While we take time off for ourselves this week, check out some of our most read productivity tips from the Social Media Minute:

Tip #1: 5 Practical Science-Based Tips to Make You More Productive

Problem: We operate on autopilot most of the day!

Not a bad view from the cockpit. But, not very productive either.

Tip #2: Two-Minute Trick to Increase Confidence and Impact Your Success

Sitting or standing with your head up and shoulders back, in what is often called a “powerful pose,” can:

• Help prevent back pain
• Improve your physical well-being
• Make you better at your job (think social media blogging)
• Reduce stress
• Increase chances for success

Tip #3 – Sitting is the New Smoking: 4 Simple Tips to Avoid the Negative Side Effects (Infographic)

Stand every 20 minutes. You’ll avoid any of the negative side effects of a sedentary job.

Tip #4 – Yes, You Can Force Yourself to Become a Morning Person. Here’s How. [Infographic]

Waking well-rested starts with getting enough sleep.

Hitting the snooze button a couple times before getting up is a clear sign of sleep deprivation, says Nathaniel Watson, MD, president-elect of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. If you are getting enough sleep, you should be able to wake up on time without a morning alarm.

Tip #5 – 7 Awesome Standing Desks that Will Change Your Life

Ever get the feeling that your hampster gets more exercise than you do?

Tip #6 – Hardcore Productivity Hack: The Best Time to Drink Coffee to Boost Performance

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We hope your Thanksgiving will be enjoyable, productive and stress-free this season!

Please share our productivity tips!

The post Top Productivity Tips for 2015 [Social Media Minute] appeared first on dlvr.it | blog.

Five Practical and Science-Based Tips to Make You More Productive

According to Manhattan neuroscientist Josh Davis, the answer is not to get more done faster, but rather to create the conditions for at least two awesome hours of peak productivity each day. Drawing on research, Davis explains that our minds operate according to complex factors that, when leveraged the right way, can make us truly effective.

Here are five deceptively simple strategies from Davis to create the conditions for incredible productivity and to restore sanity and balance to your life:

1 – Recognize your decision points

Maximize the moments in your day when you are between tasks, intentionally choosing what to tackle next.

→Once you start a task, you run largely on autopilot, which makes it hard to change course. Maximize the power of those moments in between tasks—that’s when you can choose what to take on next, and can, therefore, decide to tackle what matters most.

Problem: We operate on autopilot most of the day! Not a bad view from the cockpit. But, not very productive either.

Neuroscience reveals we are cognitive misers, looking for the easy route.

Solution: We need reminders to snap out of autopilot and focus on the important stuff.

That’s where decision points come in. They are transitional moments when we move from one task to another and can choose to attack the important or be carried along by the flotsam and jetsam of the day.

When do decision points occur?

1. When you return from a meeting and pick up your “real work.”
2. They may appear after the morning commute, an exercise break, or a walk to the coffee shop.
3. Interruptions also offer us good decision points.

These decision points can lead to hours of productive work!

What do you do?

Recognize them. And instead of plunging back into work – angry you have been interrupted or that the barista was slow – keep in mind that moving ahead without thinking is wasteful while taking time to consider the next task carefully is actually productive, not wasteful. 

• Eventually, you will learn not only to recognize the decision points but also to anticipate them.
• You will know that the end of every meeting affords you a decision point, and you can fritter away your time in the next period or choose two awesome hours of important work.

2 – Manage your mental energy

Schedule tasks based on your cognitive and emotional demands.

→Tasks that need a lot of self-control or focused attention can be depleting, and tasks that make you highly emotional can throw you off your game. Schedule tasks based on their processing demand and recovery time.

Problem: We don’t have the same energy all day long.

We suffer from decision fatigue:

• After making a lot of decisions, we get tired. And that doesn’t mean huge decisions, like where to allocate our advertising budget and when best to add new staff. A half-hour of e-mail is jammed with many decisions that can sap your energy.
• Before a major presentation, you might want to squeeze in some e-mail time while you wait for the big moment. “That’s like going for a long run before the big race,” he warns. After, when you must perform at your mental peak, you are actually tired. So at decision points, check your mental energy.

Solution: Schedule tasks based on their processing demand and recovery time.

Read: 8 Ways to Combat Decision Fatigue

3 – Stop fighting distractions

Learn how to direct your attention.

→Learn to direct your attention. Your attention systems are designed to wander and refresh, not to focus indefinitely. Trying to fight that is like trying to fight the ocean tides. Understanding how your brain works will help you get back on track quickly and effectively when you get distracted.

Problem: Your energy can be sapped by trying to fight distractions.

• How often are you distracted by a colleague talking on the phone?

• How about the distractions from hunger pains rumbling in your belly?

• What about the constant blinking or dinging task reminder on your computer?

Your instinct will be to ignore these distractions and stay the course, keeping on with the task at hand.

Solution: Consider distractions a good thing, a chance to let your mind wander.

Let your mind wander. It helps us come up with creative solutions or planning – we can sort out what needs to be done in the future. A lot of important stuff happens while we let our mind wander. You can come back to work in a few minutes, refreshed.

• Surfing websites likely won’t refresh you, though, because you aren’t just letting the mind float.

4 – Strengthen your mind–body connection

Breathe as well as feed and move your body for short-term benefit.

→Use your breath to calm your nervous system.

→Feed your body by eating in ways that set you up for success.

→Move your body.

There are not only short term but also long term benefits to breathing deeply, eating in a way that fuels your body as well as exercising and moving your body. They all improve your concentration immediately by relaxing you and your nervous system, and the long-term benefits are immeasurable.

• If tough work is ahead for the next few hours: Move your body and take a few centering deep breaths
• If you’re feeling anxious: Center yourself by taking 3-5 deep breaths
• If you’re in a hotel room preparing for a presentation: Exercise by jogging in place for 20 minutes to boost your energy.
• If you’re in a stressful meeting or situation: Center yourself by taking 3-5 deep breaths

Notice the common theme? Deep breaths and exercise

Breathing deeply, consuming nutritious foods as well as exercising and moving your body will have a positive impact on your mental state of mind and improve concentration.

Read about: Julie Down, Retreats for Learning to Live Authentically

5 – Make your workspace work for you

Identify how your environment affects your focus and alertness.

→Learn what environmental factors help you be on top of your game—and how to adjust your environment accordingly. Once you know what distracts you or what primes your brain to be in creating or risk-taking modes, you can change your environment for productivity.

Problem: Clutter is just distraction – and not a good distraction since it’s a reminder of work uncompleted.

Solution: Make your workspace work for you. In particular, keep your desk and computer desktop clean.

Read: How Clutter Affects Your Brain (and What You Can Do About It)
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Article Credit: From MariaShriver.com, 5 Simple, Science-Based Strategies to Make You Incredibly Productive, PsychCentral, 6 Ways to Stress Less at Work, The Globe and Mail, Brainy tips to boost productivity and Julie Down, Living Authentically.

