It seems our work as marketers is becoming more stressful.

Lately, I keep reading a lot more about mental issues, and hear a lot of colleagues and friends who are struggling with stress.

While the time of Covid was pretty stressful for everyone, a combination of factors seems to be pushing a lot of people over the edge:

▪ Mass layoffs

▪ Expectations of results with less resources

▪ Economic uncertainty

▪ Rising cost of living

▪ Work/life balance (overworking)

▪ Fear of replacement (with AI or automations)

While the percentage of burn-out has fallen according to Statista from the pea of Covid, it’s still higher than before 2019.

Economic or Financial Factors

Inflation increases the cost of living faster than companies increase salaries.

This leads to uncertainty, and possibly overworking to keep a job, trying to make additional income, or looking for a job.

On the employe’s side, the expectations of management rise, again to cover the inflation, with higher expectations over lower budgets.

While some companies really struggle, others find the opportunity for higher profits.

At least in marketing:

• lower budgets,
• less personnel, and
• cost reduction measures…

…come with expectations of higher performance from current employees.

The rise of AI comes with the expectation to automate many jobs, and increase productivity, while reducing jobs.

Employees are stressed by higher performance expectations or potential replacement from AIs.

🙋 Is there a Solution?

While I am not a mental health professional, and I do struggle with work/life balance and stress quite often, I have a few thoughts to share.

If you are struggling with mental health or stress, I strongly advice you to talk to a professional or at least a close friend.

Here are my thoughts on the topic:

✔ Consider a mental health professional (SOS)

✔ Manage expectations internally (SOS)

✔ Improve your skills, soft skills especially

✔ Be open to opportunities, or create ones

✔ You are not alone, speak to a friend or colleague

A piece of advice from a fellow SEO who suffered from stress a few months ago Milica Kovacevic:

And, an advice from a friend I got some time ago. It helped with some problems, but I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone:

Resources to Deal With Stressed

While I found an interesting article at Search Engine Journal about the stressors at marketing, there are much better ways I have found to deal with stress.

Here are a few:

Take a Break

Taking your days off, PTO, yearly vacations or even a weekend to fully unplug is incredibly important.

Constantly working and being on the edge doesn’t help.

Even just de-plugging and not answering to work messages, emails, or planning for next week can make a difference.

Take time for yourself, and respect your self as much as possible.

Meditation & HeadSpace

Meditation helps focus and relax. While I am terrible in meditating and rarely do it, a year or two back, HeadSpace which is a guided meditation series on Netflix helped me work towards it and relax from stressful days.

Podcast on Mental Health

As I gamer (which also helps) a friend recommended this podcast: HealthyGamerGG

Dr. Alok Kanojia talks with gamers and helps them deal with many online problems they face in their daily life and work.

Admittendly, there are many more better podcasts for lots of people, you can do some digging around.

Exercise

I do love bicycling, and for the north hemisphere, swimming is a great solution for hot summers.

Physical exercise helps alleviate stress and calms us down. Exercise can also lead to better health, sleep, and has so many positive side-effects, especially combined with healthy eating.

(I should be the one following my own advice as I really neglected these over the past few months)

We Are All in This Together

Mental health is something we all struggle one way or another.

Stress exists in many professions, individuals, and circumstances.

I decided to focus on stress for marketing professions, as this is a topic close to heart which I understand better and can offer my perspective.

Everyone’s struggle is unique.

Please, if you are struggling, consult a professional or at least a close friend.

That’s the best advice I can give you, and hopefully it can help you too!

We are all in this together, and it requires us as a society to work towards improving mental health.

It’s a long road, and I hope we reach it 🙂

Be well my friend!

The post Stress & Mental Health in Marketing Professions appeared first on Marketing Experts Hub.

Let me introduce to you the Frappe method!

☕ All it took was showing up every day at a local beach-side cafe and ordering my usual Frappe coffee, with full milk, and 2 spoons of sugar.

Now that I have your attention, let’s talk about:

📈 misleading graphs, 

💪 SEO-flexing, and 

🎯 how to focus on what really matters.

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📈 Misleading graphs

It’s very easy to manipulate results, take the best possible screenshot, or show short-term results & spikes as super wins.

Where you get your data matters.

The below example is based on an Ahrefs’ database update that shows a spike in many websites, along with some real wins over time.

Sharing this graph, it looks like something incredible happened, and I’m gonna share this secret now.

Graphs from SEO tools are a proxy-metric, it gives you a comparative, calculative look at the data you don’t have access to. But, it’s not a real outlook of a website’s performance.

Google analytics, Search Console, Matomo, and other analytics tools show the true traffic of a website. 

Here is a similar period graph from Google’s Search Console, and adding a trend line to illustrate the traffic growth, with seasonal peaks & weekend lows.

💪 SEO Flexing

There are many great SEOs out there growing websites and delivering great results. It usually takes time and focus, and it’s easy to manipulate a graph to show growth.

