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Facebook has changed quite a bit since I first signed up for an account in 2008. Back then, Facebook was still called “The Facebook”, and my bio literally said, “Check out my MySpace, it’s waaaay better than my Facebook.”

Needless to say, Facebook has evolved at breakneck speed since my middle school years, and it’ll keep adapting at a swift pace for as long as it exists.

If you need a refresher on how to use Facebook today or you want to sign up for an account, check out this in-depth explanation of how to use the most popular social media network in the world.

Signing Up for a Facebook Account

To sign up for a Facebook account, follow these three easy steps.

1. Visit Facebook’s website.
2. On the homepage, fill out your first name, last name, mobile number or email, password, birthday, and gender.
3. Press “Sign Up”.

Setting Up Your Privacy Settings

After you’ve signed up for a Facebook account, you can adjust your privacy settings to control who can see your profile and information. Follow these four simple steps to change your privacy settings.

1. Click on the downward pointing arrow that’s located on the top right corner of any Facebook page.
2. Click “Settings”.
3. In the left sidebar, press “Privacy”.
4. Set who is allowed to see your past and future posts. You can also control how people can find and contact you.

Personalizing Your Profile

Odds are, there’s probably someone on Facebook who has the same name as you. To differentiate yourself from these people and help your friends and family find you on Facebook, personalize your profile by adding a profile picture, cover photo, and some personal information.

Picking a Profile Picture

1. Go to your profile and click on your profile picture.
2. To pick your profile picture, choose a photo that you’re already tagged in on Facebook, one that you’ve uploaded to Facebook, or a photo from your computer. You can also add a frame to your profile picture.

Choosing a Cover Photo

1. Click the camera button on your cover photo, which is on your profile.
2. To choose your cover photo, you can pick a photo from your Facebook profile, a selection of Facebook’s own cover artwork, create a collage, or upload a photo from your computer. You can also reposition or delete your current cover photo.

Updating Your Profile

1. Click the “About” section on your profile page.
2. In this section, you can fill in information about your work and education, the places you’ve lived, contact and basic info, family and relationships, details about you, and life events.

Liking and Following Public Pages

On Facebook, you can follow and get updates from your favorite brands, celebrities, sports teams, and publications. The best way to do this is by searching for them on Facebook and liking or following their public page, which will have a blue verified check mark next to their name. After you like or follow their page, you’ll start to see their updates in your news feed.

Your Timeline

Your timeline is a digital log of your Facebook activity in reverse-chronological order. Your status updates, uploaded photos and videos, and the photos you’re tagged in will appear on your timeline.

Adding Friends on Facebook

There are three ways you can add friends on Facebook. You can either search for them, find them in the “Find Friends” tab, or import a list of contacts from your email, iCloud, or phone.

To find friends on Facebook, go to your profile, press the “Friends” tab, and click the “Find Friends” button. You’ll see a list of friend requests from other people and a list of people you may know that you can add as a friend on Facebook.

If you upload a list of contacts onto Facebook, you can add your friends as you sort through each of your contacts.

Posting on Facebook

The main purpose of Facebook is to help friends and family connect with each other. And the best way to connect with your friends and family is by updating them about your life with status updates. To share a Facebook status, go to the text box at the top of your news feed page or on your profile page.

With status updates, you can share text with 15 different colored backgrounds, photos, videos, GIFs, stickers, and links..

You can also share other types of posts, like:

• Feeling/Activity: share how you’re currently feeling or what you’re currently doing.
• Check in: when you visit a city, location, or place, check in and let your friends know where you’re at.
• Tag Friends: if you’re hanging out with your friends, tag them in your status and share what you’re doing.
• Tag Event: if you’re at an event, you can tag it in your status and share what event you’re attending.
• Ask for Recommendations: if you just moved somewhere or you’re about to visit a location, you can ask your Facebook friends for recommendations on where to go.
• Poll: ask your Facebook friends what their opinion is on a certain topic.
• Support Nonprofit: choose a nonprofit organization of your choice and share it through your status. Your Facebook Friends can then press the donate button to support the chosen organization.
• Answer a Question: choose a predetermined question to answer or create your own question to answer and share it with your Facebook friends.
• Lists: choose a predetermined topic to make a list for or create your own topic and share it with your Facebook friends.
• Facebook Stories: all the content that you can share through a status update is shareable through your Facebook story. You can also upload content to your stories by clicking the Add to Your Story button on the right sidebar. Additionally, you can watch all your friends’ Facebook Stories by clicking on their picture in the Stories section, which is also located on the right sidebar of your home page.

Photos and Videos

On Facebook, you can add photos, videos, albums, and live video broadcasts to your profile for all your friends to see.

Uploading photos or videos

To upload photos or videos to your profile, follow these four simple steps:

1. Go to your profile.
2. Press the “Photos” tab.
3. Press “Add Photos/Video”.
4. Upload pictures or videos from your computer.

Creating photo or video albums

To create a photo or video album, follow these four simple steps:

1. Go to your profile.
2. Press the “Photos” tab.
3. Press “Create Album”.
4. Upload pictures or videos from your computer.

Facebook Live

To do a live broadcast on your Facebook account, follow these three simple steps.

1. In the box that says “What’s on your mind?”, press “Live Video”.
2. Once you press “Live Video”, you can write a description about your broadcast, tag people in it, add a feeling or activity, check in to an event, support a non-profit, or add a poll. You can also title your live broadcast or tag a video game if you’re live streaming someone or yourself playing a video game.
3. Press “Go Live” when you’ve finished describing your live broadcast.

Connecting With Friends

On your news feed, you’ll see updates from your friends, family, or public pages you follow. To interact with them, you can like and react to their posts, share content on their timelines, and communicate with them through text or video chat.

Like, Comment, Or Share

If you like someone’s post, give them a thumbs up, comment on their post, or share it.

Other Reactions

If your Facebook friend’s post evokes a stronger reaction in you than a like, you can also express that you love, laughed, are amazed, sad, or angry at their post by holding down the “Like” button.

Sharing Content on Your Friends’ Timelines

Anything you can post on your status, you can also post on your friend’s timeline.

Facebook Messenger

To chat with your friends or public pages on Facebook, use Facebook Messenger. You can access it by clicking the “Messages” button at the top right corner of any Facebook page or pressing the “Messages” button on the left sidebar of the home page.

Next, press “New Message” and type in your friend or brand’s name that you want to connect with. Facebook Messenger also lets you create group chats by clicking on “New Group”. After that, all you have to do is name your group and add the friends you want to include in the group.

When you message your friends or group on Facebook Messenger, you can upload pictures, videos, and files from your computer, as well as stickers, GIFs, emojis, and take pictures and videos from your computer’s or phone’s camera.

You can also view Messenger on its own page, where you can search for past conversations and manage your settings. To view Messenger on its own page click the “Messages” button in the top right corner of any Facebook page and then press the “See All in Messenger” button. Or, you can press the “Messages” button on the left sidebar of the home page.

To instant message your friends’ who are logged onto Facebook at the same time as you, press the “Chat” button on the bottom of any Facebook page and strike up a conversation with your friends who are online.

Phone and Video Calling

When you have Messenger open on its own page, you can search for any of your friends or groups, click on their name, and press the phone or video chat button to call them.

News Feed

Your news feed is a curated feed of posts from your friends, family, and public pages you follow that Facebook’s algorithm thinks you’ll be interested in. You’ll also see ads from brands who think you’ll enjoy consuming their content or products.

To customize your news feed, press the downward pointing arrow in the upper right corner of any Facebook page and click on “News Feed Preference”.

From there, you can prioritize whose posts you’ll see first, unfollow people and groups to hide their posts, reconnect with people and groups you unfollowed, discover public pages that match your interests, and hide apps from your news feed.

Other Useful Features on Facebook

Facebook isn’t just a platform for viral content and connection. It’s also a hub for community communications, video streaming, marketplaces, and games.

Events

The Events page on Facebook will show you any upcoming events that are popular with your Facebook friends or have been set up by the groups you belong to. You can also find events based on their date, location, and category.

To find the Events page, press the “Home” button. Then, on the left sidebar, you’ll see the Explore section, where you can click “Events”.

Groups

The Groups page on Facebook will show you which groups you manage and belong to. You can also discover groups to join based off Facebook’s suggestions and a ton of other categories.

To access the Groups page, press the “Home” button and then on the left sidebar, you’ll see the Explore section, where you can click “Groups”.

Facebook Watch

In 2017, Facebook rolled out their video streaming service, Facebook Watch. On the platform, you can watch videos from the shows you’re following and search for other shows and videos.

To access Facebook Watch, press the “Home” button. Then, on the left sidebar, you’ll see the “Watch” button right under the “Messenger” button.

Marketplace

Not only does Facebook compete with Netflix in the streaming industry, but they also compete with eBay in the marketplace industry. With Facebook Marketplace, you can browse for all kinds of products, join groups to buy and sell products with people in your area or who share similar interests, shop for products sold from different shops, shop by category, and sell your own products.

To access Facebook Marketplace, press the “Home” button. Then on the left sidebar, you’ll see the “Marketplace: button right under the “Watch” button.

Games

Facebook Games is one of Facebook’s best features. They host a huge collection of massively popular games, and you can browse the most popular games on the platform by top charts and categories. You can even play most of the games with your friends, too.

