why does it work so well?” As part of his answer, Brin emphasized that — at the time — Google was a search engine and nothing else, and was looking at “the web as a whole, and not just which words occur on each page.” It set the tone for some of the initial major algorithm updates that would begin to more closely examine those words. Have a look at the full interview:

 

 

Source: Charlie Rose

2003-2004

This approach to the web being about more than just words really began taking shape in November 2003, with the “Florida” update to Google’s algorithm. Enough sites lost their ranking for Search Engine Watch to call the response to Florida a massive “outcry,” but careful to note that many sites benefitted from the change, too. It was the first major instance of sites receiving penalties for things like keyword stuffing, signaling Google’s emphasis on solving for the user first — mainly with quality content.

In 2004, one of the more primitive versions of Google’s voice search existed, in what the New York Times called a half-finished experiment. And while the technology was somewhat infantile at the time — just check out what the instructions looked like at first — it was also a signal to the future importance of mobile in SEO. (Stay tuned — more on that later.)

Source: Wayback Machine

 

2005: A big year for SEO

One of the biggest years in the search engine world was 2005. That January, Google united with Yahoo and MSN for the Nofollow Attribute, which was created in part to decrease the amount of spammy links and comments on websites, especially blogs. Then, in June, Google debuted personalized search, which used someone’s search and browsing history to make results more relevant.

That November, Google Analytics launched, which is still used today to measure traffic and campaign ROI. Check out its baby photo:

Source: Wayback Machine

2009: SEO shakeups

In 2009, the search engine world saw a bit of a shakeup. Bing premiered that June, with Microsoft aggressively marketing it as the search engine that would produce noticeably better results than Google. But as SEL predicted, it was no “Google-killer,” nor did its advice for optimizing content significantly contrast Google’s. In fact, according to Search Engine Journal, the only noticeable difference was Bing’s tendency to give priority to keywords in URLs, as well as favoring capitalized words and “pages from large sites.”

That same year, in August, Google provided a preview of the Caffeine algorithm change, requesting the public’s help to test the “next-generation infrastructure” that Moz says was “designed to speed crawling, expand the index, and integrate indexation and ranking in nearly real-time.”

Caffeine wasn’t fully introduced until nearly a year later — when it also improved the search engine’s speed — but in December of 2009, a tangible real-time search was released, with Google search results including things like tweets and breaking news. It was a move that confirmed SEO wasn’t just for webmasters anymore — from that moment forward, journalists, web copywriters and even social community managers would have to optimize content for search engines.

Here’s Matt Cutts, Google’s head of webspam, discussing Caffeine in August 2009:

 

 

Source: Wayback Machine // WebProNews

2010-Present

Source:Wayback Machine // Google

When you’re typing in a search query into Google, it’s kind of fun to see what its suggestions are. That’s thanks to the Google Instant technology, which rolled out in September 2010. At first, Moz says, it made SEOs “combust,” until they realized that it didn’t really have any result on ranking.

But Google Instant, along with the evolution of SEO from 2010 on, was just another phase of the search engine’s mission to solve for the user — despite some controversy along the way around pages whose rankings were actually improved by negative online reviews. The algorithm, Google said, was eventually adjusted to penalize sites using such tactics.

More on Google Instant, circa 2010:

 

 

That year also saw a growing importance of social media content in SEO. In December 2010, both Google and Bing added “social signals,” which first displayed any written Facebook posts, for example, from your own network that matched your query. But it also began to give PageRank to Twitter profiles that were linked to with some frequency. The importance of Twitter in SEO didn’t end there — stay tuned.

2011: The year of the panda

The trend of punishing sites for unfairly gaming Google’s algorithm would continue. Some of these incidents were more public than others, including one with Overstock.com in 2011. At the time, according to Wall Street Journal, domains ending with .edu generally had a higher authority in Google’s eyes. Overstock used that to its advantage by asking educational institutions to link to its site — and use keywords like “vacuum cleaners” and “bunk beds” — offering discounts for students and faculty in return. Those inbound links would improve Overstock’s rankings for queries with such keywords, until Overstock discontinued the practice in 2011 and Google penalizing them soon after.

It was also the year of Panda, which first rolled out that February — the algorithm update that cracked down on content farms. Those were sites with huge quantities of frequently updated, low-quality content that was written with the sole purpose of driving search engine results. They also tend to have a high ad-to-content ratios, which Panda was trained to sniff out.

Panda itself has undergone several updates — so many that in its timeline of changes to Google’s algorithm, Moz declined to list any that weren’t major after 2011. Even with that exclusion, the timeline still lists twenty-eight panda updates — for most of which the impact was difficult to measure — through July of 2015.

2012: Along came a penguin

In April 2012, Google took what it called “another step to reward high-quality sites” with the first of many Penguin updates — and, in the process of announcing it, acknowledged Bing’s month-earlier blog post on the changing face of SEO. Penguin targeted sites that more subtly used non-white hat SEO tactics; for example, those with content that might be mostly informative, but was also sprinkled with spammy hyperlinks that had nothing to do with the page’s H1, like in this example:

Source: Google

It’s worth noting that 2012 also saw a throwback to Google’s original anti-ad-heavy thesis with the “Above The Fold” update, which began to lower the rankings of sites with heavy ad-space above the “fold,” or the top half of the page.

Eventually, Google would go beyond targeting spammy content itself. The Payday Loan algorithm update — which was hinted at in June 2013 and officially rolled out the following May — actually focused more on queries that were more likely to produce spammy results. Those were typically searches for things like, well, payday loans, and other things that might make your mother blush. Google adjusted its ranking system to help keep spam out of those results, and while it didn’t necessarily impact the SEO efforts of legitimate sites, it displayed efforts to keep search results authentic.

Google goes local

Keeping with the tradition of animal-named algorithm updates, Google released “Pigeon” (dubbed so by SEL) in 2014, which carried quite an impact on local search results. At the time, it seems to have been designed to improve Maps queries, which began to be treated with some of the same technology that was applied to its other search functions, like “Knowledge Graph, spelling correction, synonyms“. Local searches were going to become a big deal — and it will only continue to do so, as you’ll see in a bit.

Then, in 2015…

The biggest post-2010 SEO announcement might have been Google’s mobile update of April 2015, when non-mobile-friendly websites would start getting lower rankings. That meant SEO was no longer about keywords and content — responsive design mattered, too.