By using a specific timeframe, I can tell you the story of how I doubled growth in less than 6 months.

Be wary of anyone promising to double, triple, or quadruple your traffic in X period. It’s the “new pitch” of “getting 1st page on Google”.

The reality is that if you have 100 organic visits per month, it’s easy to double and triple in just a month or two, for an established site, incremental gains are what you should be expecting.

🤖 AI-Generated, High Velocity Growth

Many SEOs now boast their results by posting hundreds or thousands of AI content. There will be an initial spike of course, due to the new content.

I have seen this happen for both new & older domains. It can help you rank or it can help you double & triple traffic, but what will that do for your business’ bottom line?

A suggested read about this from Ross Hudgens, showing the case of AI-generated content spike and then subsequent drop, but not a real impact in conversions.

🎯 Focus on what matters

The reality is that SEOs will only succeed if they focus on the most important KPIs.

Don’t fantasise based on other people’s imaginary results.

Focus on business KPIs → Revenue, MRR / ARR first (if you can attribute it), or leads, trials, demos, sales calls, mqls, sqls.

Write great, in-depth, expertly led content.

Build authority with link-building.

Improve your site’s technical foundation.

And, if you have time to experiment on how AI-generated content can increase your productivity, do it.

Learn to read your data, graphs, and learn to recognize well-chosen graphs that manipulate your perceptions. Don’t believe anyone selling you a candy-filled story, be sceptical, they are probably trying to sell you a service or something else.

☕ P.S.:  I only drink the darkest cold-brew coffee I can make at home!

P.S.2: Read how much do backlinks cost, and the most efficient way to build links the ABC exchange.

The post How I grew my traffic by 230% in 6 months appeared first on Marketing Experts Hub.

Why is that?

Too many meetings are tiring and can break concentration and reduce productivity. They take time from other tasks and often end up with a handful of people discussing while others passively exist in the background.

But, remote meetings can be useful, if done correctly!

Not all Meetings are Meetings

First, let’s identify the problem of too many meetings in your day.

When working remotely, it’s a challenge to connect with colleagues at a human level, but also a professional level. 

Office “watercooler chats” might seem mundane, however, they are immensely important. They keep are ways to socialize, brainstorm, and collaborate.

Let’s recognize the 3 main time-draining categories of remote work “meetings”:

• Real Meetings
• Announcements
• Quick Chats
• Social Calls

Real Meetings

Real meetings have an agenda, and a goal, and are planned ahead of time. They are essential to team collaboration, information dissemination, and making decisions.

Daily stand-ups, project updates, and all-hands meetings are a form of meeting that is needed in most remote work environments.

The problem with meetings is when meetings take more of your time over actual work without offering any real benefits. 

I will be expanding on the problems of remote meetings later in the article.

Announcements

A real meeting is about communication and collaboration. Often, a manager may need to inform their team of a decision, update, or important change.

Those are not always needed to be set as a meeting, they are more of a one-way announcement and can be easily avoided by an email, message, or even a video recording.

Video meetings make announcements more exciting, but are a bigger disruption and should be avoided if possible.

Quick Chats

Sometimes, you need an unscheduled quick chat with a colleague.

While working remotely, the simple act of discussing an update or asking for help has been changed to a “meeting”.

We need to mentally separate quick chats from meetings. While they take time, are tedious, or annoying, and break your concentration, they are not meetings.

They are short conversations, usually for the purpose to:

• Clarify a situation
• Make a request
• Solve an issue
• Progress a Task
• Share an update

Social Calls

Did you have a slack huddle or a Zoom meeting turn into a chit-chat or a gossip spree?

You must have thought:

“That’s a huge time waster!”

And, yes, it is a huge time waster. But, sometimes it’s as important as actual work.

We are social animals, and socializing with our colleagues is important. For employees, connecting with colleagues is satisfying and leads to more fulfilling work environments. 

Light, social talks with colleagues are also great for out-of-the-box ideation. Great ideas often come when we are discussing them!

But, too many social calls are disturbing in a day. Knowing when to set limits and when to join is an important skill.

Problems in Remote Meetings

A meeting fails its objectives when it provides no value to the company while taking time from other tasks.

There are many reasons why a meeting fails, and here are the most common reasons for a meeting to become a black hole sucking productivity:

No Agenda

Without an agenda, a meeting is easily derailed. Agendas give structure and clarity to meetings and help push the conversation towards a specific goal.

Many times, the meeting organizer thinks an unstructured meeting is great for brainstorming, but without any agenda, goal, or time management, it can easily get out of hand without any results in the end.

Sharing an agenda beforehand helps reduce the risks of having a chaotic meeting and allows participants to prepare for it by bringing data and ideas relevant to the topic.

No Meeting Goal

All meetings need a clear goal. 

A goal can be a decision, a pool of ideas, informing the participants of an update, a project update, etc.

If you are the meeting organizer, ask yourself: “What do I want to achieve from this meeting?”