Conclusion

There you have it. We hope this deep dive into using Facebook will help you build a social media presence and allow you to better connect with your friends, family, and favorite brands.

 

There’s a lot of buzz around “workplace wellness” in the HR industry recently, and for good reason.

The modern day work environment, with long periods of sitting, quick takeout meals in-between meetings, and computer screen eye strain, isn’t conducive to the mental and physical well-being of your employees.

Having happy and healthy employees has proven to result in better productivity, lower healthcare costs, and less turnover. A wellness plan is a critical strategy for making employees happier, which will ultimately improve your company’s bottom line.

But if you’ve got a tight budget and limited resources, a wellness program might seem inconceivable at the moment. 

In actuality, wellness programs can save you money in the long-run — in fact, Health Affairs found every $1 invested in wellness programs saves $3 in healthcare costs for corporations.

Additionally, there are plenty of cost-effective ways to implement workplace wellness initiatives. Here, we’re going to explore the why, what, and how of encouraging wellness in your workplace, so you can create a healthier, more productive culture.

The Five Areas of Well-Being

First off, it’s important we define “well-being” and explain its broad scope, so you can see all the areas of the workplace you might initiate change.

Gallup and Healthways have developed a “Gallup-Healthways Well-Being 5“, which defines five essential elements of well-being:

• Purpose: liking what you do each day and being motivated to achieve your goals
• Social: having supportive relationships and love in your life
• Financial: managing your economic life to reduce stress and increase security
• Community: liking where you live, feeling safe, and having pride in your community
• Physical: having good health and enough energy to get things done daily

When you evaluate these five elements, you soon realize workplace wellness encompasses a lot more than a fancy treadmill room or healthy snacks.

Each of these five elements reinforce one another. For instance, if your employees feel safe and have a sense of community at the office, they’re more likely to participate in group workout classes.

Additionally, financial stress might be a factor playing against your employees physical health — it’s more difficult to eat healthy, go to bed early, and exercise regularly if you’re stressed about your budget. Offering a free budgeting class could mitigate stress and help your employees achieve their long-term health goals.

It’s critical you take a holistic view when considering the well-being of your employees. Gallup has found, when comparing adults thriving in just physical well-being to those thriving in all five elements, that those in the latter group report 41% fewer unhealthy days, are 36% more likely to say they always fully bounce back after an illness, and are 81% less likely to look for a new job when the job market improves.

However, implementing a wellness program is easier said than done. Now, let’s look at some effective wellness program ideas that tackle each of these five wellness elements. 

Employee Wellness Program Ideas

There are innumerable options to encourage and promote a healthier lifestyle at your workplace. Some of these ideas require more money or resources, while others are more cost-effective.

It’s critical you take your work culture into consideration when choosing a wellness strategy. For instance, a more competitive workplace might thrive off a monthly team challenge, while another workplace would prefer volunteering for a day.

Here’s a list of 15 wellness program ideas, varying in cost and impact. For more ideas, consider attending a workplace wellness workshop in your area.

1. Offer flexible hours.

If it’s feasible for your office, consider offering flexible hours. Enabling employees to avoid busy traffic times could reduce stress, and flexible hours can also encourage better work-life balance. For instance, flexible hours might allow an employee to go on a run during her lunch hour, or leave earlier for a yoga class. (If you’re considering flexible hours, take a look at “Flexible Schedules: The Good, Bad, & the Surprising“).

2. Invest in standing desks.

Give your employees the option to stand and improve posture (and core strength) with standing desks. Along with improving health, standing desks have also been found to increase productivity.

3. Organize a team for a charity walk, or plan a volunteer day.

By organizing a charity walk, you’re encouraging both physical activity and a stronger sense of community. Alternatively, you might plan a volunteer day, which helps employees feel proud of their community and socialize with peers.

4. Create lunchtime mindfulness or yoga sessions.

Big corporations like Google, Nike, and Apple already implement mindfulness into their culture, and for good reason. Mindfulness can reduce stress and even change how your brain functions.

Plus, it’s cheap to implement. Maybe you can find an employee who teaches mindfulness or yoga already, and ask her to teach a lunchtime class. If not, you could gather a group and find a mindfulness app to teach the session.

5. Have personalized nutrition counseling.

If possible, hire a nutritionist to offer free counseling for your employees. For instance, HubSpot brings a Holistic Health & Nutrition Coach into the office twice a month (employees are able to sign up for a slot). With employees, the Holistic Health & Nutrition Coach discusses topics such as overall nutrition goals, daily water intake, supplements, energy level, sleep, allergies, and more.

6. Provide access to health assessments.

Office health checks allow employees to get a general overview of their health status, detect disease or risk factors early, and learn about potential issues.

This can have a life-saving impact. For instance, more than 102 million American adults have high cholesterol, putting them at risk for heart disease. By offering health checks, you could help employees avoid long-term health issues down the road.

7. Build a fitness center.

If you have the resources, offering a gym with workout equipment is an exceptional way to promote workplace wellness. Employees can workout during their lunch break or in the afternoon and then get back to their desks. Mid-day workouts could improve employee productivity all day long.

Additionally, you’re relieving a major financial burden by offering a free gym, so employees don’t have to pay for monthly memberships elsewhere. Yale New Haven Hospital built a livingwell Fitness Center to encourage employees (and their spouses) to get more active, and many other corporations offer similar exercise facilities.

8. Create a “Wellness” award.

The MD Anderson Cancer Center implemented a peer-based wellness awards program, in which employees are encouraged to nominate co-workers who they find especially active and healthy. Awards provide incentive for every employee to become more physically active, and also encourage a workplace culture that focuses on well-being as something to strive for.

9. Offer free health and wellness books.

By offering free health and wellness books, you can provide employees the resources necessary to learn how to implement and sustain a healthier lifestyle long-term.

10. Provide healthy snacks.

If you have an office kitchen, consider stocking it with healthy protein bars, fruits, vegetables, or other healthy snacks. Alternatively, try offering healthier meals at lunchtime meetings, rather than relying on pizza.

11. Host “walking” meetings.

Whenever possible, consider making your meeting a “walking” meeting. Take a lap around the block with your team, and use your smartphone as a meeting guide if necessary.

12. Start a wellness newsletter.

One of the most cost-effective options in the list, a wellness newsletter gives you the opportunity to provide employees with tips on reducing stress, increasing physical activity, and eating healthier throughout the day. Additionally, you might ask employees to get involved with writing and distributing the newsletter to foster a stronger sense of community. 

13. Offer on-site medical care.

Some larger corporations, such as American Express, offer on-site medical care to curb healthcare costs and provide easy accessibility for workers. If you have the resources, you might consider offering on-site appointments with dentists, psychiatrists, and other healthcare specialists.

14. Have in-house subsidized massages.

At Google, employees give each other “massage credits” when they believe an employee does an exceptional job on a project. The massage credits can be redeemed for a free one-hour massage on Google’s campus. Massages can help relieve stress, improve blood flow, and prevent injuries — and, as evident at Google, you can use them as incentive for teams to work harder.

15. Create monthly challenges.

Hewlett-Packard Co. created a Global Wellness Challenge to encourage workplace wellness, and the challenge resulted in active participation from 50,000 HP employees in nearly 90 countries. Friendly competition can provide strong incentive for employees to focus on wellness, so consider how you can create your own monthly challenge. You might offer a cash prize, a half-day off from work, or a donation to the winning team’s chosen charity.

How to Successfully Implement Your Wellness Program

Over the past decade, Gallup has surveyed hundreds of employees across industries. They’ve found employees who feel their manager truly cares about their well-being are more likely to be top performers and produce higher quality work, and they are less likely to get sick, change jobs, or be injured at work.

To successfully implement a wellness program, it’s critical you ensure your managers are active promoters of the program. Additionally, it’s important you ask managers to create a culture in which an employee’s well-being is seen as a critical component to the company’s success, not a hinderance to it.

By encouraging lunchtime meditation breaks, healthy meeting snack options, and afternoon workouts, a manager shows her employees that there’s nothing commendable about allowing your health to suffer at the workplace. It’s important your managers see the long-term productivity benefits of encouraging a more well-rounded employee.

Additionally, your managers need to lead by example — if they don’t actively participate in your wellness initiative, your employees might not even know it exists, or lack the motivation to partake.

If necessary, consider offering training or resources so managers can learn how to promote wellness for their own team. Take a look at HealthCulture.com’s Wellness Culture Coaching Toolkit for more information.

Web forms allow you to manage your email lists, accept online payments, review shipping and billing information, learn more about your customers and keep track of new leads registering for accounts. Web forms are integral to maintaining a healthy business and increasing your conversions.

To understand what is and isn’t working when it comes to your forms, you need to analyze the interactions between your forms and website visitors. That’s what web form analytics tools are for — they help you maximize the impact of your web forms through optimization efforts, in-depth tracking and form insights.

There are a number of tools available that help you manage your forms and learn about what and why specific aspects of the forms are (or aren’t) working for your leads.

10 of the Best Form Analytics Tools in 2018

Get the most out of your web forms. Here’s our list of the top ten best form analytics tools of 2018.

