Gennaro Cuofano's Blog, page 266
January 15, 2018
Top Three Great Alternative Search Engines to Google
Even though Google seems to be the most used search engine worldwide, there are many valid alternatives to it. However, according to StatCounter Google globally still holds a market share of 91.79%. Therefore, many people might not be aware of alternative search engines to Google. In this post, I want to show you three search engines you might not even know yet they might impress you for how good they are.
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The computational knowledge engine: Wolfram Alpha
In one of my past posts, I called Wolfram Alpha a powerhouse. In fact, Wolfram Alpha is a computational engine. In short, rather than merely spit out results based on what it finds through the web, Wolfram Alpha computes everything. It is great for math but also financial analyses.
For instance, let’s say I want to perform comparative fundamental analysis of four major tech companies: Apple, Google (Alphabet), Amazon, and Facebook.
By typing on Wolfram Alpha “Apple, Google, Amazon, and Facebook” that is what I get:
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From this table, I can see right away, valuable information.
For instance, they all have a Market Capitalisation of over $500 billion. Apple wins the race with $891.9 billion. Regarding revenue, Apple wins again with a $229.2 billion. Also if we look at the ratio between revenue generated and the number of employees Apple wins with $1.864 million.
In short, each Apple employee makes to the company almost two million in revenue, while it nets the company nearly four hundred thousand dollars! By looking at a median salary in Apple at $53,046, this means the company makes 35 times over the median wage of an employee. To put things in context, imagine you had a restaurant that for each waiter paid $1,500 would make $52,500 in revenue. That is a money-making machine!
If we look instead at the Price of a share over its earnings (or Net Income) Amazon wins with a 316 ratio. What does it mean? With such unusually high rate, one option might be investors trust that Amazon growth will be exponential in the next years.
Wolfram Alpha also gives other information which is pretty useful, and I invite you to look at it from here.
If you want to read more about the story behind Wolfram Alpha, read this:
Wolfram Alpha: The Physicist Turned a Successful Entrepreneur
If you’re going to learn how to use Wolfram Alpha more in detail read this:
How to Use Wolfram Alpha for Finance Professionals to Boost Your Career
The search engine that doesn’t track you: DuckDuckGo
The story of DuckDuckGo is incredible. Started as a solo-project by Gabriel Weinberg, it then became a search engine based on the assumption that you don’t have to track users to make money. Also, you can still offer great results, comparable to Google by doing things differently.
To know more about the story behind DuckDuckGo read this:
DuckDuckGo: The [Former] Solopreneur That Is Beating Google at Its Game
To learn all the features available with DuckDuckGo read this:
The landscape related to search is so diverse that there is space also to people that love nature. What do I mean?
The search engine that plants trees: Ecosia
I couldn’t have ever imagined to becoming a farmer! My grandad loved farming, and for how much he tried to make me love that too, I found it too strenuous. However, today the internet gave me the chance to contribute to farming by doing something I do each day: surf the web.
In fact, Ecosia is a search engine that plant trees.
I’m testing it out, and with my searches, in the last month, I’ve been helping Ecosia, to plant 128 trees! Pretty impressive considering I don’t feel the fatigue at all!
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That is also the beauty of the web. Someone decides to get the money it makes online and bring it off-line to help farmers on the other side of the planet to plant trees and save forests. I know it’s just a number on a screen and you might argue that doesn’t mean much. However, it’s intriguing to think that behind that number people are physically planting those trees.
Conclusion
Google is a great search engine, with a robust algorithm that can find what we’re looking for even before we finish typing in our questions. However, we got so used to Google that we barely think of an alternative to it. Instead, in the last decade, a few search engines have appeared which represent a valid alternative to Google. In this article I showed you three examples:
Wolfram Alpha for any computation, financial data and much more
DuckDuckGo to keep your privacy safe while surfing the web
Ecosia to help nature and forests survive while you do something you do each day: surf the web
I tested them all out in the last months, and I found them all very helpful. Also, they offer a fresh perspective on the web. I invite you to try them out.
The post Top Three Great Alternative Search Engines to Google appeared first on The Four-Week MBA.
How to Learn SEO Copywriting Basics Quickly
Many who write online believe that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is something too complicated to handle. That is why they give up before even figuring out what is SEO and how it works. However, I want to show you a practical way to use a few free and simple tools to use right now to master the basics of SEO copywriting.
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Enter Google Autocomplete and Google related searches
Unknowingly we’re all search engine experts. By that, I don’t mean to say that we all need to be going around telling others what to do. Instead, that Google is a website we use on a daily basis. Therefore, we know how to deal with it. For instance, you might have noticed that when you type something in the search bar, you get suggestions:
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Those suggestions you get is called Google autocomplete. That feature is quite useful for a few reasons. First, it helps you complete the search by suggesting you valuable things. Second, it saves you time. Third, it also gives you new ideas about things you might not have thought about.
That is from the user standpoint. What about who writes content? Well for those who write content Google autocomplete feature is even more useful. In fact, those suggestions are queries or questions that users frequently ask Google. That is why they are getting featured as autocompleted results.
Also, Google also shows related searches at the bottom of the page:
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Those two tools are all you need to pick a topic, title and the right keywords for your next copy. In fact, that is Big Data Google is giving you about your target audience. That is also all you need to understand the basics of SEO copywriting.
Pick the right topic by using free Big Data
It is critical to writing about something you’re passionate about. Yet if you’re writing for business, you need to find an audience first. How do you see that? Simple, look at the Google’s autocomplete. In fact, those are frequently asked questions, which means there is an audience for that specific topic.
In fact, we all use Google mostly to solve practical issues. Therefore, with the autocomplete, you can figure out whether there is an audience for the article you’re about to write.
For instance, let’s say you’re writing a piece about SEO for Google. Of course, Google is the most used search engine; we’re so used to it that many users still believe that is the only search engine out there. Also, “why” is a powerful question to be used as a hook for your next piece. Thus, you type into Google search box something like “Why Google” and see what the autocomplete will suggest:
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The first suggestion “Why is Google the best search engine” seems excellent as the topic of your next piece.
Let your readers pick the right title
Journalists know the title is a crucial component of the whole piece. Therefore, you might want to spend time understanding what title to use for an article. One kind of claim that works pretty well for business content is that title that addresses a specific pain point of the users. Where do people show their pain? On social media, for sure they don’t. Once again, Google is the place, and the autocomplete is the answer.
In the previous paragraph, we used the autocomplete to see whether the topic we want to write about has an audience. Now we want to figure out whether the title is good enough. Google told us through the autocomplete that people often ask “Why is Google the best search engine.” All you have to do now is to check if this title has potential. For instance, you could use the Headline Analyzer to check this out:
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The Headline Analyzer gave a score of 72 out of 100. That is pretty good considering I’ve never had a score higher than 76. I wouldn’t focus too much on the number, but I believe from 70 up the headline shows great potential.
We have the title; now we need the right keywords. How do you do that?
Target the right keywords with Google related searches
Most people that write online fear SEO, because they believe that is too hard, or that they need to know sophisticated search engine optimization techniques. That doesn’t make sense at all. First, if you think of SEO is about gaming Google‘s algorithm, you got it wrong. SEO is a set of insights that you have about what people look for through Google. In short, you can uncover data about your potential readers, and customers with the utmost simplicity.
In fact, SEO doesn’t have to be complex at all. For instance, now that we picked a topic and a title, we can find some keywords users are typing into Google related to the topic we’re about to write. How? Simply by using Google‘s suggestions.
For instance, I start by typing the autosuggestion that helped me pick the topic:
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Once Google gives me the result page I can scroll to the bottom of the page to see the related searches Google gives me:
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This will be a good list of long-tail keywords, which are merely questions users type into Google search box, which is as popular as the one we just typed in. Use that list like I’m doing below:
what makes google so popular
what has made the google search engine so successful
best search engines
internet search engines
search engine definition
bing search engines
why google is good for us
types of search engines
You could pick a few of those and include that in your copy. Of course, you need to do it in a way that doesn’t make your writing worse. In other words, in your text among the questions that you pose there might be “Is Google the best search engine?” or “Why Google is good for us?”
These questions even though usually have a way lower volume compared to simple keywords like “SEO” they are also more specific and address an issue the user is having at that moment. Therefore, those are transactions.
That is how you get questions users frequently ask, to include in your copy to address real doubts your target customers might have. That’s it.
Conclusion
Search engine optimisation is not complicated. That is how we perceive it though. Of course, there are basic to advanced tactics. The advanced tactics are for those people that gained experience in the SEO industry for years. However, if you’re trying to put down a simple piece, which copy is optimised and at the same time useful to your potential users you can do that in four simple steps:
make sure there is an audience for the topic you’re writing about with Google autocomplete
pick the right title by looking at questions users frequently ask Google
find out relevant and related long-tail keywords/ queries users are asking to Google
include those keywords organically in your text, always focusing on the user needs so that the copy is accessible to readers
Now you have a basic understanding of copywriting for SEO. It’s time to write your next SEO piece.
The post How to Learn SEO Copywriting Basics Quickly appeared first on The Four-Week MBA.
January 9, 2018
How to Use Interactive Data Visualization Techniques to Make Your Blog Post Rock
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Data is anywhere. In fact, it has become so easy to track our activities that as Kevin Kelly put it, we could build a reliable version of our Quantified self!
