17 inspirational examples of data visualization

We can all collect masses of data, but it only becomes genuinely useful when we use it to make a clear point.

This is where data visualization comes in. Showing data in context and using creativity to make that same data tell a story can truly bring the numbers to life.

There are a whole bunch of data visualization tools out there to help create your own, but here are some existing examples for inspiration.

A day in the life of Americans

This excellent visualization from Flowing data uses information from the American Time Use Survey to show what Americans are up to at any time of day.

What streaming services pay artists

This from the wonderful information is beautiful website, looks at how the major online streaming music services compare in terms of paying the musicians.

Two centuries of US immigration

This fantastic visualization from metrocosm shows the various waves of immigration into the United States from the 19th century to the present day.

US population trends over time

This gif from the Pew Research Center is a great example of how movement can be used to convey shifts and trends over time.

Why you should take the bus

The German town of Münster produced this series of images back in 1991 to encourage bus use. It's beautifully simple showing the relative impact of the same number of people (72) on bicycles, in cars, or on a bus.

What happens in an internet minute?

This infographic from excelacom presents what happens online in 60 seconds, including:

• 150 million emails are sent.


• 1,389 Uber rides.


• 527,760 photos shared on Snapchat.


• 51,000 app downloads on Apple's App Store.


• $203,596 in sales on Amazon.com.

US wind map

This moving visualization shows wind speed and direction in real time.

It looks great and is easy to understand, which is key to effect data visualization. This one comes from hint.fm.

Daily routines of creative people

I've always been pretty cynical about this 'X things successful people do before breakfast' stuff – as if by following this, people are suddenly going to become Steve Jobs or Albert Einstein.

However, this one from podio showing daily routines of creative people is very interesting. It won't turn you into a great composer, but it's a fascinating insight nonetheless.

The impact of vaccines

This is a series of visualizations from the Wall Street Journal, which shows the impact of vaccines on various infectious diseases.

It's striking stuff, which clearly demonstrates the incredible positive impact of vaccination programs in the US.

London food hygeine

This is a great use of freely available data to provide useful information for the public.

The one million tweet map

This uses tweet data to present a geographical representation of where people tweet about topics. The example below is for 'Brexit'.

The fallen of WW2

This, from Neil Halloran is a cross between data visualization and documentary.

There are two versions of this. The video version you can see embedded below, and an interactive version.

People living on earth

A simple but very effective visualization of the world's population, and the speed at which it increases.

The ultimate data dog

This, again from Information is Beautiful, uses data on the intelligence and other characteristics of dog breeds, plotting this against data on the popularity of various breeds from the American Kennel Club.

How much did band members contribute to each Beatles album? 

This from Mike Moore, shows the relative writing percentage for each Beatles album, as well as the contribution over time.

A day on the London Underground

From Will Gallia, who used data from a single day's use of the London underground to produce this timelapse visualization.

Fish Pharm

This is from way back in 2010, and illustrates the fact that antidepressants and other pharmaceuticals are now showing up in fish tissue.

When will responsive websites respond to user context?

Terms like “mobile first” and “responsive web design” sound dynamic and user-centric, but the reality is most mobile-first responsive websites are simply reformatting ubiquitous content to suit different devices.

• Goal of web (or app) advertising: right message, right person, right place, right time.


• Goal of website (or app) content: whoever, wherever, whatever, whenever… eh… same content.

Is that unfair? A gross generalization?

OK, a lot of web advertising is still woefully untargeted or inaccurately targeted, but sometimes it can be freakily accurate.

Ad targeting relies on the processing of real-time information from a variety of data sources – let's call these “signals” or “cues” – about the mobile user and their behavior, in order to determine:

• Who they are.


• Where they are.


• What they are doing.


• What they like.


• What they want.

What makes this more stunning, is the amazing speeds at which adtech (advertising technology) works.

Between the user clicking/tapping the link and the page rendering with the ad, the system has to analyze the signals and show the most appropriate ad, without causing a noticeable delay to the speed that the page loads.

With programmatic advertising, in the same timeframe of nanoseconds (or at least microseconds), the advertising space is actually bought and sold in an online auction.

Meanwhile on the website where these targeted ads are being served, the content remains largely the same, regardless of the user, their context and their intention. Similarly the content on the website where these dynamic ads are sending people, if they tap/click on them, remain largely the same, regardless of the user, their context and their intention.

This is senseless.

If targeted ads deliver better conversions than untargeted ads, then surely being shown more personalized, contextually relevant content, offers and services on the websites people elect to visit must also deliver better user experience (UX) and more conversions?

As Mike Phillips, commercial director, McLaren Applied Technologies recently said (in an entirely different context) at London Technology Week:

It's not about big data, it is about using small data within the context of the person.

Mobile first or mobile only?

Announcing the retailer's new website on June 2, 2016, Jason Goldberger, Target's chief digital officer, said (in a corporate statement):

People rely more than ever on their phones for everything in life, from interactions with friends to scheduling to shopping.

We've talked for years about being a mobile-first retailer. This move takes us from mobile first to mobile only.

What does this actually mean for Target.com, according to the before and after picture (Geographic redirects, prevent overseas people viewing the site, see below), the result is Target's desktop and mobile site are now much the same, give or take some reformatting for different screen sizes.

The web design style is more mobile-friendly more images, less words, and far less clutter. And it means visitors can more easily shift between screens, even mid-shop.

But is this sort of homogeneity a good thing? Yes… and no. Yes people want a seamless cross-platform experience, but do they want a generic experience across all platforms?

Being mobile first or mobile only isn't just about screen size, page load times, tap zones, click-to-call and so on (though that is all very important) it should also be about context.

Cross platform homogeneity forgets two massive thing:

• The requirements of the desktop and mobile user are often different


• The requirements of the same mobile user (more importantly) vary depending on whether they are at home, at work, commuting, on route to the location, on site, in a rival's location and so on.

And that's just the start of it. Now consider:

• How context varies by time of day, day of week, time of year.


• What about the trigger that causes the visit to the site e.g. something on TV, snapping QR code in a print ad, tapping through from an email, social media etc.?

This isn't just about retail, it applies to numerous sectors: restaurants, events (music, sports etc.), airlines/airports, films/cinema, transport, financial services and so on. Use cases vary when you are at home, nearby or onsite and when the “thing” is: in the future, soon, now or past.