Then, write it clearly in an actionable way for participants. Here are a few examples of meeting goals:

• Produce a list of webinar topics for the next year
• Weekly updates and coordination of the project
• Discuss the quarterly results and make a list of actions to improve lead capture activities for the next quarter

Attendance

Inviting the right people to the meeting is a challenge. Getting the major stakeholders to attend is another challenge.

The first part of the problem is identifying the stakeholders. 

• Who should attend the meeting?
• Why are they important to the meeting?
• What do they bring to the table?

A meeting is required when there is conversation and collaboration. It’s nice to invite more people to a meeting to show them they matter or to be informed, but it’s difficult to coordinate a meeting of 7-10 people physically, and even more challenging for remote meetings. The sweet spot for remote meetings would be 2-5 people, after that, it becomes difficult to have a real conversation.

The second part of the problem is having people showing up. Often, an important stakeholder might miss a meeting, this leads to more time wasted if a meeting needs to be rescheduled.

Clear communication and reminders by all parties are required to avoid issues with attendance. If this is a repeated problem for your team, you need to discuss it with the people involved.

Participation

Too much or too little participation can be a problem.

As said before, a meeting is about communication. While there is no need to keep equal time for everyone, the meeting coordinator has to keep an eye on participants. Participating too much without offering value or not participating at all is a problem.

In some cases, participants may be too shy or polite to speak up. In this case, the meeting leader can empower those people by asking them if they have something to share.

It’s important to keep a supportive tone and not force someone to speak.

Time Management

One of the most important responsibilities of the meeting coordinator is to keep time. If there is an agenda, it’s a good idea to add time for each topic and keep an eye on it.

A meeting might need to go longer for a complex issue. But, in most cases, it’s good etiquette to plan correctly and keep the sessions short and on target. 

A delay in one meeting can have rolling impacts on other meetings and waste time for multiple people.

Constant Reschedules

Reschedules happen. Stakeholders might deal with multiple unforeseen events in a day, and this is OK.

However, constant last-minute reschedules impact the schedule and concentration of the participants.

Clear communication is important to alleviate this issue. Ask important stakeholders if the time and date of the meeting work for them.

Cultivating a culture of communication in the company is important. 

A participant might say they can’t attend a meeting. 

Another may inform the organizer that something came up and they can’t attend, as early as possible. 

Best Practises to Follow

How to best avoid these meeting problems? Here are remote meeting best practices to help you have a successful meeting.

Before a Meeting

Some meetings can be an email

Identify why you need a meeting. If it is something that can be said in an email, a Slack message, or even by recording a video message for the team, consider not having a meeting.

Set a meeting goal.

A meeting goal will help the meeting go smoothly by setting up expectations and a clear north star to follow.

Prepare and share an agenda

An agenda gives structure to a meeting, keeps it on-topic, and sets specific expectations. Build an agenda to support the meeting’s goal. Add a time estimation based on the agenda topics.

Communicate requests

If a stakeholder needs to present data, prepare ideas, or come in any way prepared, clearly communicate it to that person.

Scheduling the Meeting

Ask participants about the time

Communicate with the meeting participants and let them know about the possible time(s) for the meeting. Get feedback on the day and time of the meeting before scheduling. This will avoid participation and rescheduling problems.

If possible, check first if all the participants’ calendars show them to be free at that time.

Send calendar invitations

Send an invitation to all participants. Include all the important information like:

• Meeting place (link to video call or physical location)
• Date / Time
• Agenda
• Goal
• Documents, presentations, or links

Send reminders

Remind participants about the meeting. Especially for a meeting scheduled many days or weeks ahead, it’s a good idea to send a reminder email or message the day before or a few minutes before.

Make sure that important stakeholders can attend.

During the Meeting

Set clear expectations

Set the expectation of the meeting. Repeating the agenda & goal will help you do so.

Manage time

Time management is one of the most important aspects of a meeting. Keep close to the agenda and keep the timing. Try to keep the meeting in the time decided beforehand.

Manage participation

Be mindful of your participation. Don’t let the meeting be a one-way presentation, ask for people to share their opinion, and keep them from going off-topic.

Write meeting notes

Assign a person to write meeting notes. It’s important to keep notes during the meeting and capture any ideas or important information. 

Not all meetings require notes, but most do.

Move towards the goal

The meeting was set to achieve a specific goal. The meeting organizer has to have that in mind … always! 

Keep track of the goal and move the conversation towards that goal.

After the Meeting

Follow up the meeting as required. You might need to write an email with the takeaways or share the meeting notes.

Conclusion

Meetings are important to disseminate information, make decisions, and come up with new ideas. They are also invaluable ways to connect in a remote work environment.

However, not all meetings need to happen.

Some meetings can be just an email.

And, we all need to learn when to say no to meetings. Your time is the most important resource, and you should value it.

What is your biggest problem when it comes to meetings? Let me know in the comments 👇

The post The Problems with Remote Meetings and How to Solve Them appeared first on Marketing Experts Hub.