1. Formisimo

Source: Formisimo

Formisimo provides you with specific reasons why your website visitors are not completing your forms. With user-behavior insights, you can see how your forms can be improved to increase conversions.

Formisimo has eight types of reports that work with any type of form. You are also able to segment your reports based on format, whether that be desktop, mobile or tablet. The tool provides you with ideas and tips on ways to rectify the issues you’re experiencing with the forms, as well as the ability to export and share the data to keep everyone on your team in the loop.

This in-depth reporting tool and traffic analytics tracker has a simple installation process — simply copy and paste the provided source code on the page, and Formismo starts tracking immediately.

There are different payment and subscription plans available with Formisimo, in addition to a seven-day trial period.

2. HubSpot

Source: HubSpot

HubSpot’s form builder has a traffic analytics integration that allows you to track your web form’s performance and better understand the results.

You can organize your form submissions by specific time periods and see details such as the lead’s name, the page they converted on, the date and time of their conversion and any files they may have uploaded to the form (this is common with “contact us” forms). Lastly, you can share all of the form analytics with anyone internally with the click of a button.

Since HubSpot’s form analytics tool is built into the form builder, you get more value for what you pay.

3. Woopra 

Source: Woopra

With Woopra, you can track traffic at every point of the buyer’s journey. Whether it’s related to customer experience, growth or customer success, the tool has tracking abilities that will show you how your form is performing and the traffic it’s experiencing at certain points in time.

Woopra has behavioral segmentation options that allow you to group leads based on any criteria you choose. For example, segmentation may include grouping people who signed up for an account through an email CTA and grouping another set of people who registered for a free trial through a CTA on your website.

There are three Woopra plans that vary in price based on the type and level of analysis you need.

4. Hotjar 

Source: Hotjar

Hotjar is an analytics and feedback tool that gives you insight into your web forms and your entire customer experience for both desktop and mobile. There are also traffic-related insights that help you understand who is visiting your site.

Hotjar’s analysis feature provides you with the reasons why people tend to abandon your forms and the exact point in time they are most likely to do so. Hotjar has several plans with different payment options: you can get limited use for free, but there are paid options that provide more features.

5. Clicktale

Source: Clicktale

Clicktale is an in-depth traffic and conversion analytics reporting tool. It provides you with data to determine whether or not your forms are performing successfully. The form provides detailed feedback about the number of visitors who interacted with the form and converted, as well as the number of people who failed to submit your completed form after an attempt.

Another unique feature in Clicktale is the ability to pinpoint client and Javascript errors so they can be fixed quickly. The tool has features that help you pick out unnecessary words or fields in your forms, and it gives you recommendations on ways to make the form completion process more efficient.

As for pricing, there are several levels to choose from based on features your business may or may not need. There’s also a free trial period for you to test out the tool.

6. SessionCam

Source: SessionCam

SessionCam tells you exactly why website visitors are abandoning your forms. The tool studies the type of traffic to a form and overall visitor behavior. Drop-off metrics, number of retries and the average amount of time it takes for people to complete specific fields are other metrics that this tool tracks.

With SessionCam, you better understand your form metrics, making it easier to troubleshoot issues and improve traffic, user experience and conversions. The tool records all data and changes to the form so you can look back on how certain changes impacted your form’s performance. SessionCam has integrations with several other analytics tools, such as Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics, which make it easy for you to keep track of everything in one place.

After a 21-day free trial, you can pick the SessionCam plan that works best for your business.

7. Inspectlet

Source: Inspectlet

Inspectlet helps you determine how effectively your forms engage your website traffic and convert visitors. The tool also gives you an overview of the number of website visitors that make it through each stage of the form completion process.

Inspectlet provides analytics about which form fields are causing issues for leads so you can manage problems and fix them as quickly as possible. The tool also analyzes which fields are causing leads to completely abandon the web form.

Pricing ranges from $0 up to $499 per month with six unique Inspectlet plans to choose from.

8. Decibel Insight 

With Decibel Insight, you can measure your overall traffic performance as well as individual interactions with your web forms. The tool collects data and tells you which fields cause leads to have issues and abandon your forms.

One unique feature that Decibel Insight brings is the ability to go back and watch session replays of form interaction. You can see exactly what is and isn’t working for your website visitors and make any necessary changes based on what you see happening during these replays. You can schedule a demo of the tool and chat with an expert about which package would best suit your needs.

8. Mouseflow

Mouseflow works in real-time to give you data about form drop-off, issues with specific form fields, errors, and blank submissions. The tool provides information about form traffic and details about any difficulties a lead may be facing with certain parts of the form.

By monitoring form interactions, Mouseflow is able to provide you with actionable tips on how to increase traffic and conversions, eliminate form pain points and improve overall user experience and usability.

With five plans for you to choose from, and one being “free forever”, there is a Mouseflow option for everyone.

10. Lucky Orange

Source: Lucky Orange

Lucky Orange allows you to watch website visitors interact with your web forms. The tool records visitors’ actions so you can play the video back and see the exact moment that a visitor decided to abandon your form.

Lucky Orange also includes five other form analytics reports that help you better understand your website and form traffic, including explanations behind abandonment (when someone leaves a process on your website such as checkout), time to start (amount of time it takes a lead to start filling out your form) and field time (how long it takes a lead to complete one of your fields). They also allow you to pinpoint specific changes that should be made to your form to boost conversions.

After a seven-day, free trial period, you are able to select from one of five plans that can be paid on a monthly or yearly basis.

Conclusion

With the myriad of form analytics tools available, there’s something that works for everyone. These tools allow you to learn about the type of traffic your forms are bringing in and what you can do to improve conversions. There are several analytics tools that are useful and effective — you should think about what you really need from the tool, consider your monthly budget and sign up for a few free trials to determine which option is your ideal fit.

How many characters of text can News Feed ads have again? What about image dimensions for the Right Column sidebar?

Between various image sizes and character requirements, figuring out how to optimize your Facebook ads for the various page spaces and ad objectives available to you can get pretty confusing.

To take the headache out of preparing to run a Facebook Ad Campaign, here’s a handy cheatsheet of Facebook image ad sizes and dimensions for every type of ad you can purchase on Facebook — no matter what your ad’s objective or call to action is.

Whether you’re running a campaign (or just thinking about it), this resource references everything you need to know to ensure that your ads will look their best across all placements and devices.

Most of the ads available to advertisers on Facebook share universal image dimensions, as explained above. However, there are specifics related to file type, character count, and image-to-text ratio that differ depending on where you place your ad.

The following is a bookmarkable key of Facebook image dimensions, sorted by the type of ad you might want to place.

Standard Facebook Ad Specs

Applies to: News Feed, Right Column, Instant Articles, Marketplace Ads

Standard Facebook image ads — such as the one designed for News Feed, above — should be uploaded as either JPG or PNG files with an image ratio of 9:16 or 16:9. In other words, the image’s height should be nine-sixteenths its width, or vice-versa.

• Image-to-text: 5:1 — If your image design includes text, keep it under 20% of the image to optimize the ad’s audience potential.
• Maximum headline: 25 characters
• Maximum text: 150 characters
• Recommended image resolution: 1,200 x 628 px (600 x 600 px minimum)
• Maximum link description: 30 characters

Facebook Stories

Image ads posted as Facebook Stories last a total of five seconds or until the viewer swipes away from the Story. Your ideal image ratio is 9:16, which means the image’s height should be nine-sixteenths its width.

• Image-to-text: 5:1 — If your Facebook Story includes text, keep it under 20% of the image to optimize the Story’s audience potential.
• Minimum image resolution: 600 x 600 px

Audience Network Native Ads

Native Ads on Facebook place your brand on the mobile News Feeds of users who have viewed sites and apps that are within your target audience’s network. These ads’ images should be uploaded as either JPG or PNG files with an image ratio of 16:9. In other words, the image’s height should be nine-sixteenths its width.

• Image-to-text: 5:1 — If your image design includes text, keep it under 20% of the image to optimize the ad’s audience potential.
• Maximum headline: 25 characters
• Maximum text: 125 characters
• Recommended image resolution: 1,200 x 628 px (254 x 133 px minimum)
• Maximum link description: 30 characters

Sponsored Messages

Applies to: Sponsored Messages and Messenger Inbox

Sponsored Messages on Facebook, such as the ad by Uber, above — appear in your audience’s private inboxes in Facebook Messenger. Images should be uploaded as either JPG or PNG files with an image ratio of 9:16 or 16:9. In other words, the image’s height should be nine-sixteenths of its width, or vice-versa.

• Image-to-text: 5:1 — If your image design includes text, keep it under 20% of the image to optimize the Sponsored Message’s delivery potential.
• Maximum headline: 25 characters
• Maximum text: 125 characters
• Recommended image resolution: 1,200 x 628 px (254 x 133 px minimum)
• Maximum link description: 30 characters

Facebook carousel ads allow viewers to click through a rotating “carousel” of images all designed to elaborate on a special offer by the company paying for the ad. These ads display in most of the same places as standard Facebook ads: a user’s News Feed, the right column sidebar, through Instant Articles, and even in a user’s Facebook Messenger inbox.

Standard Carousel Image Specs

Applies to: News Feed, Right Column, Instant Articles, Marketplace, Native Network Ads

Standard Facebook Carousel ads — such as the one designed for News Feed, above — allow you to display two to 10 images in rotation all in one ad placement. Images should be uploaded as either JPG or PNG files.