Google announced that change in advance, in February 2015, with a mobile-friendly test that allowed webmasters to view potential issues and make changes before the rollout. It wasn’t the last of Google’s mobile updates — in August 2016, it announced a crackdown on mobile pop-ups.

What’s Next?

It might be hard to believe, but it looks like even more change is on the horizon.

To mobile and beyond

As mobile usage is on the rise — 51% percent of digital media is consumed that way, versus 42% on desktop — it makes sense that SEO will continue leaning in that direction.

That’s already apparent with Google’s favorability toward a mobile-friendly user experience. We predict that a future wave of SEO will largely pertain to voice search. That has its own complex history and is on the rise — 20% of Google searches are currently done by voice, as are 25% of Bing’s. And it’s compounded by the rise of such voice-powered digital personal assistants, like Amazon’s Alexa.

While there might not be a clear-cut way to optimize for voice search yet — largely due to a lack of analytics in that area — we anticipate that those resources will become available, creating yet another critical pillar of SEO.

Going local

But that brings up the issue of localization in SEO, and optimizing results to be regionally relevant. That’s especially true in the realm of voice search — Yelp and other business aggregators are used to answer voice queries about what’s nearby, for example. That’s an SEO opportunity for local businesses, by making sure their listings are “comprehensive, accurate and optimized to be referenced” on a third party site.

Getting Social

While the 2009 introduction of Google’s real-time search had some social ramifications, social media is becoming a more pivotal piece of SEO strategy. When the search engine began indexing tweets in 2011, for example, it hinted toward a future in which users seek information on social media in the same way that they do via search. In fact, this indexing might be Google’s version of future-proofing — if you can imagine it — for a time when people no longer use search engines the way we do now.

For example, type in the name of any celebrity — say, Charlie Rose, whose video we shared earlier. The first page of search results for his name includes his Facebook and Twitter profiles. Plus, check out the biographical sidebar to the right — there are social icons with links to his various networks there, too. When users search for a person, that’s one of the first things they want to see.

Source: Google

In any case, it’s clear why SEO has become a full-time job. Its history will only continue evolving. Executing it well requires a high level of skill, ethics, and upkeep on technology.

But we know that, sometimes, it’s not possible to have a single person dedicated to it, which is why we continue to create the best SEO learning resources we can. Check out some of our favorites:

• How to Increase Your Website SEO Traffic in 30 Days
• HubSpot SEO
• How to Learn SEO: 10 of the Best Resources to Bookmark

What are your favorite pieces of SEO history? Let us know in the comments.

New business is simultaneously exciting and stressful for agencies.

While your team is focused on the thrill of a profitable win, they’re also stressed about meeting deadlines, impressing the prospect, and maintaining current client relationships. It can all be a lot to handle — and there’s no room for legal mistakes.

You didn’t go into marketing to deal with legal issues. But while you’re navigating agency new business at warp speed, it’s easy to make an oversight or misstep that could cause negative legal consequences or financial loss for the agency.

To reduce your risk of running into legal trouble, it’s important to be aware of the most common legal mistakes agencies make during their new business efforts, and how to fix (or avoid) them.

5 Common Legal Mistakes Agencies Make

1) You don’t protect your agency’s intellectual property during a pitch or discovery session, or in your proposal.

How to fix it: Sometimes it’s a valid business decision to allow the client to own IP in pitch materials, spec creative or proposals — either because the agency negotiated payment for it, or because it’s a required “ticket” to participate in the opportunity. But make it an intentional decision.

Unless you’ve agreed with a prospective client that it will own the agency’s pre-engagement IP, consider a Nondisclosure Agreement that protects the agency’s ownership position. Absent that, at a minimum include IP ownership clauses in your proposal and pitch assets, and use copyright ownership notices on these materials and any spec creative produced.

2) You accept the client’s services contract without a legal review, or without pushing back on terms that are unattractive for the agency.

How to fix it: A proposed contract form is a suggestion, not a requirement. First, make sure you fully review the client’s contract (and related documents, like a Nondisclosure Agreement) and, if needed, have it vetted by legal counsel.

Second, be aware of the legally “unattractive” provisions that are most likely to be in the client’s form and — of course — drafted in favor of the client, such as: immediate IP ownership, restrictive covenants on the agency, extended work acceptance processes, or unreasonable invoicing timelines.

You can — and should — push back on the provisions that are unfair or don’t work for your Agency; You’ll never have better leverage than at the beginning of the engagement. You can also learn a lot about the client by the way they respond to your concerns.

3) Your agency recreates the legal paper trail every time it engages a new client.

How to fix it: The main reason many agencies create a “fire drill-style” experience every time they sign a new client and need to legally document the relationship is a lack of process — either having no consistent forms or language to use, or the absence of a lead person or department to handle the contract issues.

Avoid having inconsistent client service contracts, legal terms and conditions, nondisclosure agreements, IP ownership legends, and the like, by having a standard set of agency-approved contract documents and, where possible, a central person, department or procedure dedicated to the process. Then use those documents, and follow that process consistently.

4) Your agency transfers its intellectual property rights in the work to the client too soon, or gives away too much of its intellectual property to the client.

How to fix it: In many situations, everyone agrees that the client will own intellectual property in the agency’s work at some point — the question is when.

The common point of difference is that the client will want to own it immediately upon creation, while it’s in the agency’s best interest not to transfer those rights until it has been paid

Additionally, the agency may have pre-existing assets (creative, technology, process) that end up incorporated into the client’s work, but to which the Agency intends to retain ownership and only license to the client. The place to resolve these issues is in the Client’s Agency Services Contract or Legal Terms and Conditions (see Mistake #3).

5) You’re insufficiently protected from contingencies like late payments, non-payment, or legal liability for claims such as false advertising, IP infringement, or ad regulation compliance.

How to fix it: If the Agency is operating without Errors & Omissions insurance coverage, reconsider. The enhanced liability protection is easy to underrate until you have an issue or claim.

Additionally, give careful thought to the liability and indemnification language in your contracts to make sure that the agency’s liability is limited to the things actually within its control (for example, not for a product feature or claim provided by the Client).