Kevin Kelly – Quantified Self Co-Founder from Gary Wolf on Vimeo.
The person able to translate all that data into meaningful insights will gain an edge over anyone else. That is also why The Economist said the world’s most valuable resource is no longer oil, but data and HBR back in 2012 called Data Scientist: The Sexiest Job of the 21st Century.
If you have a blog or use content as your main weapon to grow your business or your brand then you need to understand how to translate all that data into something meaningful to your readers. One effective way to do so is thourhg data visualization techniques!
In this article, I’m going to show you two tools you can use to generate nice animated data visualization that you can use to make your content more interactive and appealing to a wider audience.
Enter the World of animated data visualization
Using data to visualize how the world evolves is very powerful.
Below some examples of data visualization used by Larry Kim, founder of WordStream and Top Columnist at Inc. Magazine:
The world’s largest cities from 4,000 BC
Advanced Social Selling: How to Use LinkedIn to Hack the Growth of Your Business
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In the last years, I’ve been using LinkedIn as a tool to meet people that could help me grow professionally. Yet never thought of it as a social selling tool. That is also because as a former financial analyst I wasn’t focused on sales, lead generation or digital marketing. Yet for more than a year, I’ve been using advanced social selling tactics through LinkedIn. In fact, as a Business Developer for WordLift I’ve spent time and resources (a lot of trial and errors) to master this tool that turned out to be the most powerful to hack the growth of the startup, I’m helping scale up.
In this article, I want to show you what tactics I’ve been using but also how to use LinkedIn as your primary social selling tool.
What is Social Selling?
LinkedIn defines it as:
Social selling is about leveraging your social network to find the right prospects, build trusted relationships, and ultimately, achieve your sales goals. This sales technique enables better sales lead generation and sales prospecting process and eliminates the need for cold calling. Building and maintaining relationships is easier within the network that you and your customer trust.
Instead, hubspot.com defines Social Selling in 100 words as:
Social selling is when salespeople use social media to interact directly with their prospects. Salespeople will provide value by answering prospect questions and offering thoughtful content until the prospect is ready to buy.
Some argue how social selling is reinventing cold calling and bringing that to another level. Truth is whatever you want to call it, LinkedIn is an excellent tool to build relationships with key players in your industry. From those relationships, business opportunities might or might not arise.
Therefore, that is my first social selling tip: don’t focus on the sale at first but only about creating a conversation.
Be ready to accept that conversation might not turn out into a business relationship. In fact, although in sales many terms such as lead generation, or prospecting are useful to create a consistent process it is essential to realize that on the other hand, you have people that have a business objective which comes before yours.
Thus, social selling tip number two: think about how you can help the other person how to achieve his/her business objective
Once clarified those two aspects you’re ready to start. By keeping in mind that LinkedIn is just a tool for others. However, the LinkedIn team could create a business-driven platform where people are primed to think entrepreneurially. It might sound trivial, yet that is what makes LinkedIn so compelling, I argue. In fact, if you go on Facebook and start a business conversation a person might get offended “how dare you, PM me about business?!”
On the other hand, LinkedIn is the perfect environment and context to start business conversations openly. People are primed to think business on LinkedIn compared to any other social media platform. That is also why LinkedIn is so tailored for social selling.
In other words, my social selling tips number three is: don’t be scared to start business conversations as soon as you’re providing value
I know that “providing value” might seem too generic. But it really depends on a few factors. For instance, in my case, as I’m a Business Developer for a startup that offers a tool for SEO and content marketing I found content creation a great lever to start a business relationship. In fact, my principle is: content first, money then.
However, this works for me and in my industry. Would this work anywhere else? Not sure. On the other hand, I find content powerful enough to be leveraged in any other industry too. For instance, let’s say you work in a very traditional industry like real estate commercial development. You also have a company blog that talks about real estate. Why not use the blog to interview and therefore create critical strategic relationships with players in that industry? That is not going to guarantee more profits, yet in the worst case scenario, you will have great content for your blog, a new acquaintance (we abuse too much of the word “friend” over the internet, but friendship takes years and effort to cultivate) and a potential future business partner!
Why social selling on LinkedIn is important: Social selling vs. traditional selling
Social Selling on LinkedIn is based on four pillars:
Create a professional brand
Focus on the right prospects
Engage with insights
Build trusted relationships
Social selling is just another way to grow your network and business. In my experience, I found that some other traditional tactics, like cold calling, have become bothering to most people. There is no data to back it up as this is my personal experience. In short, some people might be extremely good at that, that is not my case. In fact, as a Business Developer, I tried several tactics to bring new leads. When I used cold calling, I found that people were, in any case, told me to send the information over email.
In short, cold calling not only has become for me superfluous but it actually added steps to my sales process.
Using LinkedIn for social selling means to learn how to connect with the right people. In fact, when you start using LinkedIn you’ll need to expand your network by inviting people to join. When connecting you will need to have clear in mind who do you want to talk to. Is it the CEO? Is it the CMO? Or the Editor in Chief? Those searches will help you clarify who is your best interlocutor.
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To determine that I’d look at three things:
Is my tool service solving an actual problem for the person in this role?
Has this person the ability to influence decisions internally?
Does this person manage a budget?
If so, is this budget in line with my business objectives?
Some of those questions will help you clarify who the person within an organization you need to talk to is.
Also, LinkedIn has managed to create an engaged audience ready to comment and interact with you. For instance, a few people have become influencers thanks to LinkedIn publishing and by just posting short content or videos on LinkedIn.
Lately, I also started to experiment with that, and in some cases, the reach of a post can be very powerful. Indeed, a short post can reach thousands of people:
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That helps you to establish your personal branding beyond the company or organization you manage, represent or work for.
Where can you start with social selling on LinkedIn?
Make your profile rock!
The first step is to optimize your profile. Over time once you’ve done it right you’ll see the “All-Star” badge on it:
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Don’t confuse the symbol with personal recognition. That All-Star badge is only an indicator that your profile is optimised to be found through LinkedIn search.
Make sure to optimise your profile to get found by the people in your industry that can become business partners.
Follow these six tips to have an impressive LinkedIn profile:
The six suggestions are summarised below:
Professional picture: here professional also depends on the context. For instance, since I work now in digital marketing I don’t wear the suit and tie anymore. However, I did have an old picture with suit when I worked in the financial industry
Use a proper headline: I see many kinds of headlines on LinkedIn, but I like to keep it simple. For instance, I have “Business Developer at WordLift and Creator of FourWeekMBA.com” which professionally are the two things that describe me best
“what I can do for you oriented profile summary”: don’t use buzz words, or talk only about you but what problems you help to solve on a daily basis
Work Experience: short and sweet
show off your recommendations: One way is to ask people you’ve been working together for sincere feedback on LinkedIn
Put your contact details: that might seem trivial but many people make it too hard to be contacted on LinkedIn
Once you have followed those tips and set up your profile, you can see where you’re at with LinkedIn Social Selling Index.
How to calculate your Social Selling Index (SSI)?
LinkedIn Social Selling Index is a synthetic score from 1 up to 100 that tells you where you’re at regarding professional branding, network, and influence.
As any synthetic rating, you don’t want to take it literally, yet it is an excellent proxy to track the advancement of your LinkedIn profile over time.
You can check your Social Selling Index from here:
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For instance, in the last year, I’ve been working on my profile, and I was able to bring my Social Selling Index to 72 out of 100.
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Compared to other people in my industry my profile ranks in the top 1% and on the top 10% for my network.
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To put things in context sales professionals in the Marketing and Advertising have an average Social Selling Index (SSI) of 25.
Once again, this is only a synthetic indicator. Which means having your Social Selling Index as high won’t bring you any sale to the door. That just means that you’re ready now to present your professional brand in the best way possible. Nothing more, nothing less. However, if you want to increase your Social Selling Index see next.
How to increase your LinkedIn Social Selling Index (SSI)?
To improve your Social Selling Index, you have to develop four areas:
Establish a professional brand
Establish Your Professional Brand from LinkedIn Sales Solutions
Find the right people
Find the Right People from LinkedIn Sales Solutions
Engage with insights
Engage with Insights from LinkedIn Sales Solutions
Build relationships
Build Relationships from LinkedIn Sales Solutions
Top google chrome extensions for social selling on LinkedIn
To maximize and power up your LinkedIn capabilities, there are a few Google Chrome Extensions which over time I found very useful.
Snovio for email capturing
Working on a single channel is not effective. Therefore, when you visit someone’s profile on LinkedIn, it is also a good idea to get his/her email for the future. Many people don’t use LinkedIn much and contacting them through email can be way more efficient.
Snovio is a must-have tool to make this process of email capturing straightforward.
Rapportive to connect on LinkedIn through your mail inbox
Another Google Chrome extension I can’t live without is Rapportive. That is an extension that allows you to communicate with anyone when opening an email from your inbox.
For more Google Chrome extension not related to LinkedIn read this:
Conclusion
LinkedIn is an awesome tool for social selling. Remember the three tips we saw at the beginning:
Don’t focus on the sale at first but only about creating a conversation.