• Maximum headline: 40 characters
• Maximum text: 125 characters (excluding Right Column)
• Recommended image resolution: 1,080 x 1,080 px
• Maximum link description: 20 characters (excluding Right Column, Messenger Inbox)
• Maximum image file size: 30MB
• Maximum video length: 240 minutes per card in a carousel (excluding Messenger Inbox)
• Maximum video file size: 4GB (excluding Messenger Inbox)

Instagram Stories Carousels

Instagram Stories can use carousel ads to show between two and three images or videos all in the same Story on Instagram.

Recommended image resolution: 1,080 x 1,920 px

Maximum video duration: 15 seconds per card in a carousel

Instagram Feed Carousels

Just like Facebook’s Carousel ad dimensions, Instagram Feeds can support between two and 10 cards per carousel, displayed on the homepage of a user’s Instagram feed. Images should be uploaded as either JPG or PNG files.

• Maximum text: Two rows of text (the rest will be truncated)
• Maximum number of hashtags in text: 30
• Recommended image resolution: 1,080 x 1,080 px
• Maximum image file size: 30MB
• Maximum video length: 120 seconds per card in a carousel
• Maximum video file size: 4 GB

So many ad specs, so little time. Bookmark this Facebook ads key for later and get to drafting your next eye-catching advertisement designed for you audience.

 

If Google were a person, it would be standing at the front door of your home, asking, “Can I come in?”

In a way, that was one of the chief takeaways from today’s Made by Google event: an annual product unveiling hosted by Google where it formally announces the launch of its new hardware, like mobile devices and smart speakers.

In previous years, all eyes have been on the Google Pixel: the company’s own smartphone that, when first launched, was seen by many as its answer to Apple’s iPhone.

But seeing as the weeks leading up to the event were plagued by a cascade of product leaks regarding the Pixel 3 (of which Google tried to make light with an opening video montage of leaked video), putting the spotlight on this one product would have been anti-climactic, to say the least.

And while the event didn’t stray from the Pixel 3 entirely, any talk of it was part of a broader focus shift — to how to Google-fy your home, and your life. 

Here’s how to do just that — and the three biggest takeaways from this year’s Made by Google event.

The Rise of the Ecosystem

Let’s have a look at three of the biggest companies within the tech sector: Amazon, Apple, and Google.

All three of these companies started out known for one, core product or service: buying books online, computers, and a search engine. But now, they’re all known for so much more — many of them within the same product category.

All three make tablets. All three make smart TVs, or accessories to support them. And all three make smart speakers, each one powered by the brand’s own voice assistant (Alexa, Siri, and Assistant, respectively). And each brand’s hardware products are built to work in tandem with each other — and not work as well with similar products with other brands.

That’s what we call a product ecosystem.

Google Hub works with Nest, which Google owns. Amazon’s Echo Show works with Ring, which Amazon owns. Battle between Google and Amazon is more than just for hardware, it’s for the whole platform in your home. #MadeByGoogle pic.twitter.com/COtO99DUyB

— Eli Blumenthal (@eliblumenthal)
October 9, 2018

3 New Products Announced at Made By Google

1. The Google Home Hub, its video-equipped smart speaker, which seemed to dominate a good chunk of time at the event.
2. The Pixel Slate, its tablet.
3. The Pixel 3.

The Google Home Hub is arguably at the center of the company’s product ecosystem. It’s powered by Google Assistant, and allows users to both see and hear responses to queries (ranging from “What’s the weather?” to “What’s a recipe for banana bread?”).

But the Hub is also equipped to control other Google-owned or branded devices, including those that are made specifically for the Home (such as Nest, a company owned by Google that makes “smart” devices like thermostats and security cameras).

Owners of these Google-made devices have always been able to control them through Assistant. But depending on what they’re using to prompt Assistant, it may have been a fragmented experience. For instance, if you don’t own a Google Home smart speaker or a Google phone, you’d have to open a separate app to use Assistant.

One of the goals of the Hub, it seems, is to make that process more seamless, and create a single hardware destination where users can control every device in their home, and get information in an audio-visual way. They can play music on their Google Homes. They can cast a TV show to their smart TVs using Google Chromecast. They can turn their Nest cameras on and off. 

 This particular product has the potential to make longtime iPhone users finally jump into a fully Google-branded home ecosystem. As a stubborn iPhone user myself, I can also admit to owning a Google Home, Nest cameras, and a Google Chromecast. So why not own add a device to the collection that can cohesively manage all the others?

Then, add the Pixel 3 to the equation. Sure, its official debut today was preceded by an unprecedented number of leaks. But it serves as another channel or platform to seamlessly manage many of the devices I already own in one place. Plus, it’s equipped with a feature that lets you screen for telemarketers and automatically ask them not to call you again — without even picking up. (And how cool is that?)

Source: Google

Google Knows It Started as a Search Engine — and That Will Bleed Into All of Its Products

One of the first statistics cited at today’s event paid tribute to Google’s origins as a search engine. Search queries made on Google Home, said Google’s VP of Product Management Diya Jolly, have gone up 400% over the past year.

In many ways, the evolution of Google’s foray into hardware is rooted in its position as a leader in search. Many of these devices, while equipped with multiple functionalities, serve as physical distribution channels for users to find information through Google.

These aren’t just simple links with possible answers to questions like, “Who was the 26th president of the U.S.?” For a while now, Google has shown signs of potentially (and eventually) removing a list of links from its search results completely, by way of surfacing quick answers in a featured snippet at the top of the results page.

 Source: Google

Devices like the Hub serve as yet another way to get those quick answers, but in a variety of formats. A search for how to do something could yield an instructional video result from YouTube (also owned by Google), which can be immediately played on the Hub, the Assistant app, or on Google phones that come equipped with Assistant (similar to how iPhones are equipped with Siri, Apple’s voice assistant).

Even the Pixel 3 plays a part here. Not only is Assistant built into it, it automatically equipped with assistant, but its camera will come equipped with Lens: Google’s artificial-intelligence (AI)-powered image recognition technology that allows the camera to recognize objects and text.

For example, if a camera with Lens capabilities hovers on a takeout menu, it can recognize the restaurant, Google says, and pull up its phone number. If your friend is wearing a shirt you like, the camera will recognize its brand and tell you where to buy it.

Source: Google

Lens serves as another way for users to find information, albeit a quasi-futuristic one that has yet to be proven by public use. But information-finding is at Google’s core — and it seems that it will continue to be for future generations of its hardware to come.

Putting the User First

What Google will tell you about the connected nature of these products is that they’re all designed with one thing in mind: making life easier for the user.

Does that mean permeating all facets of the user’s home and life? Maybe. But it also means making sure that the user can quickly and seamlessly find the information she needs across the suite of these devices and the technology that powers them — whether it’s a question about history, a flight reminder, or a question about the weather.

What’s more, is that information-finding mission is paired with personalization. Many of Google’s historical search algorithm updates, for example, have been made with the purpose of making search results more relevant to the user. That’s underscored by the company’s VP of Hardware Rick Osterloh calls a “deep responsibility to provide you with a helpful, personal Google experience … that guides the work we do.”

Now, that personalization will surface in more places. Call it what you will — commercialization, or an effort to sell more products under the same company’s umbrella. But here’s the thing: It could work.

Convenience, relevance, and personalization more important to consumers than ever. And those three things are connected. Information that isn’t relevant seems like a waste of time. And if it’s not personalized, that sends the message that it was conveyed by someone who doesn’t care about what we want or need — also not a good use of our time.

So maybe we can all observe a lesson from Google here — despite its missteps. Make life easier for your audience through whatever product, service, or content you offer. If that comes in multiple forms, make sure life is even better when they’re used in tandem (but that they still function just as well on their own). And above all else: Solve for the humans at the other end of everything you do. 

Google Assistant — the search engine giant’s digital personal assistant that can answer questions, set alarms, play music, and more — turned two earlier this month.

And to celebrate its birthday, Assistant got what Google is calling “a makeover”: a refresh of its core mobile app that seeks to strike a fair balance between both voice commands and those done by touch or text.

As is the case with most voice assistants, Assistant’s capabilities — or “Actions,” the name Google has ascribed to the things it can do — were built around what the name suggests: verbal user commands made either through its core mobile app, or the “smart” hardware equipped with Assistant technology (like the Google Home smart speaker, as well as certain smart headphones and TVs).

But Google found that “nearly half” of all Assistant engagements somehow included both voice and touch — and it’s refreshed the core Assistant app to make it easier to use both.

Source: Google

These changes weren’t just made with consumers in mind, though. The “makeover” also includes new tools and use cases for brands and marketers. Here’s a look at them.

Better Personalization

According to Google, there’s an experiential gap that causes users to abandon interactions with third-party brands on voice assistants.

In order to complete these transactions, users usually have to log into their accounts with these brands, or create a new one — which, when doing so through a voice assistant, typically “requires the user to open a web browser and manually log in to a merchant’s website,” writes Google Product Manager Mikhail Turilin.

That one an extra step, says Turilin, is often enough to make the user drop the process completely. After all, can you remember your passwords for all of your ecommerce or online retail accounts? I can’t.

