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Facebook has published its internal enforcement guidelines. 

These guidelines — or community standards, as they’re also known — are designed to help human moderators decide what content should (not) be allowed on Facebook. Now, the social network wants the public to know how such decisions are made.

“We decided to publish these internal guidelines for two reasons,” wrote Facebook’s VP of Global Product Management Monica Bickert in a statement. “First, the guidelines will help people understand where we draw the line on nuanced issues.”

“Second,” the statement continues, “providing these details makes it easier for everyone, including experts in different fields, to give us feedback so that we can improve the guidelines – and the decisions we make – over time.”

Facebook’s content moderation practices have been the topic of much discussion and, at times, contention. At CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s congressional hearings earlier this month, several lawmakers asked about the removal or suppression of certain content that they believed was based on political orientation.

And later this week, the House Judiciary Committee will host yet another hearing on the “filtering practices of social media platforms,” where witnesses from Facebook, Google, and Twitter have been invited to testify — though none have confirmed their attendance.

What the Standards Look Like

According to a tally from The Verge reporter Casey Newton, the newly-released community standards total 27 pages, and are divided into six main sections:

1. Violence and Criminal Behavior
2. Safety
3. Objectionable Content
4. Integrity and Authenticity
5. Respecting Intellectual Property
6. Content-Related Requests

Within these sections, the guidelines delve deeper into the moderation of content that might promote or indicate things like threats to public safety, bullying, self-harm, and “coordinating harm.”

That last item is particularly salient for many, following the publication of a New York Times report last weekend on grave violence in Sri Lanka that is said ignited at least in part by misinformation spread on Facebook within the region.

According to that report, Facebook lacks the resources to combat this weaponization of its platform, due to some degree to its lack of Sinhalese-speaking moderators (one of the most common languages in which this content appears).

As promised, I wanted to briefly explain why I hope anyone who uses Facebook — in any country — will make time for our Sunday A1 story on how the newsfeed algorithm has helped to provoke a spate of violence, as we’ve reconstructed in Sri Lanka: https://t.co/hrpBSMfb4t

— Max Fisher (@Max_Fisher)
April 23, 2018

But beyond that, many sources cited in the story say that even when this violence-inciting content is reported or flagged by concerned parties on Facebook, they’re told that it doesn’t violate community standards.

Within the guidelines published today, an entire page is dedicated to “credible violence,” which includes “statements of intent to commit violence against any person, groups of people, or place (city or smaller)” — which describes much of the violence reported in the New York Times story that Facebook was allegedly used to incite. 

Bickert wrote in this morning’s statement that Facebook’s Community Operations team — which has 7,500 content reviewers (and which the company has said it hopes to more than double this year) — currently oversees these reports and does so in over 40 languages.

Whether that includes Sinhalese and other languages spoken in the regions affected by the violence described in the New York Times report was not specified.

A New Appeals Process

The public disclosure of these community standards will be followed by the rollout of a new appeals project, Bickert wrote, that will allow users and publishers to contest decisions made about the removal of content they post.

To start, the statement says, appeals will become available to those whose content was “removed for nudity/sexual activity, hate speech or graphic violence.” Users whose content is taken down will be notified and provided with the option to request further review into the decision.

That review will be done by a human moderator, Bickert wrote, usually within a day. And if it’s been determined that the decision was made in error, it will be reversed and the content will be re-published.

In the weeks leading up to Zuckerberg’s congressional testimony earlier this month, Facebook released numerous statements about its policies and practices, and the changes it would be making to them. It was predicted that the motivation behind those numerous statements was to leave as little room for speculation as possible among lawmakers.

There’s some probability that this most recent statement was made, this appeals process introduced, and these standards published in anticipation of potential questions being asked at this week’s hearings.

In addition to the aforementioned House Judiciary Committee hearing on “filtering practices” tomorrow, Facebook CTO Mike Schroepfer will testify before UK Parliament’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee. (Dr. Aleksandr Kogan — the Cambridge University professor behind the data-harvesting app who eventually sold personal user information to Cambridge Analytica — testified before that same committee this morning.)

How or if this statement and the content review guidelines are raised within these events remain to be seen — but it’s important to again note that one reason for their release, according to Bickert, was to allow feedback from the public, whether it’s comprised of daily Facebook users or topical experts.

It’s possible that in the wake of Facebook’s unfolding and continuous scrutiny, all of its policies will continue to evolve.