Think about how you can help the other person how to achieve his/her business objective
Don’t be scared to start business conversations as soon as you’re providing value
Additional steps to take to get going with Social Selling with LinkedIn is to complete your profile, improve your social selling index by posting relevant insights, connecting with people you share professional interests, use LinkedIn publishing to build a strong professional brand. Engage with other top experts in your industry to create trust!
After all the objective is clear: build as many relationships as possible in the shortest time and with the minimum effort.
Handpicked related articles:
Everything You Need to Know About Business Development
Top Four Communities to Join to Be a Successful Digital Marketer
Business Mastery: Top Ten Must-Read Business Books in 2018
Editorial Calendar: How to Use Google Trends for Your Content Strategy
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January 8, 2018
Udemy Insights: How to Find Profitable Online Course Niches to Make Money Online
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Back in 2015, I was a financial analyst. Yet I was bored of the 9-5 work life as an employee and I wanted to break free. After reading a few marketing books, I realized that the fastest and most effective way for me to make money was to do it online. In fact, by creating online businesses I could save the hassle of supporting and paying the rent of a physical store or managing other people. Therefore, I started with online teaching. At the time there was a platform which wasn’t yet that popular, but it had an enormous potential: Udemy.
Today Udemy has more than 55,000 courses and it has become one of the major online course platforms globally. In this article, we’re going to use the data from Udemy to find out profitable niches for your next online course! I’m not saying you have to use necessarily Udemy to launch your next course. In fact, I believe that the most effective way might be to use Udemy to offer a free version of your course to have people know you. Then create a paid version on a platform where you have total control (like Teachable).
Teaching online isn’t easy, therefore even before starting, make sure you have an audience
Online teaching is not easy. The effort it takes to produce a good course is enormous, and it might take up to three-six months to get something valuable out. Since the process can be quite stressful and time-consuming, it doesn’t make sense to start if you don’t have data that can support at least the fact that there is an audience to your course and that you can make earnings for that.
Back in 2015, I didn’t know too much about analytical tools for digital marketers and I didn’t care too much about analyzing either (that might seem weird for a former financial analyst). I just knew I had been a financial analyst in the previous three years and I could use that knowledge to put together a basic course about financial analysis and accounting. That is what I did. The truth is I wanted to change career and break free. Therefore, I might have been scared to look at data, especially if that turned out to be not favorable. I went all in!
I managed to gain over 3,800 students in about two years and a half. Although I repaid the effort of producing those courses, I can’t say I became reach thanks to them. It took me about three months to put together three courses. If I had to work for those three months, I would have made more as a financial analyst.
However, I didn’t have any expense throughout those three months, as I worked from home. In addition, I didn’t work full time but I was devoting only 3-4 hours a day to create the courses. The rest of the time was free to read what I loved and learn how to get better at writing. Also the materials I had put together allowed me to create an ebook that sold quite well. Thus, overall I was lucky enough to see my efforts repaid. On the other hand, If I had to start all over, I’d look at data first.
It doesn’t to be perfect at first but you need to look at data to improve your online course
Over the years Udemy has improved a lot. In fact, the platform offers analytical insights” on how students are behaving when enrolled in one of your courses. What kind of data? Let’s dive into one of my courses. For instance, I have a course called “Financial Analysis, from Scratch to Professional!” and that is the data from the course:
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For instance, my course has better reviews (4.80) compared to the average finance courses on Udemy (4.37). Also in terms of engagement students tend to follow actively 71 minutes of my course, compared to 61 minutes on average of other finance courses on Udemy. I’m doing quite well now because I used this data in the past to optimise the course content. In short, I deleted the lectures that weren’t engaging and substituted them with fresh materials. That is how I reached that level. That is also how you will want to do to offer a great course. It doesn’t have to be perfect at first but you need to tinker it until it gets better.
Udemy also gives you insightful data about conversion:
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As you can see one of my best months, October 2017 had more than 200 students. Although this number might not seem impressive there is to say I don’t do marketing at all. In short, those are numbers coming from Udemy, its reach through search engines and its affiliate programs. Those numbers aren’t spectacular also because on Udemy often promotions can go as low as $10-$15 per course. Therefore, for a single student, you might make as low as $5. That is why I believe you should build your own brand and have your own online platform to make this business sustainable over time. However, let’s jump now to the insights Udemy can give us on new online courses ideas!
Are you looking for an online course idea? You can’t get it wrong with Udemy Insights
Udemy has a tool for instructors called Udemy insights. I will use that to assess what online course ideas can make you money by teaching online. One caveat, online teaching, like many other online businesses is based on the principle of “winner takes it all.” If you want to be the winner you need to be willing to produce an awesome, top-notch online course. That is the baseline. The remaining part is your ability to market it. However, starting with an audience will already guarantee you some discrete economic success.
Here I’m also making another assumption. If the course topic is popular on Udemy, then it might be popular anywhere else as well.
As of now when I get into the Udemy Insights tool that is what I see as promising topics:
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Promising here is meant as a course with a low offering and high demand. For instance, if I get into App Development that is what I get:
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Even though the median monthly revenue (what most of the instructors make) might see low, this niche has become recently popular. In fact, the top searches related to this topic were in November 2017:
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Some top searched keywords for courses on App Development include, xamarin (a cross-platform development software), blockchain, blockchain programming and so on :
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The good news is that on Udemy there are not quality courses about that:
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Just six courses cover App Development and only 17% has a rating above 4.5. If you are a developer you could create a course on the topic!
What are others topics promising on Udemy?
Google Maps API online courses
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In this case, too, I wouldn’t focus that much on the median monthly revenue as those are new trending topics, with no available data about instructors income. Also, if you create the course on a platform, you manage and charge for such a course anywhere between $99-$299 (as it can open professional careers) you only need10-20 students per months to make somewhere between $999-$5980 monthly income.
JSON online courses
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Things get more interesting here as the number of courses available is higher but also demand is quite high.
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Some other interesting topics related to JSON are AJAX, XML, API, Technical Writing, JQuery.
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The exciting thing is that only 9% of courses in this category rank higher than 4.5 and 53% of students enroll in highly rated classes. That means a rating of 4.6 can make your course the most successful on Udemy.
Enough technical stuff! Let’s look into other areas.
SEO online courses
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When it comes to SEO, there is a lot of demand and also a lot of offer. As you can see, here winner takes it all. In fact, most instructors on Udemy make as low as $32 but top instructors make £7,489. Therefore, if you want to make money by teaching SEO you want to make sure to offer a top-notch course.
Here are some other interesting data:
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For instance, if I had to produce a course on SEO, I’d go laser focused, with a course on “SEO WordPress.” I know it is counterintuitive as you are narrowing your audience but you will also be more competitive in that niche.
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Although over 200 courses offer SEO, only 21% have a rating higher than 4.5, and 50% of students enroll in the top-rated course. Therefore, if you make a class that has an above 4.5 score you have a chance to make more than $7K on Udemy alone.
Let’s narrow the focus and see what we get.
WordPress online course
WordPress is the most used CMS (content management system) which powers 27.5% of websites globally. That is also the CMS that powers this blog. No surprise WordPress is so successful, it’s among the most accessible CMS. In addition to that, it’s SEO friendly, which makes your website rank better in search engines.
However, for how simple it is it also has a learning curve, given by the fact that many that approach WordPress have not a technical background and aren’t familiar at all with CMS. That is why courses on WordPress are so successful as confirmed by Udemy data:
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Once again, winner takes it all! There is a number of courses in WordPress but only a few make a buck. Actually those few make as much as $13,603.
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The search for WordPress courses is on the roof!
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In this case too, like the ones above, there are plenty of courses on Udemy on WordPress, but only 24% are rated higher than 4.5, and 67% of students enroll in top-rated classes! Once again, you either make it great or it’s better you don’t make it at all.
Conclusion
Although producing an online course is a great way to make money online, the landscape is also quite competitive. Therefore, you either put the effort to create great stuff and be ready to market it or you’re energy would be wasted.
In fact, as we saw in most cases winner takes it all and most students go to high rated courses. In addition, you might want to look at the data before venturing in creating an online course to avoid the risk not to pay for the expenses of the course itself. In fact, as you saw many instructors are making as low as $32 per month. Do you want to be one of them? I know this might not be the news you were expecting but online teaching (like any other online business) is extremely competitive. Therefore, you either put 100% effort into it, otherwise, you’re better off working a regular job. Also, Udemy is an already established network. Yet if you build a course on a platform you manage you will need to market it as much as possible. Of course, you might be better off as you can price your course as high as possible and position yourself as a top-notch instructor. But two conditions are needed: quality of content and the ability to sell your course together with your consultancy.
As of now though, online teaching can be still a great opportunity which you might want to take into account for your next online business. In fact, by teaching you learn too. As you learn you can also offer complementary services (like consultancy, or seminars) and produce other materials (like ebooks). If I were to produce an online course now, that would be about SEO in WordPress. The choice is subjective as I’ve been blogging in WordPress for years now and I work in the SEO industry. What about you?
The post Udemy Insights: How to Find Profitable Online Course Niches to Make Money Online appeared first on The Four-Week MBA.