That could explain the appeal of voice assistants — like Amazon’s Alexa — that make these transactions more seamless. It’s also why some users prefer to use single sign-on options that allow them to log into multiple sites or apps using their credentials from networks like Google or Facebook.

To help brands combat this fragmented login experience, Google has introduced Google Sign-In for the Assistant, which allows users to sign into their third-party brand accounts (or create new ones) within the Assistant app, while engaging in a brand Action.

This sign-in integration allows brands to personalize interactions with users on yet another channel. By logging into their accounts on a voice assistant platforms, users are also importing their preferences there, like previous orders, saved forms of payment, and loyalty program memberships.

Source: Google

Google recently made some changes to the way third-party app requests for permissions are displayed for users, which can be reviewed here. Meanwhile, check out Google’s guide to getting started with this integration.

Creating Visual Experiences

Sometimes, it’s not enough for an Assistant experience to be truly personalized — it also has to be engaging. We’ve written before about how factors like like good copy and visual content make for a positive, engaging messaging experience. Interacting with a brand on the Assistant platform, it seems, is no exception.

Luckily, Assistant’s makeover also includes new tools for brands to create and pre-load visual content that can be used in their Actions; for example, responding to different user inputs with animated GIF images, or supplementing answers to user queries with photos and videos.

Here’s a great channel where brands can position themselves as knowledgable sources of content pertaining to a given topic in a way that delights users — even if it isn’t a direct extension of their products or services.

A local car dealership or garage might not necessarily use Assistant to sell automobiles or oil changes, but it can use these visual experience tools share a “virtual test drive” video, or share helpful, tactical content like a video on how to change a tire in an emergency.

Source: Google

Selling Digital Products and Services

It’s possible that your business doesn’t sell physical products — or that it sells digital items to complement them (like product bundles or service subscriptions sold online).

Google has introduced new tools for digital product and service transactions, as well. Within Assistant Actions, brands can sell “digital goods” like product upgrades, which is particularly helpful if your product is something like an app, game, or software. Now, if a user wants to purchase a paid add-on or subscription, that can be done through a brand’s Assistant Action.

Here’s a look at how meditation app Headspace uses Assistant to offer plan subscriptions:

Source: Google

You may have noticed that the transaction in the image above was completed with Google Pay. Assistant now also allows users to make in-app purchases with Google Pay within a brand’s Action, once again making the experience more seamless. Instead of fumbling for a credit card, users can complete the purchase with Google Pay, where payment information is already stored ( if they have accounts set up).

Learn more about building these transactions here.

The Bottom Line

When evaluating these news tools and features, it’s important to remember why voice assistants were created in the first place: “For removing the friction of daily in-the-moment activities,” says HubSpot VP of Marketing Meghan Keaney Anderson, like “finding a place to get an oil change on the way to your next appointment.”

By introducing these new marketing resources, Assistant is making it easy for brands, too, to reduce this type of friction — to make it easier to engage with and buy from them on a platform they might already be using for other tasks or activities.

I’ve written before about using my Google Home smart speaker — which is powered by Assistant technology — as an all-in-one stereo, alarm clock, and white noise machine. So why haven’t I used the app more, especially to engage with some of the brands whose products and services I prefer?

The answer, and the missing piece: Those brands weren’t on Assistant. There was no way for me to engage with them there.

But now that Google has introduced this suite of tools for businesses, it’s entirely possible that those brands will have a presence on Assistant, and create new ways for me to engage with them through a platform (my Google Home) in a way that wasn’t previously available.

As for where brands can begin, Keaney Anderson advises marketers to think about how (and if) Assistant might make sense as a distribution channel for their expertise, products, or services.

“If you’re a B2B company, the first step would be to think about whether you have a good in-the-moment use case for Assistant, and then address how to systematically reduce friction in that use case,” she says. “Let’s say you’re a subscription product that allows people to store contacts in a CRM. Using Google Assistant, users could add contacts by voice after meeting them at a network event.”

This particular in-the moment use case also shows the value of being able to seamlessly upgrade through a single platform, too. “What happens when a user finds that they’ve reached their limit of contacts they can add without upgrading? That’s friction,” Keaney Anderson notes. “Google’s latest expansion would enable users to upgrade, all without ever leaving that flow.”

And even if Assistant isn’t necessarily the best platform for your particular brand, the lesson stands: Remove friction. Make life (and engagement with you) easier for your audience. And, as always — meet your audience where they already are.

Featured image credit: Google

Here’s the nice thing about video advertising — it’s the ad format with the highest engagement rates on the internet, and since mobile video viewing is breaking records in 2018, more and more people are ready to watch your video ads.

Does that mean that your next video advertisement will magically perform better than your image ads? Not necessarily. It’s easier said than done.

A video ad requires more work than an image ad, a bigger budget, and coordination with more people. There’s also a higher probability of doing it wrong and undermining the success of your next marketing campaign.

To ensure the highest likelihood of success, I’ve created an infographic outlining the critical actions you must take — or avoid — when creating a video ad. 

This infographic will teach you how to design your next video ad for maximum performance, and the most important tips to promote it successfully on your favorite social media channel.

Let’s dive right it.

Hiring for a retail store isn’t easy.

You might find a candidate with a ton of prior experience in retail, but a poor ability to connect with your customers. Or, perhaps you interview someone who is sociable and helpful, but doesn’t have the ambition to drive sales.

Your retail employees are the face of your brand, and often the number one defense against e-commerce stores like Amazon. If customers like your salespeople, they might return for the excellent customer service alone.

Additionally, you’ll need competent employees who can work efficiently to avoid long store lines. If you think this isn’t a big problem, think again — according to a new report conducted by Adyen, retailers are losing a collective $37.7 billion in potential sales due to long checkout lines.

To ensure you’re hiring the best, most efficient retail workers, take a look at the five best retail interview questions you should ask, and how an ideal candidate would answer them.

1. Why do you want to work in retail/at our company?

Working in retail is challenging, and isn’t for everyone. You need employees who are capable of handling difficult customers, standing on their feet for long periods of time, and generally willing to drive sales even when they’re tired.

For this reason, it’s critical you ask this question. An ideal candidate will focus her answer on your company, highlighting why your brand is important to her and what she likes about your merchandise. Additionally, you’ll want a candidate who says she enjoys interacting with people, and will go out of her way to be helpful to your customers.

2. What do you consider good customer service?

Ultimately, customer service is about listening to the customer and doing your best to accommodate that person’s unique needs. It’s about remaining engaging and helpful, but also empathetic when a customer is frustrated.

An ideal candidate will say something like this, “Good customer service is valuing every person who enters the store, and doing my best to ensure their needs are met. Additionally, good customer service means remaining friendly and engaging, so a customer leaves the store feeling appreciated.”

If your candidate can’t adequately answer this question, it’s a sign she isn’t ready for the customer-facing aspect of the job. 

3. Can you provide an example of a time when you went above and beyond for a customer?

You don’t want an employee who only does the bare minimum required. If you want to retain customers long-term, it’s critical your employee goes above and beyond.

For instance, if you don’t have an item in-store and your customer wants it, you want an employee who goes out of her way to order it online and ship it to the customer, free of charge.

Additionally, you want someone who goes beyond the “Hello” greeting at the door. Collecting clothes to put into a fitting room, asking if the customer needs different sizes, and mentioning store discounts are all ways your employee can show your customers they matter.

Ideally, your candidate will be able to offer multiple examples of times she went above and beyond for customers. You want this to be the norm in your store, not a rare occurrence.

4. If a customer is rude, unruly, or confrontational, what do you do?

When working in customer service, it’s guaranteed your employee will occasionally come across frustrated or rude customers. You’ll need a candidate who knows how to show empathy and de-escalate the situation, rather than make matters worse.

For instance, your candidate should say something like this — “If a customer is being rude or confrontational, I first recognize there’s a reason for it, even if I don’t know what that is. I do my best to show empathy, and try to figure out the root of the problem. Then, I focus on potential solutions, rather than ruminating over the issue. The quicker I can reach a resolution, the faster the customer will likely calm down and become more polite.”

You don’t want a candidate who believes it’s okay to fight back, or ask the customer to leave the store. Instead, you need a candidate who is calm and empathetic during stressful customer interactions, and remains focused on finding a solution.

5. How do you make sales and promote a high-value average transaction?

Remember, the best retail employees aren’t just there to be helpful to your customers — they’re also there to help your business grow.

You want a candidate who can remain focused on making a profit for your company. For instance, an ideal candidate will say, “I focus on what the customer wants, and do my best to mention related products. For instance, if they’ve chosen a book as a birthday gift for a friend, I might mention fuzzy socks or a nice candle as a complementary gift. By focusing on the customer’s goal, I’m typically able to make sales by offering helpful and relevant suggestions.”

Whether you’re selling online products or a packaged service, efficient businesses have one thing in common: great managers.

Overseeing a specific project, area of the business or company in general, they’re critical to making sure things get delivered on time, every time.

That’s because managers have complete control of resources — including people, technology, and budgets.

But how exactly do you become an excellent manager, and make the most out of your resources?

Continue reading to find out, or click to jump to a specific section.

What Do Managers Do?

Whether you’re hoping to become a manager or intrigued about what one does, managers are typically responsible for a variety of tasks. We cover the main ones below.