Now it’s your turn…

Get back to work, and you’ll be more efficient!

We’re listening.

Share and comment!

The post 5 Practical Science-Based Tips to Make You More Productive appeared first on dlvr.it | blog.

One of the best ways to save your limited time on social media is to create an editorial calendar for efficient scheduling and posting of your social content.

In an ideal world, you would have ample time to research and craft quality content with time left to relax by the pool. However, according to Sprout Social, only 20% of your time should be spent creating and curating content. How can you fit pool time into that schedule?

How to Allocate Your Time on Social Media

25%: Researching & Planning

20%: Creating & Curating Content

10%: Collaborating with Others

35%: Engaging with Customers

10%: Analyzing the Results

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100%

4 Simple but Effective Steps to Create a Social Media Editorial Calendar

Zeroing in on how you should be spending just 20% of your time (highlighted above), here are four steps to setting up a social media editorial calendar to better create and curate content.

Step 1. Figure out which networks to post to

There’s no universal answer when it comes to deciding which social networks you should be on. However, there is some research you can conduct to find which networks you could thrive on.

The Big Picture:

First, take a look at this overview of the social media landscape as of February 2015 from Experian Marketing Services. Facebook leads the pack by a long shot.

Look to past success:

Where does your audience figure into the social media mix?

One way to find out which social networks you should spend time on is to look at which networks you’ve already been finding success on.

If you are a Google Analytics user, you know there is a ton of data to absorb. It can be intimidating and overwhelming.

For a quick look at which social networks currently drive traffic to your site, drill down into the following Google Analytics data:

Acquisition > Channels > Social

In this example, Facebook, Twitter, and Quora drive a big chunk of traffic to the site. However, Reddit and LinkedIn drive the greatest number of New Sessions.

Dlvr.it pro tip: If you’re a dlvr.it user wanting to use Google Analytics, read How to Auto Enable Google Analytics UTM Tracking Code for Social Media

Look at your demographics:

You can also use Google Analytics > Audience > Demographics data to determine the Age, Gender, Interest, and Geo-locations of your social media audience.

With this information, you can then find out exactly which social media websites they’re most likely to frequent.

Pew Research Center’s recent post on The Demographics of Social Media Users discusses the demographic characteristics of five social media platforms they surveyed. Here are the highlights:

Facebook — 72% of adult internet users/62% of entire adult population

• 72% of online American adults use Facebook
• Usage is popular among online women, 77% of whom are users
• 82% of online adults ages 18 to 29 use Facebook

Pinterest — 31% of adult internet users/26% of entire adult population

• 31% of online adults use Pinterest
• Women dominate Pinterest – 44% of online women use the site, compared with 16% of online men
• Those under the age of 50 are also more likely to be Pinterest users

Instagram — 28% of adult internet users/24% of entire adult population

• 28% of online adults use Instagram
• Instagram is popular with non-whites and young adults: 55% of online adults ages 18 to 29 use Instagram, as do 47% of African Americans and 38% of Hispanics
• Women are more likely than online men to be Instagram users (31% vs. 24%)

LinkedIn — 25% of adult internet users/22% of entire adult population

• A quarter of online adults, use LinkedIn
• Especially popular among working-age adults as well as college graduates and those with relatively high household incomes.
• Only major social media platform for which usage rates are higher among 30- to 49-year-olds than among 18- to 29-year-olds.
• 46% of online adults who have graduated from college are LinkedIn users

Twitter — 23% of all internet users/20% of entire adult population

• 23% of all online adults use Twitter
• Three-in-ten online urban residents use the site, compared with 21% of suburbanites and 15% of those living in rural areas.
• Twitter is more popular among younger adults (< 50-years old)  — 60% of online adults under 50 use Twitter

Let’s talk about Engagement:

In terms of engagement, Facebook continues to have the most engaged users – 70% log on daily, including 43% who do so several times a day.

Step 2. Choose a posting frequency

Once you determine which networks you want to be on, next up is to figure out how often you need to post to them. Unfortunately, there are no hard-and-fast rules when it comes to choosing how often to post to each of your social networks.

How often you should blog post, varies based on:

• Audience response
• Conversion
• Your ability to provide useful and engaging content

Ultimately, the answer to this question and the success of your social media efforts is based on the “numbers” ~ back to Google Analytics and other social networks analytics tools.

For a quick cheat sheet, here’s an infographic from Buffer and SumAll depicting the average ideal frequencies to post across social media:

Step 3. Find and create fantastic content

Don’t be surprised if step two made you feel a little overwhelmed. We all know that content is king, but when did it become necessary to make over 13 social media posts per day?

How could you possibly find enough content to keep your fans and followers interested?

Answer: You can create content as well as curate great content to keep your social media posting queue full.

Here are a few quick ways to make sure you always have enough content to entertain your social followers.

Best tools to help find great content:

1. BuzzSumo: A content search tool that will show you the hottest tweets and content related to any search topic under the sun. Just enter a search term (for example, cupcakes on Pinterest), and browse the most popular posts about that topic from the past 24-hours to the past year.

2. Newsle: Service that finds blogs and articles that mention you or anyone you care about – colleagues, friends, business acquaintances or industry thought leaders – and notifies you seconds after they’ve published.

3. Scoop.it!: Platform to help discover, curate and publish great content to get visibility online.

Best shareable content: 

1. How-to Posts

• 75% of people like learning online, which explains why how-to posts are so successful. They are most popular on Facebook and Pinterest, but they get a lot of shares on LinkedIn, too.

For example, the article “The Biggest Mistakes I See on Resumes, and How to Correct Them” got almost 2.3 Million views on LinkedIn.

2. Quizzes

• 8 out of 10 of the most shared articles in 2014 were quizzes

For example, take a look at BuzzFeed’s quiz on What Career Should You Actually Have? This quiz generated almost 19 Million views!

3. Picture Lists

• Picture lists work best when they tell a story, explain a process or draw contrasts.

Despite being disproven on Snopes.com, a picture list that recently went viral compared U.S. school lunches with lunches from around the world. Internet users shared it more than 470,000 times.

Another content curation option:

Concierge by dlvr.it: Concierge handpicks content to share with your social media audience.

[amads id=”10636″ size=”728×90″ title=”760×200 Bakery”]

Step 4: Schedule content to fill your calendar

Once you know which networks to post to, how often to post to those networks and exactly what you want to post, all you have to do next is start to schedule those messages.

Some of the networks have tools that allow you to schedule your posts, but it’s much easier to use a tool that automates the scheduling process while allowing complete flexibility.

Obviously our number one choice for scheduling posts is to use Q by dlvr.it

Q is a feature of dlvr.it that drips your posts out on an optimized daily schedule. Q delivers a consistent flow of perfectly timed content throughout the day to keep your social media audience engaged.

Read: A Guide to Getting Started with dlvr.it

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So now you have all the tools you need to create a social media editorial calendar. To recap:

Step 1. Figure out which networks to post to

Step 2. Choose a posting frequency

Step 3. Create and curate GREAT content

Step 4. Queue up content with a scheduling tool to fill your calendar

Did you find this post helpful? Please share and comment below!

