SearchCap: Google Location Setting, Save Google Images & Thanksgiving Search Spend

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. The post SearchCap: Google Location Setting, Save Google Images & Thanksgiving Search Spend appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

How to deliver tangible results on social media

DTAC's Nuttaputch Wongreanthong told delegates at ClickZ Live Bangkok that delivering 'tangible' results on social media means nothing if brands don't know why they are using it.

4 Hot Mobile Marketing Trends to Watch in 2016

Few things have had such a profound effect on the way we live, work, play and socialize as mobile devices. From sending emails and texts to incorporating cameras, GPS navigation, menu ordering and entertainment, no one could have predicted that the humble “brick” would evolve to become such an integral part of our digital lifestyle.

But just as devices and technologies change, so too do our marketing methods. 2015 was the first year that mobile traffic exceeded that of desktop users. As marketers, this opens up a whole new field of ideas to try and avenues to pursue in order to reach these customers, create dialogues and forge relationships with them in a way that makes our offer irresistible.

Gone are the days of top-down communications, of intrusive ads and poorly aligned customer outreach campaigns. Today, we have more data than ever, and we’re leveraging it to come up with innovative trends and ideas like these:

Customer-Centric will become Customer-Obsessive

Big Data becomes Meaningful Data in our rush to learn more about our customers.
Image source: Connexia

It sounds like the makings of a horror stalker film, but the fact is, in our race to become more customer-centric, we, as marketers, are already bordering on obsession. We’re finally at the point where we’re not being swallowed up by wave after wave of big data, and can start using it to create more meaningful interactions.

Mobile is the vehicle that makes this happen. Few other things are as pivotal to sealing the deal as a device that the customer carries with them everywhere. Figuring out how to make that impact is something that companies are still working on, but you can bet it will be the customer, not the corporation, that powers how these decisions are made.

Search Engine Results Will Display More than Pages

You got Apps in my SERPs!

Google already displays videos in search results, but they’ve recently been experimenting with video ads as well. Other search engines, as well as other platforms like Facebook and Twitter, already leverage these types of ads in the form of auto-playing videos and Vines respectively – but at the moment Google is still testing the waters to determine how audiences respond to video-based ads.

Assuming users are receptive of the idea, don’t be surprised to see apps also sharing a place at the SERPs table. Sure, we already have app directories and recommendations, but apps as part of search results will take these directories and stores to a whole new level.

Also, don’t be surprised to see big shifts in mobile search. UI and UX specialists are still learning how we gesture, point, flick and tap on our devices, and with a search interface that’s designed for typing and scrolling, you can see how trying to wrangle a process built for computers into a small screen with taps and flicks just becomes an exercise in frustration. With so much data available, and so many past browsing habits to draw from, coming up with a page full of results is no longer going to cut it. It’s very likely we’ll see fully optimized, fine-tuned mobile search that enlists the help of third party apps to not just recommend a particular product, but find it in the customer’s preferred color, size, location, price range and much more.

Brands will Blur the Lines Between Apps, E-Commerce and Social

Well-known social platforms are taking their awkward first steps into becoming shopping centers.
Image Source: Adweek

2016 will be the year of even greater innovation from apps we already know and recognize. More seamless integration between those apps and their corresponding e-commerce and social outlets will become commonplace. Many social platforms are already tying e-commerce features into their networks. From Instagram’s “Shop Now” to Pinterest’s “Buyable Pins”, today’s hottest platforms are looking for ways to blur the lines between web, social, app and e-commerce.

As you might expect, the rallying cry from marketing has been “people don’t shop on social media!” but as mobile, social and e-commerce become more integrated, the possibilities open up to hit the right combination of buying and browsing buttons to turn that notion around.

Apps Become Reflections of our Lifestyles

Apps will evolve to become more feature-full in an attempt to position themselves as a lifestyle choice rather than a novelty.
Image Source: EATT Magazine

The problem so far with consistent app adoption has been nailed down to one singular issue – bandwidth. With caps on data and insane overage charges, brands really can’t get as creative or forward-thinking as they might like to with restraints like those holding them back. These days, you might have one app for weather, one to track your fitness level and food input, and another to remind you when it’s time to pick up the kids from school.