Finally, review the payment terms in your contracts, making sure they properly incentivize the client to pay in a reasonable amount of time. Remedies like late fees, interest, and attorney fee or collection cost recovery will not be available to you unless they are in a written agreement signed by both parties.

New business is challenging enough for agencies without having to worry about the potential legal pitfalls that it creates. Sharon Toerek will be speaking on this topic at INBOUND 2016. Learn more about INBOUND.

It’s easy to think of commuting as a total waste of time. When you’re standing on the train platform or waiting at a traffic light, every minute that ticks by can seem like a minute lost from an already jam-packed day at work. But there’s good news for those of you who wish you could spend that time more productively.

There are a lot of fun, creative apps out there that help you make use of that time — whether it’s a 10-minute walk or a 60-minute bus ride. (Drivers: We don’t advocate the use of any of the apps on this list that involve reading or typing.)

Check out this roundup of 15 easy ways to make your commute more productive, and the apps that will help you make it happen. Try them out, and hey — you might even start looking forward to your trips to and from the office.

15 Ideas for Increasing Productivity on Your Commute

1) Create your to-do list for the day.

Apps: Wunderlist, Evernote, Dragon Dictation

If you’re the kind of person who likes to get organized first thing in the morning, spend some time listing the things you need to accomplish that day. Taking that extra time to think about each task can help you prioritize and set realistic expectations.

There are a number of to-do list apps out there, but Wunderlist and Evernote are among the best. They sync between your mobile devices and your personal computers and allow you to drag and drop tasks between days and categories, as well as set alerts and due dates. You can even share lists and notes with others. Here’s a look at the Wunderlist app:

For you drivers out there, you can use the free app Dragon Dictation to get your to-do list (and any other thoughts) down on your phone. Simply speak while the app is recording, and your text content will appear. If you’re an avid Evernote user, note that Evernote also has a voice recording function, too.

Source: OT’s with Apps & Technology

2) Clear your inbox.

Apps: Gmail, ASAM

There’s something so satisfying about arriving at the office with a clean inbox. That’s why I like to go through emails and delete anything extraneous before I even get in to work. It saves me at least a half hour and a loss of momentum during my most productive time of day.

If you’re driving, you can use ASAM — a free app from AgileSpeech — to “read” your emails. The app will read your emails out loud and word-for-word. (And when I say word-for-word, I mean it reads everything — disclaimers, signatures, and other information you might’ve skipped otherwise.) When the message is finished, the app will “ding” and you have the option to dictate a reply.

Source: Google Play

3) Set and check in on your goals.

App: Coach.me

Believe it or not, there’s a new year right around the corner. And if you’re into resolutions, checking your progress regularly and finding ways to stay motivated is key to maintaining them. The free version of the Coach.me app lets you set personal and professional targets, get reminders, and choose whether to make your achievements visible to a community of active users so you can give and receive support. And starting at $15 per week, you can hire a coach to actually help you achieve them.

Source: iTunes

4) Learn a language.

App: Duolingo

Once upon a time, maybe after college, you were almost fluent in Spanish. Or French. Or something else you learned in school. But then, you stopped practicing.

Want to get your language skills back on track? Duolingo is a fantastic (and free) app that makes (re)learning languages fun. Each lesson is short, painless, and super visual. Slate called it “the most productive means of procrastination I’ve ever discovered.” Be warned, though — it can get addictive.

Source: iTunes

5) Listen to a podcast or audiobook.

Apps: Stitcher, Podcasts, This American Life, Audible

If you’d rather not spend any more time staring at a screen during your commute, then listening to a podcast or audiobook can be a really pleasant way to spend any length of time. Plus, you’ll learn a lot of really cool information you can impress your friends with later.

The free app Stitcher lets you make playlists of all your favorite podcasts.

As for which podcasts to listen to, our favorites include:

• Radiolab
• TED Talks
• The Growth Show
• Stuff You Should Know
• Stuff You Missed in History Class
• Any NPR podcast — especially This American Life and their hit series Serial.
• The Economist‘s audio edition

Looking for something else? Take a look at Stitcher’s list of Top 100 Podcasts.

6) Read an actual book.

Apps: iBooks, Kindle, Zinio, Apple News

I don’t know about you, but I constantly lament how little time I spend reading. You know, actual books, newspapers, or print magazines. And while I also enjoy turning a physical page, I always forget to pack my print materials before I leave for work.

Luckily, there are numerous apps that address that issue, and let you read any book, newspaper, or magazine you choose from a mobile device.

For news and magazines, we like Apple’s News app, which lets you choose from a vast catalogue of publications that you can read right from your phone. You can store your favorites and choose from them with a simple tap.

But for actual books, there are the Kindle and iBooks apps, which let you download full reading materials and enjoy them from your phone or tablet. Kindle transfers any ebook purchases you’ve made on Amazon right to your device, so you can take in whatever great literature you please, right from the bus or subway.

7) Read the articles you’ve bookmarked.

App: Pocket

Using the Pocket app, you can save articles (and videos, and pretty much any type of content) in one place for easy reading on your commute. You can save content directly from your browser, emails, or from over 500 apps like Twitter, Flipboard, Pulse, and Zite. So while Evernote is a great app for long-term content storage, Pocket is perfect for bookmarking stuff to read later.

Source: iTunes // Just the Best Apps

8) Read the newest posts from your favorite online sources.

Apps: Feedly

We’ve covered how to catch up on the latest content from your favorite publications. But what about your favorite blogs or other online news sources? Feedly is an RSS reader that lets you subscribe to the publishers whose posts you never want to miss. You can separate them into different lists, mark articles as “read,” share your favorite pieces, and even browse for new content.

Source: Google Play

9) Get your social media fix out of the way.

Apps: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and more …

Not all of us are lucky enough to include browsing and posting on personal social media accounts in our job descriptions. Help resist the urge to check your news feeds and notifications at work by doing it to your heart’s content during your commute.

10) Brush up on your marketing & sales progress.

App: HubSpot Mobile

Remember those days when you absolutely had to be at your desk to get your work done? Those days are close to being gone, thanks in part to the new HubSpot Mobile app. 

With this app, you can take advantage of your HubSpot software, even if you’re on the go. It starts with a customizable dashboard that gives you an at-a-glance breakdown of the most important metrics to you — landing page, blog, and email performance, as well as deals and sales tasks.