The post Complete Guide to Creating a Simple Yet Effective Social Media Editorial Calendar appeared first on dlvr.it | blog.

While you can blame office work, processed foods, and sedentary lifestyles, there are some simple solutions – taking frequent breaks, stretching, and eating your veggies – just like Mom told you. What Mom probably doesn’t know is that the “new office” doesn’t have to involve sitting.

7 Fabulous Standing Desk Designs From Around the World

1 – Ever get the feeling that your hampster gets more exercise than you do?

Hampster Wheel Standing Desk: $ DIY

Rise, sedentary slouchers, and unleash that untapped potential within by marching endlessly towards a brilliant future of focused work. Step forward into a world of infinite potential, bounded only by the smooth arcs of a wheel. Step forward into the Hamster Wheel Standing Desk that will usher in a new era of unprecedented productivity.

2 – Walking 10,000 steps per day does your heart good

Treadmill Desk: $499

The TrekDesk treadmill desk will show you how to workout at work, improve your mental and physical health while performing nearly any regular desk task, without taking extra time out of your day.

No sweat, extra time or motivation required!

3 – First came standing desks, then treadmill desks, now say hello to surfing desks.

The Level: Starts at $289.

The Level is a beautifully designed tool that brings motion to any common work or meeting area. You were designed to move – it’s likely your workspace was not. From your desk to the conference room, to the living room, we aim to provide a shift where you need it most – physically, emotionally, and intellectually. The Level is the perfect addition to a standing desk, gaming system, or classroom.

Now That You Can Surf at Your Desk, Standing Is So Passé

4 – Rather than change careers and become a courier

Kickstand Desk: Start at $500

We’re cyclists. We want to ride, but we have to work. Unless you’re riding for work, you’re not riding at work. Our concept: 

ride + work

5 – The “Ergonomic Office Chair” is an oxymoron

• Locus Seat: $715
• Locus Workstation: $1,290
• Confluence Conference Table: $2,999

If ergonomic office chairs “worked,” then why are so many people still plagued with neck, shoulder, back and hip pain? The reason is simple: there are plenty of “ergonomic” desk chairs, but there’s no such thing as ergonomic sitting. The solution split the difference between sitting and standing. In its body-first design simplicity, the Locus Seat is the most radical and forward thinking way to work in comfort and health in the digital age.

The complete Locus Workstation:

The Conference Table:

6 – Standing while working?

The DeskStand: $189 (ships from Cape Town, South Africa)

For the multi-tasking individual who needs more space and a separate monitor, or two. The DeskStand doesn’t just get you on your feet; it helps improve your posture, strengthening your back muscles, allowing you to stay focused longer.

7 – So you’re looking for a desk with wheels. 

Mobile Laptop Cart: $85

Our favorite sub-$100 adjustable mobile laptop workstation is the TECHNI MOBILI Cadmus. Great for the home or the office, the mobile cart can go almost anywhere you want to use your laptop.

In case you were wondering, I’m standing now while crafting this entire post – my one hour is up. My setup is not as sophisticated as the ones mentioned above but my birthday is soon, and I’m in love with #4!

Here’s your challenge:

1. Stand for one hour the first two days
2. Gradually increase the number of hours
3. Goal: Be standing four hours by Friday of the 2nd week!

Featured image thanks to John Powers.

The post 7 Awesome Standing Desk Designs that Will Change Your Life appeared first on dlvr.it | blog.

A: They are three types of content that people LOVE to share.

If you are like me – a lover of content that you can quickly view and absorb – this should have been an easy question to answer.

By incorporating these three types of content into your social media marketing mix, you have the best potential for going viral.

Here’s why, plus the infographic:

3 Types Of Content People Love To Share On Social Media

Content Type #1: How-to Posts

Why how-to posts? Seventy-five percent of people like learning online, which explains why how-to posts are so successful. They are most popular on Facebook and Pinterest, but they get a lot of shares on LinkedIn, too.

For example, the article “The Biggest Mistakes I See on Resumes, and How to Correct Them” got almost 2.3 Million views on LinkedIn.

Content Type #2: Quizzes

Why quizzes? (Per Noah Kagan): Because, sharing our quiz results fuels our identity and ego. Others will learn more about who we are, what we value, and our tastes. Think about the last time you shared a quiz. Do you think 90% of your Facebook friends care? No, but the few that do will know what a cool person you are. Similarly, sharing an opinionated piece about a hot issue, such as gay marriage, lets others know where we stand on the issue.

For example, take a look at BuzzFeed’s quiz on What Career Should You Actually Have? This quiz generated almost 19 Million views! I guess, “Do what you love, love what you do” speaks to many more people than just me (check out my blog bio).

Content Type #3: Picture Lists

Why picture lists? 

90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual. (cited in Roman Gubern´s book “Metamorfosis de la lectura”. Dogwell, cited by Gubern 2007 : Loc 152 [ kindle version])

Picture lists work best when they tell a story, explain a process or draw contrasts. Despite being disproven on Snopes.com, a picture list that recently went viral compared U.S. school lunches with lunches from around the world. Internet users shared it more than 470,000 times.

The Infographic: 3 Types of Content That People LOVE TO SHARE

Take a look at the full infographic below, produced by Uberflip and BuzzSumo, to learn more about, what kind of content people love to share on social.

What kind of content do you share on your social media?

The post 3 Most Shared Types of Content – Infographic appeared first on dlvr.it | blog.

Consider this from ragan.com:

• If you stand every 20 minutes, you avoid all the negative effects of sedentary work.
• When you stand, your heart beats 10 times more per minute than when you sit. In one year, that adds up to more than 30,000 calories burned, which equates to running 10 marathons.
• Taking walking or water breaks throughout the day can increase productivity by 60 percent.
• The ideal work-to-break ratio is work 52 minutes, break for 17.

In our post on Why Doing Less is Good for You, we mentioned 21 interesting ways to take a break to restore your energy, sharpen your focus, boost productivity and avoid burnout at work. If you need some fresh motivation to get off your bum, check out the following infographic from StandDesk.

According to a Gallup Poll, the average American works 47 hours a week. That’s more than 9 hours a day. With most of your week spent sitting in an office, it’s important to understand how your posture and diet affect your health.

4 Office Tips to Help You Live Longer

Tip #1: Stand More

Stand every 20 minutes. You’ll avoid any of the negative side effects of a sedentary job.

Tip #2: Take Breaks

Short standing breaks throughout the workday increases productivity. 

Tip #3: Drink Water

Drinking water is the easiest way to immediately boost energy.

Read: 7 habits of highly dehydrated employees

Tip #4: Monitor Your Fitness

You can’t improve want you can’t monitor. Wearables can boost productivity at work.

Standing more is clinically proven to improve your health. Start now – up you go!