Contextual relevance: the untapped opportunity

Ronan Cremin, CTO, DeviceAtlas (a device detection tool, from Afilias Technologies):

In my experience very few sites do anything meaningful with mobile contextual information. There are a couple of exceptions e.g. Yelp and Google, but for the most part sites do almost nothing with it.

Apart from the really obvious one (location) there are other possibilities like detecting if user is literally on the move or not (accelerometer), is the battery low etc. etc.

One important point about all of these contextual cues is to use them as hints rather hard deciding factors because the cost of getting things wrong based on an incorrect assumption is high.

It's really dangerous to make assumptions about what a user wants so I think that the best thing to do is make prioritization decisions over ordering of features rather than adding/removing features entirely.

Mobile signals

Mobile users give off a considerable amount of signals/cues – data from the device use, digital behavior – which, when visible to the web destination, collectively allows you to make an educated guess about who they are; where they are and what they are doing; and what they want. I.e. identity, context and intention.

These signals include:

• Profile data – information that has been volunteered e.g. delivery address.


• Profile data – data that has been collected through behavior on previous visits e.g. pages viewed, shared.


• Device used.


• Geolocation – if shared.


• Mobile network.


• WIFI network – e.g. home, office, on-site.


• Motion and direction – walking, commuting.


• Time of day – e.g. lunch time, following a TV ad.


• Search terms used if arriving from a web search.


• Referral site (or app) – where did they arrive from today (and previous visits).


• QR codes scanned (particularly if unique to a product or place).


• Interaction with web ads (what, where, when).


• Click though from email newsletter.


• Click though from social media post.

Contextual relevance today: basics

Where relevant, a website, should deliver an experience based on the user:

1. Device – i.e. fits the screen, appropriate page size, appropriate features e.g. use of camera, click-to-call. But always with the option to revert to a different version (e.g. desktop).


2. Country – e.g. appropriate currency, language, terminology (e.g. postcode v zip code), local phone numbers, office addresses, maps, observance of local rules and regulations. But with the option to revert. There is no excuse for forms that require scrolling through every country until the user reaches UK or USA.


3. Intention – i.e. if a user clicks/taps on an ad, link, QR (quick response) code or performs a web search for a particular item or type of content, then ensure the content on the landing page is appropriate.


4. Basic preferences – specified or inferred. Where one has been selected on a previous visit, default to the same local restaurant, store, station etc. – with option for “other”. Similarly log negative behavior – if a visitor has ignored or closed your download-our-app or subscribe to email message three times, move on, they're not interested.


5. Opt-in preferences – if a visitor has elected to share location, subscribed (or refused to subscribe) to email, accepted cookies; remember the next time they visit.

However geographical redirects don't always deliver the optimum results. Accessing Target.com from the UK redirects to intl.target.com, which is not mobile friendly. From overseas PaneraBread.com delivers an “access denied” page (which is hardly a good message to potential business partners from overseas).

Contextual relevance today: more advanced

1. Location awareness

If users are prepared to share location, websites can make search results more relevant to where they are.

The search engines and the directories, such of Yelp in the US and Yell in the UK, are very acute to mobile users desire for local results – typified by the rapid growth (according to Google)  in popularity of “near me” searches (e.g. Pizza, plumber near me).

This local contextual search results is just as significant on the website of the retail, restaurant, cinema etc. chain. Customers don't just the need to find the nearest location, but the nearest store where the desired product is available in the correct size and color; the nearest cinema with seats to see the film tonight; the nearest restaurant with a table for six at 8pm.

2. Recall of behavior (or preferences)

When a returning visitor is recognized, websites should personalize based on previous behavior.

If only male clothing (or e.g. sports items) were viewed on previous visits, retailers, such as ASOS, will default to the men's (or sports) store.

Leading retailers will also allow customers to pick up where they left off with “save for later” or recall products left unpurchased in the shopping basket.

In the same way, restaurants should recall favorite meals or indications of vegetarianism; auto mechanics the make and model of the client's car; sports and betting sites favorite teams and so on.

3. Time relevance

Time context manifests itself in several ways online. For example, Google local search results tell you when the store opens (not just the opening times).

Retailers will give you a countdown to place orders for next-day delivery. Events will count down until the tickets go on sale, announcements are made or the event commences.

Contextual relevance tomorrow

The epiphany of a personalized experience is a website that adapts fully to the user context, based on the signals outlined above. Let's just focus on three contexts:

• At home


• Nearby


• Onsite

For the same user, on the same device, the goals in these contexts can be quite different and this happens across many types of businesses.

• Retail – at home: research/m-commerce at home; Nearby: find store/opening times/check product availability/reserve; in store: find products/check details/compare prices/pay/find product elsewhere.


• Airline travel – at home: research/purchase ticket at home; on route: find airport/parking; at airport: check-in/navigate airport/ find shops/restaurant when.


• Music festival – at home: research/purchase ticket/check info at home; on route: find way/traffic details/park/gain entry with ticket/ID on route; onsite: check schedule/navigate site/research bands/share.

And so on… restaurant, sports event, museum, hotel.

The imperative is to balance personalization with the danger of misunderstanding the context and the preference of the user.

While it is difficult to find any good examples of anything like this on the web, it is not so farfetched. Some companies have already started to experiment with contextually aware native apps.

According to a 2015 report by digital agency DMI a handful of US retailers – Walgreens, Home Depot, Nordstrom, Walmart and Target – now have apps that will switch to “Store mode” when on site, triggered by geo-technologies.

Store mode include functions that are irrelevant outside the store, for example in-store mapping and navigation.

Similarly, the BA App recognizes you're in some airports and provides a tailored experience (thanks to Daniel Rosen, Global Director of Advertising at Telefónica for recommending this).

The app also sends alerts if you've not left enough time to make it to the gate.

Notes:

• Please notify Andy Favell with any examples of websites that use contextual relevancy in innovative ways.


• The origin of the mobile marketing mantra “Right message, right person, right place, right time” is uncertain, but I first heard it used by Paul Berney, mCordis.


• Disclaimer: Andy Favell has undertaken contractual work for both Afilias and mCordis, in the past.

Why are we so bad at social media customer service?

While social media marketing campaigns have always grabbed the lion's share of the headlines, customer service is the area where the real battles for market dominance are being waged.

Providing good customer service is not just about differentiation, it is business-critical.

So… why is everyone so awful at it?

There are a lot of reasons customer service isn't up to scratch. It's a new discipline. In many cases it's grown organically. A majority of businesses still file social under the marketing banner, rather than as a service department, which means that there are conflicting interests vying for channel space.

