How to Showcase Your Hard Skills

Medicine, engineering, technology ― careers in these fields are incredibly prestigious and satisfyingly high-paying, making these jobs some of the most lusted-after openings in the market. Unfortunately, not just anyone can waltz in and snag a position in these industries. These fields and others require workers to have particular skills that require difficult training, so only a select group is capable of getting hired.

In fact, most employers expect job candidates to have similarly hard-to-attain (or simply “hard”) skills, but few candidates understand how to report their hard skills during the application process. Generally, at best, applicants include an uninspiring list on their resumes; at worst, they don’t mention them at all. Hard skills are quickly becoming the best resources to get workers hired, so it is important to showcase them on any and all application materials. Here’s how to do that to maximal effect.

Use Flashier Formatting

It may feel a bit too obvious, but altering the formatting of the section on your resume will naturally draw the hiring manager’s eye to your hard skills. This isn’t to say that it is appropriate to use bright red, block letters; rather, subtle differences, like italics for descriptions or distinct bullet markers, can set the section off. Alternatively, you can highlight your use of hard skills within your work experience section by bolding or underlining pertinent words or phrases. This is a good trick for when you must submit your resume before securing an interview because it grabs your potential future employer’s attention.

Employ Industry Terms

Likely, the hiring managers at your future employer isn’t as entrenched in your field as you are, and you might be tempted to dumb down your language so anyone can understand your skills. However, HR reps aren’t the only people to see your application materials, and your future co-workers and bosses like to see proof that you have applicable knowledge and experience.

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Using jargon may feel incorrect, but as long as you appropriately apply industry-appropriate terms, you can highlight your hard skills through your fluency with the language. Plus, when faced with an overabundance of applications, many hiring managers perform a keyword search for industry-related words and phrases, so it helps to use relevant terms.

Quantify Everything

Simply claiming that you are a “proficient coder” or a “skilled designer” doesn’t prove anything to your potential future employer ― except that you might be able to use a thesaurus. Data and proof is the life-blood of modern businesses, and you should infuse your resume with hard facts and figures to establish your skills and knowledge.

As long as you aren’t lying about your hard skills, it shouldn’t be difficult to back them up. For example, if you want to brag about your experience as a server administrator, you might mention how many users you supported, what systems you ran, what types of issues you encountered, and what improvements you made. Data is easier to appreciate than vague verbiage, so be generous with your facts and figures.

Another way to quantify any hard skills you have is to include a list of any relevant certifications you may have earned, leaving HR and anyone who reviews your resume with proof of your knowledge. Certifications can boost your attractiveness, so if you don’t currently have any, consider taking relevant tech courses online to prepare for the exams, possibly for CompTIA or SSCP. If you’re applying for a medical position, some relevant certifications to consider are CCMA or CPT. Just make sure the certifications are relevant to the position, or they’ll look nice but won’t be as helpful.

Be Liberal With Examples

Numbers are good, but then again, actual examples are even better. You should work to compile a portfolio of your completed works to substantiate the claims you make on your application materials. Your portfolio should be available all over the place ― online on a dedicated website, in your hands during the interview, and passed to the hiring manager on a flash drive before you leave. You should also be able to provide anecdotes and explanation of your work during and after the interview to demonstrate your proficiency with your hard skills.

Don’t Disparage Soft Skills

No matter how important hard skills are to your line of work, every employer wants workers with soft skills. These are skills you don’t usually learn in school, skills that require emotional intelligence and for which the skills constantly change. At every job, soft skills like communication and teamwork are vital, so while you are highlighting your hard skills, you should be wary of being scornful toward the others.

In fact, showcasing your soft skills in the same manner might set you apart from your competitors, who choose to focus on their abilities and education. When trying to get a job, all relevant skills matter, so you should avoid being too judgmental of certain strengths.

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How to Showcase Your Hard Skills

3 Common Sources Of Frustration In Sales And How To Deal With Them

A job in sales is not for the carefree. Hitting steep quotas and handling the push to always be on are things reps deal with every day.

However, we all have limits. And, sometimes, frustration sets in.

In a high-performance environment, getting frustrated is a recipe for disaster. I’m sure you’ve experienced some degree of this on the sales floor.

Here’s what it does to you: It interferes with your ability to do things right – things you normally have no issue with.

Performance suffers. Goals are not hit–resulting in even more frustration.

That said, it’s best to understand the common situations where salespeople get frustrated. This way, you know how to handle them when they arise.

1. “All I get are low-quality leads.”