The post Sitting is the New Smoking: 4 Simple Tips to Avoid the Negative Side Effects (Infographic) appeared first on dlvr.it | blog.

Here’s a thought: How about taking a break?

As counter-intuitive as that sounds, every self-help program talks about the importance of taking 10-15-minute periodic breaks to boost your productivity. When you are constantly busy, when can you take a break?

Intuitively, I think we all know taking breaks and having “down time” is an absolute must to avoid burnout. So, what is the biggest problem with taking a break? We often forget to take them! (For the record…going to the bathroom, pouring yourself a cup of coffee, standing up to answer the door or checking email, does not count.)

As strange as it may sound, taking regular breaks throughout the work day requires discipline and a little bit of planning. There are plenty of apps and timers to remind you to take a break.

One of my favorites is Stand Up! The Work Break Timer.

Stand Up! is a fun, flexible work break timer. By now you know that sitting down is slowly killing you, and we want to help you live longer. We don’t micromanage you, and we don’t make you feel guilty.

There’s no compulsive tracking and time management, and we don’t tell you what exercises you need to do. Just regular, simple reminders to get up, with easy confirmations so you can get a sense of how you’re doing.

Now that you are up and standing, the pressing question is: What do you DO during the break…

Here are 21 Counter-Intuitive and INTERESTING Break Ideas from Lifehack that can help to restore your energy, sharpen your focus, boost productivity and avoid burnout at work.

1. Listen to a guided meditation.

There are plenty of 10-15-minute meditations that can trigger your creativity, let go of muscles tension and take your mind off the work at hand.

All you have to do is put on a headset, close your eyes and enjoy peace and relaxation even in the midst of work chaos.

2. Exercise during your break with a co-worker. Alone, you might not always have the strength to pull yourself away from the computer, but if you have a friend taking breaks with you, it is much easier to stick with your break routine. In addition, it offers a great opportunity to bond with your colleagues and get to know them better.

Do this set 5x a day to get your blood flowing:

• one minute of non-stop skipping
• one minute of tricep dips
• one minute of tricep kickbacks
• one minute of push-ups against the wall

3. Step outside for a fresh perspective. Leaving a stuffy office and letting yourself enjoy the warmth of the sunlight, the coolness of a breeze and the freshness of the spring air can do miracles to your mind and body. You will come back feeling rejuvenated and ready to approach your work with new energy and a fresh perspective.

• Take a walk
• Daydream
• Go for a swim
• Sketch
• Read

4. Close your eyes and take 10 deep breaths. Stand up and walk away from your desk. Find a quiet place, where you can sit down, close your eyes, smile to yourself and take a few deep breaths. Imagine your tension, stress and anxiety leaving your body as you breathe out, and peacefulness, positivity and relaxation filling your mind with every breath that you take.

5. Say NO to tension headaches. Slowly roll your neck to the right noticing a slight tension in your neck muscles. Hold this position for a count of 120 (2 minutes), then turn your head to the opposite side and repeat. Enjoy the feeling of warmth and flexibility return to your neck and shoulders.

6. Try people-gazing. Watching people walking down the street, chatting in a nearby café, and driving by, is meditation in itself. In addition looking outside the window helps to take the strain off the eyes.

7. Rock out to some great music. Music is a great mood changer, especially if you allow yourself to get up and move with it. Just a few minutes of humming and dancing can put a smile on your face and get your blood moving.

8. Take a Thumb and Pinkie Brain Break. This is a great break idea if you need a quick distraction from the problem at hand to get your creative juices flowing:

• Take your left hand and have your fingers in and your thumb up.
• Then take your right hand and put all the fingers in except the pinkie.
• Now switch the roles of your hands. And now try doing it faster.

Check out this cute video on Brain Breaks for other quick ideas.

9. Exercise. What can be more satisfying than taking a long hard look at your to-do list and crossing off a few unimportant tasks?

10. Eat an apple. S-L-O-W-L-Y. In the middle of a busy day, when you feel rushed, take a 2-3 minute break to eat an apple (or another fruit that you like). Just do it very slowly. Notice the flavor, the texture, the freshness. Doing something at a slow pace might feel weird, even annoying at first. But after a few minutes you feel much calmer and less stressed.

11. Say Thank you. Grab a notecard and your favorite pen and write a quick thank you to someone you appreciate. Then attach a stamp and go downstairs to put it in a mailbox. This simple act of gratitude will take your focus away from any pressing work problems and will put you in a good mood.

12. Take a “No Cell-phone Walk”. Leave your cellphone in the office and head outside for a brisk walk. Shake off apathy and fatigue. Walk even faster, raising your heartbeat and letting the excitement and the sense of freedom recharge your mind and body.

13. Read a magazine or a book. Pick a read that has nothing to do with your area of work or the latest news. Give your brain the pleasure of not to thinking, being stressed or making decisions.

14. Hydrate yourself. First drink a full glass of water. Second splash some water on your face: warm to relax, cold – to wake up and energize yourself.

Read: 7 habits of highly dehydrated employees

15. Make animals of the clouds. This is a great exercise to entertain your children, but it is also a great game you can play alone as it helps to tap into your creative potential and distract your mind from upcoming deadlines or customer complaints.

16. Pick up the pace. If you feel yourself tired and sleepy, deliberately pick up the pace, and try to move a little faster than usual. Type faster. Speak faster. Read faster. Make decisions faster. And, of course, go home sooner.

17. Laugh off the tension. You can start by simply saying, “Ha, ha, ha.” and keep repeating it until you are really laughing. A few minutes of a good belly laugh help to get rid of tension, relax a lot of involuntary muscles and increase blood circulation.

18. Stretch out stiffness. Getting up from your desk to do a set of sun salutations or this might not be an option if you work in a room full of people. But it does not mean that you should deprive yourself of the pleasure of stretching your body and getting some exercise. Try a simple stretching exercise.

• Plant your feet firmly on the ground, lift your arms and look at your palms.
• Stretch your spine for about 30-60 seconds, gradually increasing pressure, as if you were trying to touch the ceiling with your fingers.
• Relax, lower your arms and feel the energy moving up your spine.

19. Do something artistic. Write a short, funny poem and dedicate it to your co-worker. Draw a picture for your kids. Take a few photos of your surroundings. Let your creative side shine!

20. Unclutter your desk. A great way to take a much-needed break, while looking “busy” is to unclutter your desk. Not only is it relaxing, it also helps to activate productive energy flow.

21. Juggle. Learning to juggle isn’t particularly difficult and it could be a great exercise to take during a break (maybe not in the office itself, but in a place, where balls flying left and right will not bother anyone). Juggling requires fine muscle control, timing, and concentration. But most importantly, it is fun!

Still looking for the “perfect” productivity-boosting activity for your break?

Here are another 5 break activities – choose one, choose them all:

1. Take a Nap
2. Exercise
3. Call your Mom
4. Plan a trip
5. Stand up exercises

The post Why Doing Less is Good for You: 21 Ideas to Hack Break Time at Work appeared first on dlvr.it | blog.