Expect apps in 2016 to become less about individual features and more about becoming an integral part of your life – a fitness journal that displays the weather before your run and reminds you when it’s time to get the kids. Sound a bit far-fetched? Not to app developers. As long as there are forced restrictions on how much you can download, apps themselves play a pivotal role in position themselves as more of a lifestyle attachment than a usable “thing” that can quickly be uninstalled in favor of the next big thing. There’s only so much bandwidth that will fit in a mobile plan – better make sure your app is making the most of it.

What’s more, the apps you choose could very well communicate your values in terms of your lifestyle. Just like Doritos and the Superbowl or Mountain Dew and gamers, the apps you use every day could tell people “I’m proud to be a _______ and that’s why I use (app). The more attuned these apps become to our goals, likes and dislikes in life, the more they’ll find themselves being used likely far beyond what the original developers envisioned.

The Next Big Thing?

2016 is bursting at the seams with mobile potential, and that’s not even counting things like wearable technology and mobile automation systems like Echo, Cortana and Siri. At the end of the next year, we’ll take a look back and see how these trends played out. Did they catch on or fizzle out? Did something new and unexpected take hold of our collective attention? What do you think will be the next big thing? Share your ideas with us in the comments below!

About the Author: Sherice Jacob helps business owners improve website design and increase conversion rates through compelling copywriting, user-friendly design and smart analytics analysis. Learn more at iElectrify.com and download your free web copy tune-up and conversion checklist today!

Why You Should Invest In Inbound Marketing Before CRM Implementation

Since the beginning of time, humanity has sought to answer unanswerable questions, like which came first, the chicken or the egg? Recently, I’ve come across a question with increasing frequency, that may not be as significant, but is probably even more important if you’re looking to embark upon a journey of accelerated sales growth.

What should you focus on first, building an effective inbound marketing/lead generation process or implementing a CRM to manage your sales and customer acquisition process? While both are important, the question is should you focus on one before the other?

To be clear, both are very important to making growth predictable, sustainable and scalable. If you have the resources and bandwidth you should be pursuing and enhancing both of them simultaneously. However, if you must choose between them, the decision you make will have a significant impact on your growth outlook.

Before answering the question, let’s take a look at the fundamental purpose of each initiative.

The Purpose of CRM

There are several advantages of an effective CRM system with the primary purposes being:

• Building sales efficiency
• Providing management insight into the status and progress of the overall sales effort
• Ensuring compliance with the sales process
• Providing clear reporting
• Creating greater predictability throughout the entire sales process

The Purpose of an Inbound Marketing Program

Here too, there are lots of reasons you’d want to embark on an inbound marketing effort, with the primary purposes being:

• Generating greater awareness and engagement with your desired markets
• Standing out from your competition by creating and reinforcing relevant thought leadership
• Increasing lead velocity and generating more sales qualified opportunities for the organization

To reiterate, all of these results are very important, but I think it’s pretty clear which initiative should be focused on first. That is Inbound Marketing.

3 Reasons Why You Should Focus on Inbound Efforts First

1) CRM Doesn’t Fix Bad Processes, But Inbound Can

An effective CRM system provides tremendous value in increasing the efficiency of a good process. However, it does nothing to address an average or poor process.

For more than 20 years I’ve been working with companies looking to improve their results through CRM utilization. All too frequently significant investments are made in software, time is spent training on the system and absolutely nothing changes. The initial reaction is to blame it on bad CRM, when the reality is that it’s bad process that is the real culprit. Designing a CRM system effectively requires that you have a clear and effective demand generation process that can be mapped to the CRM.

While working on the CRM does little to address bad sales process, the process of implementing an inbound marketing approach does a tremendous amount to improve your sales process (and thus your CRM efforts).

Inbound marketing requires that you start at the top of the funnel and work your way through to the bottom. It makes you view demand and revenue generation from a holistic viewpoint, to understand your market better and to align your sales efforts to how your market behaves today. All of these things drive greater revenue opportunities and create the path to gain the very efficiencies that CRMs promise to create.

