Making sense of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a struggle for businesses and industry professionals alike. These six factors will help you get better returns on your marketing spend
95% of traffic on the internet comes from Page One of Google
Like you, I spent most of 2020 working from home 😷. Perhaps unlike you, my year was spent advising New Zealand’s top export businesses on how to tune their digital presence for growth in the Australian market. I had the great privilege and fun working with some exciting companies, ranging from fintech, food engineering, leasing, and accounting technologies, through to construction tech, edible seaweed, and even racehorse exporters. On the surface, the businesses I worked with had very little in common.
Curiously, as the year progressed, I noticed that the same question was coming up over and over again, that being: “How do I drive more traffic to my website?”. Now, remember, the companies I am working with are successful NZ businesses, most of whom have engagements in place with reputable marketing agencies and development companies. …
Spoiler: it has nothing to do with the skills and experience of your next hire. It has to do with The Hum.
‘Ma’ is a Japanese boundary, but it isn’t a line. It is a void, an expanse. The literal translation is “space between,” but rather than a static gap, it is the distance that exists between objects as well as between time. It is the silent pause between …the interactions between people
A good team creates magic. In “The Science of Teamwork”, Goodwin, Blacksmith and Coats analyse 60 years of research into team dynamics in the military. …
A trusted six week week strategy to lift yourself out of a crisis pit, in readiness for forward motion
The view from the center of a crisis always looks warped. Whether the crisis is one of the standard flavours of mid-life meltdown, or an emergent new type that will arise from ambient uncertainty and fear caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, it is hard to imagine not being in that dark phase when you are there.
I have learned over and over again that action trumps thought on these occasions. If you are at the bottom of your own happiness curve, challenge yourself to do nothing more than the 2+2+2 Method. The method is simple, achievable, and works in every case. …
A handy reference of common pitfalls for novices and experienced UX testers.
It’s not what you look at that matters. It’s what you see — Thoreau
User testing is hard, and it takes years to master the skills to consistently deliver the kind of user tests that produce breakthrough insights. The good news, however, is that the skills you need can be learned, refined and polished over time.
In this post, I look at seven of the most common mistakes made in user testing, and how to avoid them. Every mistake on this list has been and can be made by novices and experts alike (myself included). Despite years of conducting user testing sessions, I still keep this list on hand. I hope you find it useful too. …
No place like an Uber ride to catch up on the latest COVID-19 Conspiracy Theory #safeplace
This is a true story, based on real events and people, told exactly as it went down…
The Uber driver arrived as I was just finishing the final touches on my Uppit.io presentation. As per usual, I hopped into the back seat, nodded a quick hello and refocussed my attention on my phone. Creating a bias-free app for ideation keeps me, like, Very Busy.
I was quite comfortable in my busyness, tapping away on my phone, when the Uber driver started talking to me. On a regular day, this is pretty rude — can’t he see I am busy tapping things into my phone? — but given the current climate, I was especially appalled. …
Add credibility to your idea in 8 easy steps.
The word “research” connotes images of bowties, books and boredom. Laborious journeys through volumes of life’s works recorded in inaccessibly obtuse collections of words. As most often the overeducated person in any room, I speak from experience. For me, the hardest part of writing a Doctorate Thesis was not the writing, but rather figuring out a system for how to research and how to write. Turns out I am not alone — according to research reported in The Science Teacher Journal, most students report topic selection, followed by study construction and time management as the biggest challenges in conducting research.
Research process dogma
According to just about every…
A Futurist’s guide to picking the bottom of the COVID-19 market crash. The answer is encoded in the patterns
When we meet, you will have a hard time placing me. I sound like I’m from here, but also from over there. I am small, but will captivate you with my big insights. I struggle to play poker, but have an uncanny knack for predicting numbers. I am unquestionably a paradoxical human, with a talent for seeing patterns.
Seeing patterns may not seem like much of a thrill. Certainly, in my experience, it has never come in handy at a party. There are a few odd cases though, when my talent for seeing pattens has put me at an advantage — when I worked on Wall Street in the late 1990’s, when I analysed market trends in Taiwan in the same decade, and today, when I think about technology product futures. …
Your A to Z for Apocalyptic Times
A is for Alphabet. Not Google 🚫
B is for Beta. Another chance to get it right
C is for crypto. Need we say more? 🤣
D is for Data centre. Your back-up plan 📄
E is for Elon. The Godfather of Tech 🙌🏻
F is for financial crisis. You can bet on that 📉
G is for GIF. Again and again 🔁
H is for Hockey Stick. Grab it with both hands 🏒
I is for Instagram. Are you still following? 🤳🏼
J is for Javascript. Are you speaking my language?
K is for Y2K. A blast from the past…
To have great returns, you need great ideas. To have great ideas, you need great thinkers, understand who they are, and “pay them unfairly”
Laszlo Bock, the former Head of HR at Google, wrote an excellent book in 2015. In the book, he describes (what was, and remains) a controversial policy of paying people “unfairly” based on the quality of their contributions, rather than their role or seniority:
At Google, we… have situations where two people doing the same work can have a hundred times difference in their impact, and in their rewards… In fact, we have many cases where people at more “junior” levels make far more than average performers at more “senior” levels. …
The ripples of Coronavirus are extending far beyond the virus that it is. Where does it end, and what is the best thing that we can do about it
Exactly four months have passed since COVID-19 patient-zero was identified. Mutating from virus, to pandemic, to marketing opportunity (seriously!) to what now appears to be a catalyst for global meltdown and widespread panic.
Virus or Pandemic?
COVID-19 started as a virus, thought to have originated in a bat, passed on to other species, and then humans. It is not the first time a disease has been passed accross species lines. …
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