1. Who is your target audience and what content are they consuming?

The best way to find out what sort of content your audience wants is to interact with your audience.

Closely observe what sort of questions they ask and what sort of answers they respond to.

Or, be bold. Ask them what content they want, need or wish they had access to. 

FREE tools: Twitter, Quora, Google Analytics

Paid Tool (with a free trial period): Simply Measured – Determine what your target audience is talking about on social so you can join the conversation.

2. What are your competitors posting?

What other blogs target the same audience as you and what are they writing about? Look at the top posts on those blogs to get an idea of what your audience likes to read, then write more advanced posts on those same topics.

Must read: 25 Sneaky Online Tools and Gadgets to Help You Spy on Your Competitors. The title of this post from KISSmetrics says it all. Make sure to read through the comments filled with additional great tips.

Paid Tool (with a free trial period): Rival IQ – Rival IQ is a game-changer. Incredibly useful intelligence about the digital activities and successes of your competitors, delivered quick, easy and smart. Jay Baer, New York Times best selling author

3. What content is trending?

Check what content is trending on social media.

GREAT Tool: BuzzSumo. Type any keywords into the search field and the tool will show you the most shared articles based on these keywords.

Have any tips or tools to share? Please feel free to add your comments.

The post Quick Cure for Writer’s Block: 3 Questions to Ask Yourself to Unlock the Block appeared first on dlvr.it | blog.

What is Attention Span?

According to the Statistic Brain Research Institute, attention span is the amount of concentrated time on a task without becoming distracted. Most educators and psychologists agree that the ability to focus attention on a task is crucial for the achievement of one’s goals. It’s no surprise attention spans have been decreasing over the past decade with the increase in external stimulation. (Think smartphone, Candy Crush, Words With Friends, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and the list goes on and on….)

Two questions to consider:

1 – What is the average human attention span? 

2 – How long in seconds is the average attention span?

Take a quick moment to digest the following attention span statistics from Statistic Brain:

To recap the above (in case you got distracted):

Between 2000 and 2015, the average attention span of an internet user has shrunk from 12 seconds to eight seconds.

To put that in perspective, the average attention span of a goldfish is nine seconds – one second more than your online customer!

The real question becomes:

What Will You Do When Your Customers No Longer Have Attention Spans?

Here is one more statistic from qSampleBlog to help understand your customers’ declining attention span with great tips from DIYMarketers.com on how you can tweak your marketing to fit the amount of attention your customer is willing to give you.

• 10 seconds is the amount of time it takes a visitor to decide whether they’re going to stay on your page. (If someone stays on your page for more than 30 seconds, they will likely stay for more than two minutes, and will probably return later.)

You have exactly 10 seconds… GO!

What can you do to keep a potential customer on your website?

1. De-clutter your website by tightening up your copy and reduce the amount of irrelevant content.

2. Identify and speak to a single customer: You can’t sell anything to everyone. Pick a specific customer and write your website to them. Imagine a single individual and write to that person. It will pull in your ideal customers and keep them there.

3. Have the core purpose, benefit and description of your site in BIG BOLD words at the top. This purpose is your headline, and the ideal length of a headline is no more than six words.

Great headline examples using six words or less:

MailChimp: Send Better Email

Copyblogger: We Power Websites That Work

Grammarly: Better Writing Made Easier

Airbnb: Welcome Home

4. Focus on the top three things you do for people: Immediately after your headline – be sure to identify the top three things that people will get or be able to do.

Two examples of websites that don’t dimish a customer’s attention span:

1 – Grammarly

Here’s an example of Grammarly’s home page clearly identifying what they will do for their customer:

2 – Airbnb

And, Airbnb with a short headline and succinct tagline:

More mind-numbing statistics from QSampleBlog:

• 5 minutes is the average attention span of a person (dropping from 12 minutes in the course of the last 10 years).
• 30 seconds is the average length of a television commercial (down from one minute in the 1950s and 1960s).
• 90 seconds is the drop off attention in viewer retention to any marketing video.
• 30 seconds in the considered length of an elevator pitch (formerly 118 seconds, the average length of a New York elevator ride).
• 20% is the average email open rate of any business email (while 95% of visitors never fill out a form in any industry’s website).
• 40% of visitors will leave a website if loading takes more than three seconds.

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For more advice from DIY Marketers on the attention span of your customer, read: Tips on How to Leverage Shorter Attention Spans

For other fun attention span facts, read: What’s the Connection Between a Productive Meeting, REM Sleep, and Attention Span?

The post 5 Tips That Will Help Your Customers Attention Span appeared first on dlvr.it | blog.

What Exactly is Content Curation – A Curated Definition?

To better understand what content curation is and how to use it for your small business, here are a few definitions from the experts and dictionaries across the web:

Curated Definition #1 – From Beth Kanter’s post on her blog appropriately titled Beth’s Blog – Content Curation Primer:

Content curation is the process of sorting through the vast amounts of content on the web and presenting it in a meaningful and organized way around a particular theme.

The work involves sifting, sorting, arranging, and publishing information. A content curator cherry picks the best content that is important and relevant to share with their community.

It isn’t unlike what a museum curator does to produce an exhibition: They identify the theme, provide the context, decide which paintings to hang on the wall, how to annotate them, and how to display them for the public.

Curated Definition #2 – From Uberflip.com:

Curated Definition #3 – From Pawan Deshpande of Curata analyzing Rohit Bhargava’s definition of Content Curation:

A Content Curator is someone who continually finds, groups, organizes and shares the best and most relevant content on a specific issue online.

There are a few key parts of this definition worth highlighting:

1. First, a content curator is “someone”. Content curation cannot be performed solely by an algorithm. It involves a person who is a domain expert in the middle to be selective and add value during the process.
2. Secondly, it’s something that needs to be done “continually”. Other forms of offline curation can be performed once (such as curating an art gallery). When it comes to online curation, a good content curator is continually and consistently staying on top of a topic area as a trusted resource for their audience.
3. Third, a curator is not just regurgitating any content that they come across, but they are very discerning, discriminative, and selective in only sharing the “best and most relevant” content.
4. Lastly, a curator focuses on “a particular issue”. They do not curate on all topics under the sun. Instead, they specialize on a single specific topic and over time have the opportunity to become an authority and perhaps even a thought leader on that subject.

Curated Definition #4 – From Rohit Bhargava on removing the noise from content marketing – ICON15:

Curation is the act of turning the noise into meaning.

The key to curating content is to:

1 – Apply a human touch

2 – Have a broad knowledge of the current internet trends and memes

3 – Listen to your customers

Curated Definition #5 – From Dictionary.com’s definition #4:

Curate: to pull together, sift through, and select for website content

Are you starting to see a consistent theme with the various definitions of content curation?

Content curation is to…sort through, present in a meaningful way, cherry pick and humanize the best and most relevant content for your audience.