You can also easily access your contacts database, marketing insights (like email analytics) and your sales pipeline. For that last part, you can use the app to add notes, activities, or tasks, and keep track of deal stages.

  

11) Clean your house.

App: iRobot HOME

Weekends: The perfect time to catch up with friends, family, the TV you missed last week and house-cleaning. Okay, how many of us really get around to that last one? (Hint: I don’t.)

But my colleague, Eric Peters, let me in on a little secret about the internet of things. Thanks to its HOME app, if you own a iRobot device like Roomba, you can remotely clean your house from your mobile device.

“My new favorite productivity app is from iRobot,” he told me. “I can turn on my Roomba and clean my floor, and not have to vacuum later.”

What’s more? You can even set a cleaning schedule for the week, in case you forget to spontaneously turn on your devices.

Source: iTunes

12) Clean up your Twitter feed.

App: Twindr

Ever scrolled through your Twitter feed and realized you’ve been just a bit too generous in how many people you follow? Twindr is a free app that works kind of like Tinder, but for unfollowing people on Twitter. All it takes is a few quick swipes to clean up your follower count.

Source: Gizmodo

13) Get zen.

Apps: Insight Timer, Personal Zen, Headspace

Mondays, amirite? Suddenly, in the midst of pre-workday standing nap among the subway masses, you find your mind flooding with a mental to-do list of all the stuff you didn’t get done when you left the office early last Friday.

If this scenario sounds familiar, you’ve got to breathe — which can be tough to do on a Monday morning. But there are apps out there that can help you get zen during your commute, no matter how long it is.

We especially like Insight Timer, since — as its name suggests — you can actually set a timer for the window you have to meditate and select a combination of ambient sounds to use in the background. Or, you can select from any number of the app’s guided meditations. Om…

14) Set a step goal for the day.

Apps: Fitbit, Withings, Jawbone UP, Apple Health

A great way to get more exercise and burn more calories throughout the day is by building incremental physical activities into your daily routine. If that sounds like your style, use an app like Fitbit or Withings to set step goal for each of your commutes. (While these companies sell expensive devices that sync with their apps, they have the ability to measure your steps for free.) And if you have an iPhone, the Health app will track any steps you take when you have your device with you.

Each morning and afternoon, try to hit your goal. If you drive, park your car some distance away from the office and walk the rest of the way. If you take the train or a bus, get off a stop or two early and walk the rest of the way. If your mode of transportation gets delayed, get your steps in by walking back and forth on the platform.

Source: Jawbone

15) Plan your meals.

Apps: Eat This Much, Pepperplate, BigOven

You work hard. Your days are long. That’s why it’s so easy to resort to something that’s quick and already prepared for dinner. But you don’t have to fall victim to the easy way out — if you plan ahead. There are apps out there that can help you do that, by making it simple to plan your meals for the week in advance.

We get especially geeked-out over the Eat This Much app, in part because it’s linked to grocery-delivery apps, if they’re available in your area. Plus, it lets you set nutrition goals and set parameters for any dietary restrictions you might have, like vegan, gluten-free, or specific food allergies.

Source: iTunes

Get Appy

See? Your commute doesn’t have to be so bad, after all. 

And even if you’re lucky enough to love your work, it never hurts to have that time to yourself to take care of the things that these apps are made to do. So get happy, get healthy and get “appy” — it’s one of the best ways to make the most of your precious time.

What do you do to make your commute more productive? Share with us in the comments below!

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in February 2015 and has been updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.

Not every marketing success comes from a big campaign. When you’re a nonprofit operating under budget constraints, big campaigns aren’t always even an option. Sometimes, it’s the little tweaks that can yield a boost in results. In some cases, the tweaks correct an issue that’s been holding your website back.

We’re going to dive into three areas where you can make some quick changes that can kick off strong change. 

1) Maximizing Your SEO Strategy

You have a clear SEO strategy based on your research of your prospects most pressing questions and concerns. You’ve identified what words and phrases they’re using to search for information online. But is it being executed as completely as it could? Each page on your website and each blog post should be optimized around a single keyword or phrase that your ideal constituent is searching for on Google. More keywords than that can dilute the organic power of your main keyword.

If your organization isn’t blogging yet, get going ASAP. A blog is the constant stream of fresh, SEO-focused content that search engines will use to drive traffic to your organization’s online presence. 

For a quick overview of blogging for nonprofits, check out this free ebook >> 

Take a look at some pages and posts that aren’t attracting as much traffic as anticipated. Review them to make sure they’re focused on a current, high performing keyword. If they are focused on a single keyword, this is a good time to re-assess if that keyword should still be a part of your SEO strategy.

You can also optimize your high traffic pages and posts. Have you optimized each element on the page? Many people overlook optimizing their images for SEO. Look at everything from the image’s filename to its alt text and title text to its loading time.

If you’ve seen an overall drop in organic traffic or your place in search results, it’s probably time for a more comprehensive review of your keyword strategy.

• Have you done your SEO research based on what your prospects want to know, or only what you want to tell them? Inbound works because of an “educate first – ask later” approach.
• Perhaps your current keywords have gotten stale. Are they focused on what constituents and prospects are concerned about now? Prospects interests and pain points may have changed since you last created your keyword list.

2) Creating More Opportunities to Convert Visitors

Inbound marketing is a journey, just like the one your future constituents take. If your only calls-to-action (CTAs) on your website are calls to join, donate, or get involved – you’re ignoring a lot of conversion opportunities.

Most of your website visitors aren’t ready to make any sort of commitment to your organization just yet. That doesn’t mean you can’t get them into your database. 

Pick one of your high-value, free resources and make it gated content. This could be a report on how use different credit union resources to rebuild poor credit or a 10-year outlook forecast on the direction of your cause. 

Whatever the topic, it should be of sufficient interest and value to prospects that they’ll happily give over their email address to get it. It’s the starting point of an active relationship between your organization and a prospect that enables you both to learn more about each other, which ideally ends with the prospect joining your organization.

Placing CTAs to your gated content throughout your website and blog provides a low stress entry point for people who are still just looking for information and aren’t quite yet ready to commit.

3) Treating Mobile as Mobile

Your mobile site can’t just be smaller version of your primary website. Part real estate, part use case, the ways visitors interact with a mobile site are very different than a desktop site. Slightly more than half of all digital media is consumed via mobile, so optimizing your organization’s mobile experience is critical to capturing and converting mobile traffic.