Editorial Calendar: How to Use Google Trends for Your Content Strategy
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This is the time of the year where you need to have an editorial calendar. I’m not talking about a fixed, unchangeable plan for 2018 (I don’t believe in that). Rather some definite ideas about what is trending and how to use that to vamp up qualified web traffic to grow your blog.
That is not complicated, and all you have to do is to turn your attention in the coming weeks at Google trends. In fact, Google Trends is a powerful tool to understand what people are most interested in. Therefore, if you want to produce content that converts you have to look at what is attractive to your potential audience first. I will save you some time by selecting a set of trending topics in 2017, which might also be quite popular for 2018, according to several areas. Therefore, whether you have a lifestyle blog or a car dealership, you’ll find here what trended for 2017 and what you should invest in, for your editorial strategy in 2018.
The information provided in this article is true for even for 2020. Those are tactics based on a principle: look at data first before you write even a line of content!
How to turn a “how-to” search into a tutorial for your blog
Tutorials have been quite popular on Google, and they still are. Most users turn to Google to solve a practical problem they have. That is why also for 2017 “how-to” searches are among the most asked questions on Google.
Although some of them are too practical (like “how to make a slime”) for you to cover into an in-depth tutorial. Others (like “how to buy Bitcoin”) give you a great insight into what to write next.
Once you know where to start, you need to uncover all the potential questions users might have about that topic. How do you do that?
Use a free simple tool called Answer the Public to uncover the questions you might want to take into account for your tutorial.
For instance, I inserted into Answer the Public “bitcoin,” and that is what I got:
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You can also download the Bitcoin Questions spreadsheet here.
From the spreadsheet, you can find several kinds of questions that start with several modifiers. A modifier is an element of the phrase that if you take off, the sentence makes still sense, grammatically. However, it changes the meaning of the phrase itself. That is why using modifiers can be useful to you also to structure content.
What kind of modifiers do people type into Google search box?
The most typical modifiers are:
are
how
why
when
what
who
which
where
can
with
Some of the most frequent questions US users aked in 2017 related to Bitcoin are:
are bitcoin gains taxable?
are bitcoin transactions anonymous?
how bitcoin works?
how bitcoin mining works?
You can also use some of those questions to write an entire essay on the topic. For this sake “why” issues are perfect:
why bitcoin is not a bubble
why bitcoin will crash
why bitcoin is the future
That will be more of an opinion piece. Yet if well written and researched it will work wonders.
Therefore, use Google trends to see what topics are trending now and Answer the Public to uncover the most popular questions users might have. That is all you need to write a piece that will rank well and will be attractive to an audience that can bring qualified web traffic to your site.
You can follow the same approach by looking at other trending topics on Google trends.
Ideas for some recipes if you’re a food blogger
Ideas for some tech products review if you are a tech blogger
Do you sell cars? Make sure you have these brands and models!
A car dealership is a traditional business. However, it can also be quite risky if you don’t invest in the right brands and models that people will turn out to buy in your area. I looked at some popular brands and car models. Of course, if you’re located in the US you might want to go more local with the search and have an idea about the brands and cars most requested in your neighborhood. In that case, the best big data you can get is to go around and take as many pictures of cars in the neighborhood. Then analyze those pictures to see what models are the most popular.
If you want to save time Google trends will help you out.
Once again, in the moment you found out the trending and most popular car models and brands you can consult Answer the Public to see what questions are frequently asked. You can use those questions to create a targeted content marketing strategy. Or you can actually use them to get ready to the objection potential customers might have
You might be surprised to find out how many questions people ask about a car, like say “Toyota Camry.”
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Some recurring questions are:
are toyota camry good on gas?
are toyota camry seats comfortable?
why toyota camry is the best?
why buy toyota camry?
You can also use some curiosity people’s have about cars to get them to your website or why not to use them in your sales pitch. One example? One frequent asked question is:
can a toyota camry tow a camper?
can a toyota camry tow a caravan?
Therefore you could put together a specific content about Toyota Camry like this “Tow-free hybrids a ‘lifestyle’ issue: Toyota.”
This kind of content bring qualified web traffic to your site while also addressing specific questions potential customers have. Therefore, this is the content you might want to produce. A content that can be used for the whole funnel.
Don’t you have a clue about your content strategy? Start from the “what” and expand on the Five Ws
To write great content you should use the journalist mindset. Therefore, it might be a good idea to start from the “what” when you do your analysis. In fact, “what is” is one of the questions that pops to mind when approaching a topic. After that, others questions such as “why, where, who, when” might also pop to mind.
Therefore, once you have discovered the “what” use the other four Ws to cover a topic more in-depth.
Here some questions that you might want to ask when writing about a topic:
Who was involved?
What happened?
Where did it take place?
When did it take place?
Why did that happen?
Some authors add a sixth question, “how”, to the list:[1]
How did it happen?
Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Ws
Popular fashion brands for 2017 for fashion bloggers
Tech info products for your tech blog academy
If you’re a techy person, passionate about programming now it’s a good time to start blogging about it. Even though competition is high on those topics so is demand. Below some interesting Google trends for Software Technologies in 2017, which can be a good starting point for your editorial strategy for 2018, or to start creating a course.
Conclusion
Having an editorial strategy doesn’t mean to have a fixed calendar. In fact, as the technological landscape evolves faster and faster it’s hard to predict what is going to trend tomorrow. That doesn’t mean you have to write a news article. In fact, I believe that is the worst kind of content you can produce. If you ever have to produce a valuable piece of content starts with something you know in five, ten years will still quite valuable. With that in mind though, you might want to take advantage of what is trending today to give a buzz to your content through SEO and social media. In this way, you make sure to produce content that has an interested audience.
That is of course if you write for business porpuses. If you’re just an essayist or writer for passion then don’t follow this advice, just write what you love! However, if you write for business purposes you must be able to combine your passion with analytical data that can prove your passion is also valuable for others. You don’t need to look far. You just need to use tools like Google Trends and Answer the Public. The first, to find what is trending, therefore finding a topic that has an audience. The second, to uncover the most relevant questions people have. In this way, you can produce an in-depth, evergreen piece of content that in a few years will still be relevant. That kind of content ranks well and converts even better. That is how you build a business through content!
By keeping one principle in mind:
Look at data first before you write even a line of content!
The post Editorial Calendar: How to Use Google Trends for Your Content Strategy appeared first on The Four-Week MBA.
January 5, 2018
Big Data: Why the Facebook Feed Is a Liar According to Google
In Alexa top 100 websites in the world, we find two websites part of our daily routine: Google (number one) and Facebook (number three).
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Those two sites as part of our daily routines also tell us quite interesting truths about human nature. You might have given them for granted, yet now big data allows them to be checked. Indeed, we can test our assumptions about human behaviors and more interestingly about our more intimate thoughts.
In fact, by looking at what we type when searching through Google we can compare it to what we do when we post, like or share on Facebook. That tells us a reviling fact: the gap between what we say and do when we believe others are looking at us is vast compared to what we think when we are in our intimacy.
How do I know? I looked at Google data coming from web searches to find out a few interesting facts.
The Facebook feed is a liar
Judging the world through the lenses of social media posts is the most deceiving way to look at reality. Yet many people each day take the likes and shares on social media as a sort of currency that has some value. But does it? I doubt it.
When you scroll into feed, you find pictures and posts that show how cool we are. That is only a mask we put on. You might already imagine that but looking at Google data can be pretty useful to assess how big is this social phenomenon.
How do I know? Let’s run a quick experiment. Go on Google (in Incognito mode) and type into the search bar “my husband” you will see Google autocompleting the search with suggestions like “my husband hates me,” or better yet “my husband cheated on me.”
That is not to say that women are evil. In fact, if you type “my wife” into Google’s search bar you will notice the same kind of suggestions – based on the most common search queries people type into Google search box.
What does it tell us? For me, two main things.
First, I don’t believe in general we lie because we’re intrinsically bad or evil. Instead, the gap between what we say and what we really think or do is due to our belief in what is socially acceptable. Second, the social media feed is not a reliable way to create meaningful relationships at all. A real friend is someone that tells you how he feels. Not a cosmetic version of his life. Building a real relationship takes a lot of time and effort on both sides.
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You don’t think is enough?
Why are people happy on Facebook but miserable according to Google?
I just did a quick research into Google Keyword Planner and looked at the keyword “my life is perfect” which as of November 2017 was searched 270 times. However, I also looked at “my life sucks” as of November 2017 it was searches 12,100 times: a ratio of 46 to 1 in favor of the latter (my life sucks)!
True this data might be biased. In fact, if you search for something on Google most probably you do so because you have a problem, a pain point. Instead, if you are so happy to think that your life is perfect, you might not need Google!
What does this tell us? On the one hand, the social feed isn’t reliable at all as a source of understanding people’s lives. On the other hand, Google web searches also give us a bleak picture.
Indeed, Google – I believe – gets used more as a psychologist that can solve our issues. If you feel happy, there is no particular reason to speak to a psychologist. What can we conclude from this data?
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Facebook is a liar if we’re trying to understand how people really feel.
That isn’t to say that Facebook is the cause of people’s lies. Human nature makes us behave in this way because we want to be socially accepted. So much that at times we lie to ourselves as well. What Facebook does is to amplify such behaviors. In short, it makes fake social behaviors more widespread. If that loser posted something cool, why shouldn’t I?
