The Zapier Blog

The Journalist's Guide to Automating Curation

justin.pot@zapier.com (Justin Pot) — Mon, 09 Sep 2019 11:29:46 +0000

Modern journalism is digging through piles of information and finding the one or two interesting tidbits you can turn into a story. Good ideas live in all sorts of different places: some you find using Twitter, Google News Alerts, or your RSS reader. Some you find out about from your co-workers, possibly on Slack. And occasionally one of the (approximately) ten million press releases and pitches emailed to you daily by soulless marketers are (somewhat) interesting.

Ideally all of the actually useful bits of information would live in one place, so you could reference them all easily. Think of it as an idea bucket. Where your bucket lives doesn't matter: note taking applications like Evernote and OneNote work quite well, but so does a spreadsheet, a Trello board, a to do list app. The point is to collect article prompts all in one place, so you can find them when it's time to write.

You could do this by manually copying and pasting information, and in my experience most journalists do. This works, but is time consuming, which is why I want to show you how you can automate this kind of curation using Zapier.

How Zapier (and Automation) Will Help You

Zapier gives you the power of automation without expecting you to become a programmer. You can automatically send information from one app to another, using rules you set up yourself. We call these automations Zaps.

How does this help you, a journalist, keep track of potential article ideas? Because you can set up separate rules to send ideas to one central repository, which you can then reference when it's time to write.

Let's go over a few ideas for automating curation. I'll include links to guided templates for each idea, but don't let those templates limit you. You can [build your own Zap] and send any of the information mentioned to whatever application you prefer.

Save Twitter Favorites

Twitter is the firehose that all journalists are seemingly required to drink from, even though most of it is very bad. It's easy to scroll through your timeline and forget about the couple of good things you found that might be useful for an article later.

With Zapier you can save the actually good tweets for later just by clicking the like button. You could, for example, automatically send every tweet you like over to Evernote.

Again, you don't have to use Evernote—that's just an example. The idea is to save your liked tweets somewhere so you can reference them later. Set this up, scroll through Twitter like you usually do, and only hit "Like" for posts you might want to reference later. It's a way to filter the firehose down to the bits that matter.

Save Starred Emails

I know: Most of the press releases you get are garbage. Occasionally they're useful, however, and it's good to file those away somewhere before they disappear in the ever growing unholy mess that is a reporter's inbox. With the right automation you could send Starred emails in Gmail over to your idea bucket. For example, you could send them to Evernote or Trello.

Now you can quickly reference the emails that actually looked interesting, without having to dig through the 200 emails you got while reading this single sentence.

Save Slack Messages

Slack is another service that becomes overwhelming quickly. If you want to remember the insightful bits and links your co-workers share, you can. Just set up an automation that sends them over to your idea bucket of choice.

For example, you could send starred posts to Evernote, Trello, or Todoist.

Set this up and you can quickly save messages to reference for later just by starring them, which is far better than those ideas disappearing forever in the never ending stream of "hilarious" jokes sent by your co-workers.

Save Feedly Articles

RSS might be old school, but it's still the best way to stay on top of several different publications at once, and many government organizations offer RSS feeds for announcements and press releases.

Zapier can connect to Feedly, and a few other RSS readers, allowing you to send articles you favorite or tag over to other programs. For example, you could send articles that you save in Feedly to a channel in Slack or a notebook in Evernote.

Save Any Website You Find With Push by Zapier

Zapier works with 1,500 apps, but that's not every website on earth. Push by Zapier is a Chrome extension we offer that allows you to send the name and URL of the site you're currently browsing over to any application we support. It's like a bookmark button that sends articles and websites to your idea bucket.

For example, you could quickly make a Trello card or Evenote note using the name and URL of any website you have open in Chrome.

It's a great way to remember those websites you find while researching a story.

These Are Just a Few Ideas

This is all just a starting point. Automation lets you funnel all kinds of information to your idea bucket, all without much work on your part. It's a great way to separate the wheat from the chaff, so you can find those compelling bits of information when it's time to actually write something.