2) Effective Inbound Methodology Creates Better CRM Application

I deal with a lot of companies that have been using CRM for years. It is a rare event for me to come across someone who has either designed or implemented their CRM effectively. The data is, to put it bluntly, 90% crap.

A tremendous amount of the value you get from using a CRM comes from the ability to slice and dice the data to segment effectively and increase personalization. However, if you haven’t done the basic work of defining your buyer personas, designing the message to enable you to personalize and to determine how you are going to effectively nurture, you won’t have the clarity to use your CRM effectively.

In my experience, effective CRM reinforces an effective inbound marketing and sales approach, it does not create one. I’ve lost count of the number of times a client has had to substantially change their CRM as a result of the creation of an effective inbound marketing strategy.

3) You Cannot Have Predictable Growth Without Predictable Lead Generation

If I were to summarize the two most valuable benefits of a CRM it would be predictability and efficiency. As I’ve shared, inbound marketing creates the environment for an efficient process, but what about creating predictability?

Simply put, you cannot have predictable sales results or predictable growth if you do not first have predictable lead generation. While creating an effective lead generation strategy certainly involves more than just inbound marketing, inbound is a crucial component.

Inbound marketing enables you to build a true funnel that allows you to build a predictable pipeline for growth. Consider the following:

• The Content Marketing Institute reports that 80% of decision-makers prefer to get company information in a series of articles versus in an advertisement (and by extension a sales call).
• Inbound leads cost 60% less than outbound leads. (source: State of Inbound Marketing Report)
• Companies that excel at lead nurturing (a core part of the inbound methodology) generate 50% more sales ready leads at 33% lower costs (source: Forrester Research).
• Nurtured leads make 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured leads (source: The Annuitas Group)
• SEO driven leads have a have a 14.6% close rate, while outbound leads have a 1.7% closing rate. (source: Search Engine World)

The natural focus of building engagement that is created by fully adopting an inbound marketing approach builds a more efficient and effective sales process and make CRM adoption a much easier, more profitable effort.

Additionally, a major benefit of inbound marketing is that it creates revenue. No matter how you slice it, CRM is a cost (a valuable one, but a cost nonetheless). Building an effective revenue generation process creates the environment that allows efficiency and predictability to be sustainable.

Investing the time, money and energy into inbound marketing first, puts you in a stronger position to both implement an effective CRM initiative and to accelerate growth.

Get to Know Women in Tech: 33 Facts About Female Leaders in the Tech Industry [Infographic]

For a long time, the tech industry was heavily dominated by men. Nowadays, though, more and more women are entering both regular and high-level positions in tech. In fact, the eight largest tech companies are hiring women 238% faster than they are men, including Google, Apple, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

Who are these women? How about Sandra Kurtzig, the first female entrepreneur to take a Silicon Valley company public? Or Stephanie Hannon, the first woman to manage technology for a U.S. presidential campaign?

Coupofy aggregated data from 30 trusted sources and looked at the most successful women in the industry and their roles as founders, leaders, and venture capitalists. Check out the results of their research in the infographic below.

Overwhelmed by Email? Here Are 11 Great Tools for Organizing Your Inbox

Most people have a love-hate relationship with their email inbox. On the one hand, email can be exciting -- whether you're making progress with a client, replacing a meeting with a (much more efficient) email thread, or receiving an invitation to a fun social gathering.

On the other hand, though, email can be overwhelming -- especially if you lose control.

And boy is it easy to lose control. After all, email is one of the top ways we communicate with a lot of the people in our lives, from our best friends to people we've never spoken with before. Many of us get bombarded by new emails on a regular basis, and it's stressful to know that we might be missing out on the truly important stuff amid the flood of less pertinent stuff.

Luckily, there are a lot of tools out there that can help us get more organized. In this post, we'll go through 11 of our favorite tools for organizing your inbox. Try 'em out, and help pave your own way to a more productive and less stressful email experience.

11 Tools for Organizing Your Inbox

1) Unroll.me

Price: Free

The first step to relieving your inbox from all that email is to unsubscribe from all the newsletters you've subscribed to over the years. But unsubscribing manually from tens, maybe hundreds of newsletters would take forever.