This means that the market is under-serviced in many cases. According to 2015 data, the majority of businesses using social media are only able to respond to two-thirds (66%) of the social media interactions they receive.

This issue is actually compounded in businesses where social customer service is part of the wider customer service function.

Channel expertise is at a premium, meaning there is often a lack of structure between the people running the Twitter account and the people on the phone. What should be a beautiful, frictionless experience for a customer becomes a hell of multiple calls, and explaining issues over and over again.

It's worth remembering that by the time someone is complaining about your business online, it is probably because your other channels have already failed them. You are starting with a customer who is mad as hell and isn't going to take it anymore.

No amount of brand-building is going to counteract that. And just so we're clear on the impact, 40% of US consumers have taken their business to a competitor brand based purely on superior customer service.

How do we start providing good service through social?

It would be remiss of me not to mention that I've recently finished writing an enormous social media customer service best practice guide on just this subject, which you can access through ClickZ Intelligence, but just like customer service, it would also be bad of me not to at least try to solve the issue in this post.

The most forward thinking organisations have begun to address these issues by creating posts that are designed to completely own customer experience. Rather than separating touchpoints by channel, a Chief Experience Officer or Chief Customer Officer is primarily charged with making sure that the customer has a good time, all of the time.

On the face of it this seems straightforward (It's not), and there is definitely a school of thought that says it is as much about mindset and culture as it is systems and processes. The realisation that every department is on the same P&L is, perhaps surprisingly, not a common one in business.

Different channels, different metrics

I mentioned channel expertise earlier. The ability to understand how interactions occur on different platforms is key to successful implantation, because it will fundamentally affect how you measure success.

In the case of email or telephone, it was historically common practice to base reporting on 'number of closed cases'. This obviously does not always motivate the service representative to supply customers with the best answer to an issue. Merely the quickest.

Retailer response times on Facebook

This is again compounded by social, where it is not a linear conversation. A phone call may take ten minutes to complete. A contact through Twitter may be answered immediately, but the customer may not respond for several hours. Time-to-resolution is not a fair or useful metric here.

Also, while it is strategically possible to remove customer satisfaction from channels, it is not as easy to separate it from departments. If your marketing team is providing customer service, then you can bet they'll want that value reflected in their monthly reports.

The fact that at least a third of social media questions go unanswered is also an issue bought on by a failure to apply considered metrics to social customer service. Marketing has often been guilty in the past of 'everything, everywhere' approaches to social. We have to be on Snapchat and Pinterest and Twitter and YouTube and…

Hold your horses.

Success in any form of social media is dictated by the quality of service you can provide. Whether that's an interesting Facebook page or a raft of multimedia omnichannel responses. If you cannot resource for these channels, then the most valuable thing a business can do is work out which channel is most used by their customer base, and concentrate on responding on that channel.

As businesses become more complex, so too does customer service. Monitoring tools are extremely advanced, but if they do not have a native language speaker setting up initial Boolean search terms, then they will miss a huge number of interactions (If you'd like to see this in action, try typing 'SEO' into search.twitter.com and see how many returns you get from Korea that have nothing to do with Search Marketing).

Although these systems are still developing, many use tracking and logging processes designed for traditional CRM. Where 'traditional' CRM provides a customer persona based on their interactions with a business by phone, email, through a website or in person. Social CRM data includes every interaction that customer makes with any business, so can be far more valuable if collected and utilised properly, but it requires a more comprehensive tracking and response process.

There is no simple way to provide great customer service through social, but it is achievable, and perhaps more importantly, it has clear commercial value. Forrester found that 45% of users will abandon an online purchase if they can't quickly find answers to their questions.

The trick is to find out where that customer is online and be ready to provide that information.

EU referendum and brexit betting: who's winning in organic search?

With the referendum on Britain's membership of the EU coming up this week, there has obviously been a lot of debate online. 

It has also become a major online gambling event, with the value of bets set to exceed the previous biggest political event, the 2012 US election, according to a recent press release from online betting exchange Betfair.

In fact, it has now exceeded that mark, with more than £43 million in bets matched on the exchange. There's also plenty of betting on the financial markets too, but we'll stick to the bookmakers for this article.

While the polls predict a close outcome, the bookies are more certain that a brexit vote is unlikely. Odds of 4/1 for a leave vote seem very generous when some opinion polls put the two sides neck and neck.

One interesting aspect with a relatively unique betting event like this is the opportunity for new customer acquisition. It's likely to attract customers who wouldn't normally bet, and should be seen as an opportunity for the betting sites.

So which betting sites are ranking for brexit betting?

Here's the data from Google Trends, showing the spike in search interest for terms around EU referendum betting.

We can see the spike in interest, which obviously presents an opportunity for traffic and customer acquisition for the betting sites.

Unlike seasonal SEO events like Christmas or major sports championships, this referendum is a one-off (hopefully) so strategy has to be geared towards this single event.

In the case of the EU referendum, the betting sites have had around a year to prepare for the event, though we can see that interest in betting has only really taken in the last two to three months.

According to PI Datametics, the term 'EU referendum odds' was searched on average 1,000 times in November 2015 and is now being searched 40,500 times a month.

We don't have the data for June yet, but I think it's safe to assume that we'll be in six figures, as the spike on the chart above suggests.

Top organic search performers

The top performers (from the gambling sector) are:

1. Odds Checker


2. Paddy Power


3. Ladbrokes

All three sites rank highly for the term, and consistently too. Just compare their performance to that of their rivals:

This points to a lack of a coherent strategy around EU referendum betting. For example, Betfair has has 10 separate pages performing for this term, hindering its ability to hit a high search position.

Again, so much of this is about effective internal linking and creation of single landing pages for high value and high traffic search terms.

Clearly, with £43m matched on the exchange alone, Betfair has done well, but could it have done better with the right SEO strategy?

A missed PPC opportunity?

One final side point here – have the betting sites missed a PPC opportunity around referendum betting?

There is just one site buying ads today on the term. Given the spike we can see from Google Trends, and the high cost of customer acquisition for online betting, it seems strange that more sites aren't using PPC to gain instant visibility here.

Just because they're sharing, it doesn't mean they're reading

If you're visiting this article before or after sharing it on a social channel, then may I offer you a warm welcome to an increasingly exclusive club. For you are just one of the 41% of people who not only shared the article but actually read it too. 