Featured image credit: Facebook

The average job opening attracts 250 resumes, and the average interview process from start to finish can take 23 days. Phone interviews can help you determine which candidates have the critical thinking and interpersonal skills necessary for an in-person interview. When you weed out less qualified applicants right off the bat, you can narrow down your candidate pool, and limit the amount of time wasted in your search.

While a resume supplies you with general information about a person’s background, a phone interview helps you ask second-level questions to start forming a deeper, more holistic picture of a candidate’s background and skills.

But with only about thirty minutes on the phone, what questions can you ask to build good rapport with your interviewee and receive some truly insightful answers? Better yet, what can you ask to decipher whether the applicant is a good fit for your company and the role?

To help you get the most out of your phone interview process, we’ve narrowed down to eleven of the best questions to ensure you’re discovering the the best candidates to bring into the office.

1. Tell me a bit about yourself?

While this question sounds really simple, it actually serves an important purpose. First, it helps put the candidate at ease — it’s an easy one, and one she should expect. Second, your interviewee will likely bring up whatever she is most excited about or proud of in relation to the role, and this will help steer the direction of your entire conversation.

Look for the candidate to list out a few skills she’s learned from prior experiences that relate directly to the role. A good candidate will incorporate some key phrases from the job description into her answer, demonstrating she’s prepared and aware of what the role entails.

2. What attracted you to apply for this position?

You want to figure out how much research she’s done, and whether her perspective of the role is accurate (if she mentions she can’t wait for creative opportunities, but this is largely an analytical role, she might not understand the position’s responsibilities). This question is also an easy way to see how genuinely interested a candidate is in your company. Look for a candidate who expresses her interest in the tasks required for the specific role, rather than more secondary benefits that come from working at your company — like the awesome snack room, or team outings

3. How would you describe your work style?

What if your interviewee says she works best in collaborative, social settings, yet the role she’s applying for requires a lot of independent work? Although this might not be a deal breaker, it’s good to know early on whether this person will be the best fit for the work style necessary to excel in this position. Hopefully, the interviewee will describe a work style that fits your requirements.

4. What can you tell me that isn’t on your resume that is important for me to know about you?

This question shows the candidate that you care about who she is as a person, beyond what a piece of paper says about her. It also encourages the candidate to avoid using her resume as a crutch, and forces her to reflect more deeply on what she views as her biggest strengths.

With this question, you’ve asked the candidate to provide just one thing, so it’s pretty likely that whatever the candidate tells you, it will be very important to her. Look for a candidate who has the confidence to reply with something she is truly passionate about — you might want to use this question as an icebreaker at the beginning of a phone interview, but you can also use it halfway through the interview if you feel the candidate’s answers are stiff and you want to uncover some deeper layers to her personality.

5. Would you rather finish something late and perfectly, or on-time and imperfectly?

A “would-you-rather” question is an opportunity for your candidate to showcase her priorities and decision-making methods. You’ll want to look for a candidate who is good at thinking on her feet, and able to respond confidently to this question — her answer isn’t as important as how she delivers it, since the question doesn’t really have an obvious right or wrong answer. Look for a candidate who can answer firmly, with good reasoning to back it up and a self-assuredness that indicates someone who can make decisions efficiently without lingering in self-doubt.

6. What would you say is the most important skill you’ve learned in your current role? What’s an area you’d like to improve on?

You already know the skills listed on her resume, but a description without a deeper explanation often isn’t enough: plenty of people can write “hard working” on a resume, but it’s more important to know how they can exemplify that. You’ll want the candidate to say something along the lines of, “In my past job, I learned a lot about SEO, but I think there’s still room for me to grow in that area. In particular I’d love to learn more about keyword research, and how I can use more advanced tactics to grow my company’s organic traffic. I’m hoping my next role will offer learning opportunities in that area.”

In her answer, she admits her content can get better, and although she’s skilled at something, there’s still room for her to grow. If you’re unsure of whether or not her skills are adept enough for the job, you can ask follow-up questions, but her initial answer is enough to demonstrate she’s flexible, willing to learn, and capable of accepting criticism.

7. What’s the biggest challenge you’ve faced in your current role? Tell me about it.

It’s not a bad sign if your candidate has faced problems in her prior position: it means she’s human. But it’s critical to know her problem-solving methods. Let’s say she mentions she once worked with a client who was difficult. Look for her to talk about how she was able to reach a mutually-benefitial compromise and learned to work with the client by adapting her own strategy. It’s important that she can demonstrate empathy for other people, rather than putting the blame on the other party. Plus, you’ll want her to tell you about her own ability to solve problems creatively and efficiently, rather than dwelling on the frustrations of the experience.