One last curated definition – From Heidi Cohen’s post on The 3 Content Curation Superpowers:

We’re drowning in content. As Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt famously said:

“Every two days now we create as much information as we did from the dawn of civilization up until 2003.”

As a result, we don’t need more information; we need help finding the important stuff fast. 

Content curation provides your audience with a life raft in a sea of information.

In recap, we discussed:

1 – The benefits of content curation

2 – The definition of content curation (from the experts)

Next up is to drill down into what a great content curation strategy looks like.

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Have any great tips and tools to share on content curation?

We would love to hear from you.

The post Curated Definition of Content Curation From 6 Best of the Best appeared first on dlvr.it | blog.

The first step is to recognize that not all marketing tactics are equal. Some may take forever to execute, but result in little reward, while others could have a huge payout. To determine which tactics are best for your small business, from HubSpot, first figure out your top priorities:

Top 3 Priorities for a One-Person Social Media Marketing Team

1. Determine your ultimate goal and how to measure it

Before you start posting to a blog, sending e-blasts or scheduling tweets, you’ll find you will be more effective if you’ve properly set goals for your marketing efforts. Think of your marketing like a road trip — you wouldn’t start driving until you knew your destination, and mapped out the most efficient route to get there. Similarly, you should always make sure you know where you wish to end up by implementing your marketing plan and what tactics are useful in reaching your goals.

Once you set your goals, make sure you have systems in place to monitor your results and your ROI.

I love this graphic from our post on Tempus Pecunia Est (Time is Money): How to Maximize the ROI of Time Spent on Social Media. It’s a fun reminder of why you need systems in place to measure your results.

2. Establish exactly who your audience is

There is only so much time in the day to devote to marketing, you want to make sure that every piece of content you produce, whether a blog post, social media update or an e-Blast, is on-target and effective. It would be incredibly frustrating and a complete waste to spend time creating content that falls on deaf ears.

Here are some helpful posts to help determine your audience:

• Understanding the Influence of Millennials on Your Social Media Marketing Strategy
• Using Google+ Insights to Guide Your Social Media Marketing Strategy

3. Focus on the right social media platforms

We’ve established that you can’t be on all social media platforms at once. Instead of wasting your time engaging on social networks that won’t achieve your goals, limit yourself to one or two effective platforms.

To find the right social networks for your business, check out your analytics. Use the analytics as a guide to determine where you should be spending more time on social media. What content is resonating with your audience? What social network gets you the most traffic?

SocialMediaToday had a great approach on how to evaluate social media platforms:

Is Facebook dead as a marketing platform? Not if that’s where your audience is. If the people you need to reach are on Twitter, Snapchat, Pinterest – that’s where you need to go, plain and simple. If that means you have to work with what you can on Facebook, that’s how it is.

For a real-time example of how we used our Google Analytics traffic data to help inform which social media platforms were driving traffic back to our blog, check out our post about Quora:

Is Quora Part of Your Social Media Strategy? 3-Step Process to Easily Grow Quora Referrals by 3x

Now that you have put some thought into your social media goals, established a methodology for determining your audience and social media platforms, the next step is to implement and scale your social media plan.

In our post on daily social media to-do’s, we discussed three simple social media marketing plans you can use when you are strapped for time. Taking just 5-minutes to keep your social media audience active is much better than providing your listeners with silence. All you need to do is schedule the time.

The 5-Minute, 30-Minute and 60-Minute Social Media Plans for a One-Person Content Marketing Team

Social Media you can do in just 5-minutes

1. Repost content from your archives. Dig through your blog archives to find a great piece of content to share again. Your new followers will think it is new content. (3 min)
2. Write a thank you post. Think of a person who has helped your business in the last month. Get in the habit of saying thank you. You might just brighten up their day. Queue up a few thank you Tweets or Facebook updates to trickle out over the week. (1 min)
3. Favorite a tweet. Did a customer say something nice? Let them know you appreciate their feedback. (1 min)

Social Media in under 30-minutes

1. Get influencers to notice you. Create a list of 20 prospects you want to interact with in social media. Spend 15-minutes interacting with some or all of these 20 people. (15 min)
2. Distribute your content. Register your blog with three relevant RSS Directories.  (5 min)
   
3. Create a drip-marketing program. Start planning ahead and saving time in the future. Schedule several updates, blog posts, deals, and promotions or add a back-up feed to your social media scheduling tool. (5 min)

Social Media in 60-minutes or less

1. Write an original blog post. Follow our Quality Blog Post Ideas when Faced with a Deadline. Set a timer for 45 minutes. Are you good under pressure? Often, I set a timer on my iPhone. It focuses my attention during the time allowed. And remember to check for these common grammar goofs. (45 min)
2. Answer one question on Quora. Quora is indexed well in Google. Respond to questions relevant to your niche. Get in the habit of doing this weekly. (5 min)
3. Queue up 3rd party content. Spend a few minutes on scheduling content from sources you like and your audience might find interesting. Spending 10 minutes now will save you in time in the future. This will keep your social accounts active when you can’t. (10 min)

Use this as a guide when you are strapped for time. For a comprehensive list, be sure to check out 7 One-minute Social Media Marketing Growth Ideas When You’re Pressed for Time and the 56 Time-Saving Social Media Ideas for the Time-Strapped Business Owner.

The post 3 Laser-Focused Priorities for a One-Person Social Media Team appeared first on dlvr.it | blog.

3 Proven Behaviors to Get More Twitter Followers

1. You forgot the 80/20 rule

Who would you rather hang out with – someone who is informational and interesting or someone who is boastful and self-centered?

It’s hard to love someone who’s excessively self-promotional on social media. It’s OK to periodically tweet stuff about yourself, but if your stream looks like your blog’s RSS feed, you’re not being social.

The golden social media rule is: Talk about the things that matter to your customers most of the time; then you can talk about yourself a little bit of the time, and they won’t mind.

The 80/20 rule recommends posting engaging, informational and relevant content 80% of the time and brand-centric, call-to-action content only 20% of the time. This ratio is meant to keep your audience engaged with your social media presence while promoting your brand and improving sales simultaneously in a way that doesn’t make the account seem like little more than a digital salesperson.

How can you do this?

1. Follow influencers, and learn from what they find interesting.

2. Share interesting content with your own followers, and try to connect to them.

3. Engage with your influencers so it motivates them to want to share your own content.

Read: 4 Easy Steps to Promote your Business on Social Media when you have No Followers

2. Cat got your tongue?

Twitter is a noisy platform and users tend to browse their timelines periodically. It’s like listening to the radio in the background, rather than trying to tune in for every single song. Unfortunately, if you’re not tweeting on a somewhat regular basis, the chances you’re actually appearing in front of your followers if and when they tune in becomes slim.

Georgia Tech researchers examined 500,000 tweets over 15 months to find the formula for building a Twitter following, they recommend: Tweet often, but not in bursts.

Burstiness, which one user described as spamming people’s Twitter feeds, will lose you followers, but tweeting often is a good thing, since “it’s all about being visible”. In real terms, that translates to an optimum frequency of eight tweets per hour, the research showed.