In news that will embolden some, depress others and possibly surprise nobody, a new study by computer scientists at Columbia University and the French National Institute reveals that 59% of links shared on social media have never actually been clicked.

As the Washington Post put it this weekend in one of their best headlines ever – 6 in 10 of you will share this link without reading it, a new, depressing study says.

Back in 2014, it was estimated that social media referral was responsible for 30% of total visits to websites. However according to the research published by HAL (yes, a group of computer scientists publish their research under the name HAL, what of it? Why are you terrified?) and using a dataset amounting to 2.8 million shares, 75 billion potential views and 9.6 million actual clicks to 59,088 unique resources, most people just retweet news without ever reading it.

According to the study's co-author, Arnaud Legout, “This is typical of modern information consumption. People form an opinion based on a summary, or a summary of summaries, without making the effort to go deeper.”

These blind retweeters are also, worryingly, shaping the news agenda, by sharing what is already 'viral' and adding to social platform's 'trend-watching algorithms' without first stopping and reading what they're actually doing.

Or are our favourite news sources so trustworthy that we can put blind faith in anything they publish? To be honest, Facebook will probably just ignore much of the above anyway.

For proof of this, you need not look any further than May 26, when a certain social media manager (*cough*) tweeted the following headline but accidentally forgot to include the link to the article.

Is content marketing really working? Advice and insight from #ClickZChat: pic.twitter.com/MotnFQ49q6

- Search Engine Watch (@sewatch) May 27, 2016

And yet the tweet enjoyed 25 retweets and 28 likes. That's one of our most popular tweets, and yet not one person noticed the lack of link. Maybe that's the key for us… black and white photo + non sequitur headline – link = engagement gold.

A peek behind the wizard's curtain

To add our own two pence (or cents depending on where you are right now) to this debate, let's open up our own analytics and let you see what influence SEW's social channel on traffic to the site.

Here are our own Twitter analytics for May 2016…

A 'robust' 2.5 million impressions from only 465 tweets is pretty good. But what about actual click-through rate (CTR)?

Let's take a look at our top tweet in May…

The impressions gained from its 29 retweets resulted in 18,202 impressions and ultimately 40 link clicks. This means it had a CTR of 0.2% which is about our average. Sadly, this is a little lower than the industry average for a following of our size.

According to Hubspot the average Twitter CTR is 1.64%, and the more followers you have, the fewer clicks you'll receive on your tweets.

• Users with 50 – 1,000 followers had a 6.16% CTR.


• Users with 1,000 – 5,000 followers had a 1.45% CTR.


• Users with 5,000 – 10,000 followers had a 0.55% CTR.


• Users with 10,000+ followers had a 0.45% CTR.

And according to this Quora forum on Twitter CTR, links shared by Mashable's Twitter account, despite its 7+ million followers, results in a CTR of just 0.11%.

If that's not enough to get you completely down heartened, let's open up Google Analytics and see how much traffic social drove to SEW in May.

Over the course of 31 days in May, only 4% of our total traffic came from social. The majority of our traffic comes from organic search (as you would hope and expect from a site with 'search engine' in the title), with direct, email and referral all coming in above social.

To break it down further by social channel, it's 47% from Twitter, 24% from Facebook, 11% from LinkedIn and, uh, 0.3% from Pinterest.

However if we look at Twitter, the most popular social channel we operate, it drove more than 16,000 sessions to the site, 40% of which are from unique users.

So despite a low CTR, these are fairly considerable numbers, and certainly the research presented by HAL should not be used as an excuse to 'switch off' your social activity. In fact if anything, this is a good excuse for us to take a good look at our Twitter strategy and see how we can improve things.

Remembering to add links to tweets would be a good start.

Finally, you should also be aware that, if your boss is asking for ways to measure your content's engagement, a simple 'number of retweets' isn't good enough.

Update: I just tweeted this article. It IMMEDIATELY got 3 retweets within 30 seconds.

Should publishers and content marketers be playing the platform game?

The early 2000s saw the advent of platforms on the web: somewhere that bloggers and publishers could host their content without having to worry about the back end, while still maintaining control over their own outlets and what they posted.

More than a decade later, and many of the social media platforms of today are starting to suspiciously resemble blogging platforms, becoming a place for users to publish content instead of just share links and brief updates. At the same time, huge companies like Facebook and Google have developed native publishing platforms aimed at providing a superior user experience for an increasingly mobile audience.

We have a wider choice of platforms to publish to than ever before, and each is promising the fastest, shiniest interfaces that will put our content directly in front of huge audiences we can't reach through other means.

But how can we manage to spread ourselves between so many different outlets, and what are the drawbacks of these platforms? Veteran digital journalist and university lecturer Adam Tinworth gave a presentation at CMA's most recent Digital Breakfast on 'playing the platform game' which looked at what this plethora of new tools – and gatekeepers – means for online content.

Social publishers and walled gardens

In 2015, we reached a watershed moment: in June, Facebook surpassed Google as the top referring site to publishers, according to Parse.ly. Clearly, we are now living in a very different internet age, in which social publishers dominate over search engines as a means of distribution and referral.

Tinworth remarked in a panel discussion later in the Digital Breakfast that social networks have taken over from search engines in the role of “finding something to read” online, leaving search engines to fill more of an “answer engine” role. This has huge ramifications for both SEO and social publishing, some of which are already being felt, and others which will make themselves known further down the line.

The other huge trend affecting the way that traffic reaches sites online is of course mobile. An Ofcom report from August 2015 declared that the UK is “now a smartphone society”, with 2/3 of Britons owning a smartphone and 33% seeing it as the most important device for going online, above laptops at 30%.

The trend towards mobile has affected the types of platforms springing up that we can publish to. Take Snapchat, the ultimate mobile-native social app, whose Discover publishing platform was just revamped to become much more visual, allowing users to more easily browse content at a glance.

Although Discover is only available to a select few publishers, many more brands and businesses use Snapchat for content marketing, and the redesign shows that Snapchat is serious about pushing further into the publishing space.

The new, more eye-catching Snapchat Discover

Meanwhile, publishing platforms like Facebook Instant Articles and Google's Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) have come about with the goal of providing users the best possible experience in mobile. They aim to load fast and look sleek, getting rid of the distracting artefacts which clutter the desktop web to deliver a streamlined product.