Let’s start with real estate. Do use responsive design so your website design works on mobile screens. Since mobile visitors will see less with a first view than on your desktop site, make sure that first impression clearly communicates who your organization is and why the visitor wants to explore more.

When you visit your mobile site, do you see a lot of text? Consuming blocks of text is difficult and off-putting for mobile visitors. Break up monotonous text with bullets, color, or an image.

Your phone number should be click-to-call, for people who want to reach you immediately on their mobile device. Yet many people visiting your mobile site don’t want to call you.  They want information. So make sure your mobile CTAs reflect mobile usability — you’re your requests simple — ask only for an email address. A CTA to apply for membership or donate now should make it clear they’ll get a link they can use to apply online that they can complete later from anywhere.

Last, Google constantly changes how it optimizes its mobile search results and user experience. Its latest approach is cracking down on annoying mobile pop-ups. If you have liberal use of pop-ups on your mobile site, or use big pop-ups that block out the content behind it, you’ll want to get rid of them. 

Staying Ahead of the Curve

It’s easy to lose track of the little things when producing a lot of content, especially when the best practices of digital marketing change so quickly. Optimization is a never-ending process. But that just means you can always find ways to get some quick wins off your website when you’re in-between running larger campaigns.

As marketers, we know that the term “mobile optimization” can sometimes seem like just another hot button term these days. And the actual process of optimizing your brand’s site can be somewhat intimidating.

In hopes of making the whole process a little less daunting, we teamed up with Localytics to bring you The Marketer’s Guide to Mobile.

This five-part kit will walk you through the best practices of mobile marketing, help you decide whether or not your brand should have an app, and bring you up to speed on how mobile has evolved over the past couple years.

More specifically, you’ll learn:

• The state of mobile marketing today and the importance of getting your marketing completely mobile optimized.
• How to optimize your website and the most important factors to keep in mind when working with your web team or freelancers.
• Best practices for mobile marketing and ensuring your efforts are passing the test.
• How to tap into the app ecosystem and why that matters for your business.
• What’s next in mobile: How to keep on top of mobile trends so your business continues to rank on search engines and bring in leads and customers.
• *Bonus* Flowchart: Should you build an app or not?

Download your copy of The Marketer’s Guide to Mobile now.

You nailed the pitch, closed the account, and now it’s time to roll up your sleeves and get to work. Everyone on your team is ready to dive in, and the client couldn’t be happier to have an agency bringing fresh ideas and new energy to the table.

What could possibly go wrong?

As you probably already know, quite a lot. The client onboarding process might seem cut-and-dried, but there are a lot of moving parts to manage to ensure the relationship gets off to a solid start. The groundwork you and your team lay in the first 90 days with a new client will either support a profitable long-term relationship, or lead to frustration and flopped projects.

To help you avoid the financial and psychological pain of a botched relationship down the line, we’ve put together a list of common client onboarding missteps to avoid at all costs. Read on to make sure your agency is doing everything possible to prevent the new relationship from going sour before it even has the chance to get off the ground.

6 Client Onboarding Mistakes to Avoid

1) You don’t set realistic expectations or goals.

Right from the start, agencies need to manage expectations with their clients — even (or perhaps especially) when it feels uncomfortable. Remember: It’s always better to under-promise than to over-promise.

Setting reasonable expectations begins with discussing what your client wants to achieve, and comparing it to what your agency is actually able to deliver. Think of it like a venn diagram: In one circle, you have your client’s dream website, and in the other circle, you have your agency’s area of expertise. During the kickoff, it’s up to your team to find the overlap between the two circles, and set goals around that.

If you don’t set reasonable, attainable goals from the get-go, your clients will fill in the blanks themselves — and you’ll find yourself being held accountable for achieving too much in too little time. It’s better to explain from the beginning that it isn’t realistic to build a fully-functional lead-generating powerhouse website in 2 weeks, rather than explain why your team couldn’t deliver later down the line.

2) You aren’t transparent about your team’s process.

During the kickoff meeting, it’s typical for agencies to provide a estimated timeline of the project — usually explaining the different phases or components that the team will be working on. This gives the client a good idea of what to expect during the process, but it might leave some critical information gaps.

To make sure the client fully understands all the work that goes into the project, it’s beneficial to give them some basic information about your team structure, and go more in-depth on how your team actually functions.

It might seem unnecessary at first to get into these nitty gritty details, but full transparency about your team’s process and work schedule will make the client more understanding if anything goes wrong — such as a deadline being pushed back or a request taking longer than expected to be addressed.

Transparency also means telling the client upfront how your team handles uncomfortable issues like out-of-scope work and billing, so it isn’t a surprise to them if these issues arise in the future. It’s always better to address these details as early as possible to avoid potentially relationship-killing drama in the future.

3) You don’t build rapport with the client’s team.

Amidst all the housekeeping, scheduling, and project management that goes into onboarding a new client, it can be easy to forget that your new clients are just people — and people like to converse and connect.

The key to establishing good rapport is to keep momentum going after the initial meeting or call. Starting with the kickoff, make a conscious effort to establish common ground by asking open-ended questions and learning as much as you can about your new client. Once you have a feel for how your client likes to communicate, focus on keeping that positive energy going through subsequent meetings and check-ins.

Developing a positive rapport doesn’t just make meetings less awkward, it also helps foster an early sense of trust and understanding between your team and your new client. If you stick solely to the technical details of a project and fail to relate on a social, human level, you could be setting the relationship up for avoidable tension or stress.

Any project setbacks or other potential issues that arise in the future will be much easier to diffuse if you’ve already put in the work to cultivate an authentic connection from the beginning.

4) You under-communicate in the first few weeks.

Over-communication is better than under-communication — especially in the critical first weeks of a new client relationship. If you under-communicate or lag in your responses early on, you’re basically saying that the project isn’t a priority for your team.

During the kickoff meeting, establish how your client prefers to be contacted (Phone? Email? Carrier pigeon?) and who your main point of contact will be. It’s important to decide on a clear communication framework right off the bat, so there’s no confusion about who will be contacting who, and when/how the check-ins will take place.