Do you feel like you’re just not getting sales-ready leads you need in order to hit your quota?

You’re sure you’d get the numbers right– if only you’d get leads who are really interested in the product.

Sales reps from all industries work with leads of varying nature: warm, qualified, unqualified, and even cold.

At the end of the day, we want all of them to be sales-ready, but that’s wishful thinking.

Salespeople usually get two types of leads: Marketing qualified leads (MQL) and top-of-the-funnel (ToFu) leads.

MQLs are people who have demonstrated a desire to connect with the company–either through signing up for a trial, providing full information on a contact form, or directly reaching out to the sales team. Most of these leads are already in the consideration and decision stages.

ToFu leads are a different story. As your demand generation team works doubly hard to dish out content that attracts prospects, you will get leads from ebook downloads, webinar signups, and other content opt-ins. These are ToFu leads who could be interested in your product but could also just be in it for the ebook. Some can even fill out the opt-in with incorrect contact info just to get the content. These leads are still at the research stage and could be unsure as to what their current unmet needs are.

Connecting with ToFu leads only to get brushed off or even hung up on can quickly become frustrating.

What to do: Know the value of ToFu leads and how to handle them.

While MQLs have a much higher close rate since they’re already interested in the product, what you need to grasp is that the number of ToFu leads coming in exceed MQLs by a wide margin.

So, even if the close rate is much lower, the amount of business you can generate with ToFu leads is often more than what you get from MQLs if you do things right.

How should you handle ToFu leads?

See, you already have a rough idea of what ToFus need before engaging with them.

The content they opted-in for will give you an idea of what issues they’re facing.

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Did they download the “Top Time-Saving Tips for Salespeople in 2016” ebook? Did they sign up for the webinar on getting more high ticket sales? The content should give you a heads up on what the ToFu lead is interested in and a rough idea of what the nature of their business is.

Your first conversation with a ToFu lead probably won’t be a selling one.

Take a consultative approach. Use the call to help them uncover inefficiencies and issues in their business. A helpful, non-pushy call will position you as a valuable resource for this lead. And in B2B sales, these types of relationships are what you want to develop with leads, especially with decision-makers.

Another upside of handling ToFu leads is that it gives salespeople the chance to do qualifying work on their own.

While the sales qualification and marketing departments do their part nurturing and qualifying ToFu leads, sales reps develop great relationships with ToFus when they nurture these leads themselves. They get to uncover sales needs with these qualifying conversations, putting them in a better position to go for the close eventually. If it doesn’t end in a sale, the rep will have learned more about the buyer’s journey.

The key here is identifying which ToFu leads should be handled by marketing/qualification, and which ones should be forwarded to sales. Not all ToFus should be phoned, and it takes communication among departments to make the correct distinction.

Your gated content could act as a screen to help this process. For example, a sales VP who downloads a whitepaper should be sent to sales to get this person on the phone as soon as possible. On the other hand, someone who only gave their email could be sent to marketing for further qualification.

So don’t let “low quality” leads frustrate you. Making the most out of them just takes awareness of the different stages a buyer goes through and what role you can play as a rep who nurtures leads that are not sales-ready yet.

2. “The sales process slows down the sales cycle.”

While there is no reason to ignore critical stances on existing practices, it’s still widely recognized that the top salespeople are those who follow the sales process in qualifying and closing deals.

Where does your frustration come from? Is it because you’re unable to close deals when you follow the outlined sales process?

Here’s the harsh truth: In sales, we need to be humble and trust the wisdom of management. We may think that we’re in better control of our sales calls when we don’t follow the process, but the reality is that when don’t follow the steps, we are really letting the deal slip out of our hands.

As Bob Urichuck of the National Association of Sales Professionals wrote in Are You Following A Sales Process?,

“Who is really qualifying? Who is really in control? The buyer!

Do you want to know why and how the buyer is in control? The answer is simple; buyers follow a buyers’ sales process, just like you do when meeting with a sales person. Sales people assume they are in control by answering all the questions, but in reality, it is the buyer who is in control. They actually carry out the rejection, not you.”

What to do: Trust the sales process. Identify when the buyer is taking control of the call instead of you.

While we’re in the business of helping buyers solve their problems, they don’t always know what they need. A lot of people today are sales-averse, and if salespeople don’t create the opportunity to position themselves as consultants, deals will be lost.

This is where the sales process comes into play. Sales processes are designed to lead the salesperson through the journey of uncovering buyers’ interest and match their need with a solution.

Using the sales process, reps qualify leads against buying motivation, financial status, and decision-making power.