Looking for more? Check out these Zapier resources:
- Explore ways to integrate the 1,500+ apps we work with
- Learn more about the apps you can integrate with Zapier
- From the archives, Zapier at ONA14

News icon made by Icon Monk from Flaticon.

Your Computer Is a Tool. Here's How to Actually Use It Like One.

justin.pot@zapier.com (Justin Pot) — Mon, 09 Sep 2019 06:00:00 +0000

When's the last time you "surfed the web" or "went online"? I haven't really heard those phrases used unironically since the early 2000s, which makes sense. The internet isn't a place we visit anymore—it's where we all live.

I couldn't help but think about this when I read a beautiful Atlantic article by Ian Bogost , which he wrote using a 30-year-old Macintosh SE. That computer sold for $3,900 in 1990, which is about $8,400 in today's dollars, but people used it a lot less than we use computers today. From the article:

Nobody used [their computer] every hour—many people wouldn’t boot them up for days at a time if the need didn't arise. They were modest in power and application, clunking and grinding their way through family-budget spreadsheets, school papers, and games.

A computer was a tool for work, and diversion too, but it was not the best or only way to write a letter or to fritter away an hour. Computing was an accompaniment to life, rather than the sieve through which all ideas and activities must filter.

Bogost goes on to describe using the Macintosh SE to load Microsoft Word and write the article, and then doing something no one does anymore: turning the computer off. It's striking how much the limitations of the computer forced him to focus on the task at hand. In 1990, the computer was a tool, and people used it like one. Distraction wasn't an issue because hardly any distractions were available (and the ones that were available took forever to load).

I bring this up not to advocate for some lost golden age. Old computers weren't great, and trying to use one for day-to-day tasks would be a nightmare. But there was value in the purpose-driven way we used computers back then, and the hardware limitations were part of what created that mentality. We'd turn the computer on for a specific purpose, complete that purpose, and move on.

It's possible we can never go back to that mindset, but there's no reason we shouldn't think about our relationship with our computers. By remembering that a computer is a tool and implementing some strategies that put it to good use, we can get more done—and then log off.

Plan What You're Going to Do

It's really easy to sit down at your computer and lose a couple of hours doing nothing in particular. You might even feel tired afterward, despite not being sure what you did during that time.

This isn't entirely your fault. The internet is optimized for "engagement," which is a fancy word app developers use for taking up as much of your time as possible. Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix, once said that sleep is Netflix's main competition, which really drives home the extent to which internet companies want to dominate your day. The apps you use aren't neutral: they have their own priorities.

If you want to use your computer as a tool, however, you need to focus on your priorities, and that means being intentional about what you're doing whenever you're using a device. Time tracking apps are great for this. Most can display the task you're currently working on right on the screen, which is a helpful reminder of what you intend to be doing. I use a time-tracking application for Mac called Timing, but time blocking apps could also do the job.

When I sit down at the computer, I enter the task I hope to accomplish, which then shows up on the menu bar of my Mac. This puts a reminder of my intention in a prominent place.

And you don't need any software for a reminder like this. A sticky note can do the job.

Just write down what you intend to focus on, then put it somewhere you'll see it. The specifics don't matter. The important thing is that you use your computer with a specific purpose in mind, and that you remind yourself what that purpose is.

Go Offline, If You Can

Retro messaging applications like AIM and MSN sorted contacts according to who was and wasn't online, and would even notify you when a buddy "logged on." Modern messaging apps don't do that, and that's a good thing: we'd all be getting notifications constantly. These days, messaging apps sort people by your most recent conversations. The implicit idea: online and offline isn't a meaningful distinction anymore. It's assumed that everyone is online all the time and will respond to you immediately.

Which, of course, means you feel like you have to respond constantly, which makes it hard to treat your computer like a tool you're using for a single purpose. Your attention is being pulled in all sorts of directions, by all sorts of people.

To be clear, chatting with friends and co-workers is nice, and quite often even essential for getting things done. I can't imagine life without Slack. But Slack can also derail focus, as other people's priorities for my day interrupt what I hope to accomplish.