8. Why are you leaving your job/why are you looking elsewhere?

You’ll want to know why the candidate’s current job is unfulfilling, so you can evaluate how your company or position could fill the void. This also speaks to her character. If she says, “I’m leaving my current job because I don’t really like the people I work with,” this isn’t a great sign. While it may be true, it hints that she might have a tough time getting along with other people. Instead, look for a candidate who desires a more challenging role, or a position that can satisfy her job-related passions. Hopefully, this position is a better fit for her, and you can express that.

9. What’s some feedback that you’ve received that was difficult to hear, but ultimately has proven really valuable?

It won’t be easy for the candidate to relay some tough criticism to you, but it’s critical that she is mature and self-aware enough to show she can receive difficult feedback and use it constructively.

Look for a candidate who can be honest and non-judgmental about feedback she has received. You want a candidate to focus on how the criticism helped her improve — ideally, she will even say she’s grateful that the criticism taught her skills that eventually helped her grow. It’s not a good sign if applicants become defensive when asked this question, or blame the feedback-giver and refuse to take accountability. This could indicate a lack of maturity when it comes to receiving and using feedback to improve, and could be a problem for you down the road.

10. If you could have dinner with three famous people who are no longer living, who would they be and why?

This question can offer some insight into who your candidate finds inspirational, and that’s valuable information for understanding which traits she values most for personal growth. Plus, it’s a fun one to answer, and it’s likely that your applicant has thought about this before (I know I have).

Look for a candidate who can provide you with a list of influential people, with convincing reasons as to why they inspire her. The reasoning in itself isn’t that important, but you’ll want to find a candidate who can explain how and why she’s inspired by certain people and ideas, and how those philisophies have shaped her own career path.

11. What questions can I answer for you?

Opening it up for questions will let you get a read on your candidate’s concerns, but even more importantly, it shows how well prepared she is. If she doesn’t have any questions, it’s most likely because she either isn’t that passionate about the role, or believes she’s overqualified for it. You’ll want her to ask thoughtful, specific questions that prove her interest in the role. You’ll also want to see she can take questions to a deeper, more analytical level. Look for a candidate who asks unique questions to prove she’s done her homework, and also listened well during your phone conversation. For instance, if she asks a generic question you already answered in the beginning of your conversation, it might not be a great sign.

When was the last time you gave your website a checkup?

If you’ve never before audited your website, it’s been a while since you have, or you’re planning a website redesign in the near future, use this post as your go-to website audit checklist to make sure your website is primed for maximum SEO and conversion results.

Keep in mind that in most cases, you’ll probably want to pair up with someone with a technical brain for this, whether that be someone in your in-house IT department or an outsourced party.

The Benefits of a Website Audit

Before we dive into the things you should be keeping an eye out for as you’re auditing your website, let’s review some of the benefits of doing one. Here are some of the top benefits from a marketing perspective:

Website Performance Optimization

Website audits usually evaluate a site not only for its content, but also for its technical performance.

As a result, an audit will give you a chance to inspect the robustness of your website’s technical framework and infrastructure, assess how friendly your website is to search engines, and determine how easy it is for users to navigate and intuitively find content on your website.

Search Engine Optimization

By conducting a website audit, you’ll be able to identify any missed SEO opportunities and remedy any misguided or poorly executed SEO pitfalls (e.g. keyword stuffing, exact match anchor text links, etc.) throughout the content of your website.

It will also allow you to re-focus your SEO efforts on users first and search engines second. This will safeguard you from constantly chasing changes to search ranking algorithms, meaning you won’t be applying misguided practices just to show up in the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs).

Conversion Rate Optimization

Thirdly, website audits enable you re-evaluate the effectiveness of your website in terms of lead generation and conversion. As a result, you’ll be able to spot any previously overlooked opportunities to convert visitors into leads so you can add relevant CTAs, as well as identify deficiencies in your landing pages so you can optimize them to boost conversions.

As you can see, assessing both the content and technical aspects of your website will open up opportunities to drastically improve the traffic and conversions your website generates.

The 4 Assessments to Make When Auditing Your Website

Let’s talk about how to pursue each of the three benefits above, and what you should specifically be checking for in this four-part website audit.

But first, enter your website into HubSpot’s Website Grader — this will give you a general overview of your website’s strengths so you can gauge your focus on each of the assessments that follow in this article.

How’d you do? Got an idea of which website audit benefits you need the most? Here we go.

1. Website Performance Assessment

In the first part of your website audit, you should be focusing on how users navigate your website — from your homepage, to blog posts, to landing pages, and any related content in between.