Following the sales process gives you a complete view of your buyer’s situation. At each step, you get needed information important decide whether the deal is worth pursuing or not. Knowing exactly if a lead is worth your time will rid you of frustration. Letting the buyer lead conversations, however, will put you in a weak position and could get you exasperated.

3. “Do we really need to use the CRM all the time?”

Sales orgs these days are largely tech-driven, but problems in CRM compliance can still be found in almost any sales organization.

Why do some salespeople dislike using the CRM? Why does a piece of technology that’s supposed to help salespeople end up getting them frustrated instead?

You feel like the only thing you need to concern yourself with is closing deals. Having to type information into the CRM is just taking away minutes you could be using on the phone

While some sales reps look at the CRM an “un-productivity” tool, the reality is they couldn’t miss the mark any wider.

Salespeople can’t be faulted for focusing on closing deals, no matter how they do it–but there’s a reason why CRMs are a mainstay in almost all successful sales organizations.

What to do: Know what the CRM does for you and the company.

Customer relationship management (CRM) software paved the way for today’s sales acceleration solutions.

These tools help shorten the sales cycle, a goal all sales organizations have. And these days, reps who thrive are those who learn to embrace sales acceleration. Sales reps should understand that these tools were created to take out the frustration, not add to it. For some, there might be a moderate learning curve at first– but the results are worth it.

The benefits of using a CRM are quite straightforward:

• It is a more reliable place to store information versus your head or a notebook
• Automates repetitive admin tasks
• Speeds up the sales cycle
• Saves you the deals you won’t forget to follow up on
• Keeps the team on the same page about everyone else’s progress
• Gives the sales manager a more streamlined way to communicate with reps
• Gives everyone access to data for data-driven decisions

The overarching benefit of using a CRM is in getting the full view of your customers, prospects, and leads. Having this information gives you and your sales organization what’s needed to carry out a sales strategy that’s in line with where you stand and where you want to go.

Understanding the value of the CRM is crucial to the productivity of every sales rep. If you’re experiencing issues in this area, it’s best to communicate with your manager right away.

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Communicate with management, engage in continuous training and education, and focus your energy on what can be done in the midst of tough situations.

Frustration in the workplace is normal–but being equipped with the right information helps you avoid it.

What are the sources of your frustration in sales? How do you deal with them?

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3 Common Sources Of Frustration In Sales And How To Deal With Them

Nobody Wants To Admit This, But Good People Are The Ones Who Kill Startups

You keep your great people and terminate the bad people- we all do that. But it’s the merely good people that will kill you.

“Steve is a good guy”, you tell yourself. He didn’t do anything so egregious that he deserves getting fired.

And maybe his performance will improve if you give him more time. After all, he’s relatively new and you feel guilt from not having as much time as you’d like to answer his every question multiple times.

Perhaps Steve is friends with another teammate, which creates an awkward situation. Maybe he has a new wife or has a kid on the way and you know they need the money. Or it’s Christmas. Nobody gets fired during Christmas, right?

But the trouble with merely good is that you’re spending so much time on them, while neglecting your star performers. Because the squeaky wheel gets the grease, you’re penalizing your best people.

Unless your company or group doesn’t have to be efficient, you should be spending at least 50% of your time on the top 10% of your people if you want to maximize productivity.

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That leaves no room for the “good” people that you’d very much like to keep around. It’s not that you’re a heartless manager or don’t care– see it as you stealing time from those who deserve it and have earned it.

My mentor, Al Casey, who was CEO of American Airlines, taught me that there are 3 types of managers- those who are loved, those who get results, and those who do both.

95% of people are in the first two categories. The loved ones are pushovers who don’t enforce the rules, so their teams don’t feel any discomfort or need to improve their performance. The results-oriented managers are often task masters- the bosses mocked by Dilbert and Office Space.

But the managers who are loved and get results are those who have high performance teams to start with, then have clear standards. If you are frustrated with the merely good people, I assure you that you aren’t keeping or attracting the high performers, as they see they aren’t getting love.

A great team member is not just slightly better than a good employee. They are TEN times better or more.

One of our star FB ad specialists, Jason, might cost double what a good employee makes, but their output is 20-50 times better. We don’t have to hold his hand, he achieves stellar results in an hour that an average specialist can’t do in 50 hours, and is better all around.

Have you identified your Jason’s and Steve’s?

The longer you wait, the worse it is for morale.