Instant Articles and AMP, while they are often mentioned in the same breath, take fundamentally different approaches to providing a better mobile experience. AMP is an open-source project aimed at reinventing the code on which the mobile web runs (from HTML to AMP-HTML), and can be used by anyone to build a faster mobile site. Instant Articles is more selective and restrictive, requiring publishers to have a Facebook page, and allowing them to begin publishing subject to having a sample of their content reviewed by Facebook.

But both companies ultimately have the same goal with their platforms, which is to keep users within the spaces they own, their walled gardens, for as long as possible. Readers who click on Sponsored links in Facebook Instant Articles find themselves redirected to other Instant Articles, still within Facebook; and Accelerated Mobile Pages allow you to swipe between news stories without leaving Google.

Other new publication platforms like Apple News have the same basic aim. Even Medium, which appears at first brush to just be another, more social-oriented take on the blogging platform, forces writers who publish with it to give up much of the editorial control they would normally enjoy over how they offer their work, in order to produce content (and revenue) for someone else's branded platform.

As Tinworth put it in his presentation, “There's a whole new set of gatekeepers between us and audiences.” But if you can connect with much bigger audiences than you would be able to reach without them, then it's worth it, right?

The danger of sites as gatekeepers

As we've established, publication platforms like Facebook Instant Articles and Medium can provide excellent user experiences, but at the cost of giving over control of your content to the brand whose platform you use.

There's another, more general, drawback to this proliferation of platforms, which is that suddenly publishers are having to publish to a whole range of different formats. Publishers who are serious about social media, said Tinworth, have known for some time that you need to insert certain metadata in order to do well on those sites, making sure that your social posts look clean and carry the right information.

Multi-platform publishing takes this to the next level, requiring publishers and content creators to cater to wildly different formats: the requirements for Facebook Instant Articles are different to AMP, which is different to Apple News, which is very different to Snapchat, and so on. But if you want to get engagement on these platforms, this is the game you have to play.

“It's complicating what was a fairly simple and opening publishing format,” said Adam Tinworth.

The danger of putting these different companies (Google, Facebook, Apple) in front of our content as gatekeepers is that they start to call the shots and tell us exactly how we ought to publish.

So, away with platforms, then? Should we all stick doggedly to hosting all of our content on domains and websites that we have complete ownership and control over? Well, not necessarily. There's still a lot to be gained from publishing to platforms, and ignoring them means missing out on a great deal of opportunities to connect with the audiences who use them.

What's good about publishing to platforms?

As Tinworth pointed out, we can't afford to ignore platforms: they're incredibly valuable for finding audiences and getting our content out there. And there are other good things about publishing to them.

Platforms are rich experiences where people hang out online, and deliver good traffic and interaction. Posting content there can provide a huge visibility boost, especially if the platform features it in some way; and it reduces the need to drag people, by hook or by crook, over to your own website when they'd rather not go.

Mike Burgess, another speaker at the Digital Breakfast, also advised that you can have success by being early onto platforms even when they're not that successful overall, like Apple News.

Of course, there's also the bad, which I've given plenty of attention to in this article: publishing to multiple platforms means more APIs and feed formats to support, and that extra bit of distance between you and your readers. It's harder to get access to meaningful analytics, which can be issued at the discretion of the platform, and we're at the mercy of the platform in other ways – including if they decide to charge.

Where does that leave publishers who want to get the greatest returns out of the platform game, however that might mean playing it? Ultimately, said Adam Tinworth, the trick is to play it strategically. It's inevitable that publishers will have to play the platform game, and the key is finding the platforms that the audience you want to target are using.

Mike Burgess gave an excellent example of this in his own presentation when he talked about travel brands on Instagram. Instagram is home to an absolute wealth of travel-related content, with 353 million travel-related hashtags on the app.

People turn to Instagram in droves for inspiration on where to go for their travels, spending an average of 21 minutes per day perusing the app; and yet the travel industry has been the second-slowest (after financial services) at adopting and making use of Instagram.

Businesses can't afford to be too high-minded about platforms and social publishing, for fear of missing out on golden opportunities like these. At the same time, it's also worth being aware of the risks and drawbacks, and keeping an eye on them so that you know if they ever start to outweigh the benefits.

Google testing 'top rated' shopping ads format for “best” searches

By now we should be used to Google experimenting with its results pages and ad formats, and well, we are, but it doesn't stop a minor change from creating a frisson of excitement even when only about 0.5% of searchers in a single territory get to see them.

The latest variation, as discovered last Friday and brought to my attention by @VikingWagon (probably not her real name, in fact it's Victoria), is a new way of presenting Google Shopping Ads, ranked by customer ratings.

Let's take a look at the screengrabs, and I'll try not to be too offended that I discovered @VikingWagon tweeted a certain Barry before me.

Hi @Christophe_Rock Have you seen this before? Seems to only show for best/top related queries on mobile. Thanks! pic.twitter.com/Kur963gQEt

- Victoria (@VikingWagon) June 10, 2016

This was also replicated by a company called Grade Us.

@sewatch@VikingWagon@Christophe_Rock Yep! Same here. pic.twitter.com/b3DEZDvlIu

- GradeUs (@GradeUs) June 10, 2016

And although we all assumed foolishly this was a mobile only variant, Victoria also made it appear on desktop.

@sewatch I made it do it on desktop too :) pic.twitter.com/qeRxWgc7Wg

- Victoria (@VikingWagon) June 10, 2016

Now as I stated in the opening paragraph, which I've just realised is drenched in sarcasm, this isn't much to get terribly excited about, however it is an interesting variation of format that's perhaps more useful than a mere change of colour.

Google is using rich snippet markup provided by retailers, and using the aggregated customer ratings to put them in a ranked order of best rated. Notice the little blue '1st', '2nd' and '3rd'. It's a great way for retailers to show off their 'top customer rated' products and everyone loves a ranked lists right?

This is also particularly relevant – and will also probably only appear – for searches including the term “best”, as this shows that Google is providing results based on genuine intent.

Although at the moment it's only working for 'lawn feed' so who knows what Google's secret agenda is there. To encourage everyone's gardens to look prettier? Well I guess that's not too evil.

A handy guide to content marketing for mobile

A responsive website is not a mobile strategy.

There has been a lot of re­cent articles on mobile and more and more of us are getting on-board but how can you, from a people-centric content marketing perspective, optimise your website for mobile? Let's begin…

Technical change

Google has strengthened its mobile-friendly ranking signal to include site speed, so should you. This also helps with UX and general engagement. This is the first technical change you need to do and by far the last thing you need to do for mobile.