My solution: disconnecting from the internet entirely when I need to focus. Turn off Wi-Fi. It's crude, but it works, and it removes a wide variety of potential distractions, which helps me think of my computer as a tool for the job at hand.

People used computers before there was an internet, and they rarely ended up reading Wikipedia or scrolling through Twitter instead of getting things done. Solitaire was about the only distraction available, which was fine because Solitaire is boring (and isn't even included with Windows anymore). You don't need the internet to use your computer, and you might find your focus improves without it.

Full Screen Is Your Friend

Multitasking isn't healthy for humans, but modern computers are very good at it. User interfaces go out of their way to show that off. There are windows and tabs, of course, but there's also the Windows taskbar and the macOS dock. Both serve as a constant reminder that there are other applications you could be using. Often there are even little badges with numbers, further incentivizing you to click away from the task at hand.

Which is why I recommend that you switch your application over to fullscreen when focus is needed. Mac users have it easy: they can simply click the green button in the top-left corner.

Do this and the current application will take up the entire screen, hiding the dock, menu bar, and all other applications. It's perfect for when you need to focus.

Windows users don't have a system-wide option, though many applications offer a fullscreen mode. The keyboard shortcut Alt+Enter triggers fullscreen in many apps, and F11 works in others. If fullscreen isn't offered, you could just hide the taskbar instead.

It's About Your State of Mind

Ultimately this is about you. You need to approach your computer, and other devices, as a tool for accomplishing a specific job, then be intentional about using it for that job. It's a skill, and learning it takes time.

Want more ideas for doing that? My friend Matt wrote about tweaking your software to be more productive, and I recommend you check that article out. Here are a few more things you can try:

Turn off the red dot in Slack. It's just going to pull you away from what you're working on.
Block notifications in Chrome. You don't need them.
Try out some Pomodoro timers. A 25-minute work session followed by a five-minute break makes focusing on one task a lot less overwhelming.

No Email Should Take More than Five Minutes to Write

deborah.tennen@zapier.com (Deborah Tennen) — Mon, 02 Sep 2019 06:00:00 +0000

We're all drowning in email. And if you're spending 15 minutes on every reply, no productivity system is ever going to save you. Not inbox zero, not batching, not turning off notifications—nothing. Your only hope is retirement.

My rule: I never spend more than five minutes writing a work email. And when I manage other people, it's a rule I ask them to follow too. Ideally, each email will take 30 seconds to write—then, even if you write 100 emails a day, it's still only an hour of your day—but five minutes is the max.

I call this rule the five-minute rule, and it's how I do work email. I also think it's how you should do work email, so here I'll give you some suggestions for how to make it happen.

Don't Be a Jerk (in Your Emails)

You might think I sound like a jerk here, and I am one. But I don't come across as a jerk in my emails, despite how little time I spend on them. This is in marked contrast to what Katie Notopoulos from BuzzFeed calls the "boss email":

It's defined by nearly immediate — but short and terse — replies. The classic two-word email. For underlings, it can be inscrutable. Is that an angry "thanks" or a grateful "thanks"? Does "please update me" imply impatience with you? Boss email can be the workplace equivalent of getting a "k" text reply from a Tinder date.

But writing quickly and concisely doesn't have to come off as cold or impenetrable. It takes just as long to write "Hey, any updates here? Thanks!" as it does to write "Where are we on this?" Even getting rid of the potentially disingenuous "Thanks!" feels a thousand times more approachable than the latter option.

The phrase 'Where are we on this?' may have been made famous by Hillary Clinton, but if I search my professional emails, I get more than a dozen hits for it.

How to Follow the Five-Minute Rule

You can turn the five-minute rule into the three-minute rule, the one-minute rule, or the 30-second rule. Whatever makes the most sense for the role you're in. For example, if you're often communicating with contractors who need unique feedback, you might need those five minutes. If you're mostly communicating with your coworkers, it should probably be 30 seconds—or less.

Other than the always fun advice of "don't overthink it," there are some concrete ways to be sure you're not dumping too much time into your emails.