Facebook is Dopamine, while Google is an antidepressant
The way we use Google is fundamentally different from the way we use Facebook (or other social media like LinkedIn). When it comes to behaviors that we manifest on those two sites, there is a considerable gap.
On Google, none is looking at us, while on Facebook it seems anyone is staring at us. Therefore, to Google, we tell our most private secrets. On Facebook instead, we say our biggest lies.
Some more data can confirm that. You can open Google in incognito mode and type “why my life” and see what results Google is giving you. Those results are the most frequent searches.
What do you see? Here some quite popular Google searches for “why my life” and those are some popular results:
“sucks,”
“is like this”
or “is so boring”
If you keep going those searches become quite sad. Of course, Google is different from Facebook. As we saw we use Google mostly when looking to solve a problem, while Facebook to have a dose of dopamine.
However, if I see a Facebook page called “my life sucks” how would you explain it only has 46 likes?
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Does it mean Google is the ultimate source of truth?
Google’s myth-making machine
We’ve become so used to the word “entrepreneur” that we tend to believe the way we think about it today has always been the same. However, in English, the word “entrepreneur” was used only starting from early 19th century.
In fact, “entrepreneur” derives from the Latin “inter + prendere,” and Old French “entreprendre” which meant to undertake or something undertaken. Initially, “entrepreneur” didn’t mean necessarily a risk-taker but instead someone who made a product just to sell it at an undefined price.
With time the definition of “entrepreneur” expanded until it became hyped and stereotyped. In fact, if you search on Google “entrepreneur that” you can see the stereotypes around entrepreneurship such as “entrepreneur that changed the world” or “entrepreneur that started from nothing.”
It is quite impressive how Google’s autocompleted results can help us build the hyped and stereotyped version of the modern entrepreneur, which we’ll call Mr. Stark:
Mr. Stark although very smart didn’t go to college as he started from nothing. After have failed multiple times he took a risk and changed the world at 25.
You don’t have to be Iron Man to be an entrepreneur! Yet that is what you see from Google’s suggested searches.
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What does it tell us? Google is a commercial search engine. Even though it is also an excellent source of big data, it also has a business logic. In short, if many people submit queries to Google. Google will use those questions to suggest users things they might want to look for. This, in turn, might trigger a vicious circle where myths and false beliefs might perpetrate.
The example above shows us – I believe – that as stereotypes are passed upon in real life are then perpetrated through Google, which works as a sort of amplifier. Therefore, anyone starts believing in something, types that through Google. Google then suggests those queries to users, which in turn ends up looked for more easily. Since publishers are using that data to assess what people like, those same publishers might end up creating content around those queries, thus perpetuating this never-ending myth making mechanism. Ok, probably I went too far imagining and that is not sure to happen.
My point is that even though Google is a great source of data to balance against social media. That is not a truth-teller neither. Google data might be biased as well.
Neither Google nor Facebook is a truth-teller yet…
As we saw throughout this article, both Google and Facebook are two sites that play a crucial role in our daily routines and rituals. They have become so part of our life that we don’t even think any more of the way we use them. Even less why we use them at all.
From this article, we saw how Facebook is more like the dopamine dispenser, and Google the antidepressant that keeps us going. However, those roles are not fixed. At times, in fact, we might use Google to relief our boredom and Facebook to talk to friends when we’re depressed.
However, those two sites are used in a completely different way. When in trouble most of the time we open an almost white page with a Google search box and type whatever comes to mind at that moment. With no secrets, neither filters.
On the other hand, when we look into Facebook we have access to an infinite stream of news, updates, and content from our network. That is almost like a slot machine mechanism with the main difference that you could go on forever as scrolling is free while pulling the slot machine lever will cost you each time money. In that feed, though we don’t behave naturally, because we know we’re observed. Therefore, we don’t tell the truth but only show one side of our personality, which we think others would like.
Is Google better than Facebook to understand human nature? Not necessarily. In fact, I believe Facebook tells us a fundamental truth about humans too: we are social creatures. In other words, our desire to be socially accepted is superior to any other.
Therefore, we accept to limit our thoughts and behaviors to fit into an accepted social stereotype. Does this make us happy? I think it doesn’t. That is why we need moments of intimacy to turn at Google to find answers to our most secret thoughts. Will those ideas turn into behavior? They might and they might not.
Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are
This post has been inspired by a remarkable book written by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz. The book shows how we can find sources of data that just a few years ago were not available. One excellent source of data – not only for business – but also to find answers to social questions is coming from Google Web Searches.
The book is a source of inspiration on how to think about data differently and creatively. Information is anywhere you just need to know where to look.
The post Big Data: Why the Facebook Feed Is a Liar According to Google appeared first on The Four-Week MBA.
January 1, 2018
The Ripple Effect: How Cryptocurrencies Are Changing the Global Balance of Power
Throughout this article, I used the data coming from Google web searches to try to understand the phenomenon of cryptocurrencies – Bitcoin in particular – and how it is evolving together with the technology behind it, the Blockchain. I find this data useful as it is data of billions of users across the globe have been inputting into Google search box in the last year. Thus, I believe that data tells us a quite interesting story.
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If you look at the graph above which takes into account the Bitcoin (web search) vs. the Blockchain (web search); that tells us – I believe – that although the Blockchain is the technology behind the Bitcoin, most people are interested about the former. Therefore, even though the Bitcoin arose awareness about the Blockchain, most interest is still around the Bitcoin rather than the Blockchain – which I think is the real deal.
Also, On November 19th the interest in the Blockchain spiked.
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In just a few weeks, by December 8th, 2017 the price reached an all-time high at $16.224.
Another exciting aspect is the interest in Bitcoin vs. Blockchain worldwide.
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In most countries Bitcoin interest over Blockchain prevails:
The US
Canada
Russia
and most of the European nations
In just in a few countries instead, Blockchain seems to be more of interest than the Bitcoin:
Belarus
Latvia
Lithuania
Tunisia
Kazakstan
China
The top five countries – in order of magnitude – most interested in Bitcoin in 2017 were:
South Africa
Slovenia
The Netherlands
Austria
Australia
The top five cities – in order of magnitude – most interested in Bitcoin in 2017 were:
San Jose
San Francisco
Toronto
Los Angeles
Vienna
The top five related queries related to Bitcoin were:
bitcoin price
bitcoin usd
bitcoin to usd
buy bitcoin
bitcoin cash
The top five countries – in order of magnitude – most interested in Blockchain in 2017 were:
Ghana
China
Nigeria
Singapore
Luxemburg
The top five cities – in order of magnitude – most interested in Blockchain in 2017 were:
Zurich
Toronto
San Francisco
Amsterdam
Lagos
The top five related queries related to Blockchain were:
hive blockchain
riot blockchain
hive blockchain stock
riot blockchain stock
neo blockchain
You can find a summary of all the data used in this report here.
An assumption of the report: here the search queries “bitcoin” and “blockchain” is meant as an implied interest of the searcher into the topic.
What does this data tell us?
A few things.
New technologies have been accepted with great skepticism since the dawn of time
For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory.
We look at technology today, and we think how it is impacting humanity, for better or for worse. Many of us are scared and consider all the possible negative consequences of that. The passage above is from a wise man that talks about a technology that disrupted humanity.
Can you guess who is this person and what technology is he talking about? Is he Kevin Kelly? Moreover, is he talking about your smartphone, your computer, or the internet? None of them. That is a comment from Plato – more than 2,400 years ago – about a new technology: writing!
Today, none would argue how writing has been good for humanity. Human history itself has been the fruit of writing. Without that there wouldn’t have been any history at all. Yet writing itself was at the time a disruptive technology which consequence none could have predicted. Therefore, also a smart person, like Plato felt uncomfortable with that – even though he has become immortal thanks to it!
Old centralized systems are losing trust in favor of new decentralized systems
Throughout human history, there is no system which is a hundred percent centralized. For as much as we like to think of kings and queens as the primary protagonist of human history. In reality, those centralized systems also relied on decentralized, informal systems that in some way concurred or reinforced those central systems. Niall Ferguson makes this point very clear in his book, The Square, and the Tower.
The exciting findings by looking at Bitcoin web searches I believe is that beside places like Singapore and Luxemburg where Bitcoin is a clear sign of it being used for financial purposes. In other areas, like Ghana, China, and Nigeria, the digital currency might be used – besides illegal transactions – as a way to escape injustices coming from centralized and authoritarian regimes.
In addition, after the 2007-2008 financial crisis, hundreds of millions of people around the world lost trust towards capitalism. In fact, if in the past, people disliked states and banks. The situation was relatively stable because people trusted capitalism. In short, capitalism for better of for worse allowed anyone to move up the economic ladder. Since the financial crisis that feeling has been threatened too.
Beware of speculation: The Bitcoin seems now like the tulip bubble
Besides the buzz, speculation or bubble behind Bitcoin – many fear Bitcoin is like the Tulip mania, a financial bubble that exploded during 1636 – 1637 in the Netherlands when the price some Tulip bulbs would be worth more than a home!
Predicting whether Bitcoin is a bubble or not I think is impossible. We can argue and give it a valuation. Yet the success of this currency overtime will highly depend upon its ability to be used as a valid alternative to other payment systems.