Set Goals

No matter the industry you’re working in, goals are essential for success. After all, it’s how managers ensure their teams are meeting targets.

Managers set smaller goals for their team, which impact company-wide targets. For example, if a company-wide target was to “increase sales by 25% year-on-year,” a sales manager may set goals for each of their team members to deliver 20 software demos each week.

In short: managers set smaller, more achievable goals to help their team to meet bigger targets — and communicate this to all members of staff.

Plan and Organize

Similar to goals, solid plans are the foundation of any successful project. You can’t meet goals if you don’t have a plan to achieve them, right?

That’s also the job of a manager: to plan and organize how they’ll meet their goals — and delegate tasks to people who can make it happen.

Direct All Staff

Once a manager delegates tasks, they then give direction to all their team members.

People look up to their managers — acting as a positive role model in the workplace, managers provide support and direct their employees, so they meet goals and targets.

Monitor and Evaluate

If something in a project’s workflow is taking longer than expected or isn’t on-course to meet the deadline, managers will spot it.

That’s because managers continuously monitor and evaluate their workflows.

They ask staff for feedback and immerse themselves in the project. They also analyze what worked and didn’t work, noting this for next time they’re managing a similar project.

Build a High-Performance Team

Although there are several management styles, all of them have one thing in common: they build a solid team of high performers who get work done — on time, every time.

Managers do this by:

• Encouraging communication.
• Giving praise. 
• Delegating tasks according to staff skills.
• Coaching all members of their team.
• Giving feedback.
• Solving collaboration problems.
• Defining roles, responsibilities, and timelines.

Hire New Staff

Since managers oversee projects, they need to have some input in the hiring process.

This helps managers hire people with skill sets their current team might be missing. Having the ability to pick new talent falls under resource management.

For that reason, managers are always recruiting and looking to hire top talent.

However, managers also have the unhappy responsibility of firing a staff member who’s not pulling their weight.

Common Leadership Styles

When you’re managing people and delegating tasks, managers often follow specific leadership styles. This helps staff know where they stand with their superiors and sets a precedent of the standard of work expected.

There are six main types of managers, including:

Directive and Commanding Managers

When you think of the word “manager,” you wouldn’t be alone if you thought they were demanding, threatening, and often arrogant.

This approach is called a “directive” leadership style — stereotypical managers, or micromanagers, who follow the “do as I say, not as I do” approach to managing resources.

Directive managers rarely do the work. Instead, they give demands for other people to do it — sometimes in a threatening manner.

This leadership style can work well in urgent situations and allows managers to understand where work stands.

However, staff might struggle to relate to this type of manager. Not only could this management style make them wary of voicing concerns and giving feedback, but directive managers might struggle to motivate their team and create a high-performance workforce.

Persuasive Managers

Similar to directive leadership styles, persuasive managers give demands and rarely ask for employee feedback.

However, managers try to persuade their employees to do things, rather than just telling them straight.

For example, a persuasive manager might say “if we get this done, I’ll treat you to lunch.”

Although this leadership style can help motivate employees, communication is still limited. Staff members don’t have the opportunity to voice their feedback, which could lead to poor quality work.

Consultive Managers

Consultive managers always ask for employee feedback and view their role as more of a team leader than a high-level manager.

Often having open door policies, this management style makes people feel like their more involved. This is useful if you’re managing a large team.

However, consultive managers might struggle to get work done. Since they’re always waiting for feedback from other people, they need to push harder to make progress.

Affiliative Managers

Focusing on teamwork and building relationships, affiliative leaders use personal connections to get work done faster and more effectively.

They’re likely to plan team-building days and find unique ways to encourage staff to work well together.

While this leadership style can help staff to be more accountable for their work, affiliative managers often struggle with conflict. Any conflict could impact the entire project, and impact staff’s focus.

Pacesetting Managers

This type of manager doesn’t let their team do all of the work — they get involved and do some themselves.

Setting a good example and expecting staff to follow it, pacesetting managers provide their team members with a positive role model. And their high energy and constant drive to do more can be a massive motivation for their staff.

On the other hand, pacesetting managers could have the opposite effect on people who take longer to digest information. What takes an experienced manager two minutes could take someone else 15, meaning they could feel discouraged if they’re not up to the same speed.

Laissez-Faire Managers

Typically, these leaders take on more of a coaching role than a manager.

That’s because laissez-faire managers aim to make staff happy, and focus more on company culture rather than meeting tight deadlines.

Laissez-faire managers often see less employee turnover because they’re always striving to keep staff happy.

However, with minimal pressure on staff to get work done, it could lead to low performance.

It’s possible to be a leader without managing staff directly, but managers should have leadership qualities if they want to maximize their team’s performance. 

Qualities of great managers and leaders include:

• Honesty
• Empathy
• Creativity and versatility
• Focus and discipline
• Self-awareness
• Motivation
• Accountability
• Confidence
• Responsibility to build and manage relationships

Leadership is all about setting vision, leading by example, and motivating your team to follow you … not to work for you.

Source

How to Set Goals to Focus Your Team

Great managers know how to make the most out of their team. For managers to succeed, they need to set goals and make sure their staff is focused. This can be done by:

Using a Project Management Tool

When a project is active over an extended period, staff members might be unsure of where they are in the process, forget a deadline, or need someone else to do something before they can start on their next task.

A central tool or software to store this data can prevent this, and keep all members of the team up-to-speed with the whole project.

Delegating Tasks Wisely

Assigning tasks based on employee’s skills helps them to focus and meet targets.

So, if you know someone is great with numbers, give them a math-based task rather than a writing assignment.

Not only does delegating tasks help to motivate employees, it also helps save time. They already know what they’re doing!

Simplifying and Streamlining

If you have three smaller but similar tasks, you could boost employee performance by giving them to one person — rather than three individuals.

This helps people feel more in control of that specific project, which means they are usually quicker to meet deadlines.

Giving Staff Something to Aim For

When you’re aiming to focus your team and reach goals, think about what’s in it for them — other than their bi-weekly paycheck.

Give your staff something to aim for: Percentages of overall profit from the project they’re working on, team days out, or shares in the companycould be the extra push they need to complete their tasks on time.

Setting Check-in Meetings

If the project you’re working on is long or ongoing, your team’s output might start to dwindle.

This isn’t uncommon and can happen due to boredom, confusion, or being unsure of what they need to do next.

You can prevent this from impacting your deadlines by setting regular check-in meetings. Weekly or bi-weekly discussions can help get everyone back on track and give staff the opportunity to voice concerns that are restricting their output.

How Can Managers Be More Effective?

1. Set SMART goals that people can realistically achieve.
2. Delegate tasks according to employee skills.
3. Encourage employees to give feedback through asking questions.
4. Listen to your team.
5. Recognize and reward staff achievements.
6. Set a good example.
7. Customize your leadership style for individuals, projects, and deadlines.
8. Be transparent.
9. Make your working environment fun and positive.

How to Motivate Your Employees

Good leaders and managers know how to get the most out of their team. However, there’s one small thing that makes this possible: motivation.

If employees aren’t motivated to work, they’re unlikely to meet deadlines — and achieve goals.

However, if your team is motivated and comes to the office ready to start working, it’ll lead to better performance and higher job satisfaction.

You can experience these benefits and motivate your staff through using these tactics:

Recognize and Reward

Because analyzing is part of a manager’s daily to-do list, they should be able to see how staff are performing.

Recognizing this, and rewarding their good behavior, can be a fantastic boost of motivation for your team. If their hard work is paying off, they’ll be sure to continue performing at a high level.

That’s why achievement and recognition have been found to lead to higher job satisfaction.

Be sure to reward members of your staff that are working outside of the box or helping other employees meet their targets.

Suitable rewards could be leading a project, gift vouchers to a free lunch, or a day off. Showing that you take notice of hard work, and appreciate it, is a surefire way to motivate staff.

Create a Positive Company Culture

Company culture is dependant on your work environment.

Since managers always want to boost their team’s performance, crafting a positive company culture could be the motivation boost they need to meet their goals.

Managers should make employees feel:

• Recognized.
• Valued for their thoughts and ideas.
• Encouraged to do their best work.

Creating a culture based on openness, communication, and appreciation of one another can help to achieve this.

Explain Impact

Instead of following the directive leadership style, managers can motivate their employees by explaining the impact they’re making.

One study saw a 7% improvement in productivity when a group of workers saw how their actions had a positive impact in the factory.

You could use this methodology to motivate staff by explaining:

• How their actions are impacting customers — i.e., “if we get this task done quickly, people in our local community can enjoy a hot meal.”
• How their actions are impacting the company — i.e., “if we can complete this project ahead of schedule, we’ll be able to charge an extra $5,000 — this could help us upgrade your old desktop computers.”

The tactic may sound obvious, but it’s often underused.

Help Your Team Meet Personal Goals

No matter where a member of staff falls in your organization’s hierarchy, they’re likely to have personal career goals.

That could be:

• To move into a different department.
• To earn a certain salary.
• To become the manager of a big project.

As a manager, you can motivate staff by understanding their personal goals — and by helping your team members reach them.

This can be done by regularly scheduling meetings and taking time to understand new members. Work together to create a long-term plan, and explain how their performance now affects the likelihood of meeting their personal goal.