Time yourself

This one's simple: Set a timer. Nothing fancy needed—just turn your phone timer to five minutes, and when it's up, you're done. No matter how much of the email you have left to write, you need to wrap it up. I'd suggest having a canned final sentence in case you run out of time. Some version of this should work:

I'll stop there, but I'm happy to dive deeper or clarify anything as needed!

(Exclamation point optional but encouraged if you're cutting your email short.)

If you end up using your canned final sentence a lot, you'll know you need to get better about getting to the point quickly, which will shorten your writing time. Remember that people don't have time to read emails just as you don't have time to write them. So dive right into whatever you're emailing about.

Create canned responses

Take a day to create canned responses—email templates for messages that you send often. There are a couple ways to do this:

Use a text expander, an app that reads what you type anywhere on your computer, and automatically replaces snippets of text with full-blown sentences and paragraphs. For example, you can set it so that every time you type thx, it automatically changes it to Thanks for reaching out! In more robust uses, you can have keywords for specific email templates—type the keyword, and an entire email will appear.
If you wear a tinfoil hat like I do and don't want a text expander reading your every keystroke, use the canned response feature in your email provider. Both Gmail and Outlook have a canned response feature, and we can walk you through how to use them. This requires a few extra clicks, but it'll even autofill a subject line for you.

I currently have 28 canned responses in Gmail, ranging from a few sentences to long paragraphs outlining processes.

Use word count tools

The amount of time it takes to write an email doesn't always match the number of words you end up with. Sometimes, you labor over an email because you want to be sure you're using precisely the right tone, and a six-sentence email takes you 15 minutes to write. But usually those kinds of emails are a bit more…fraught.

If your issue is that your emails are too long, get in the habit of using a word counter tool to stop yourself. Outlook provides a one-click way to do this, but you'll need to use a Chrome extension like Word Counter Plus to get the feature within Gmail.

I haven't been able to find a tool that actually cuts you off after a certain number of words, but it would be a great feature (as long as you can override it when necessary).

Ditch the email chain

If you think it'll take longer than five minutes to write, your email probably isn't an email. It's probably a memo sent in email form or a persuasive essay that starts with "Hi."

The point: Don't try to shove a collaboration-shaped peg into an email-shaped hole. Instead, use a tool that's meant for what you're doing.

If you're listing out all of your availability for a meeting, use a calendar app. If you're coordinating a project or updating people on progress, use a project management app. If you're sending a list of questions, turn it into a meeting pre-read and schedule an associated meeting, so you don't unwittingly create an email chain of doom.

Example: I spend lots of time giving feedback to freelance writers. I do it in Google Docs, where I can leave specific comments on specific sentences, paragraphs, or sections. When I'm done, I write a 30-second email letting the freelancer know I've reviewed the work and left comments in the doc. It's easier for them to parse my feedback this way, and it saves me loads of time. (I could even automate an email when I change the editing status in my project management app.)

If you just can't stop writing long emails, maybe it's time to ditch email altogether. Try composing messages from within your CRM, using Slack with your coworkers, or automating your work to the point where email isn't as much of a nuisance.

The 7 Best Electronic Signature Apps of 2019

hannah.herman@zapier.com (Hannah Herman) — Sun, 01 Sep 2019 13:00:00 +0000

Everyone dreams of a paperless office. To be fully digital, however, you need the right tools to electronically send, sign, and store important documents like contracts. That's where eSign apps come in.

An electronic signature app is an app that allows you to sign paperwork digitally. But how do you know which one is right for your unique business needs? We've done the legwork for you, testing dozens of apps to find the ones that will best help you cross all the T's and dot all the I's—in your signature, that is.

Here are the seven best apps you can use to sign documents. Click on any app to learn more about why we chose it, or keep reading for more context on electronic signature apps.

The 7 Best eSignature Apps

DocuSign for tracking the entire document lifecycle
HelloSign for users on a budget
Adobe Sign for Adobe integration
Preview for occasionally signing documents
RightSignature for added security
Yousign for sending lots of documents
Contractbook for collaborating on paperwork

What Makes a Great Electronic Signature App?