Read: How to Break 3 Social Media Bad Habits That Cause Followers to Unfollow Plus Solutions to Change

How do you craft the right posting schedule to get more Twitter followers? There is plenty of research on social media posting frequency. At the end of the day, each social audience is different. It is a matter of trial and error to get the right balance. We have written several posts on the subject containing the latest research:

• How to Find the Perfect Social Media and Blog Post Frequency Using Data
• The Unscientific Guide to Determine Best Times to Post on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and More
• 7 Counterintuitive Stats and Facts on Blog Posting Times

3. I haven’t heard from you, so I moved on

This is a logical extension of the last point: Make sure you check in regularly to respond to @mentions, shout-outs, direct messages, and retweets. It’s not cool to blast out tweets and never engage the people who respond to them.

Vacations are important but don’t drop off the grid and disappear for days or weeks, if it can be avoided. Instead, engage with users and respond to your interactions every day, including weekends, so your profile never looks like a ghost town.

Pro Tip: Use a social media scheduling tool to automate your posting frequency. This tool will help you space out your updates, provide valuable engagement data and queue items for a future release, so you don’t become a slave to social media.

Follow the advice above and you will get more Twitter followers!

The post 3 Proven Behaviors to Get More Quality Twitter Followers Quickly appeared first on dlvr.it | blog.

Is it even possible to quickly grow Instagram followers?

Read more, especially if you want to see the bikini shot…

How to Grow Instagram Followers

Step 1: Make your Instagram profile look interesting

For detailed instructions on how to create the perfect Instagram profile, read our post on The Ultimate Checklist for a Winning Instagram Profile.

Here’s a quick recap from the post:

1. Use a unique but real Username

2. Create an interesting Bio

3. Include a profile photo

4. Include a URL link to your website or social accounts

5. Include a clever #hashtag

6. Set your profile to Public (not Private).

***Important: Keep your profile private until you’ve completed step #2 below. Not sure? Follow the 3-step tutorial at the end of this post on how to make your Instagram private.

Annie’s Homegrown has done an excellent job following the five steps listed above in creating an interesting Instagram profile.

Step 2: Build a portfolio of really good photos

Would you open your store if the shelves were empty? Before you start doing anything else, you want your Instagram profile to look great. Nobody is going to follow an empty profile.

• If you want other people to follow you, the first thing you should do is upload about 15 – 20 really good photos. Having the right photos positively impacts the growth rate of Instagram followers.

Keep in mind that certain types of photos do particularly well on Instagram.

I ran across a fascinating white paper in an article published on elle.com on What Makes an Image Popular by MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, eBay Research Labs, and DigitalGlobe. Using a dataset of about 2.3 million images from Flickr, they considered the photos’ colors, textures, gradients, objects present, tags, and more, then measured what gets the most reach.

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From the study referenced above, here are the impact results on popularity from a wide variety of objects:

Find anything surprising?

Need a visual…

What’s more popular?

→Some of it is pretty obvious: Scantily clad ladies = Likes (duh!)
→Some of it seems like it only makes sense in certain situations: A gun-holding, miniskirt-wearing woman drinking tea and looking at maillots would probably just be…weird!

Popularity Tool

Yes, this is real! Led by MIT doctoral candidate Aditya Khosla, they wrote an algorithm to help predict how popular photos will be on social media—before you even post them.

• All you have to do to test it yourself is upload your own photo and press the “Run” button to see its “popularity API.”

I’ve been testing a few of my photos to determine their popularity score. My “Hey Ladies” image scored a 4.013. Apparently, that means I can expect to receive, roughly, 2^4.013 = 16.15 views of my image per day. You’ll have to test your own bikini shot to see the results.

Step 3: Get yourself noticed

If the bikini shot didn’t get you enough traction, once you’ve uploaded some really good photos and made your profile look interesting, it’s time to attract everyone’s attention.

***Make sure to set your profile to Public. Reverse the steps from the infographic in Step #1 on how to make your Instagram private.

1. Reach out to friends and customers: Reach out to your existing friends and followers from other social networks. Since those people already know you, they’re far more likely to become a follower
2. Cross-post on Twitter and Facebook: Cross-post your Instagram photos to other social networks especially ones where you have a larger audience. You’ll be building your Instagram following while sharing interesting photos with people who want to see them!
3. Leverage hashtags: One of the quickest ways to build a following on Instagram is to monitor and engage with different hashtags. Use 1-2 relevant hashtags when posting photos on Instagram. Research which hashtags other industry influencers or competitors are using, and then spend time each day monitoring the content of each tag.

Step 4: Engage with your followers

While everyone is obsessed with their number of followers, keeping your followers happy and engaged is equally important if you want to build a relationship and get the most out of your Instagram experience.

• Post regularly so that people don’t forget who you are, but don’t upload a bunch of photos at once (except when setting up your profile in private mode).

***If somebody doesn’t like one of your photos, the chances are that they’ll still keep following you, but when you post three unpopular photos in a row, you’re far more likely to lose a follower.

• Engage your followers with hashtags that you wouldn’t normally use. Everyone loves a sunset because everyone can relate to a sunset. There are thousands of users who want to find photos of #sunsets, and one might become your customer.

Bonus: How to create the perfect Instagram post

It’s easy to create the perfect Instagram post. Just follow the tips in the infographic below from our post on how to Create the Perfect LinkedIn, Blog, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, Instagram, Vine, Tumblr Posts.

How to Make your Instagram Private

Until you are ready to open up your Instagram “doors” for business, follow this 3-step infographic on how to make your Instagram private:

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I’m all set with my action list to increase Instagram followers. I’ll get back to you soon with the results.

Please share any of your tips on becoming popular on Instagram but hold off on the bikini shots!

The post How to Get More Instagram Followers: A Simple Growth Strategy appeared first on dlvr.it | blog.

At dlvr.it, we convert our blog posts into PDF’s and upload them to SlideShare. Read this two-minute tutorial on how we do this.

We don’t spend time creating original content specifically for SlideShare, but the traffic spikes we see from this simple method of uploading blog content leads me to believe we could be doing a better job of maximizing our exposure.

This extra exposure is where the potential of SlideShare SEO comes into play.

How to Improve SlideShare SEO

Step One: Identify target keywords

Off-page SEO includes anything done outside of your website, proving to search engines that your digital footprint is relevant for certain keywords and phrases. This includes SlideShare SEO.

To start, Google is the first place I go when I need to do keyword research.

• Google’s Keyword Planner: It is mostly intended to help Adwords advertisers spend money efficiently when purchasing ads from Google but you can still use the data to find higher traffic keywords that are more likely to send organic traffic.

• Google Analytics: Although most keywords will be displayed as “not provided”, Google Analytics does still show some of the most relevant keywords that are sending you traffic, as well as which pages, are performing the best.

• Google Webmaster Tools: Provides a wider range of keywords than Analytics if you want to get even more data from your current content.