Original post

Author: Dennis Yu

Dennis Yu is the CTO of BlitzMetrics. He is an internationally recognized lecturer in Facebook marketing, having been featured in The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, LA Times, National Public Radio, TechCrunch, Fox News, and CBS Evening News. He is also an author at Adweek's SocialTimes column.
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Nobody Wants To Admit This, But Good People Are The Ones Who Kill Startups

9 Services to Raise Cash for Your Business

No matter what type of business you own, you have probably discovered that there are always times when you need more money. In many cases, it is impossible to rob from Peter to pay Paul, so to speak, because you don’t have a lot of extra money at your disposal. So, you need to find ways to be able to raise more cash for your business that you can use for day to day expenses and more. Here are nine services that we really like.

When you need to boost sales, increase productivity, and manage your business on a day to day basis, Zoho is the tool you need. Apps include CRM to help you close more deals, clean and advertising-free email, smart accounting, and custom built apps. All of this is free to use.

Sometimes, finding extra cash is simply a matter of not making mistakes in your books. Often, business owners do not use the right accounting software, and they end up missing a lot of things, which can affect the cash flow for a business. Using FreshBooks will ensure that you are able to create invoices, track how long it takes clients to pay, and profit and loss statements, quickly and easily. You can bill up to 25 clients for just $19.95 monthly.

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When you want to really make a great digital presence, this service can help. They take care of all of the digital stuff, and you get that digital presence you want. You will not only end up with a great website, but also an increased customer base. The user interface is completely customer oriented, bounce rates are reduced, and new customers will be converted through unique designs and visuals.

You can use this service to easily set up conference calls without bothering to take the time to set up an account. International clients will receive a local number to call you at, so you can continue to use your domestic number. This service is free to use.

Here is a social platform that businesses of all sizes can use. You can use it to offer products and services, hire new staff, work with various other businesses, etc. Some of the best features are increased revenues, the ability to showcase skills, and the ability to interact with other businesses.

Your employees are the heart of your business. If they aren’t happy, your business is going to suffer. By using 15Five, you can find out what is frustrating them and easily communicate with them to learn more about how you can help, which is going to help your bottom line in the long run. Each week, employees take 15 minutes to answer a few questions, and then you read and respond to their answers. The cost is $49 monthly for up to 10 people.

This site helps creative types find the cash they need to turn their ideas into reality. Tens of thousands of artists, musicians, designers, etc. have used this tool to finance their projects, which may never have come to life without this type of help.

This app is easy to use, and it allows you to track all of your business expenses. You can also use Expensify to create digital images of all receipts, submit reports, reimburse employees through the payroll or PayPal, and more. It is just $5 per month per each active user, and well worth the cost.

Loads of new businesses are started every year, but very few receive any funding to speak of. This business crowdfunding platform can change all of that, and make sure that new businesses get the funding they need from investors, customers, and friends. The team is with you every step of the way, from creating your business profile to marketing and more.

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9 Services to Raise Cash for Your Business

Should You Rely on Your Logic or Intuition?

Your Customer Success dashboard says everything is fine with a key customer. But you’re not so sure. The data looks positive, but your intuition nags at you. Is it time to check in? Should you trust your head or your gut?

The vast majority of business leaders espouse data-driven decision making. Looking at the numbers, they assert, keeps employees from making erroneous choices. Convention holds that taking the time to carefully analyze objective evidence is the best way to make decisions.

But blind reasoning can be dangerous. Consider the case of a gunnery captain on a British ship under attack during the first Gulf War in 1991.¹ The ship was just a few miles off the coast when the crew saw an unidentified radar blip heading towards them at high speed. The commander had only seconds to decide if the image was an allied aircraft or an enemy strike. If it was an inbound missile and he didn’t fire, his crew faced certain death. But if he fired on a friendly aircraft, he would take the life of the pilot.

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At the last possible moment, the gunnery captain fired. He was right—it was an enemy missile—but how he had correctly identified the blip was a mystery to both him and the crew. Investigators concluded that the captain had subconsciously detected a threatening flight path. Allied aircraft typically flew at 3,000 feet, but missiles starting from the surface were invisible to radar until they reached an altitude of 1,000 feet. Although the gunnery captain was not aware of it at the time, analysis showed the blip had in fact, suddenly appeared on the radar display. His intuition had saved the ship.

Neuroscientists say we are always of two minds: logical and intuitive. We are most familiar with our conscious, rational side. Contemplative and controlled, it deliberates options and makes careful decisions. We tend to overlook our primal, subconscious, emotional side. Our reflexes hide in the shadows, making lightning-fast decisions sifting through vastly more stimuli. Lacking the power of language, our enigmatic subconscious communicates information through somatosensory responses. While we can’t put a finger on it, we get a gut feeling whenever something seems out of place.