Enter Unroll.me, a free tool that lets you mass unsubscribe from all the newsletters you don't read. You can either wipe the slate clean and unsubscribe from everything at once, or you can pick and choose. Read this blog post to learn more about how it works.

2) The Email Game

Price: Free

If you're overwhelmed by the amount of email in your inbox but dread the thought of clearing it out, and you're a competitive person, The Email Game might be right up your alley. This free tool for Gmail and Google apps gamifies the act of clearing out your inbox.

All you have to do is enter your email address, and the game will begin. It gives you five seconds per email to decide what to do with it: reply, "boomerang" (i.e. archive now and resurface in your inbox at a later, specified time), archive, delete, or skip. You get a certain number of points for each action and you're penalized if you go over time. If you click "reply," then you're given three minutes by default to respond. You can always add time if you really need to, but speed is in your best interest here.

3) FollowUpThen

Price: Free; Paid Versions Available

Here's another simple but useful tool, this time for reminding you -- and even your clients, if you want -- to follow up on specific emails.

Here's how it works: Compose an email, and then include [any time]@followupthen.com in the "Bcc," "Cc," or "To" fields of your email. The "any time" wording here is pretty flexible: It can be "tomorrow@followupthen.com," "nextwednesday@followupthen.com," "3hours@followupthen.com," "everyday@followupthen.com," "every3rdwednesday@followupthen.com," and so on.

What happens to that email when you click "send" depends where you put that @followupthen.com email address:

• Bcc: You'll get a follow-up regarding the email (without bothering the original recipient).
• Cc: The tool will schedule a reminder for you and the recipient.
• To: The tool will send an email to your future self.

It works for every email client, and it's free for up to 50 follow-ups per month. You can increase the number of follow-ups and add features like calendar integration for between $2–$9 per month.

4) Boomerang

Price: Free

Boomerang is a powerful tool I've been using for years to manage my Gmail inbox. This Chrome extension for Gmail users does two things really well:

1. It lets you schedule emails to be sent later.
2. It lets you archive emails that will reemerge in your inbox later as an unread message.

The second concept here is similar to that of FollowUpThen, except you have a lot more control over tracking and changing the times at which emails reemerge in your inbox. It's free and works on desktop and mobile, including Android.

5) Sidekick

Price: Free; Paid Versions Available

Ever wanted to know who opens your emails and when, how many times, and from where? When you download the Sidekick Chrome extension, you can opt in to get live notifications whenever someone opens or clicks on the links in your emails.

Another cool feature is the contact information sidebar that pops up when you open an email thread. It includes all the relevant information about the person you're emailing, including past contact history (kind of like LinkedIn's "relationship tab" function), social media content, mutual connections, and so on. Soon, the extension will let you schedule emails to send later.

Image Credit: Sidekick

The free version gets you 200 open/click notifications per month and unlimited email profiles. There's also a version created for sales teams that includes email templates, document sharing, and other functionalities you can learn about here.

6) SaneBox

Price: $2/month

If you're looking to automate prioritizing each email as it comes in, you may want to give SaneBox a try. There's nothing to install here: Basically, it works with any email client to create three new folders: SaneTop, SaneLater, and SaneNews. When a new email comes in to your inbox, SaneBox quickly analyzes it to determine how important it is. This analysis is based on your past interaction with your inbox. If SaneBox finds the new email important, it'll keep it in your inbox. If not, it'll send it to one of those three folders.

Later, you'll get a digest of the emails that were sent to those three folders so you can decide whether any of them need your attention when you have the time. Over time, you "train" SaneBox to filter certain types of emails into each of these folders.

Image Credit: SaneBox

SaneBlackHole is a fourth folder that'll help you delete emails and unsubscribe from them in one fell swoop. When you manually drag an email into your SaneBlackHole folder, it'll delete the email and unsubscribe from the source automatically.

There are other cool features in here too, like the "attachments" feature that automatically sends all email attachments into a Dropbox folder.

You can try SaneBox for free for two weeks, but after that, it's $2 per month.

7) Checker Plus

Price: Free

Checker Plus is a Chrome extension for Gmail that helps you manage multiple Gmail accounts at once so you don't have to flip through multiple inboxes. One of the main features is instant email notifications even when Gmail isn't open. So if you're a fan of notifications, then you'll like this one.