Let's start with the basics: the most important feature in any eSignature app is the ability to add an electronic signature. The easier it is to create and store that signature, the better the app experience. We kept this in mind while researching this list and only included apps that are straightforward to use.

But there's more to signature apps than just the signature. An eSignature app is especially useful if you can send the document for other people to sign and then track its progress from a unified dashboard. It's a big plus if you can invite others to collaborate when creating the paperwork, too.

It's also important to understand the difference between an electronic signature and a digital signature. They may sound the same, but a digital signature has added layers of security used to identify the signer and protect the information in the document. You can learn more about digital signatures from the Department of Homeland Security.

If you simply need to sign a PDF and print it out, you may not need any extra security features, and a basic electronic signature app will do the trick. But if you're storing and sending a lot of sensitive contracts, the added security of a digital signature app may be what you need.

Most of the apps on this list offer basic features, like the ability to password-protect a document so that only the correct person can sign it. Some eSignature apps offer steps beyond that, like requiring the signer to receive a verification code via SMS before they can sign. And many (but not all) apps included on this list use bank-level encryption when transmitting and storing documents for extra security.

Before you invest in a specific piece of software, you may want to double-check the security features offered to know if they meet your business or personal needs. What qualifies as a legally binding signature can vary by country, and different types of documents may have different requirements. Compliance and security information is usually provided on the app's website.

Best Electronic Signature App for Tracking the Entire Document Lifecyle

DocuSign (Web, iOS, Android, Windows)

DocuSign is one of the most popular electronic signature apps available. Getting started with DocuSign is fairly straightforward: when you sign up, the app will prompt you to upload a document, prepare it for signature, select recipients, and send it. You can also manage your drafts from DocuSign's dashboard, so if you're not quite ready to send a document yet, that's okay.

DocuSign's Quick View sidebar also makes it simple to track the status of documents throughout their entire lifecycle. You can see which require action, which are waiting on other people, and which are complete. You can even see which are expiring soon—a super useful feature if you work with lots of deadlines.

DocuSign Price: From $25/user/month for a Standard plan with personalized branding

Automate DocuSign with DocuSign's Zapier Integrations.

Best Electronic Signature App for Users on a Budget

HelloSign (Web, iOS, Android)

HelloSign is one of the simplest and easiest ways for individuals on a budget to sign documents or collect signatures. With a browser extension, HelloSign lets you sign documents in Gmail, or use its mobile apps for iOS and Android to sign documents on the go. You can type in a signature, add initials, or fill out a form with text editing. If you're the one needing to collect another person's signature, send a document by email right from the app.

HelloSign's saved signatures are a timesaver, too. You can create a new signature by uploading an image file, dragging your finger over your trackpad, or taking a picture of your signature with your phone. If none of that works for you, use one of HelloSign's handwriting fonts to type your signature. Place your signature and resize it if necessary before clicking Continue.

Enter your recipient's email address, add a note to include with your signed document, and hit Send. Preserve a copy of the signed document for your files by clicking Download. From there you can track your documents, including those awaiting an eSignature, on the Documents page linked in the sidebar.

HelloSign Price: Free for 3 documents/month with one user; from $13/month for Pro plan with unlimited documents

Automate HelloSign with HelloSign's Zapier Integrations.

Best Electronic Signature App for Adobe Integration

Adobe Sign (Web, iOS, Android)

Adobe Sign sets a high standard for signature apps. As the benchmark for professional document apps, users expect a lot from Adobe—and Adobe Sign delivers.

Even if your recipients don't have an Adobe account, they can open and sign a document from any browser or mobile device. Alternatively, sign from within your most-used apps with Adobe's enterprise application integration, or keep signers in your business applications with Adobe's API. This makes it a great option for users who already use other Adobe software in their day-to-day work.

Adobe Sign Price: From $29.99/month for a Small Business plan with up to 9 users

Best Electronic Signature App for Occasionally Signing Documents

Preview (Mac)

Preview comes pre-installed with Mac OS X and can be easily overlooked as an eSig tool. With Apple's OS X Yosemite release—which added the Markup feature to the app—it's just gotten better.