However, whether or not Bitcoin itself will be a huge success (many argue it’s already), a significant failure (many others claim it’s only a bubble), or just another cryptocurrency; there is one thing we can’t deny. Bitcoin made for the first time possible to have financial transactions without the need of a central authority (a bank or government) to secure those transactions. It managed to do that thanks to the Blockchain!
The Blockchain is the real deal
Today we give for granted simple systems, like the double-entry accounting.
Yet also a simple system like that had significant consequences for businesspeople. In fact, think of a merchant that keeps only one column – the one related to what he is owed. What effect would that have?
In short, if you only take into account what others owe you rather then what you owe them; sooner or later your business will fail. Why? None will trust you enough to do business together. Although we take that for granted now, it was not back in the days.
In fact, in 1458, in Italy, a merchant, Benedetto Cotrugli put together what would become a masterpiece for any businessman, “The Book of the Art of Trade.” He’s the first – even before Luca Pacioli – to introduce the concept of “double-entry.” However, more than introducing it like a system, Cotrugli proposed that as a best practice any businessman should attend to.
In his words:
“Those that keep only one column of accounts, that is how much is owing to themselves and not how much others are expecting from them” are “the worst type of merchant, the basest and most iniquitous”
Would business and the economic system be possible without this simple yet so effective rule of thumb?
Going back to the Blockchain, this system which explained extensively here – even though has some bugs to figure out – it allows decentralized systems to work without the need of a central institution that acts as middlemen for those transactions. If on the one hand many like the idea behind Blockchain, it also poses a significant threat. In fact, many see the Blockchain as a sort of weapon in the hands of ordinary people against evil central organizations, like States and Banks. For how much we love to hear this story that must not be necessarily the case. In fact, technology is neutral. Like atomic energy which can be used to give electricity to the world, or to produce the nuclear bomb that can destroy the globe so is the Blockchain. What does it mean for the future?
Imagine you manage a large organization. You look for practical ways to make your business grow. As business commands, you don’t have preconceived ideas about what’s wrong. Instead, your primary compass is how efficient is that technology to grow your business. Imagine that the Blockchain becomes the most efficient way to manage transactions at the global level. That means the same technology – freely developed – can be used now by anyone who has a business interest. As a businessperson wouldn’t you take advantage of that? I guess you would. And I argue that a large corporation might be better equipped to take advantage of that technology.
Therefore, large corporations may eventually monopolize the markets thanks to this powerful weapon. In other words, the Blockchain rather than act as an equalizer would instead create even more economic disequalities.
What to expect for the future? The Ripple Effect
When you say “cryptocurrency,” most people think about the Bitcoin. However, the market for cryptocurrencies has expanded so much just in the last year that digital currencies are springing like mushrooms after the rain. As of now the list of cryptocurrencies count 1374 for a total market cap: $613,837,033,849 according to coinmarketcap. To put things in context just a few years back this market didn’t even exist. Now it has a market cap as big as of major Amerian corporations if not bigger. In fact, the total market cap of all the cryptocurrencies is bigger than Amazon market cap (563.54B for Dec. 29, 2017).
Some new cryptocurrencies, like Ripple, saw in the last year an increase of 36,018%. In fact, just the year before the market cap for Ripple cryptocurrency was over 230 million dollars, until it reached over a hundred billion dollars by January 2018:
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That might seem a huge number. However, the Federal Reserve alone (US central bank) has a balance sheet of 4.5 trillion dollars as of December 2017. In other words, cryptocurrencies have still a long way ahead.
Like many new phenomena, there is a first mover. Then many other players appear. Therefore, the market becomes extremely fragmented. Just to consolidate again in the hands of a few players. Which currencies will be the winner in the next five-ten years? I wish I knew!
Putting it all together
The Bitcoin is the biggest thing happened in the last few years. Yet as any phenomenon that spreads quickly it brought with it a lot of noise and speculation. It is not surprising then that many like to compare the Bitcoin to the Tulip Mania. However, the Bitcoin also brought to light an exciting technology that can have multiple applications: the Blockchain.
Will the Blockchain be a propeller to democratize the worldwide economy or as a weapon in the hands of few large corporations that an become even more wealthy and powerful? The interrogative stays open.
Also, even though most people relate digital currency to Bitcoin, the market has exploded. It now has a market capitalization larger than Amazon, and it counts more than a thousand cryptocurrencies. Which ones will be the dominating currency that will shape the world economy in the next decade? I wish I knew!
The post The Ripple Effect: How Cryptocurrencies Are Changing the Global Balance of Power appeared first on The Four-Week MBA.
December 20, 2017
Everything You Need to Know About Business Development
Just a few years back I was working as a financial analyst for a real estate investment firm in San Diego. I was the farthest person from being a sales guy. I couldn’t understand whoever wanted to undertake a career in sales. Neither I understood why sales were important at all. Until I had a revelation, selling is the hardest and most important job in the world. It doesn’t matter if you’re selling a product, a service or if you’re selling yourself. Selling is everywhere.
Whether there is money involving or not you’re still selling. What do I mean? Let’s say you want a promotion. However, you’re not the only one. A few people are competing for the same spot. For you to convince your boss you’re the right person you need to be able to sell your capabilities to your boss. That is also why selling skills are paid well. In fact, if you look among the most paid 25 jobs in the US you will find the sales manager with a mean salary of $135,090.
For a year now, I’ve been taking care of the business development for WordLift, a B2B SaaS that operates in the SEO industry. In this article, I want to clarify what does it mean to be a business developer and what are some of the days to day activities to perform. A caveat, business development varies according to company, industry and business model. However, if we look at the big picture, we can find some similarities across business development activities. Let’s start with what business development is not.
Business Development is not only direct sales
Thinking about the business developer as the sales guy, it’s limiting. Not that a business developer doesn’t sell (it is its primary duty), but it does so by creating a distribution. In other words, rather than looking at the single sale the business developers try to find sales channels to tap into to speed up the process of scaling up a company. If that means selling a product or a service directly, then the business development person will become a sales guy.
Business Development is not only about sales
A good business developer doesn’t have to have prejudices about the kind of daily activities to undertake. Especially if you do collaborate for a startup the day to day activities can vary quite a lot. For instance, one day you may be sending out emails to potential prospects. Some other days, you may be taking part in a conference. While some other days you may be writing an article about a topic that is of interest to your target customers. Other days yet you might be setting dozens of calls and talking to prospects or drafting a proposal for custom projects. In addition to that, you might be coordinating the activity on projects and accounts you closed and you manage. Therefore, all the activities that enhance the sales process grow the business and help you reach the financial target are welcome.
What is business development?
Business development is about nurturing the right relationships
Business is based on trust. No matter which industry you operate in that is the baseline. Therefore, as a business developer, you must learn to build relationships and trust pretty quickly. How do you do that? This brings us to the next point
Business development is about scaling up a business
To be great at business development you have to be a quick learner. Thus, able to understand several aspects of the business you’re serving. For instance, throughout this year I had to learn quite a new subjects: SEO, funnel optimization, content marketing, and all the other channels available to grow a business. In short, you have to become a sort of hybrid, able to learn anything to make the company grow. That leads us to the next point.
Business development is about hacking the growth of a business
As I said at the beginning of the article business development could vary quite a lot based on industry, business model and stage of maturity of a company. If you are called as a business developer for a startup, most of the activities will be connected to grow the startup and ferry it to the next stage of growth. To do that you’ll need to understand how to use growth hacking.
Put it very shortly that is a mindset fine-tuned for growth, which is data-driven and measurable. Of course, there are many other aspects of growth hacking. If you want to know more in detail how this relatively new discipline read my previous article on the topic:
Mindset, Tactics, Skills, Tools and Resources to Grow Your Business in the era of Growth Hacking
For how complicated growing a business might seem, it all boils down to one crucial aspect: create value!
Business development is about creating value
Reaching out to people is one of the most effective ways to start a business relationship. However, the line between being spammy and create value can be ephemeral. How do you create value? First, you have to investigate the person you will going to approach and identify the things that person values the most businesswise.
For instance, if I want to approach another entrepreneur that sells a product similar to mine I have to understand exactly how I can create value for him. If our products are complementary, would make a bundle with both add value to him and his customer base? Would this generate enough value? In short, you have to invest a bit of time trying to understand that person business, and what objectives he/she is looking for to achieve.
What activities does business development imply?
As a business developer, I realized that there is no limit to your creativity. Anything that can enhance your sales process can become something you want to focus on. At the same time, the pipeline is the primary focus. In short, you might want to stay creative while concentrating on having enough prospects on the one hand and enough potential projects on the other side, ready to be closed.
The sales pipeline
A sales pipeline is as a visual representation of your sales process where all your potential customers are displayed and neatly arranged according to their phase in your sales cycle.
Source: salespop.pipelinersales.com/sales-pro...