In the early stages of the project, keep your new client consistently in the loop — even on decisions that seem minor to your team. This shows the client that you’re fully committed to providing clear, actionable information throughout the project.

Worst case scenario? The client asks you to update them a little less frequently. At least they know now the project is meaningful to you, and you’re taking it very seriously.

5) You don’t ask useful questions.

You probably already learned a lot about your new client during the pitching process — whether through research or directly interviewing them — but once the deal is closed, there’s still a lot more to learn.

Now that you’re essentially part of the client’s team, you might be privy to more sensitive information about their business — information that can help you better understand and accommodate their needs and goals. The key is asking the questions that get you the relevant information you need.

Start by asking questions to assess the client’s existing marketing assets, e.g.: What marketing tactics have you found success with in the past? How do you currently generate leads? If you’re working on a website redesign project, check out these 90 questions to ask before getting started.

If you don’t use the onboarding period to ask insightful questions, you could encounter information gaps further into the project. Ask your questions upfront to get a clear picture of your client’s business and marketing program before diving into the project.

6) You don’t provide immediate value.

Never underestimate the positive impact a well-executed quick win project can have in the early stages of a new client relationship. As you probably know from experience, real marketing results can take a long (long) time to see, and all the time spent waiting for numbers to rise can make clients restless — particularly when they’re fresh off the exciting promises of your agency’s winning pitch.

A quick win project in the first few weeks of the relationship can demonstrate your agency’s capacity to provide value, and validate the client’s decision to pick you. It can also help clients feel more comfortable when bigger projects take a longer to produce tangible results, since they’ve already seen your team succeed before.

A quick win project doesn’t have to be a big strain on your agency’s time and resources. Consider developing a content offer or auditing the client’s existing marketing assets to identify new opportunities. For more advice on creating a quick win project early on, check out this article.

What client onboarding mistakes has your agency made in the past, and what did you learn from them? Share with us in the comments.

When I was eight, I became stuck on a particularly tough Where’s Waldo scene. It was so difficult that I became convinced that Waldo — the character I needed to find — wasn’t in it at all. I began thinking the whole thing was a joke, full of red herrings.

And then I found him. And after that, I could never un-see him. And, strangely, whenever I saw a classmate struggling with that same difficult scene, I’d become frustrated, even angry.

“I can’t believe you’re not finding him,” I’d say. “It’s so easy!”

Little did I know, my unreasonable behavior was the product of a dangerous cognitive bias, one we’re all susceptible to: The Curse of Knowledge.

The Curse afflicts kids and teachers, content marketers and salespeople, corporate executives, cab drivers, and presidents.

Here’s how it could be hurting you …

What is “The Curse of Knowledge?”

If you’re “Cursed,” then you are unable to imagine what it’s like not to know or understand something — a topic, discipline, craft, what have you — which, in turn, makes it hard to communicate that knowledge to less-informed people.

In their book, Made to Stick, the Heath Brothers provide a typical example:

Think of a lawyer who can’t give you a straight, comprehensible answer to a legal question. His vast knowledge and experience renders him unable to fathom how little you know. So when he talks to you, he talks in abstractions that you can’t follow. And we’re all like the lawyer in our own domain of expertise.”

That said, let’s set the anecdotal evidence aside and focus on the science:

The Stanford Tapping Experiment

In 1990, Elizabeth Newton, a Stanford graduate student in psychology, demonstrated the Curse of Knowledge using an exercise that asked one group of students to tap the rhythm of a popular song (e.g., Happy Birthday) on a table to another group of students who were listening. The listeners were then asked to guess the song.

Over the course of the experiment, more than 100 songs were tapped out. When the “tappers” we’re asked to predict how many of their “listeners” would guess the song correctly, they landed on 50%. The actual percentage of listeners who could figure out which song the rhythm belonged to a mere 2.5%.

This huge discrepancy occurred because the tappers couldn’t un-hear (or un-know) the song’s actual melody, which played in their head as they tapped. This caused them to overestimate their ability. The listeners, of course, didn’t hear a melody but, rather, a dull, monotonous knocking. This caused them to almost always misidentify the song.

In this experiment, the tappers’ knowledge grossly distorted the reality of the situation and, in effect, created a communication breakdown as well as a major expectations mismatch.

Can your writing be cursed?

The Curse of Knowledge is a documented cognitive bias. It affects us all, especially when we write. It’s particularly dangerous on paper because, unlike being face-to-face, readers (i.e., listeners) can’t ask questions and writers (i.e., tappers) can’t gauge reactions.

The Curse can sneak its way into an email, a landing page, a web page, or a blog post, which is why anyone who writes should be perking up right now …

Here’s everything you need to know to protect yourself:

7 Ways to Lift the Curse of Knowledge

Ironically, the more you know about the Curse of Knowledge, the less likely you are to fall victim to it.

Moving forward, try these best practices whenever you sit down to explain something in writing.

1) Know your audience’s base subject knowledge.

How well your audience understands your subject should shape the way you approach it.

So, do your research. If their base subject knowledge is high, feel free to skip the fundamentals. If their base knowledge is low, or nonexistent, start from the beginning — start at thirty thousand feet and parachute down, slowly, gradually.

To figure out your audience’s base knowledge, try creating a detailed target persona. It’s not that hard and it’ll give you the background you need to write in a way people understand and appreciate.

2) Tone down your vocabulary.

Peppering your writing with idioms, jargon, and big, fancy words is like saying: If you don’t understand this, maybe you shouldn’t be reading it. Stop while you’re ahead. Thanks for playing.

That’s a nasty vibe, if you ask me. Plus, if people can’t understand you, they’ll inevitably tune out and turn off. And then what will you do? For example, this is:

• Bad: “Let’s open the Kimono, take a peek at the email CTR, and break down scalable successes.”
• Better: “Let’s look at the data, evaluate the email clickthrough rate, and capitalize on what’s working.”
• Best: “Let’s see how many people opened our emails and do more of what works.”

3) Tell a story.

Before writing existed, people used stories to keep history. For thousands of years, stories helped us spread information. Today, stories remain just as psychologically impactful as they did back then. As Jonathan Gottschall explains in his book, The Storytelling Animal, human beings are natural storytellers. Stories are a fundamental piece of our genome.

We love stories because they help us see the world through different lenses. We love stories so much, in fact, that we naturally inject ourselves into their narratives, hijacking characters’ circumstances, emotions, and learnings.