There’s a growing body of evidence that good decisions access intuitive processing. Using brain imaging techniques, neuroscientists have discovered that when executives consider strategic options, their minds recruit centers known for inferring the impact on people.² With experienced leaders, data informs but doesn’t direct outcomes. Superstar investor Warren Buffet, for example, regularly looks past the numbers and makes gut decisions.³

But having mental abilities just below the surface doesn’t mean we should always trust them. Author Malcolm Gladwell tells the story of how four white police officers mistakenly shot Amadou Diallo, a black man from Guinea, in the Bronx.⁴ After seeing what they thought was suspicious activity, the police confronted him. When he turned away, they fired instinctively, believing he was reaching for a gun. But after the smoke of 41 gunshots cleared, none could be found. Gladwell says the officers subconsciously made tragic errors. In a blink of an eye, they had completely misinterpreted Diallo’s background, motivations and state of mind. Rather than observing a curious foreigner reaching for his wallet, their instincts told them he was a brazen thug, intent on killing them.

To speed processing, the subconscious uses mental shortcuts which can be a blessing or a curse. With enough experience, the adaptive unconscious can find meaningful patterns in data far more quickly than the conscious mind. But the same machinery produces phenomena such as confirmation bias, our tendency to notice information that supports our beliefs and ignore information that contradicts them.

Our goal then is to use both logic and intuition optimally to make decisions. Becoming aware of our natural tendencies and developing greater emotional maturity are key first steps. Author Julia Galef recommends that we spend time thinking like “scouts” investigating possibilities instead of “soldiers” defending our positions.⁵ When we remain curious, grounded, and open to the possibility our conclusions may be wrong, we leverage our intuition while logically checking the blind spots that naturally come with it.

So should you follow your head or your gut? Use your head—unless your gut, guided by experience, says otherwise. Investigate further and then be open to changing your position.

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¹ Klein, G. (1999). Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions, pp. 75. MIT Press, ISBN 0262260867
² Blackman, A. (2014). The inner workings of the executive brain. The Wall Street Journal, online edition, April 27, 2014.
³How Buffet relies on his emotions, The Emotionally Intelligent Investor: How Self-Awareness, Empathy and Intuition Drive Performance blog. Accessed August, 2016
⁴ Gladwell, M. Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, pp. 189-196. Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 0316172324.
⁵ Galef, J. Why you think you’re right—even if you’re wrong. TEDx PSU talk, February 2016.

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Should You Rely on Your Logic or Intuition?

How to Grow Your Blog While You’re On Vacation

It’s time to go on vacation and enjoy some well-deserved rest. Vacations are great for your health, your social life and even your business, because a fresh, well-rested mind is a creative and productive one.

Even though you probably need a vacation, you also probably feel tense about leaving your blog unattended – and it’s not just about the possibility of finding hordes of spammers and emails on your return, but also about your readers and their continued satisfaction, because you know they’ll be eager to come back and read new content.

Still, vacation is your blogging-free time (unless it’s your personal blog) to recharge your batteries, so you may not want to research, interview experts and write when all you need is to forget all duties and just relax on the beach.

As a solo blogger or a small business owner, you want to ensure your blog will keep attracting traffic and possibly growing while you are away and relaxing.

How to do that?

This guide offers advice based on 3 types of business decisions:

1. Open hiatus
2. Scheduled content
3. Hiring an editor and a blogger

I will go in detail about each of these below, and you will decide which one is best for your business model, what kind of time off you’re taking (summer vacation, holiday, time off to recover from a health issue, etc.) and how long you will be away.

How to keep your blog traffic incoming while you’re at the beach?

1. Putting Your Blog On Open Hiatus

For this business decision, you will put your blog on a temporary hold and suspend all blogging activities. However, you will not rely on a splash page announcing that you’re on vacation (the kind that obscures your whole website and makes your past content inaccessible), but you will put up an announcement and leave the blog open so users can still read your content and engage with it.

In other words, you let users know you won’t be around for a while and you will stop producing new content until you return.

Of course, that doesn’t mean you can’t schedule a few posts to go online while you’re away – you can still write round-ups, link parties, Q&A posts, or reshare your older posts on your email list, but your users know to not expect the next memorable piece during this time.

Regarding social media, you can either announce that there will be no updates or replies for the duration of your vacation, or you can automate the re-sharing of old posts and discussion posts. Here, your users know they’ll be reading scheduled posts.