Without opening Gmail in your browser, Checker Plus will give you desktop notifications when you get a new email, along with the option to read, listen to, or delete emails.

I'm a big fan of the extension's voice notification feature. If I get an email while I'm busy cooking dinner or something, I can choose to have the extension read the email out loud to me, even if Gmail isn't open. (Just remember to shut this off when you head into the office.)

It's worth noting, by the way, that Checker Plus has pretty extensive online support and documentation. If you're having an issue with the extension, it's not hard to find a solution.

Image Credit: PC World

8) Hiver

Price: Free; Paid Versions Available

If your team (or heck, even your family) uses Gmail as their main email client, then this could be a useful app for collaboration. Hiver lets you share Gmail labels with other users to streamline collaboration. That way, you can share emails with other people -- even if they weren't an original recipient -- by adding a shared Gmail label to that email. A great way to use these labels is by assigning tasks, delegating emails, and tracking their status.

Hiver also lets you create and share email templates with your team, as well as share notes on emails that help you summarize or explain what's going on in an email thread. This can be helpful for anyone working on proposals, tasks, or support tickets.

Hiver's free version lets you share labels, notes, and so on with three other users, and lets you share three labels and ten email templates. For added features and functionality, paid versions range from $6–$18 per user per month.

Image Credit: Hiver

9) Mailbird

Price: Free; Paid Versions Available

There are other email clients out there, like Mailbox, Boxer, and CloudMagic, but Mailbird manages to stand out.

While it only works for Windows users, this email client unifies your inbox with your apps by rolling your email and all your calendar, task, and messaging apps into an all-in-one interface. And it's a simple user interface, which you can customize in different colors and layouts.

Here's an example of what one layout looks like with email and WhatsApp integration:

Image Credit: IT World

Other popular choices for app integration include Google Calendar and a video conferencing app called Veeting rooms.

Mailbird works for Windows users on desktop and mobile. The Lite version is free and will allow you to sync three email accounts. If you want to sync more than that and want other, more advanced functionalities -- like the ability to "snooze" your email, Boomerang-style -- then you'll have to get the paid version for $9 per year.

10) SimplyFile

Price: Free

While Outlook doesn't have nearly as many organization tools as other email clients, here's one for Outlook users only that'll help you spend less time filing your email. The tool adds a toolbar (or "ribbon tab") to your inbox, with different, customizable files, which is easily accessible so you can file new emails quickly.

When an email comes in, simply drag it into the appropriate folder. You can organize both messages you're receiving in your inbox, as well as messages you're sending -- which you can file as you send them.

Image Credit: SimplyFile

11) Gmail Special Stars

Price: Free

I couldn't write a blog post about inbox organization without including my go-to strategy for getting to -- and maintaining -- inbox zero. This tool isn't an add-on, but rather it uses a built-in feature in Gmail called "special stars," which is just a slightly fancier labeling system than Gmail labels. Read this blog post to for step-by-step instructions for enabling special stars and using the methodology to get to inbox zero in a few hours.

Which tools do you use to organize your inbox? Share them with us in the comments.

How to Write With Clarity: 9 Tips for Simplifying Your Message

There’s something missing from a lot of content.

It’s clarity.

Clarity means making your content easy to understand. If people can’t understand what you’re trying to say, then your content is not useful, right?

On the other hand, if you can produce sharp, clear, intelligent, and easy-to-understand content, it become much easier for people to see the value in it. They'll want to keep reading.

How do you make your writing crystal clear? I've explained nine unbeatable methods below to help you get started.

9 Unbeatable Methods for Writing With Absolute Clarity

1) Know what you want to say.

Clarity goes beyond a few writing tweaks.

It’s a whole new way of thinking. And it forces you to think about what you’re writing before you start spilling words onto the page.

Before you write a word, you should know the following:

• Your subject. For example, this blog post is about clear writing.
• Your point. My point in this article is to explain how to write with clarity.
• Your outline. An outline is the basic structure of an article. My outline has 9 points.