Of course, stories also maintain an order. They have a beginning, a middle, and an end, which makes it hard for the Curse to sneak its way in, leaving people out of context and confused.

4) Ditch the abstractions.

Leaders often speak in abstractions because their experience helps them visualize broad concepts. For example, we can all imagine a Chief Customer Officer saying something like:

Our mission is to provide callers with the best customer service they’ve ever experienced.”

That’s great and all, but what does it mean? And how does a statement like that differentiate you from the competition? It doesn’t. These days, differentiating yourself in a crowded space means getting specific, like this:

Our mission is to answer every phone call to the customer service department within three rings and to resolve non-emergency calls within 6 minutes.”

Be concrete. It’s comforting to people.

5) Provide examples.

Unlike abstractions, examples put concepts into perspective.

An example could take the form of a metaphor or a simile. As long as it paints a picture, it’s doing its job. In any case, examples make sense of things, using information we already understand to forge connections.

For instance, when my grandma Sofia didn’t understand what a blog was, I explained it to her in terms I knew she’d be familiar with: “It’s like a journal or a magazine,” I said, “but you can only read the articles on the internet.”

6) Use visuals.

About 65% of people are visual learners, meaning they absorb information better and faster when images are used to explain it.

Hence: PowerPoint presentations, infographics, and those quirky, mesmerizing whiteboard videos you’ve seen. These are all examples of compelling visual content being used to engage and educate people from the boardroom to the web page. Incorporating these and other visual components into your messaging is a potent way to appeal to nearly a third of your audience.

7) Get an outside point-of-view.

You write. You edit. You reread, rearrange, reformat. You repeat.

That’s writing — and it can be an intense process, which, sometimes, leaves your message over-processed. In other words, it’s possible to overthink something, twisting it up until you’re the only person who gets it.

A good editor will alert you to this issue. Don’t know any editors? That’s okay. Ask a friend to give your writing a once over. They may not be your target audience but they can still serve as a barometer for comprehension.

You could also try this old copywriting trick.

Final thought.

The Curse of Knowledge is rooted in the fact that you were once in your reader’s shoes, void of the vast knowledge you now possess.

My advice: When you write about your area of expertise, try to channel that less-informed version of yourself. It will make you sympathetic to the challenges your readers are facing because, once upon a time, you were there, too.

Ultimately, if you want to be understood and help people grow, don’t tap your song, sing it! Sing it loudly, so that everyone can hear the notes. The above techniques will help you do that.

What tips do you have for overcoming The Curse of Knowledge? Share them in the comments.

Want to drive traffic to your blog and boost your social activity? 

Well, I’ve got a simple solution to help you achieve just that: An expert roundup.

And the best part is, you only need to write 20% of the content — the other 80% is written by experts in your niche.

Sounds easy, right?

It is, well, as long as you have the right process. Luckily, I’ve successfully applied this approach multiple times — and I’ve learned a thing or two about how to drive the most traffic, shares, and engagement in the process.

Have I piqued your interest yet? Good. Let’s walk through how to apply this strategy below.

What Is an Expert Roundup?

An expert roundup is a collection of quotes or interviews by influential people in your niche. Each participant should be someone with some authority in your field and that has something to contribute to your readers.

The most effective roundups pose a very specific question that the experts can easily respond to. It should be a question that people care about the answer to.

Here are a few great example roundups:

• 55 SEO Experts Reveal 3 Favorite Link Building Tools
• 80 Productivity Tips From Incredibly Busy Experts
• How To Survive A Party: 42 Experts Reveal Their 3 Best Party Tips For Introverts

As you can see, a roundup can really be about any topic.

This is an excellent strategy to quickly establish yourself or your company within the blogging community for your niche. And since you will be linking, sharing, and promoting the responses of these influential people, many of them will be willing to help you down the line.

Do Expert Roundups Actually Generate Results?

Before I get into the results, let me give you a little background.

I am the CTO and Founder of Proven.com. We provide a job distribution and hiring solution for small businesses. I love it, but it’s not always the sexiest topic to create content for. After all, it’s tough to convince people to share a blog post about how to hire more efficiently with the same vigor that they share cat videos.

As a result, many of our early blog posts were members of the “Triple Zero Club” — zero shares, zero comments, and zero new subscribers. But this all changed when I started experimenting with expert roundups.

Over the past seven months, I’ve conducted three different expert roundups for the Proven blog that have consistently delivered shares, comments, views, and subscribers. Let’s walk through them …

Roundup Attempt #1:

My first roundup was the least successful and I definitely made some mistakes, which I will explain later.

Despite the mistakes, I managed to get 16 experts in the HR space to respond to my outreach, and the article I created about the Best HR Software, generated 286 views in the first month, 71 social shares, and five backlinks.

Relative to other blog posts we were producing at that time, this was actually pretty good. Most importantly, it helped me establish early relationships with blogging influencers in the HR space. That led to more successful blog posts in the future and guest blogging gigs with some of the best HR blogs available.

Not to mention, Proven is now ranked #1 on Google for search terms like “hr blogs”, “best hr blogs”, etc.

Roundup Attempt #2:

In my second attempt, I got significantly more ambitious.

I surveyed the founders of hundreds of different technology startups and asked them, “If you could only ask a person one question during an interview, what question would that be?”

Over 150 different founders responded, which was actually quite overwhelming. That article, generated 1,747 views in the first month, 193 social shares, and 45 backlinks.

Roundup Attempt #3:

In my third roundup, I contacted companies that have remote work teams and asked them about how to make remote work actually work, as well as the type of characteristics they look for when hiring a remote employee.

The resulting blog post has been live for less than two months, but has already generated over a thousand views, 492 social shares, and seven backlinks.

It also helped me build important relationships with several companies that I have since posted guest articles to their blogs.

How to Create an Effective Expert Roundup

So, if you’re still with me, hopefully I’ve convinced you that this is a very effective strategy.

But how can you pull this off for your domain?

That’s what I am going to show you now, step by step.

Step #1: Find the right question.

The first thing you need to figure out is what topic and question to focus on for your roundup. Questions that focus on solutions to specific problems, software tools to solve a problem, or tips and tactics are great directions to go when creating a roundup.

