I was on holidays last week and I actually managed to not open my email, read any blogs or articles or even write. I completely switched off. And I'm proud of myself for doing so for the very first time in my life.
Now I'm refreshed and ready to get back to it with full energy. And so I spent a few hours on Sunday afternoon catching up on all my reading from the past two weeks. Almost 500 articles were waiting for me in my feedly but yet again, sitting on my sofa with my coffee and reading helped me learn quite a few new things that I thought I need to share with you too.
Below you'll find 17 must-read pieces about digital, inbound marketing, public relations, agency world and management and leadership I recommend for you to go over this week.
17 Articles and Blog Post to Read Now:
Digital
#1: 26 Disruptive Tech Trends for 2016 – 2018
Brian Solis again gives us a sneak peek into the future. Brands, brace yourself and start adjusting and adapting again and never stop if you want to stay relevant!
#2: The secret to delighting customers: Putting employees first
Competition for products and services today is fierce. We simply have way too much choice so absolute brand loyalty is hard to achieve. Designing an unforgettable and emotional customer experience is what gets you repeat customers. But this needs to come down from the board room trough to each and every employee. Tough thing to do but McKinsey offers four approaches to building an organisational culture that enables this.
Inbound Marketing
#3: 13 Ridiculously Clever Lead Generation Tactics
Some good ideas on how to generate more conversions on your site. I quite like the segmented storytelling and the giving more information one - these help build lasting user experiences.
#4: 21 Ideas for Evergreen Social Media Content Updates
This is a practical piece and it has some really good ideas of types of social media posts you can create - not necessarily only evergreen. You can fill up your social media calendar for the next few months with this.
#5: After The Sale Success: Your Next Strategy Beyond Lead Generation
This is something that's not done much or better yet not done well - you put a landing page out there, someone converts, you send them a thank you email and then that's it; or you follow up with more of the same emails with barely any special treatment or personalisation. But what about the ROR then - Return on Relationship - and using every email as an opportunity to engage further in meaningful ways that drive repeat customers? Good points in this piece on that part.
#6: Eye Tracking in 2016: How Searchers Interact with Mobile SERPs vs. Desktop
Moz shows us the results of the 2016 eye-tracking study be Mediative. Many things have changed since 2014 when this study was done for the first time. It's interesting to see between what people look at and click on mobile and on desktop. This is very helpful for marketers since consumers are quickly moving to mobile-first.
#7: How We Tripled Our Leads Using This Rarely-Discussed Blogging Tactic
Our own powerful example at HubSpot of the importance of evergreen content and how you should not neglect pieces you've already published. They are your best performers so spend some time updating and republishing some of your older posts. But do the math and the analytics first. This post will help you.
#8: How To Predict Inbound Marketing Results
My clients often ask me what results they should be expecting from their own marketing activities and by when. They also struggle with this when planning for clients. This is a great article that explains in detail what an increase in blogging or content creation as well as different traffic sources could bring.
Public Relations
#9: Die, AVEs, Die!
This was my favourite piece of all that I read this week. I love Gini's enthusiasm and passion. And I agree with her 100% - let AVEs die!
#10: How to Measure PR: A Case Study and Examples
This is my second favourite piece this week. Again by Gini. It provides an awesome example of how modern PR works and should be measured, aligned with PESO and very much with the concept that I preach - Inbound PR.
#11: Is Any Press Good Press? Measuring the SEO Impact of PR Wins and Fails
Another interesting research here that looks into whether all press is good press and how both negative and positive press coverage impacts SEO for brands. There are some cool campaigns shown as well and what we can learn from them.
#12: Public relations planning exercise
This is a very cool SlideShare (yes, not an article as the rest) that shows you how you can use a number of free digital tools to do research and gather insights that can help you plan a PR campaign in a structured and easy to follow way. Really cool - can be adjusted to anything, not just PR.
Agencies
#13: The Dark Arts of Leveraging Cognitive Biases
A fantastic one for agencies and anyone in sales. It explains the most common biases and how you can use them when working with clients or prospects. Turns out I suffer from the Dunning-Kruger effect.
#14: What Timesheets Don't Tell You
This piece illustrates in 10 powerful ways why timesheets should not be such a focus of how you run an agency business - for instance, they don't tell you whether your client is satisfied or not and they don't show the quality or the degree of the work completed.
#15: Why Inbound Marketing Agencies Need to Collaborate With Clients
HubSpot's first ever Diamond agency partner explain how they work with their clients - they don't do 12-month editorial calendars, but 30-day ones; they have weekly updates and flexible, agile engagements; they preach about delivering done work to get results (and optimise in real time) than waiting for perfect. Some sound real-life, hard-learned advice.
Management and Leadership
#16: What I Wish I Knew Before I Became a Manager
Meghan Keaney Anderson, our VP of Marketing at HubSpot, gives here 5 really valuable tips for managers. I've been thinking a lot about this lately, whether I am suited as a personality for a manager (I've always been very individualistic) so this post certainly provides some clarity into what makes a really good manager.
#17: Millennials and the leadership gap
I've read so many articles squashing millennials. Not this one. This one gives a lot of facts and research study examples of how different millennials are. Yes, I am different. I have different values and beliefs. And many others my age are the same. Instead of making this gap between millennials and everyone else bigger, why don't we just close it with good leadership?
Did you read any remarkable pieces this week? Please share in the comments below!