Being able to track your sales pipeline is a critical activity. A sales pipeline is just a way to have clear in which stage of the sales process you are with a potential client. As shown by Sales POP from the initial contact to closing a deal it takes a few steps:
Initial contact
Qualification
Meeting
Proposal
Close
At each of those actions, we can assign a probability of closing a deal. For instance, at the initial contact, you don’t have an idea yet whether the person you’re reaching out would later become a customer. Therefore, the more you move forward down the pipeline, the more the chances of closing the deal improve. Sales POP research shows that each of those stages has a chance of success as it follows:
Initial contact – 0 %
Qualification – 10 %
Meeting – 30 %
Proposal – 60 %
Close – 100 %
Therefore, after you have qualified a lead, you have 1 in 10 chances of closing it. Once you have met, defined the project and sent a proposal, then your chances will improve up to 60%. The chances of closing a deal also depend on other factors. For instance, have you previously worked with this person? In short, if you have already built trust it will be easier to close the deal. If you are expanding a project you were working on, then it might be easier as well. Therefore, it will depend upon several factors crucial to any deal.
What can I do to improve my sales pipeline?
Before the sales get in you, need to prepare the soil. That also means a set of activities that create trust in yourself and the company you work for to bring more leads. How do you do that?
Experiment new tools, or channels. Linke social selling
find out new tactics by asking a feedback to your peers in the same industry
creating new partnerships
managing existing partnerships to see if there is a chance to expand the scope of work and create more value for them and your company
direct sales (outreach, live demonstrations, free training)
off-line activities (like live seminars)
content marketing (writing articles of interest to potential clients)
What other specific activities can you do as a business developer for a SaaS startup?
Some of the things I’ve been doing as a business developer for a B2B SaaS startup
As a business developer of a small startup, I also had a great responsibility as I had been in charge of one of the most precious things for a startup: interactions with clients. In fact, at times clients help you understand your business better than anyone else.
Talking with your clients help you define, strengthen and develop your product or service so that it fits better with the market. In the last year I’ve been doing a few activities entirely all with the same objective: grow the business quickly and sustainably. Some of the activities I’ve found more useful have been:
talk to clients to understand how they are using your service and assess if they could benefit from a custom project
building relationships with micro influencers or in any case people with an active community behind
performing product demonstrations (one of the most influential ways to create value for you leads while showing them practically how to use your service)
LinkedIn for social selling: more on that later
identifying and creating new distribution channels
being featured in the media (I know it sounds like PR activity, but the content is the most significant weapon to build trusted relationship quickly)
go to events related to your industry
Let’s dive a bit into the way it makes sense a career or a part of your career in business development.
Why undertake a career in business development?
A little premise. I don’t see myself as a business developer for my whole life. Instead, I see this as a transition toward being an entrepreneur. I’m already a digital entrepreneur. However, when I launched digital products in the past, I noticed how struggling was to get traction for those. Therefore, I understood I needed an experience in sales if I wanted to become a better entrepreneur. In other words, at least for me mastering and acquiring the “selling mindset” allows me to be a better entrepreneur, thus by giving me more freedom. Why should you work in business development? A few reasons:
develop an entrepreneurial mindset
get more freedom compared to a traditional job
dynamic work that pushes you to learn new things quickly (to be good at selling you need to understand yourself first the value of the service you offer)
make more money (less salary but more commissions if you do perform)
high pressure but also more fun than a traditional job (at least for me)
being your boss (if it is in a large organization, of course, you will respond to someone. However, the only boss you have are the commercial objectives you agreed upon)
get to build a professional network quickly (you’re pushed to meet new people daily even if you might be the most introvert person on earth)
What are some downsides?
Of what I can think of here are some I identified:
The bottom line is your mixed blessing. In fact, although you might be doing things right for specific periods you just don’t seem to be able to close a deal. From the outside that might look like you’re not doing your job properly. What I like to call the outcome bias. In those periods you have to be good to think about your track record
your pay is proportional to the objective you’re able to achieve. Therefore quite volatile
some days it just seems you’ll never get to achieve the financial results agreed. It is normal to feel like that. The good side of it is that you’ll feel what any entrepreneur experiences
Overall the balance is positive. Now the most critical question. How do you make a business get traction?
The channels you can tap into to get traction
Gabriel Weinberg, CEO, and founder of DuckDuckGo, a search engine that doesn’t track your data, put together in his book, Traction a list of channels that are critical to allow a business to grow. He identified sixteen channels. Below some examples of how to use them:
Targeting Blogs
Publicity
Unconventional PR
Search Engine Marketing
Social and Display Ads
Offline Ads
Search Engine Optimization
Content Marketing
Email Marketing
Viral Marketing
Engineering as Marketing
Business Development
Sales
Affiliate Programs
Existing Platforms
Trade Shows
Offline Events
Speaking Engagements
Community Building
Source: Medium
To tap into those channels, you can use the Bullseye framework that I discuss more in detail below:
DuckDuckGo: The [Former] Solopreneur That Is Beating Google at Its Game
The secret weapon for the business developer: LinkedIn
65% of salespeople who use social selling fill their pipeline, compared to 47% of reps who do not. source: blog.hubspot.com/sales/sales-statistics
LinkedIn is a fantastic tool to generate conversations that can help you speed up the prospecting phase. In the last months on LinkedIn I’ve been able to achieve the following goals:
found new B2B clients
built new partnerships
got media coverage
personal branding
Those things are possible if you are consistent. Three ways to build relationships with business are:
outreach to people that might get value from what you offer
use LinkedIn publishing to create awareness or become a thought leader in your niche
share and like posts about people you admire to strengthen your relationship and create value for your network
LinkedIn is the only social media I find useful for B2B and the social media I use on a daily basis. What else?
Try out beBee! It is another professional network focused on personal branding with an engaged community, which is growing quite fast.
How beBee is Hacking Its Growth with the Hook Model [Case Study]
At the end of it, it’s all about listening
Based on a research by Hubspot those are the top four ways to create a positive sales experience, according to buyers:
Listen to their needs (69%)
Don’t be pushy (61%)
Provide relevant information (61%)
Respond promptly (51%)
Therefore, it is critical to learning to listen, which does not mean thinking about what you have to say next when the other person is listening. But instead to focus solely on what the other person says emphatically. One mantra I have (or at least I try) to follow is “how do I create value for this person?”
Once that becomes hardwired, it will be much easier to get things going!
Let’s wrap it up
To wrap things up throughout this year I’ve learned quite a few things. After resigning to my job as a financial analyst, I was looking for something that would get me more freedom. That is why I put together ebooks and online courses that allowed me to become independent. However, initially, I blindly thought that all you needed was great content. But I soon found out I was wrong. In fact, as I started to focus on the marketing and distribution part of my online business I could not have it take off to reach the objectives I had in mind.
I realized an experience in sales would allow me to master the critical skills to become a better entrepreneur. That is also why I joined WordLift as a business developer. I found this role challenging yet stimulating; pressuring yet fun; tiring yet exciting. Thus, the overall balance is positive. I would suggest anyone that is trying to transition from employed to self-employed or becoming an entrepreneur to have an experience in business development.
Everything You Need to Know About Business DevelopmentSource: FeedPublished on 2017-12-20The History of the Web in a Nutshell: From the First Computer to the Deep WebSource: FeedPublished on 2017-12-15The Interface Theory: Why Humans Are Not Wired for TruthSource: FeedPublished on 2017-12-10Blockchain: Why Distributed Search Engines Can End Google SupremacySource: FeedPublished on 2017-11-22Top Four Communities to Join to Be a Successful Digital MarketerSource: FeedPublished on 2017-11-19Business Mastery: Top Ten Must-Read Business Books in 2018Source: FeedPublished on 2017-11-01Fifteen Smart Ways to Be More Productive with DuckduckgoSource: FeedPublished on 2017-10-30DuckDuckGo: When privacy becomes a trigger for growthSource: FeedPublished on 2017-10-29Five Business Podcasts You Have to Listen in 2018Source: FeedPublished on 2017-10-28What The Death of Socrates taught me about challenging the status quoSource: FeedPublished on 2017-10-26
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December 15, 2017
The History of the Web in a Nutshell: From the First Computer to the Deep Web
Today we all give the internet for granted. That is not surprising, considering that over 3.5bln people are connected. Also, that number grows each second, faster and faster. Almost like a rocket heading toward the space undisputed, the web is conquering larger and larger pieces of the world population.
Indeed, as of today, around 46% of the world population has access to the internet. To put that into context, imagine that only in 1995, the world population connected to the internet was less than 1%! This means that each year in the last two decades the web users base has grown at a double-digit rate.
And although that rocket, which we call “web” sooner or later will stop, the only question that pops to the mind of any modern human is “how long will it take for the web to be used by 100% of the world population?”
Even though this question is legitimate, that is not the most important one. We make a case for the benefits that the web offers to its users. We may almost get horrified when we hear that China’s government is censoring the internet. We may also find ridicule when the French Government states that workers have the right to be disconnected, outside the working hours.
Yet, instead, that thinking about the web, from the quantitative standpoint (how many users will join in?); the real, most crucial question is “how will the web work in the future?” In other words, we want to make a qualitative assessment. So far we managed to create web technologies that although bettered our lives, also made us more stressed, confused and dehumanized. Is this where we are heading? Hopefully not. In this article I want to give you a very quick summary of the web. This is not a complete history, but just my point of view.
Blockchain: Why Distributed Search Engines Can End Google Supremacy
When the only computers were people
We all give for granted that a computer is a squaring device, that sits on your desk, and it is able to perform a variety of tasks. From computation to coding and video editing, computers nowadays are indispensable for any human. Yet the term “computer” was used starting from the early 17th century. How is that possible?