If you choose to put your blog on open hiatus, it’s better to hire a social media manager to take care of the social part of your blog and other channels, since your readers may still want to leave feedback while they wait for your return, and a social media manager can reply to their comments and provide some kind of feedback while you’re away.

This would play a positive influence on the emotional impact of your brand on your readers, who will feel taken care of and trust that you left them with someone who can help them when they need.

Traffic Tips For Open Hiatus

1. Turn your most popular and engaging post into a sticky post. It will stand out and it will be the first piece of content users will see. Make sure the headline is captivating.
2. Setup your email autoresponder to recommend a few of your best articles.
3. Schedule social media posts to offer your past content to followers and new visitors alike. Make it clear you appreciate debate on the ideas proposed in the posts.

2. Scheduling Content to Go Online While You’re Away

Scheduling posts and guest posts in advance

If you decide to schedule content that you would normally post according to your regular calendar, you don’t even need to announce the vacation – simply work on a batch of quality posts for your blog and your social channels to go live on the days you’ll be offline and you’re good to go.

You may, however, alert readers that you will be busy, so you will reply to comments and emails only after a specific date.

From the readers’ point of view, nothing will change. They will still see regular posts coming up on your blog that they can consume, share, discuss, link to, etc.

If you choose this option, then hiring an SMM manager will turn out to be even more critical because readers will notice that, all of a sudden, you’re no longer responding to comments and social media posts. An SMM manager can respond for you and keep the communication open on your site.

You might either tell your manager to ghostwrite the replies or you can announce that you hired an SMM manager to help you respond to comments.

Eric Brantner, founder of Scribblrs.com, uses CoSchedule to schedule content for when he goes on vacation:

Just because you go on vacation doesn’t mean you have to put your blog on pause. With the right tools and some planning ahead, you can make sure you have posts scheduled to publish and get shared out to your social media accounts while you’re away. Personally, I use CoSchedule. Using this platform, you can plan out content, assign content to writers, schedule posts for publication at future dates, and automate sharing via social media–all in one place. It has streamlined our content marketing dramatically, cutting out hours of work and allowing me to know things will run smoothly while I’m away.

To lighten your pre-vacation workload, you can announce that you’re accepting guest posts for the entire month (if you do this sparingly), or you can contact bloggers you know and trust to invite them to guest post on your blog. In this case, you can focus on writing and scheduling less of your own posts and focus on quality.

Traffic Tips For Scheduled Content

1. Write at least one quality post to schedule for your vacation period. That post alone will drive the most traffic to your blog and keep it coming for at least a full week.
2. Add an introduction to each guest post you decide to publish and let your readers know why you think it connects with your existing content. The more readers can trust guest writers on your blog, the more they will engage with them and their posts.
3. Follow the traffic advice given for #1 (open hiatus).

3. Hiring an Editor and a Blogger

An editor can take care of your blog while you’re away

If you have no time to dedicate to writing and scheduling content before you go on vacation, you have the option to hire an editor and a blogger to take care of your editorial calendar for the time you’ll be on vacation.

This is a much better decision to make if you have the budget to pay an editor and one or two bloggers, because you would be effectively building a team behind your blog that will be much more successful in keeping your blog alive and thriving than what you would be doing with a few scheduled posts and SMM manager.

You have two ways to go about this:

1. Introduce your readers to the editor and blogger(s) so they will know who they’ll be interacting with while you’re away.
2. Let both the editor and the blogger(s) ghost for you, so from a reader’s point of view nothing will change – they will still see new posts coming and updates from your social media channels.

I did this for a client in the past – I took care of the editorial calendar, ghostwrote blog posts and updated my client’s social media channels. The blog’s readers never knew I was doing the background work unless I got permission to mention my presence as a “team member” whenever the task at hand made it a necessity.

Recommended for You Webcast, September 7th: 3 Ways to Speed Up Your Marketing Review and Approval Process

This is not an option for anyone that cannot afford an editor and bloggers, but as per option #2, you may still involve your blogger friends or your wider community with guest posting or swapping favors.

Traffic Tips For Editor and Bloggers

Ask your editor and bloggers to follow the traffic tips given in #1 and #2, plus any other editorial plans you want them to follow.

What Kind of Content Should You Schedule?

Eric Brantner says “I wouldn’t say there’s necessarily a specific type of content I prefer to publish while I’m away, but I definitely don’t schedule anything I think has viral potential and requires more hands-on promotion and outreach.”