Get to Know Everyone

Take some time out of your schedule and get to know everyone you’re managing.

Ask about their family, make friends with your team, and learn what makes them tick.

Remember: one size doesn’t fit all when it comes to managing. You might need to adapt your leadership style for different people on your team and push each person at their own pace.

Over To You

Now you’ve learned what it takes to become a great manager, and you can start building a solid team that helps you to produce fantastic work.

Remember: staff who connect with their managers enjoy their work —reducing employee turnover.

If you can build a leadership strategy that makes the workplace fun and boosts staff performance, you’re sure to have a high performing team.

Last year, Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) startups raised over $3 billion in venture capital. Coupled with a 47% increase in active virtual reality users from 2017 to 2018, the VR market is set for some explosive growth in the near future.

For marketers, virtual reality’s ability to deeply engage people in immersive experiences and transport them to places they could only imagine going to makes it one of the most exciting emerging technologies in the industry.

But branded VR experiences are still in its infancy. Most marketing teams don’t know how to use the technology to its full potential.

To learn how to effectively leverage VR, we decided to make a list of the top VR startups and showcase how they’ve been able to use the technology to raise hundreds of millions of dollars in venture capital and build successful businesses.

If you want stay ahead of the VR curve in 2019 and beyond, check out these seven startups.

7 VR Startups to Keep an Eye On In 2019

1. Surgical Theater

The third highest cause of death isn’t a ravenous disease or motor vehicle accidents — it’s medical errors. These errors are usually due to the extreme difficulty of treating each unique patient with absolute precision, especially during surgery.

It’s even harder to mitigate this prevalent problem because the only way surgeons can prepare for an operation is usually by planning and practicing surgery on a generic two-dimensional model of the human body.

Fortunately, with Surgical Theater, a VR system that can combine a patient’s MRIs, CT scans, and angiograms to reconstruct a 3D model of their brain’s unique anatomy, neurosurgeons can explore each of their patient’s arteries, bones, and tissue, accurately plan the surgery, and even practice the upcoming brain surgery on the 3D model.

Brain surgeons also use Surgical Theater to walk patients through their brain’s anatomy and the entire process of their surgery, making patients feel more informed about the details of their procedure.

Neurosurgeons can train with Surgical Theater similar to the way fighter pilots train with flight simulators, and some of the country’s top academic hospitals, like UCLA, NYU, University Hospitals Case Medical Center, Mayo Clinic, Mount Sinai, and Stanford University, have implemented the technology to advance their neurosurgery efforts.

2. VirtualSpaces

Selling a property that hasn’t been constructed yet is one of the biggest challenges real estate professionals face today. Blueprints don’t do the potential property justice — it’s almost impossible for people to sense its scale, size, height and depth. The human imagination can only visualize so much.

On top of that, most people are too busy during the week to tour property, so a lot of real estate professionals heavily depend on the weekends to showcase their realty. Getting people to walk through properties that are far away is also another challenge for real estate professionals.

But with VirtualSpaces, a mobile VR technology that can build immersive, three-dimensional visualizations of properties with only a blueprint, real estate professionals can overcome these common challenges.

With VirtualSpaces, real estate professionals can send digital properties to their potential clients at any time, transport them to the property from the comfort of their own couch, and walk them through its entire concept. And this allows them to provide unprecedented convenience, get potential clients excited about the property’s potential, and expedite their sales cycle.

3. Avametric

Even though online shopping is more convenient than going to the mall, brick and mortar stores still have one huge advantage over their digital counterparts: dressing rooms.

Last year, Retail Dive surveyed over 1,400 consumers about why they chose to shop at stores rather than the internet. They discovered that 62% of shoppers want to touch, feel, and try out items before they buy them, which you can’t do at most ecommerce stores.

With Avametric, though, brands can build virtual dressing rooms, enabling customers to try on their clothes from their own home. All shoppers have to do is plug in their body measurements into the mobile app and it’ll project a 3D model of their body with the selected outfit on.

Avametric has built virtual dressing rooms for big retail brands like Gap, Ann Taylor, and Alternative Apparel, making it a VR startup with a ton of upside potential.

4. Virtual Speech

Practicing a speech without an audience can be helpful, but the experience doesn’t truly emulate the pressure of an evaluating crowd. You can nail a dry run ten times in a row on your own, but when you actually step on stage and see an ocean of people staring at you, the nerves can debilitate your public speaking abilities.

Fortunately, VirtualSpeech can help you hone your public speaking skills — the app places you on a virtual stage with a virtual crowd, where you can practice your speech or presentation in front of an audience that imitates the mannerisms and sounds of real people. Their movements and noises are fully customizable, so you can ramp up the distractions and virtual judgement as much as possible.

At the end of your virtual speeches, the app will analyze and score your verbal and nonverbal communication. You can also add your own slides into your virtual presentation, practice for job interviews, learn how to network, and sell in a wide range of sales situations too.

Virtual Speech offers soft skills training courses and packages for individuals, teams, and companies too.

5. Neurable

Mind control of everyday objects might seem like science fiction today, but with virtual reality, it’s already a proven concept.

Using Neurable’s wireless brain-computer interface platform, people can interact with virtual and augmented reality applications with only their brain activity, avoiding lag-prone technologies like eye-tracking and voice commands.

Neurable leverages machine learning and a non-invasive method of monitoring brain activity called electroencephalography or EEG to accurately and instantly detect what your brain wants to do. And since using your brain is faster and easier than using controllers, brain-computer interface platforms like Neurable could be the future of VR.

6. Vivid Vision

Most healthcare VR startups provide solutions for doctors and surgeons, but Vivid Vision focuses on the people who truly need help: patients. By designing VR games that treat lazy eye, Vivid Vision provides a non-invasive cure to a common eye issue people can suffer from for their entire lives.

Vivid Vision also partners with over 180 eye clinics around the world to provide their most advanced and personalized treatment for lazy eye. But if you just want to do their vision therapy at home, you can get a prescription from your doctor to buy their less complex treatment program.

7. Jaunt VR

Jaunt VR wants to make immersive storytelling the future of entertainment. The startup offers hundreds of 360-degree films, shows, documentaries, tours and concerts on their app, all in virtual reality.

When you slide on your headset, you’ll transport to a virtual room where you can choose from a massive collection of immersive experiences, segmented by 20 different channels. At the touch of a button, you can tour the awe-inspiring Redwood National Park, go through the San Francisco Giants pre-game routine and take the field with them during opening day, or sit back and enjoy Emmy winning documentaries.

Jaunt’s content is already engaging on its own, but in virtual reality, you’ll actually feel like you’re experiencing the events they’ve documented.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that a bug discovered in March may have granted access to the private data of nearly half a million Google+ users.

Google+ is search engine giant Google’s social network, which since its 2011 inception was often the butt of jokes for being a largely unused attempt to copy Facebook.

Out of fear for “immediate regulatory interest,” write the WSJ‘s Douglas MacMillan and Robert McMillan, Google chose not to reveal the data breach to the public.

What Happened

As part of its overarching Project Strobe third-party app developer data access review system, Google discovered (and reportedly fixed) in March a bug that mistakenly allowed these developers access to Google+ user profile information fields that had been marked as private.

These fields include name, email address, occupation, gender and age. According to Google’s official statement, the information potentially exposed “does not include any other data you may have posted or connected to Google+ or any other service, like Google+ posts, messages, Google account data, phone numbers or G Suite content.”

According to a memo reviewed by and two parties close to the incident who spoke with the WSJ, the bug has existed since 2015. In between that time and discovery of the bug this past March, 496,951 users shared this private profile information with a friend who could, in turn, have had it improperly obtained by a third-party developer.

As many as 438 applications could have used the API that would allow access to this profile data.

Google has asserted that it “found no evidence that any developer was aware of this bug, or abusing the API, and we found no evidence that any Profile data was misused.”

However, Google has also implied that it does not know the full extent of the data breach, noting that it “cannot confirm which users were impacted by this bug.”

Since Google only maintains activity logs related to this type of app activity for two weeks at a time — and since the bug has existed since 2015 but wasn’t discovered until nearly three years later — the full extent of the breach remains unclear. Google, says the WSJ, is still “unable to determine … what types of data may potentially have been improperly collected.”

What Comes Next

Google has said it will now sunset Google+, after years of seeming willfulness in doing so. Now, however, the company has emphasized what a low rate of usage was experienced by the app among personal account users. 

dark comedy: google plus PR spent five years trying to dissuade writing about the network’s absymal usage numbers

now that it leaked everyone’s data, google can’t get enough of telling people how no one used it https://t.co/iGocHG7vpA

— rat king (@MikeIsaac)
October 8, 2018

Moving forward, Google said, it will pivot to rebuilding Google+ as an enterprise network, noting that “Google+ is better suited as an enterprise product where co-workers can engage in internal discussions on a secure corporate social network.”

Perhaps in response to this breach, Google is also rolling out new security and privacy changes, namely the visuals seen by users when apps are requesting access to various parts of their Google accounts. 

Instead of a single “sign in with Google screen,” each item to which the app is requesting access — e.g., Google docs, Google calendar, Gmail, et cetera. — will have its own permission dialog box.