Make a list of the pages on your website and ask yourself the following questions to evaluate them for optimization opportunities:

Is Your Website Optimized for Maximum Usability?

The more visitors you can attract to your website, the more opportunities you’ll have to generate leads and, ultimately, customers. But only if your website performs well.

As I’m sure you can imagine, just having a website does not guarantee results. As part of determining the overall efficiency of your website, your audit should check to make sure your site is designed with your visitors in mind. The design and overall navigability of your website should correspond with what a person would come to the site to seek out, such as more information on a business-related topic, resources, product/pricing information, testimonials, etc. This will largely depend on your individual business.

The main goal here is to make it easy for people to get to the information they’re looking for. As a result, you’ll likely see conversion rates improve on their own.

To audit your website for usability, consider the following:

• Are all the main value propositions of our business easily accessible via our main navigations/menu items?
• Do we have a simple yet intuitive website design and page layout? Make sure pages aren’t too cluttered; littered with ads, CTAs, or links; or void of internal links altogether.
• Are your conversion paths and/or shopping cart or checkout processes intuitive? Are there a ton of distractions along the way that could be creating friction for your site visitors?

You might also consider doing some user testing with members of your target audience to ensure you’re effectively surfacing the content they’re looking for, and that they find it easy to navigate to the parts of your website they’re interested in.

How Is Your Website’s Overall Speed?

Are there excessive page sizes and/or long page load and server response times? Does your site go down frequently? Site speed can be impacted when image files are too large or HTML and CSS needs to be cleaned up, all of which can drastically improve your site speed.

Ultimately, fast-loading and optimized pages will lead to higher visitor engagement, retention, and conversions. To quickly check a web page’s load time, download MozBar, a toolbar by Moz that you can attach to your browser for simple page analysis every time you visit a website.

2. SEO Assessment

Optimizing the performance of your website is crucial to holding onto visitors, but the above question isn’t the only one you should be asking. You should also audit the content you’re publishing to ensure it’s actually solving your visitors’ problems.

Is Your Website Content High Quality?

As you evaluate your content for quality, think about it from your target audience’s perspective. Did this information leave me satisfied? Did it answer all of my questions? Does it give me all the resources relevant to this topic? Do I know what to do next?

Keep in mind quality content should appeal to the interests, needs, and problems of your buyer personas; be interesting and well-written, provide valuable, thorough and detailed information about a particular topic; and leave the reader with next steps (such as calls-to-action, links to resources, etc.).

If you’re still not sure if your content is high quality, evaluate it with this checklist:” How to Tell if Your Marketing Content Is Actually Valuable.”

Is Your Website Search Engine Optimized?

Make sure all your web pages are following on-page SEO best practices. To audit your content for on-page SEO, conduct a keyword analysis in which you do the following:

• Consult your analytics to review keyword performance. Which keywords are giving you the biggest gains in traffic and leads?
• Assess how well you’re factoring keyword performance into your content strategy. How much relevant content are you adding to your website to target those keywords?
• Review basic on-page SEO elements like URLs, page titles, meta description, and copy. Make sure keywords are included where relevant.

To help you conduct an on-page SEO audit of your content, read the “Step-by-Step Guide to Flawless On-Page SEO,” which also includes a free downloadable on-page SEO template to keep you on track.

3. Conversion Rate Assessment

While high-quality, search engine optimized content is a great way to boost your traffic numbers, it’s what happens once those visitors are on your website that really counts. Unless of course, you don’t care about conversions (ha!).

Is Your Website Optimized for Lead Generation and Conversions?

This is where optimized calls-to-action (CTAs), marketing offers, and landing pages play a major role in the performance of your website. Not only do they offer you opportunities to capture visitors’ information so you can follow up with leads, but they also keep your visitors engaged with your content and your brand.

To audit your website for maximum conversion potential, ask yourself the following questions:

• How many marketing offers do I have in my content arsenal to gate behind landing pages?
• Do I have a variety of marketing offers that appeal to all my different buyer personas?
• Do I have any landing pages/conversion forms on my website to begin with?
• How optimized are those landing pages?
• Do I have conversion opportunities for visitors in varying stages of the funnel?
• Am I using calls-to-action effectively? Am I missing opportunities to include calls-to-action on various pages of my website?

To learn more about CTA selection, check out our post, ” How to Select the Right CTA for Every Page on Your Website.”

4. Technical Assessment

Once you’ve addressed the three primary goals of a website audit, it’s time to loop in a developer or someone from your IT department for a technical evaluation. You could also hire an outside agency — just be sure to do your homework first.