If you have a general topic in mind but you are not sure what would make a great question, then you can use tools like ahrefs’ Content Explorer or BuzzSumo to get ideas.

For example, below is the result of searching “remote work” on ahrefs:

As highlighted in red, three of the top four articles have great potential for crafting a roundup question.

For example, first article is about productivity while working remote. This idea could be converted into a roundup by asking experts “What is your number #1 productivity tip when working remotely?”

Pro Tip: Whatever topic you choose, you want to make it as easy as possible for your experts to answer the question. Make your question specific and limit the scope so that busy experts can provide shorter answers.

Step #2: Find the right experts.

Your experts are likely going to be comprised of bloggers, marketers, or perhaps company executives. If you’ve been working in your particular niche for a while, you should have a reasonably good idea about who the experts are.

The bigger the names that you can attract, the more successful your roundup is likely to be. This is because their participation adds legitimacy to your article — and as you’ll see in step #5, we will leverage our expert’s social reach to help promote the article.

Step #3: Collect expert contact details.

Start by creating a spreadsheet to keep track of names, emails, Twitter handles, and company or blog URLs.

The example spreadsheet below is a snapshot of the expert contacts I used for my roundup about remote work.

Note: You can tailor the details of your spreadsheet based on the type of information you feel is important to keep track of.

Step #4: Contact the experts.

I highly recommend reaching out to your list of experts at least twice. My general recipe is to first contact experts on Tuesday, and then send a follow up email on Thursday.

To help you get started, check out my email templates below. The email formula is always establish rapport, be clear about your ask, demonstrate what they will receive in return, and thank them for their time.

I received a 53.8% positive response rate using a version of these templates on my latest roundup. (Of course, you will need to adjust the copy a bit to align with your offer or ask.)

Email Roundup Invitation #1

Subject: Quick question about remote work

Hi [First Name],

My name is Sean Falconer and I am CTO and Founder of Proven.com.

We recently transitioned our entire company to working remote and as I understand it, [Company Name] is also remote.

I am working on a blog post about companies that work remotely and I was hoping to be connected with someone at [Company Name] that would like to contribute.

To participate, all you or someone at [Company Name] has to do is reply to this email with the answer to these questions:

1. What is your number #1 tip for being successful as a remote employee?

2. What is the number #1 characteristic of a remote worker that you look for when hiring?

We’ll feature your answer on our blog (http://blog.proven.com/) and link back to [Company URL].

A very brief response is more than enough! If you are not the right person for this, could you please forward this email to the appropriate person? If you have any questions about this, please do not hesitate to ask.

Cheers,

Sean Falconer

CTO & Founder | Proven

Email Roundup Invitation #2

Subject: RE: Quick question about remote work

Hi again,

I just wanted to follow-up on the email I sent a few days ago. Did you get a chance to take a look and consider contributing? If not, no problem.

A number of your peers include [Company 1] and [Company 2] have already contributed but it would be even better if you were involved too!

Here are the questions again:

1. What is your number #1 tip for being successful as a remote employee?

2. What is the number #1 characteristic of a remote worker that you look for when hiring?

Thanks in advance, and naturally, I’ll include a link back to you.

All the best,

Sean

In the second email, notice that I name drop a couple of peer companies — this strategy is very effective. People may ignore your first email, but if they see a competitor or known expert has contributed to your article, then they’ll often feel compelled to do so as well.

Pro Tip: If you can’t find a particular expert’s email address, you can try sending your question directly on Twitter. I did this successfully in my first roundup to collect answers from four people that I otherwise would not have been able to reach.

Step #5: Putting it all together.

If you followed these steps up to here, at this point you should have a great collection of awesome responses. Now, you need to put it together. Follow the suggestions below to get started.

Design your title:

Your title needs three components: number of experts that participated, who the experts are and the topic the experts covered.

For example:

• 150+ Startups Share their Most Important Interview Question
• 35 Companies Share Their Secrets to Remote Work Success

Introduction:

In your introduction, you will want to present the problem, why it is important, and then how you solved it by reaching out to experts in the field.

It’s important to emphasize how many experts participated and how amazing their responses are. Remember: You want to make the experts look good — it will help with the next step.

I also like to add a summary of the main takeaways so someone doesn’t have to read through every response to get a sense of the expert’s consensus.

In my roundup about startup interview questions, I added the top five most asked questions to the introduction.

Navigation:

After the introduction, you’ll want to add a navigation that makes it easy to jump through the expert responses.

If possible, put a face to the name by grabbing the expert’s image from Twitter or LinkedIn. You can ask for a headshot, but I always try to reduce the amount of work the expert needs to do in order to increase participation.

Main Body:

This is the easy part. Your main body is going to be comprised of the expert responses.

I like to include the expert’s image, Twitter link, link to their blog or company, a share link for that specific section, and their response.

Conclusion:

Keep this part short and simple: Summarize how awesome the content is and give a CTA to share or ask for people to submit a comment with their own answer to the question you posed.

Step #6: Let the experts know when the post is live.

In this final step, you will go back to the spreadsheet that you created earlier and reach out to all the experts that contributed to your article to let them know that it has gone live.

Example Outreach Email:

Hi [First Name],

I wanted to you let and the rest of the folks over at [Company] that the article is now live: [insert URL here]

There are a lot of great ideas and I think people will find a ton of value in the responses. I‘d greatly appreciate it if you could help me share it out. If you require any edits, please let me know.

Cheers,

Sean

Pro Tip: You should also contact all the experts that ignored your original outreach and let them know that the article has gone live and they can still get their answers in if they like. You will be surprised by how many people jump on this.

*Bonus Step*

One successful amplification technique I started experimenting with is creating periodic tweets with @ mentions of the experts that contributed to my article.

For example, although the “Top Interview Questions” roundup was published months ago, I recently created the tweet below and that gave some new life to the post on social media.

The mentioned experts will usually retweet allowing you to piggyback on their social media presence.

Ready to Get Started?

This approach serves as a fantastic way to build an extremely rich and engaging piece of content without a ton of research on your part. And the best part is, it works regardless of how boring your niche is.

Get the experts on board talking about a key issue and you’ll have engagement like you’ve never seen before.

Remember: Don’t settle for the “Triple Zero Club.”

What tips do you have for putting together an expert roundup? Share them in the comments.