Micro-moments

“When consumers don't have a lot of time to make a decision, they tend to focus on a few key criteria or product attributes” – Think With Google

We need to start optimising content to reflect mobile behaviour.

Now I'm not talking about Responsive Content Marketing, but I am saying that we should now make content layout 3D based on devices.

To begin a mobile content marketing strategy, you should think about a time schedule and match this time to the days of the week based on traffic. So that you can say “at 8pm, 25% of my traffic comes from smartphone, I need to write a more mobile-focused blog post,” for example.

Once you know your peak mobile times you need to publish your mobile content during this time. This content needs to be written with the mobile, short time frame, in mind.

Here is a checklist:

Attention span

• Write with bullet points and use a lot of headings to make your content more scanable. This is also positive for UX as well as for optimising for Google Hummingbird (which is essentially a thesaurus so you need to include synonyms of your targeted keywords in your text and the headings are great places to start to do this, as well as, optimise for voice search - more below).


• Include a short sentence summary of your content at the top of your article to help to grab attention and encourage readership and engagement.

Real life thinking (I can't wait, I'm busy… waiting for the bus, or kettle to boil)

• Mobile content, especially, needs to be written as concisely as possible. Aid reading time by making content as short and with concise as possible.

Social media

• Integrate social media icons. Remember mobile is going to kill links, so make it easy to spread your authority and hard work by making it easily shareable.

Mobile keyword research

• Think about revenue and conversion. Where does most of your revenue come from, desktop? If so, it is clear that your mobile content marketing strategy should be more focused on the early stages of the buying cycle (more informational queries).


• Make sure you carry out mobile keyword research and do not just have a unified, one-size-fits-all keyword strategy for all devices. Mobile queries are more informational and often the only conversion is knowledge acquisition so do keyword research thinking just like this – education and inspire with keywords to build your brand's trust. Your brand's trust will then make you money.

Content formats

• Including multiple formats of content (e.g. compressed images, embedded videos that do not auto-play) allows you to optimise for more people. We have different learning styles and interact with content differently as a result, this is also true on mobile. It may be that your mobile searcher has their headphones in, so they may be more likely to interact with a nice, short video a lot quicker than they would in an open-floor office space.


• Engage your user by strategically selecting and placing the right formatted content on your website.

Optimise for voice search

• We speak in natural language. So carry out voice keyword research. See below…

A quick guide to optimising for voice search

20% of all Google searches on Android devices are now voice search queries. You need to get in on this increasingly popular market. How?

Log onto Google Search Console, then:

1. Go to 'Search Analytics' then 'Search Queries'


2. Apply a filter with a natural language targeted keyword (e.g. 'what', 'where', 'how')

You now have a list of long tail, voice search keywords. You can also use other tools and platforms to help you with your long tail, voice search, and keyword research.

Then, just as you would for 'normal' SEO, put these queries, naturally in your content and most importantly answer them, with well-researched and concise content. You are now optimising for voice search.

So there you have it, a mobile content strategy needs to be person-centric by thinking about the searcher at every touch point. Your content needs to be optimised for mobile but you also need to have a mobile and desktop content-based approach which is directed by data on when and what devices your audience is coming onto your website.

Four of the most interesting search marketing news stories of the week

It's Friday, so welcome to our weekly round up of search marketing and related news. 

This week we have the 16 companies dominating Google, stats on retailers' search budgets, and a look at accusations around Google and searches for Hillary Clinton.

Is Google manipulating searches for Hillary Clinton? Er,no…

There's been talk of Google manipulating autocomplete suggestions for searches on Hillary Clinton. A video from SourceFed claims that searches around Clinton are being manipulated as they don't return the suggestions they would expect to find.

Specifically, searches such as “Hillary Clinton cri-” did not suggest “Hillary Clinton criminal charges” and “Hillary Clinton in-” did not return “Hillary Clinton indictment.”

SEO and reputation management expert Rhea Drysdale does an excellent job of debunking the theory in a post on Medium.

Essentially SoureFed failed to compare similar searches for Donald Trump, which fail to suggest phrases like “Donald Trump lawsuit”.

In a nutshell, if Google is manipulating searches for Clinton, it's doing the same for Trump. There's another theory too – the popularity of the SourceFed video has led to thousands trying out these searches for themselves, thus potentially manipulating these results.

Google becomes the world's most powerful brand

Apple's value has dropped 8% to $228 billion in the past year, while Google's has risen 32% to reach $229 billion. So Google takes top spot in Millward Brown Digital's annual report.

Amazon's search spending

Fractl has analyzed the marketing spend of some of the biggest retailers, and search gets the lion's share of Amazon's budget.

During the period studied, the ecommerce giant spent $8 million on TV and radio, $54 million on print and $1.35 billion on search.

For more stats, see Mike O'Brien's piece on the research.

In search, do the the rich just get richer? 

Earlier this week, Chris Lake covered an excellent Glen Allsop study into how 16 companies are dominating Google's results.

As Chris says in his post:

In this case, the rich are major publishing groups. The way they are getting richer is by cross-linking to existing and new websites, from footers and body copy, which are “constantly changing”

And these are the big 16:

Seasonal pages and SEO: who's ready for Euro 2016?

Seasonal events which can deliver relatively short-term traffic spikes, need to be planned for from an SEO perspective. 

It's about being in the right position at the right time to capitalise on interest and to hoover up all the traffic you can.

Seasonal events could mean Black Friday, the Christmas shopping, one-off days like Mother's Day and Valentine's Day, or sporting events. In this case, I'm using the example of the Euro 2016 football (or soccer) championships, which begin on Friday.

This month-long feast of football will spark much interest from football supporters, around Europe and indeed the whole world (maybe not the US so much).

There is already plenty of interest around the tournament. Indeed, 'Euro 2016' is more popular than the crucial EU referendum on Britain's membership of the EU. This is nation which has its priorities right.

The chart shows the sheer level of interest around the tournament, before it even begins. There'll be plenty of searches around the event, and lots of opportunity for sites to attract traffic.

Here, I'm looking at publishers, the most obvious destination for much of the Euro 2016 traffic. As publishers compete for online traffic, this is an area where the right SEO strategy can really pay off.

Seasonal SEO success factors

Planning in advance should allow sites to capitalise when the time comes.

• Publish in advance of the event. It takes time to rank, and those sites which have pre-prepared Euro 2016 pages have an advantage.


• Don't publish volume for the sake of it. Publishing more pages doesn't help unless you have a unified strategy around your target terms.