Seth Godin is a masterful writer. His articles are short because he knows exactly what he wants to say, then writes it. Check it out:

The lesson to learn from Godin? The clearest content is content with intention.

2) Know who you’re talking to.

Knowing your audience is an important feature of good writing. The better you know your audience, the more clearly you can communicate to them.

Let me improve on this idea. Think of your audience as a five-year-old child.

To communicate with them effectively, write the way you would talk to a five-year-old. It won’t offend them or insult their intelligence. Instead, it will allow them to process your message easily.

Obviously, when explaining advanced topics, you will need to use bigger words and advanced concepts. For this reason, you should know what topics and concepts your audience is familiar with, and discuss such topics.

When you write, think to yourself, “How can I help the user understand this better?”

Image Credit: SlidePlayer

The brief list above suggests simple ways to help any user understand your content. People want to understand. They want to know what you’re trying to say. The clearer you are, the easier it is for them.

3) Define unfamiliar words.

One simple technique to make your writing clear is to explain your terms.

At the beginning of this article, I defined clarity. If I had just assumed you knew the definition, the article could have been confusing. Instead, I explained it.

If you’re going to write an article that focuses on a particular subject or concept, then be sure to explain that subject or concept. That way, readers know exactly what you’re talking about.

4) Create a sentence outline.

What is a sentence outline?

A sentence outline is an outline of your article using complete sentences. When your outline consists of phrases or single words, it’s not clear or helpful.

Writing full sentences forces you to think through what you’re saying. Plus, full sentences help the user understand what each point is about.

5) Write one-sentence paragraphs.

One thing that I’ve tried in my writing, especially on my own blog, is creating one-sentence paragraphs.

Here is an example from my article on webinars.

Why do I do this?

Because it makes content scannable.

Most users don’t read every word. Instead, they skip entire words, sentences, and even sections.

Single-sentence paragraphs cause the eye to

stop ...

read ...

and understand.

It’s a simple technique, and it increases clarity.

6) Make your sentences short.

Short sentences are easier to understand. If you try to pack a lot of words into a sentence, you lose clarity.

Image Credit: Charlie Hutton

What kinds of words tend to creep into sentences?

• Adverbs: actually, currently, really, literally
• Adjectives: very, real, simple
• Other filler words: perhaps, pretty, now, that, in order, just, maybe

These words just clutter your writing. The result? Your content loses meaning and clarity.

7) Don’t use long words.

Long words impact clarity.

Why would you use words like these?

• Preantepenultimate
• Thanatognomonic
• Misodoctakleidist

To impress people? To flaunt your knowledge? To most ordinary people, these words mean nothing.

Drop big words from your writing, and your clarity skyrockets.

8) Leverage writing tools.

Over the years I've come across a couple tools that make it easier for me to write clearly: Hemingway Editor and Grammarly.

The Hemingway App is designed to make your writing clear.

Here are the benefits:

• The Hemingway Editor cuts the dead weight from your writing by highlighting wordy sentences in yellow and more egregious ones in red.
• Hemingway helps you write with power and clarity by highlighting adverbs, passive voice, and dull, complicated words.

The desktop version costs $9.99.

Grammarly is an advanced proofreading software. When I started using it, I found plenty of places where I was using fluffy filler words.

Grammarly has both a free version and a paid version with advanced features.

For even more resources, check out this comprehensive list of tools for improving your writing skills.

9) Be consistent.

It’s good to be predictable. In fact, that’s why people come back to your site -- they know what to expect and how your content will speak to them.

Consider McDonald's as an example of consistency. Every time you go into McDonald's, you know how the store will look, the menu options, how to order, and how the food will taste. People go back to McDonald’s because it’s predictable.

Your website’s content is the same way. People want the same experience every time, so focus on delivering a steady and consistent style.

Mastering Clarity

Clarity is a lost art in today’s content-saturated world. If you can write more clearly than most people, then your writing will stand out.

Clear writing is powerful and compelling. It turns heads, changes minds, and encourages action. Although, keep in mind that clarity takes practice. If you don’t get it the first, second, or even tenth time, don’t worry. You will get it.

What techniques do you use to write with clarity? Share them in the comments section below.