Keep in mind that there may be some carry-over from the three assessments above — website performance, SEO, and conversion rate. The technical evaluation, however, addresses all three to maximize the user experience (UX).

Here’s what you should be looking for in the technical assessment stage of your website audit …

Is Your Website Design Responsive?

Does your website have a responsive design? Meaning, is it a mobile-friendly website? The usage of smartphones to access the internet is only growing. As of 2017, mobile devices account for half of all web page views worldwide. As a result, websites must be compatible with that growing demand.

For more on mobile compatibility, check out our “Ultimate Cheat Sheet for Mastering Mobile Marketing.”

Is Your Website Error Message Free?

Are response code errors popping up all over your website where there shouldn’t be any? Calling out 302-, 404-, and 500-level response codes can be useful to tell users that something’s wrong.

However, having this happen is also an indication that someone isn’t cleaning up broken links and, as a result, leading users to dead ends. Find those error messages and clean up your broken links. Tools like Google’s Webmaster Tools or Xenu’s Link Sleuth can be very helpful for this.

Are Your Website URLs Optimized?

Does your site have URLs of excessive length due to keyword stuffing? Do they contain session IDs and/or include tons of dynamic parameters? In some cases, these URLs are difficult for search engines to index and result in lower clickthrough rates from search results.

Learn more about SEO-friendly URL syntax practices in this helpful post from Search Engine Land.

Does Your Website Have Too Much Flash or JavaScript?

Identify areas of your navigation that are entirely Flash or JavaScript. Search engines have challenges reading and accessing these, which could prevent your site from getting indexed.

Furthermore, these elements present problems from a usability perspective. Visitors are often looking for a very specific piece of information when visiting your site; if they have to sit through a 10-second visual introduction before they can find your hours of operation, you’re going to have a pretty frustrated visitor on your hands.

Is Your Site Structure Optimized for Search Engines?

We already talked about site structure as it relates to accessing content and usability for users, but it’s also important to make sure your site structure is optimal for search engines. If pages on your site are not internally linked to from other pages on your site, those pages are less likely to be indexed.

Learn more about effective site structure for SEO in this Moz article.

Are You Defining How Your Web Pages Are Crawled and Indexed by Search Engines?

This can be done through various methods that include everything from robots files and tags, to sitemaps. These measures are a way for you to guide search engines toward your website’s most useful content.

Robots Files or Tags

The robots meta tag lets you utilize a granular, page-specific approach to controlling how an individual page should be indexed and served to users in search results. These tags should sit in the <head> section of a given page.

The robots.txt file, on the other hand, is a text file that allows you to specify how you would like your site to be crawled. Before crawling a website, search engine crawlers will generally request the robots.txt file from a server. Within the robots.txt file, you can include sections for specific (or all) crawlers with instructions (“directives”) that let them know which parts should or should not be crawled.

Public and XML Sitemaps

Your website should also have public and XML Sitemap files. The public sitemap is one that users can access to review the pages of your site, like the index of a book.

The XML Sitemap is for search engines to review pages that get added to your site, all in one place. The usual location of a sitemap.xml file is https://ift.tt/2kf16Lq. The XML Sitemap is something every website should have; it offers an opportunity to tell Google and the other search engines what pages on your site you want to be crawled and indexed.

While search engines don’t guarantee they will abide by your sitemap, anecdotal evidence has proven time and time again that XML Sitemaps help provide insurance that your pages are found, and found faster — especially if your sitemap(s) dynamically update your new web pages.

Are You Defining Canonicalization of Content?

The canonicalization of your website content is the final major technical consideration to make. To gain more control over how your URLs appear in search results, and to minimize issues related to duplicate content, it’s recommended that you pick a canonical (preferred) URL as the preferred version of the page.

You can indicate your preference to Google in a number of ways. One such way is to set the Canonical Tag (rel=”canonical”) in an HTTP header of a page. Be sure to have someone check that the Canonical Tag is properly implemented across the site by making sure it points to the correct page, and that every page doesn’t point to the homepage.

It’s important to establish an audit framework early on. Ask yourself questions ideally centered around gauging “How am I doing?” These questions may also include things like, “How does this compare to others, especially my competitors?”

Website audits aren’t easy, especially if you’re not totally tech-savvy. For additional resources, check out this article by Distilled, which highlights a list of tools to use as you conduct your technical audit; as well as this complete site audit checklist by SEER.

I also recommend passing the Google Webmaster’s Guide along to anyone implementing this kind of work.