• Reuse pages where you can. If you rank for a seasonal term, don't delete the pages, just update and adapt.


• Pick a hero / hub page for each term. You need to decide which page you want to rank for each keyword and work your strategy around that. Send a clear signal to Google about which page is beat for each term, and avoid competition between pages on your site.

Euro 2016 hub page examples

A hub or category page, backed up by consistent internal linking, is the way forward. Here are a few examples.

BBC

The BBC is currently the top site in this slot after EUFA.com. It has a dedicated landing page for it, and points links at the page.

As a result, it ranks consistently for the term, and has done for the last four months. As a result, it's in prime position for the start of the tournament.

Mail Online

Mail Online has been implementing a more consistent category page strategy recently, and seems to have applied it to Euro 2016, pointing most links at this category page.

As a result, the page ranks more consistently for the term. However, the strategy hasn't been applied as well as possible, so there is still some competition between different pages on the site.

This alone may be keeping the Mail off page one of Google.

Who hasn't got it right?

While the two sites mentioned above, and other such as The Guardian and Telegraph are ranking more consistently thanks to an effective strategy, others are struggling in this regard.

Metro

Metro simply has a tag page for the term 'euro 2016' and doesn't link to this consistently. As a result, the rankings are all over the place.

Every time it publishes an article on Euro 2016, it competes with previous pages for the same term. Google has indexed at least 40 different pages on that term in just four months.

It's currently on page three of Google, and in no position to capitalise on traffic.

The Independent

It's a similar story here. 70 different URLs have been competing against each other to rank for 'euro 2016'.

It does have a landing page for the term, but it's barely performing, currently it's not even in the top 100 results.

The reason is that The Independent is barely linking to that landing page. Take this article – the exact term occurs four times yet not one mention is used to link to the category page. The same is true of ten other articles I looked at.

In summary

Creating category pages for key terms and using consistent internal linking to help them rank isn't a difficult SEO strategy, but it can be very effective, as the BBC and other examples show. It also helps users, offering a useful destination page to see all the relevant content on a topic.

However, as we can see from the last two examples, some sites are just not putting this into practice. As a result, they're in a poorer position to take advantage of the massive online interest around Euro 2016.

Revisiting Digital Marketing Cornerstones: 140-Character Tips from Marketers

Posted by Bill.Sebald

There's no shortage of advice on the Internet. This holds especially true in digital marketing; after all, we're the folks who came up with “content is king,” right? If we weren't the inventors, we clearly co-opted it.

I've been wanting to write a piece that takes us back to the roots of digital marketing. A reminder of sorts; one that might serve to snap some marketers out of the mundane daze of their daily grunt work. I wanted to inspire a vacation from hanging out in the weeds, which unfortunately can be common for some digital marketing practitioners. Falling into tactics and routine processes without any deviation certainly feels like grunt work - something that marketing should never be.

In reality, there's still plenty of life left in classic digital marketing advice. Like music or meals, sometimes the basics still have plenty of flavor left. Maybe you simply have to challenge yourself to hold onto your roots.

So, I decided a great place to collect this general advice is the platform that still hangs onto 140 characters - Twitter. I wasn't looking for anything too specific or particular, just cornerstone digital marketing advice. I posted a few repeated tweets requesting the following:

You have 140 characters to give your best digital marketing / SEO and client management advice. Go, go, go!!!
- Bill Sebald (@billsebald) March 1, 2016

Next, I'm going to share some of the fantastic responses and expand upon them. Thanks to everyone who helped me out with their responses.

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Marie Haynes

@billsebald Figure out how to be better, more useful, and immensely more helpful than all of your competitors.
- Marie Haynes (@Marie_Haynes) March 3, 2016

This is a great tweet to kick things off. My mind immediately goes to the concept of 10x content, of which Rand is a big proponent. Want to be the best option for searchers? Be the best solution. (Wow, that makes it sound awfully simple!)

But it's true; this translates from the written word to business, and frankly, to life in general. Or what about The Immutable Laws Of Marketing, where not only being the best - but being perceived as the best - would help you fit into the The Law of Perception, among others classic concepts.

Here's a quote I've always believed: "Perception is reality." I find it really tough to argue. Even if you think you're a stud, it doesn't mean a thing if your customers do not. Using your own company as an example, you could compete by putting together one hell of a PR game, or you could genuinely build a practice that does the talking for you. If you're an agency or consultant getting repeat business and having success through referrals, you're doing something right.

Han Solo said it best: “Don't get cocky, kid. A strong perception will fade if you don't maintain it with consistently high value." He may not have said the last part.

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John Doherty

@billsebald move discussions from tactics to strategy. Tactics change, strategies live on.
- John Doherty (@dohertyjf) March 2, 2016

In my opinion, the heyday of SEO was very much a tactical time. It was a land of scalability and, well, a lexicon of spammy tactics. We spoke and wrote about SEO strategies, but we were often only discussing tactics.

But Google made some significant changes to offset the value of many standalone tactics. Google didn't want to be manipulated by SEOs - they wanted to be influenced by valuable websites. I believe we're still very much in a rebirth of SEO, and I'm completely in agreement with John - true strategic partnerships are the most valuable SEO relationship you can have today.

Tactics are components of a strategy, built upon a hypothesis and goals, and including milestones. It's a bigger picture, but an accountable one as well. Being a strategic thinker is not everyone's cup of tea, but it can be practiced. I would suspect (and I'll bet John will agree) that the most success in 2016 will come from those consultants and agencies who master the multi-stepped, multi-faceted, data-driven strategy. And those who have the ability to help their clients execute and implement in parallel.

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Steve Hammer

@billsebald measure what matters to the business - don't get hung up on metrics that don't drive to that goal.
- Steve Hammer (@armondhammer) March 2, 2016

Damon Gochneaur

@billsebald tie yourself to revenue, not traffic, rankings etc, over communicate, & expect to get fired every time you talk to a client.
- Damon Gochneaur (@DamonGochneaur) March 3, 2016

Several interesting points here from Steve and Damon. First, measure what really matters to the client. If it's not revenue, it's certainly some form of ROI. Let's be honest: as digital marketers, notably SEOs, this is a serious challenge.

Reporting on rankings and traffic is easy. We have software with report “export” options, but we're not hired to be button pushers. In actuality, we are hired to help our clients hit their KPIs, while muddling through a plane of limited visibility through search referrals and unpublished Google metrics. How did we get ourselves into this?