The best way to go is to create a blog schedule for the entire period of your vacation and to do it before you start writing any posts. Your pre-vacation work has to be meaningful for the purpose of keeping the traffic flow as high as possible, so creating a blog schedule first and then writing according to it will ensure that no step taken will turn out to be ineffective.

More Blogging Vacation Tips

Tips to help your blog thrive while you enjoy your vacation!

When you have decided how to leave your blog before you go on vacation, and made all the necessary steps, here are a few more pieces of advice on how to keep traffic coming to your blog.

1. Content Planning and Guest Posts

Saurav Kumar Nayak, content manager at Temok.com, shares his advice on how to plan your content for your vacation and get the guest posts you need to keep your pre-vacation workload slim and beneficial for your traffic stats:

1) Keep posts scheduled in advance – I never let my posting schedule get affected, and the best way to make sure that the posts are coming is scheduling them in advance.

2) Allow Guest Posts – Time is a luxury we bloggers never have and that is why accepting guest posts to speed up content posting is helpful. I don’t give author access to my guest writers, though – I simply allow them to contribute it so that I can schedule some of their posts to get published while [I] am away. This way, they take care of replying to commentators too while am away!

3) Buffering Socials – It is important to keep the social profiles updated with fresh micro-updates. While [I] am away, I make sure to buffer some of those updates that get posted during my vacation.

4) Posting vacation updates – I do take selfies or pictures and post them on my social profiles during my vacation. This step isn’t really recommended for everyone and shouldn’t be done aggressively. Vacation is meant to have fun, not waste it by keeping yourself busy with your blog that you do 24*7 on any other regular working day anyway!

Stay in the habit of scheduling at least one extra post every month as it will help you stay on track when something happens and lessen your workload when you are about to go on vacation.

For guest posts, make it clear before hand that you will require writers to respond to readers’ comments the day the post goes online – if they are busy on that day, or can’t be online, ask them to respond to comments within the following 48 hours and, possibly, continue to check the post for comments for the remainder of the week. In fact, in my experience as a blogger and a hungry blog reader, I’ve noticed that not all readers will comment the day the post goes live – some will take a few days to sort through their thoughts and comment then.

Check your comments moderation log when you come back from your vacation, because it’s possible that the spam filter caught some legit comments.

If you don’t wish to dedicate full days to blogging, create short posts complemented with video content. Videos may appear more intimidating to make at first, but they will take you less time to produce and your audience is guaranteed to enjoy them and put them to good use. Make sure you attach a downloadable transcript to your post for those readers who prefer text over video.

2. Schedule Follow-Up Emails Recommending Your Best Articles

Blogger and digital marketing strategist Raelyn Tan explains how you can leverage your email list to send out a series of follow-up emails that offer your most successful past content:

If you have an existing list, schedule a few follow-up emails recommending your best articles. Your email service provider can easily do this for you. This will keep a steady flow of visitors who come to your website and even share your content, and also encourages your current audience to continue building that relationship.

Evergreen articles are good picks for recommendations, but if you have published content earlier in the year that’s timely but still valid, do give that priority over your evergreen pieces.

3. Email Mini-Course

In addition to Raelyn Tan’s follow-up emails, you can create an email mini-course for your visitors to sign up for while you’re away, and promise that you will be looking at feedback and student questions as soon as you come back.

This idea works better if you are putting your blog on an open hiatus, so your readers won’t be distracted by new blog content and will be able to focus entirely on the mini-course.

The mini-course length should match the time you will be on vacation. For example:

• 1 week – 3 to 7 lessons
• 2 weeks – 4 to 14 lessons
• 1 month – 4 to 30 lessons

The number of lessons will depend on the frequency with which you will send out emails. You can dedicate the last lessons to a recap and homework that you will review when you are back from the vacation.

If you opt for a mini-course, make it something your readers really need. I recommend you read or listen to Rob Walling’s podcast at TheMcMethod.com on how to create an opt-in mini-course that will boost your conversions – one of the good points he makes is that you can save time and create an effective mini-course by building upon your existing content.

4. Out-of-Office Automated Response (With A Bit of Humor)

Jerry Low shared the “funny out-of-office auto reply” he sends to people, with a link to WHSR and his Twitter account. “It’s a small hack that I use to grow my social followings and website visits”, he says.

Here is a past out-of-office message Jerry used:

Hey there,

Thanks for your email.

I am on holiday, and hence can’t read your message right now.

For urgent matters, please tweet to https://twitter.com/WebHostingJerry using hashtag #youareruiningmyholiday :)

I’ll be back to my desk first week of the year. Till then, take care and Happy New Year!