Before those machines that sit on our desk were invented, all the tasks related to computing were delegated to humans. In fact, what seemed a trivial task, actually had a crucial role in modern human societies, since thousands of years. From roman numbers to the invention of logarithms (by the Scottish mathematician John Napier, see “Computing before computers“), computing was made easier and easier. While in middle-age societies computing was mainly an accounting task, which made possible the birth and rise of empires and powerhouses (like the Medici Family in Florence and the Rothschild Family in Europe); it eventually became more and more important in the scientific and military field.
The first real attempt at substituting a human with a machine, to perform computational tasks was made nu Charles Babbage in 1828. The seed was planted.
The Turing machine
What we want is a machine that can learn from experience. Alan Turing, London 1947
Even though the quote above was pronounced in 1947, it still sounds revolutionary! It was pronounced by Alan Turing, the father of modern computation. Still, today is hard to think of a machine as “intelligent,” (yet Alan Touring deeply thought about machine intelligence, more than three-quarters of a century ago. His idea was simple but extremely powerful. Turing thought what if we made machines able to learn from experience and to solve problems by using rule-of-thumb principles fed to them, those machines could become extremely useful to humanity. In short, by making a machine working through a heuristic, a short-cut, that same machine could have solved a problem way faster that otherwise would have been possible.
It was the birth of the theoretical framework behind modern computers.
When computers were as big as a house
Time is running out. In one hour or so, you have the presentation of the quarterly financials. Your boss is waiting for you in his office. You are about to panic. Yet, you take a deep breath, relax and open an excel spreadsheet. Within that file, there are hundreds of tabs, tables, arrays. In a plethora of excel formulas, which go from what if statements, to VLOOKUP, you are ready to summarize the huge amount of data in a nice and clean Pivot Table. You are ready to rock!
That same file, which is saved on your desktop computer, stored in a device that weighs less than one kilogram, is something that you take for granted. Yet it took decades for computers to become as useful to humans as it was first imagined by Alan Turing. Also, computers were not the slim and light machines that we are used to but instead vast and voluminous machines that occupied entire rooms.
Thanks to Turing‘s new theoretical framework the first computers were created. It was the year 1943, in the middle of the Second World War. There were two huge battles going on. One was only visible to people. It was the war on the battlefields between the allies’ soldiers against Germany. Another battle, way less visible to common people, yet of extreme importance. It was the competition between the allies’ intelligence service against the Germans. It was not a battle fought through weapons but rather through the rise of a new technological tool, the modern computer.
In that scenario, in 1943, the British scientist Tommy Flowers, developed the Colossus. A computer used by Biriths to encrypt the German messages. Not long after Eckert and Mauchly from the University of Pennsylvania, developed the ENIAC. This machine looked more like a modern super-computer; in fact, it occupied 1,800 square feet (167 square meters), with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighing almost 50 tons. Except the fact that to perform the same calculations that you can through your 11 inch Mac Air it probably took many ENIAC computers combined. In other words, imagine an entire castle occupied by those first digital computers, only to perform the calculations you are now able to do in a simple excel spreadsheet.
From batch processing to time sharing
Today programmers around the world write their lines of codes, press the enter button, and that’s it. The computer executes the command at the speed of light. Yet that is not how things worked back in the 1950s. In fact, at that time computers performed one task at the time. Those huge machines required a cooling system so powerful, that made sense to close those computers in a room. Yet those computers’ room was accessible only to few people, called “operators.” In other words, as Paul Alan, co-founder of Microsoft, narrates in his book “Idea Man;” programmers had to use a keypunch machine to convert a code into a punch card. Each punch card coincided with one line of code. Those punch cards were given to the operators, that according to their schedules and how they prioritized it, inserted those cards in those huge machines, to be eventually executed. This meant that if a punch card contained one single error, or it was bent, the whole work of the programmers was invalidated. On the other hand, the programmer wouldn’t have known it for days. This kind of system was called “batch processing,” and it made programmers’ life miserable.
It is not surprising then, that a new system came out only a few years later, in 1957. Rather, than having those computers controlled only by few operators; a remote connection was created. This remote connection allowed each programmer to communicate with the computer directly. In other words, finally, programmers could write their codes, without relying on punch cards, and operators. Therefore, multiple users could work on the same computer. “Time-sharing” was the first new revolutionary system, that allowed a leap forward in computer’s programming. In fact, finally, a computer could “communicate” with multiple users. Yet another step, which would have revolutionized the internet and therefore humanity, was the ability of computers to communicate with each other. How?
From the ARPANET to the chaotic web
As Kevin Kelly would put computers didn’t become interesting until they didn’t connect to the internet. Yet, the internet of today is not that of yesterday but evolved in few decades. Yet Kelly’s point is correct. Before, computers were those giants boring machines that performed clerical tasks. Before, computers could really make a difference in humans’ lives it took the advent of the web. But why did the web took off in the first place?
The World Wide Web
In less than a decade, the world wide web exploded! Today more than a billion websites comprise it!
How did it all start? Put it very shortly Sir Tim Berners-Lee in a side-project he was working on when at the CERN of Geneva figured out he could connect web pages with what we all know today as hypertext. Therefore, he came up with a protocol, which was the result of an extreme need to give a standard to the web. In fact, Tim Berners-Lee later said:
I just had to take the hypertext idea and connect it to the Transmission Control Protocol and domain name system ideas and—ta-da!—the World Wide Web[29] … Creating the web was really an act of desperation, because the situation without it was very difficult when I was working at CERN later. Most of the technology involved in the web, like the hypertext, like the internet, multifont text objects, had all been designed already. I just had to put them together. It was a step of generalising, going to a higher level of abstraction, thinking about all the documentation systems out there as being possibly part of a larger imaginary documentation system.
However, surfing the web was still limited because you could just go from one page to the next through links: the effort it took to find what you were looking for was massive.
Search engines take over
In this chaotic web that was in some ways tamed by Sir Berners-Lee protocol, the Web was still a confusing place. That is why many ventured out in finding a way to search through those pages to see specific content to queries.
This idea led to the creation at the beginning of the 90s of search engines. In short, those were websites that allowed to scan through the web pages available at the time through the web to find what a user was looking for with the use of keywords.
However, there wasn’t a search engine that took over the web until the early 2000s. Before that, back in 1994, the first search engines were WebCrawler or Lycos.
That is until two young fellows and Ph.D. students at Standford University came up with an algorithm able to rank web pages by using a system similar to that used by research papers. In short, one of the most powerful ways to assess the popularity of a research paper was to look at the citations it received from other publications. That citation mechanism was also used to rank web pages. Those citations were represented by links. A website receiving a link from another website would receive a so-called backlink.
The more quality backlinks a website received, the more it could rank higher in the SERP. Backlinks are still the backbone of the web. However, on that spine, a new web blossomed.
What Web are you looking for through Google?
When you surf the web through a commercial search engine like Google you are only scratching the surface:
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Source: darkwebnews.com/help-advice/access-da...
What you see on Google or other online communities is just the so-called surface web, which may comprise a small percentage of the total internet.
Therefore, if we had to proceed on layers, the following would be the layers of the web:
Surface Web > visible and indexable web
Deep web > non-indexable web and dark web
Let’s see the differences.
What is the indexable web?
Search engines use algorithms to rank web pages on the surface web. However, before to rank those pages, a commercial search engine has to form an index. To build that index the search engine uses software, called spiders that crawl web pages. Those web pages contain hyperlinks. By following those links, the web crawlers can index the web. However, what they index is only the so-called indexable web.
In fact, there are web pages which are not accessible to those crawlers. In other words, each website has a file called robots.txt that instructs a web crawler how to behave on a page. In short, it says something like “you ain’t index the page!”
All the pages indexed according to the robots.txt form the indexable web.
What is the visible web?
When you type something in Google‘s search bar, you’re not accessing the whole web but only their “point of view” of the internet, or if you want of the world.
Indeed, while Google‘s bots to crawl all the indexable pages, that doesn’t mean those pages will be shown to users, quite the opposite. Google‘s search algorithm will perform a sort of “censorship” of those pages to decide what is relevant and what not. That is how you get the results you want. Those results you get from Google, any other commercial search engine, but also from online communities such as Reddit, Facebook and so on are only partial versions of the indexable web. That is the visible web.
In short, the main difference between indexable and visible web stands in the “censorship” or “selection” applied by an algorithm to decide what the users can see.
What is the deep web?
Everything outside the indexable web is part of the deep web. Those can be pages that are protected by passwords, membership pages, but also pages that for instance company’s websites are not showing because are not useful to their users.
There is a subset of the deep web called dark web, where instead you can find anything from political activists to smugglers. That part of the web is accessible with ad hoc search engines like Tor.
Summary and conclusions
Throughout this article we went through the development of the web, starting from the first computer to the world wide web. Eventually, search engines like Google took over. Today Google, worldwide has a 92% market share, which means that every single day almost three billion and a half searches go through it! That is why it easy to confuse Google with the web. However, Google is not the web. I hope this very short guide could be of help to you. Yet far from being a definitive or complete guide (it would take a book for that) I hope things look much clearer now.
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