Being goal-oriented is everything. In my opinion, some of the most important questions you can ever ask yourself are:

• Why is this particular task (or strategy) worth doing?


• How do I measure it?


• What are the metrics I can use to show my client we had an impact?

More often than I'd prefer to admit, I hear from prospects who say, “I don't know what my last SEO company really did.” That's shocking to me. Why would a client keep an SEO company who failed to communicate up to the required level? But at the end of the day, even if it takes longer than it should, the client does ultimately end up leaving if they don't get what they want. Business 101.

Last, “expect to get fired every time you talk to a client” is truly an interesting one (and one I'll be stealing). I love it. If you want your client for the long term, try to impress them every time. Have you ever rescued a sour client relationship? It's tough being behind the 8-ball. Treat every opportunity like it's your last. That should keep you honest.

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Nick LeRoy

@billsebald use data to support all your decisions
- Nick LeRoy (@NickLeRoy) March 1, 2016

One of the most beautiful things about digital marketing is the ability to capture loads of data. In the old days, someone sat next to a billboard and clicked a counter as cars drove by, with no sense of engagement or demographics. Now we are so data-rich that going into the campaign creation stage without due diligence is almost negligent. While Google does keep plenty of juicy metrics a secret, we still have client analytics, log files, and even fairly accurate competitor data (a la SEMrush).

At Greenlane, any time we create a campaign for a client, hours of data gathering and looking for stories precedes the actual strategy creation. Does this guarantee success? No. Does it improve the odds? Yes – a helluva lot. A “data-first” position is what the most seasoned marketers adopt, but it should simply be something everyone – no matter how experienced – should adopt. For some right-brained marketers, reading numbers like words it's a skill you need to learn and practice.

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Jeff Gibbard

@billsebald stay in constant communication, no matter how good the work, the relationship keeps the contract going.
- Jeff Gibbard (@jgibbard) March 3, 2016

This is a great point. We're in the relationship business. This makes us an important line of defense/offense when needed, a challenging partner, and a safe pair of hands to rely upon. When your point-person sees you as a partner, you have an agent defending your honor when it's time for internal budget reviews. Who's the first to get fired? The consultant... unless that consultant does amazing work and is beloved.

Plus, the more frequent the communication, the better the intelligence gathering becomes. How many times have you talked with a client and the conversation took an unexpected turn?

Here's an example. An SEO finds themselves talking about an email campaign they knew nothing about. The SEO started to learn about all this content that the email team was creating based on A/B tests. The SEO learned about stockpiles of great content that never appeared anywhere but in customers' inboxes. This SEO found the motherlode, even though the call was originally about URL structures. (This is a true story. My name was removed to protect my identity).

These conversations are gold, and don't happen often if you're not speaking on a routine basis. Enjoy the communication.

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Mark Kennedy

@billsebald Give the opinion/strategy that will work for the client's business (as if it was your own), not what the client "wants to hear".
- markkennedysem (@markkennedysem) March 2, 2016

Are you someone willing to mix it up with a client, or are you just trying to placate them? We're not here to let our clients eat Big Macs, folks. We're being hired to tell them there's over 500 calories in that hamburger, and give them reasons why they should or shouldn't eat it. Our job is to empower clients with what we've learned in the steps we've taken before. I proudly tell new prospects that "we will fight for our ideas if we really believe them to be the best." I've never had anyone reject us for that statement that I know of. Even if they have, I'd argue that we probably dodged a bullet ourselves.

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Corey Eulas

@billsebald I don't need that much: K.I.S.S.
- Corey Eulas (@coreyeulas) February 29, 2016

The “Keep It Simple, Stupid” Principle. It's a great principal in marketing, especially in design and usability. But I agree with Corey that the same holds true with digital marketing.

A fantastic way to balance your relationship with the client is to understand what level of complexity they want. Do they want massive amounts of data, or would some visualization help them get the point faster?

I love our attorneys (said nobody ever, and this is from a guy whose ex-wife is a divorce attorney). They're great at expediting a phone meeting, giving us just what we need, and executing on follow ups. I hate law and don't understand most of it. But when we have a need, they do a fantastic job of relaying it to me in my language. It's an incredibly important trait of any service provider. As I am with tax law, most of our clients are the same with SEO. Keep it simple.

Albert Einstein said: "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." It's a balance which brings valuable results.

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Chad Lio

@billsebald Spend the time + research to find a niche within a niche. Once you've found it, create content that matches audience intent.
- Chad Lio (@WaiverWarrior1) February 29, 2016

I like this a lot. It's the advice I give many clients who either have relatively young websites or aggressive competition. SEO is organic - start with a few sectional wins, and Google will start noticing your website as a whole. The niche (sometimes within the niche) is often areas of lower competition and higher opportunity. Hit those areas hard. Get a good footing there and create a roadmap for expansion.

Let's say you're an eCommerce site who sells nothing but buttons. Looking at Google's Keyword Planner, "Mother of Pearl Buttons" (whatever they are) has a search volume of 880 monthly estimated searches. Not a huge number, but pretty high for a small niche campaign. Showing your customers and Google that you're the master of Mother of Pearl Buttons is really not above the reach of even the smallest company. You will live in infamy, kind of.

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Dan Kern

@billsebald Clients must understand they're never "done" with their website (optimization, content, design, etc). If stop, eventually drop.
- Dan Kern (@kernmedia) April 30, 2016

Here's an analogy I occasionally use when talking to prospects who are thinking of merely dabbling with SEO for a only a brief period.

"SEO is like a big game of King of the Mountain. On your mountain, you have many aggressive competitors all climbing towards the top. Someone will always get there. Then, without warning, Google might make a change and knock away all your progress, starting you at the bottom again. Not guaranteed, but this can happen to the other climbers as well. You have two choices: quit the game, or play to win in this routine scenario. SEO is a game that's not for the weak of heart. But keep in mind, when you do win, your rewards should offset all your losses."

That analogy either produces excitement or pause, and I think this is important. We should encourage our clients to understand the true rules of engagement with SEO.

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Phil Nottingham

@billsebald buy Bill Sebald a beer.
- Phil Nottingham (@philnottingham) April 30, 2016

Without a doubt, this is my favorite piece of advice in the entire article. I think it speaks for itself. I'll be at MozCon this year, so everyone can feel free to take Phil's advice.

How about you? Any nuggets of advice you'd want to add? Sound off in the comments.

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