Source: Google

Google CEO Sundar Pichai is expected to testify before Congress in November, where he will likely be questioned by U.S. lawmakers about both the breach itself, as well as the company’s decision not to disclose it to the public.

What Marketers Should Know

If your marketing efforts have at all focused on Google+, be aware that it will sunset over a period of ten months, and is predicted to shut down completely in August 2019.

However, in its pivot to rebuilding as an enterprise-level network, it is unclear what will become of branded pages and profiles that currently exist on Google+. The company has said that it will inform individual users of how to download and migrate their data, but has not indicated how business profiles will be impacted.

This story is developing and will be updated as more details emerge.

Growing up, my town’s local shopping mall was a bustling hub of commerce, chock full of busy shops and pesky tweens. But today, half the place has been gutted — it looks like an empty morgue of stores now.

With the explosive growth of online shopping and a shift in consumer preferences for experiences over possessions, the retail apocalypse of 2017 was inevitable. Brick and mortar stores aren’t essential for consumers anymore.

But contrary to popular belief, the retail apocalypse isn’t the final nail in the coffin for retail brands. Consumer preferences might have changed, but recent technological advances have allowed retailers to adapt to them.

If brands truly want to rise from the ashes of the retail apocalypse, though, they must stay laser-focused on adapting to the evolution of this technology and their customers’ preferences. More specifically, they need to embrace change and prepare for the upcoming trends that will transform their industry in 2019.

5 Retail Trends That Will Transform the Industry in 2019

1. Brands will sell experiences at their stores, not just products.

Most people cherish experiences over material possessions. And while we can attach material items like our new iPhone or car to our identity, these objects eventually lose their allure, and we throw them away to replace them with the newest, trend-setting product. Material possessions can really never be apart of your true identity.

On the other hand, we’re the sum of our experiences, so they’re ingrained in our identity. Sharing experiences with people also has a special ability to forge close relationships. And even if experiences end like your relationships with material objects do, they’ll always be a part of your story, allowing you to bond with other people who’ve shared similar experiences.

For instance, who do you think you’ll connect with on a deeper level — someone who also studied abroad in Scotland during college or someone who wears the same Apple Watch as you?

By setting up special shops that only sell experiences, like Nordstrom or Sephora’s new stores that only provide styling, makeovers, and sampling services, retailers can pull customers into delightful, memorable experiences that make much more of an emotional impact than buying a product.

These experiences also make for a compelling story that consumers will always remember and be more than happy to share with one another.

2. The Internet of Things will make shopping easier, cheaper, and more convenient.

Since The Internet of Things connects over 11 billion everyday products, like home speakers, TVs, and cars, to the internet, retailers can collect hoards of data that provides context about their customers’ product usage. This allows them to send relevant marketing messages to their customers throughout every phase of the buyer journey.

For instance, if you run out of milk or it spoils, a smart refrigerator can recognize your need and display a message on its screen or your phone about the best deals on milk in town. You can even order a carton through one of these smart devices if the refrigerator company partners with a grocery store.

Amazon has also sold a similar device, called Dash Buttons, since 2015. Dash Buttons are physical pieces of hardware that you press to buy everyday products, like laundry detergent, dog food, and snacks. As of today, the ecommerce giant has partnered with over 200 brands to sell their products through Dash Buttons.

Macy’s has leveraged The Internet of Things to help customers save money, too. Since 2014, they’ve used beacons, which are Bluetooth devices that send alerts to people’s smartphones based on their proximity to one of their stores, to promote discounts to any customer who walks by one of their stores and has their app.

The app can also pinpoint your location in a store, so if you’re in the perfume section, the app will send you deals on the products and brands you liked online.

It’s clear that The Internet of Things makes shopping easier, cheaper, and more convenient. And since Gartner expects consumers to possess over twice as many smart devices in 2020 as they do today, it’s also clear that the technology could finally move beyond hype and enter reality in 2019.

3. Consumers will message brands’ Facebook bots more to vet and purchase their products.

With businesses and consumers exchanging over 8 billion Facebook messages with each other per month, and the retail industry exchanging the second highest number of those messages, Facebook Messenger is one of the most popular and convenient channels for consumers to research and purchase retail merchandise today.

53% of consumers also prefer to shop with businesses they can directly message on Facebook, so it’s crucial for retailers to set up Messenger bots that can handle moderately sophisticated interactions, like welcome conversations and product discovery conversations.

To drive even more sales with Facebook Messenger, retailers should also build bots that can send abandoned cart messages and let consumers place orders directly in the app.

Some of the top retail brands are already using Facebook Messenger bots to accelerate their buying process. With H&M’s bot, you can customize and buy your own outfits, and with 1-800-Flowers’ Messenger bot, you can order and ship flowers in under five minutes.

Image Credit: MarketingLand

4. Brands will leverage cognitive computing to provide better, faster customer service.

Cognitive computing is technology that can analyze enormous amounts of data in the same way humans think, reason, and remember, so people can naturally interact with the technology and extract data-backed recommendations from it

Brands who implement cognitive computing into their customer support technology are able to assemble two-pronged customer service teams that help provide better, faster customer service.

By setting up computers and robots in their stores that can actually understand natural language and accurately answer people’s routine questions, a retailer’s human employees can service more customers who have more pressing needs. 

For instance, Hilton Hotels introduced their first ever concierge robot, Connie, in 2016, and she can help guests find the best attractions and restaurants in the area. Connie can even move and point her body to direct guests toward any spot in the hotel. All the guests have to do is ask her their question, and she can quickly help them out.

With Connie’s assistance, Hilton Hotel’s front desk employees can focus on more important tasks, like picking up phones and checking in guests.

Image Credit: USA Today

5. Brands will use augmented reality more to market their products.

The best furniture brands understand their customers’ decision to design a room is just like getting a tattoo. If they buy the wrong furniture, it could ruin the room’s entire aesthetic. On top of that, they’d have to deal with the embarrassment of living in an eyesore unless they shell out more money on some new furniture.

Without being able to picture how a store’s furniture would look in their own home, customers will either stall their decision to buy any furniture or get mad at the brand if they buy the wrong sofa.

To help customers avoid this situation, retailers like IKEA and Wayfair have developed augmented reality apps that can place fully rendered 3D models of their own furniture in their customers’ home. All the digital furniture is also resizable to fit a room’s dimensions and observable from any angle and in any light. Users can even save specific room designs for future reference.

By leveraging augmented reality, these retailers have made it a lot easier for customers to engage with their brand, pick the right furniture for their house, and, ultimately, buy more of their products.

Future proofing your retail store for 2019.

The retail industry has evolved at a breakneck speed, but hopefully, preparing for these five trends will arm you with the insights and skills to grow your retail store in 2019 and beyond.

There’s a big difference between a splash page and a landing page.

A landing page is a standalone page created to fulfill a conversion goal. A splash page, on the other hand, is a screen that pops up when you first enter a site. A splash page is the introduction to your website, while a landing page won’t appear until after a user fills out a form.

Essentially, a splash page is your virtual business card.

But it’s more than that. A splash page can deliver critical information, like a promotion or upcoming event, and even evoke a sense of mystery or exclusivity.

In essence, a splash page is your doorman, leading users in the right direction.

For instance, consider Football.com’s splash page. Football.com uses a splash page to ask the user which game they care about — American, or World. When a user clicks American or World, they are directed to the first page of the site, but of course, that page depends on which option they choose.

Football.com’s splash page allows them to go the extra mile to provide an exceptional user experience for their site’s visitors.

To learn how to make a splash page, or to gain inspiration from splash page examples, keep reading.

How to Make a Splash Page

When you’re creating a splash page, you can either hire a third-party designer, or use a professional template to design one.

If you choose to use a template, rather than hiring a third-party designer, take a look at some of the template options from these website builders:

• Instapage
• Strikingly
• Wix
• Splash

A short-form landing page template works best as a splash page. For this example, I chose to use Strikingly, but you can follow similar steps for another builder of your choice.

Once I chose to use Strikingly as my builder, here’s how I created a splash page: 

1. Sign up for a Strikingly free account.

2. Click the “Create New Site” button.

3. Select your preferred template. For my purposes, I chose the “Splash” template.

4. Within your template, click the green “Add New Section” button.

5. Scroll through the “Add A New Section” options, and click “Button”.

6. Now, click the “X” beside your other web pages to delete them. Ensure you only have a button left.

7. Beside “Button”, click the settings icon, and then un-check “Show in navigation”.

8. Now, click on your button to edit it.

9. Copy and paste a link into the “Link URL” box, and then include text for the button. This is your splash page command. 

10. Next, change your text to reflect whatever you want your splash page to say — in this case, I want my splash page to say “Caroline’s Portfolio”, with some information below. Then, I want my button to say “See Designs”.

11. If you want to change your background, click “Background” in the top right and select an image, or upload your own.

12. When you’re happy with the design, click “Publish” at the top left.

13. Include a URL for your splash page (in this case, mine is http://carolineforsey.strikingly.com/) and then click “Publish Now”.

14. And voila! You’ve officially created a splash page, which links to the rest of your site.

1. Zara

2. Football.com

3. Conversion Gods

4. Urban Influence

5. Femme Fatale Paris

6. Mrcthms

7. Resn

8. Playtika

9. Maaemo

10. CoLofts

11. Garrison Footwear

12. Forbes