Other (non-Google) keyword research tools:

• Keywordtool.io: With a single search, this tool can generate up to 750+ keyword suggestions from Google, YouTube, Bing and even the App Store. It’s free, reliable and pretty fast!

• Übersuggest: Created by an Italian SEO guy and touted as one of the best free keyword tools for getting lots of keyword suggestions. Check it out!

Step Two: Give your upload file an SEO-friendly name

The name of the file you upload to SlideShare becomes the URL slug. So when you name your file, choose something SEO-friendly with your keywords (from Step 1).

Your SlideShare presentation will have a better chance of ranking in SERPs, which drives more reliable and continuous traffic to your deck.

For example: Using our simple technique of uploading blog posts to SlideShare as a PDF, we save the PDF using keywords in the filename.

Step Three: Write SEO friendly descriptions

Don’t ignore SlideShare’s description field. The text you include here is what the search engines see.

What you say and how you say it can improve your SlideShare natural rankings dramatically. When someone does a search on SlideShare, the search terms appear bold in the results, which draws more attention to them.

More attention quickly translates into more clicks and make sure to include:

• Your main keyword in the description, ideally in the first sentence.
• Make sure to include a link back to your website or reference the URL to your blog post.

Step Four: Don’t forget to optimize the Tags

In addition to using your keyword or phrase in the title and description of your SlideShare, make sure you include the tags as well.

Pro tip: Make your keyword the first tag for the presentation, and then choose closely related tags to follow. Notice in the example above the use of our keywords: Instagram and Winning Profile.

Step Five: Use SlideShare Analytics

For deeper insight into your content, SlideShare offers a robust analytics feature allowing you to track the daily progress of all your content.

You can see the geographical distribution of views to find out where your content is accessed, traffic sources to evaluate which channels are bringing the most viewers, and timing to measure what days of the week and months content performs best. There is a lot of great information packed into this feature.

On your dashboard, you can choose to see stats for each upload by clicking the ‘uploads’ drop-down menu. From, here you can see daily details of Views, Sources, and Geography.

You can also see stats for:

• Top Content
• Top Countries
• Traffic Sources
• SlideShare Actions
• Recent Viewers

An Example:

The image in the picture below is the analytics view for one of our more popular posts on SlideShare: 21 Unique Gift Ideas a Small Business Owner Would Love and Appreciate.

We posted this to SlideShare on December 22, 2014 – just in time for the holidays. The data shown below is from the period (March 29 – April 28, 2015) – almost 4-months later.

This data proves that posting content to SlideShare is an easy way to get more eyeballs on your content and ultimately, traffic back to your site.

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Now It’s Your Turn

How do you use SlideShare?

How do you maximize your SlideShare SEO?

We’d love to hear from you.

The post How to Boost Your SlideShare SEO to Drive More Traffic appeared first on dlvr.it | blog.

If you’re debating between outsourcing content creation and getting it all done in-house, here’s a checklist of the pros and cons to make the best decision for your time and investment.

The Pros of Outsourcing Social Media Content Creation

1. Save time with fast turnaround

Outsourcing saves you time. You can have high-quality work delivered in a relatively short amount of time, depending on the scope of the project. For example, short content pieces like blog posts and articles can often take five business days or less. You get the content you need when you need it, saving time and keeping up with your content marketing calendar.

For example: Scripted offers to create blog posts that engage your audience and drive qualified traffic. All blog content includes:

– Free topic pitching

– Editing by Scripted Editors

– Plagiarism detection

– Round of revisions

– 100% transfer of ownership

– 5-business day turnaround

2. Take advantage of others’ expertise

Outsourcing allows you to use the knowledge and abilities of others that you and your team don’t have. Using others’ expertise can take many forms, such as writing skills or knowledge of a particular medium or subject.

For example: We reached out to SEO expert Art Enke, Director of SEO Services at Phoenix-based Vertical Measures to be a guest author. He authored two popular posts for us on SEO:

• How to Conduct a Basic (But Effective) SEO Audit in Under 30 Minutes
• SEO & E-Commerce: 5 Ways to Ensure Your Products are Visible in Organic Search

3. Maintain your enthusiasm and reduce burnout

Outsourcing unique content creation helps you stay excited about your business and products. Think about what’s the biggest drain on your enthusiasm. My guess is, it’s one of these following four, time sucks and energy drains:

• Researching and writing content
• Determining the best types of content to use
• Deciding when and how to employ content marketing
• All the other tasks for social media post perfection that quickly drain your enthusiasm

It’s hard to write the passionate content your customers want when you feel burnt out.

4. Save money by saving time 

By outsourcing your blog posts, and other content projects, you can put your time toward other important projects and business objectives. You get the benefit of publishing great unique content while putting your time to better use.

Utilizing a blog writing service to create unique, expert content for your business blog saves you a lot of time, so you can do what you do best.

5. Effective blog content gets the results you need

Many of the experts creating blog articles are also great writers, so they know how to use language and formatting to get you the results you want most. With the compelling content they create for your blog, you can get more:

• Natural traffic
• Qualified traffic
• Subscribers
• Leads
• Sales

What’s not to love about the increase in any of these numbers?

So, What’s the Downside of Outsourcing Social Media Content Creation 

From KISSmetrics on Should, You Hire a Ghost Blogger?

Bad (really a good) reason #1: No, it’s not a sordid, dirty word. Ghostwriting means someone writes on your behalf, and you present the work as your own. The President does it with his speeches. Nothing wrong with that.

Bad (really a good) reason #2: But it’s controversial, especially when it comes to blogging. Some feel it’s dishonest. Others feel that there’s nothing wrong with hiring someone to help write and share your knowledge with your audience. No rule says you must slave over writing posts if you absolutely can’t stand it, don’t have the time, or just don’t want to.

Bad (really a good) reason #3: Smart entrepreneurs don’t do that. Why should you?

Bad (really a good) reason #4: Here’s another argument. If your writing skills aren’t up to snuff, and you might be potentially damaging your credibility and sales, and if hiring staff bloggers or guest posters dilutes your brand and also damages your credibility… why wouldn’t you hire a ghost blogger?

Bad (really a good) reason #5: People with average writing skills often hire ghost bloggers who turn their notes, audio files, thoughts and outlines into great posts. The same knowledge is presented, but with an author, capable of presenting it in the most understandable way, writing. And very often, it’s the knowledge that your readers care about, not who puts it into words.

So ghost blogging may be an option for you, especially if you don’t like to

1. Spend time writing
2. Can’t write well
3. Aren’t seeing the results you want
4. Want time to develop other areas of your business

There’s nothing wrong with it, no more than there is in hiring a chef for your restaurant.

No matter what you decide about outsourcing your blogging, you’re never stuck and committed forever. A blog is just a marketing tool that you can play with and test, adapt to your needs and measure for effectiveness, just like any other form of marketing.

The post Pros and Cons of Outsourcing Content Creation. How to Get the Most Out of Your Investment. appeared first on dlvr.it | blog.