Cheers, Jerry Low
Also visit – http://ift.tt/1ax7ekQ

Takeaway

In the end, going on vacation doesn’t mean your blog traffic has to suffer unless you keep blogging or checking your blog even when you are trying to relax. The key is planning the smart way and giving readers as much as you can afford while you are away, via content scheduling and social media automation.

Whether you choose to put your blog on open hiatus and schedule minimal remarketing content, or write and schedule posts according to your regular editorial calendar, or to leave everything in the hands of an editor and one or two bloggers, you will still be giving your readers what they are looking for — fresh, interesting content and food for thought that they need to up their game.

Now you better go – get everything ready and enjoy your vacation!

Author: Luana Spinetti

Luana Spinetti is a freelance writer and artist based in Italy, and a passionate Computer Science student. She has a high-school diploma in Psychology and Education and attended a 3-year course in Comic Book Art, from which she graduated on 2008. As multi-faceted a person as she is, she recently... View full profile ›

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How to Grow Your Blog While You’re On Vacation

Having Trouble Keeping Up With Social Content Demands?

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Marketers today have a lot on their plates. They face an ever-growing landscape of channels to connect with their community and each channel poses it’s own content demands. Plus there’s the time it takes to properly engage with audiences on those channels. If you’re feeling the squeeze from all of this social pressure, you’re not alone. 54% of B2B marketers and 50% of B2C marketers cite creating enough content for their marketing efforts as a top priority for their marketing initiatives.

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Creating quality content for social channels and managing the conversation happening around that content could be a full-time job. But few marketers have this as their sole task. So, where can marketers turn to supplement their content creation needs?

Power of Visual Content

46% of marketers say photography is critical to their current marketing and storytelling strategies. This is in part due to the value and impact of visual content. From hieroglyphics to emojis, humans have always communicated with visuals. The reality is that people have historically needed images as a form of communication that builds social intimacy. This is especially true in our modern world, where much of our communication takes place exclusively in virtual ‘communities’ that have replaced face-to-face communication (Ayres, 2016). Without images, we would have lots of trouble sharing thoughts and feelings with one another. The goal of marketing is to strike an emotional chord, to gain the attention, emotion and ultimately the trust of your audience. Visuals are valuable to marketers because of the speed at which they elicit a human response. There are a million examples of how the image has been employed by marketers over the years: billboards, posters, mailers, newspaper ads and glossy photo shoots. In fact, it’s hokey and quaint (even bizarre) to think of a day when the marketing message was not accompanied by a high-impact visual.

Savvy marketers are leveraging captivating visuals and photography to connect with their audience. In fact, when people hear information, they’re likely to remember only 10% of that information three days later. However, if a relevant image is paired with that same information, people retained 65% of the information three days later. On top of that when these visuals are produced by their peers it increases the value and receptiveness of the content. This user-generated content has been found to be more memorable and influential especially when it comes to the ever-elusive millennial audience. Marketers are looking for engaging content and user-generated visual content is exactly what they need. But how do you get your hands on it?

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Many marketers are turning to trusted influencers, not only for sharing branded content to their large audiences but also for their content production needs. Influencers serve as their personal branded content creators. This content may be passed directly to the brand for use on their social channels or website. Repurposing this influencer content is much easier than attempting to create the content yourself and more relatable than stock photos or catalogue-style shoots.

We’ve seen influencers share amazing content for some of the top brands. And we’ve written about the benefits of tapping creators to promote your brand many times before. But in addition to amplification gained by sharing, the content itself is also valuable for brand use. You gain the value of an influencer’s personal style and creativity, plus the peace of mind that you’re choosing content that will resonate because it has already been validated by the influencer’s audience. This test can also help with deciding where to use certain pieces of content. If you know @thebalancedblonde’s post performed well with fitness-focused millennial females, then include her photo in your next product announcement to that audience. Influencers are effective because of the trust and respect they’ve built with their audience, you can tap that trust and respect by leveraging the content they create.

Repurposing Ethically

There are important legal and ethical things to account for when deciding to use influencer content for your next program. Any post created by a content creator needs to be shared with full attribution. This isn’t just a safe idea, it’s a smart idea. It helps build community and collaboration between you and your content creators as well as drawing the influencer’s credibility even closer to your brand. And most importantly, you need to make sure you have permission to re-share that content.

Author: Alex Ditty

Alex leads Client Operations for SEEN, a visual marketing platform that allows brands to manage, monitor, and measure Twitter and Instagram campaigns.... View full profile ›

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