With Preview, you can fill in a form using text annotation, and you'll have a lot of control over how your text looks. The signature feature is a real highlight, though. Use your trackpad to create a new signature, or sign a piece of paper and Preview will capture your signature using your Mac's camera. Preview will then save your signature for future use, and you need only place it in your document. Best of all, you can open an email with a PDF, eSign it right inside your message with the Preview markup extension, and send it back—all without ever opening another app.

Preview doesn't have all the bells and whistles that many dedicated eSignature apps offer, though, so it's best if you only need to sign documents occasionally and don't need watertight security features.

Preview Price: Included free with all Macs

Best Electronic Signature App for Built-in Compliance Features

RightSignature (Web, iOS, Android, Windows)

RightSignature is an electronic signature app created by Citrix. Like most eSignature apps, RightSignature allows you to upload, prepare, and send documents for signature—as well as receive them, sign them, and return them to another sender.

Where RightSignature shines, however, is its built-in security and document management features. If you need to make sure that electronic signatures are extra secure and can only be signed by the right person, RightSignature can be a huge help. You can easily password-protect documents that you send for signature, set expiration dates for documents, and even cancel or void documents from a central toolbar.

RightSignature also makes it simple to make sure all the right people sign off on a document at the right time with its Signer Sequencing feature. If you're sending the paperwork to multiple people, you can choose the order in which they sign off on it. This is a great way to implement a final security review. For example, you can have a new employee sign off on their contract first and then send it to an HR specialist for review and their signature.

RightSignature Price: From $12/month for Personal plan with one user

Automate RightSignature with RightSignature's Zapier Integrations.

Best Electronic Signature App for Sending a High Volume of Documents

Yousign (Web)

Yousign is a Europe-based electronic signature app. It's pretty similar to other eSignature software, though its UX is a little cuter and more modern than some programs targeted toward large businesses.

What sets Yousign apart from other apps are its Procedures: a set of steps, signers, and notifications that you can re-use whenever you send similar documents. This feature is great if you have to regularly send lots of paperwork to the same people or if you work with a standardized document, like a basic contract. And because you can customize the notification settings for each Procedure, it's easy to make sure that you get signatures in time for all of your deadlines. It also lets you designate whether signatories are internal or external, so you can create Procedures based on whether someone inside or outside your business needs to sign a document.

Let's say you're a small business that hires a lot of seasonal employees, for example, and you send them all the same general contract. With Yousign, you don't have to manually prepare and send the contract to each employee. You can create a Procedure that sets a signature deadline, password-protects the contract, and automatically sends personalized reminders to each new hire on a schedule.

Yousign Price: From €25/user/month for a Team plan with unlimited signatures

Best Electronic Signature App for Collaborating on Paperwork

Contractbook (Web)

For many businesses, paperwork is a team effort. You often need people from legal, accounting, and other departments to help put together a document before you can send it for signature. Or you might expect to get change requests to a contract before it's signed. But managing that sort of collaboration—and making sure you get everything signed on time—can be a bit of a nightmare.

Enter Contractbook. It's more than just an electronic signature app; it's also a contract management tool. That means it has built-in features for collaborating on a document, requesting changes, tracking revisions, and more.

For example, the app offers a straightforward menu that divides your documents into Signed, Pending, Requested Changes, Rejected, and Uploaded categories. You can see the status of all your documents at-a-glance or filter them by signature date, whether they've been sent or received, by relevant tags, and more. These features are especially great if you're working with paperwork that has to go through an extensive legal review process before it can be signed.

Contractbook Price: Starts free; from €4/month for a Standard plan with one user

Automate Contractbook with Contractbook's Zapier Integrations.

Originally published in April 2015 by Paula DuPont, we've updated this post with new selections and app descriptions. We also shifted our focus to just eSignature apps and removed apps for faxing and scanning.

How Automatically Managing Leads Led a Company to Automate Everything They Can

joey.blanco@zapier.com (Joey Blanco) — Wed, 28 Aug 2019 06:00:00 +0000

"At Outbrain, data security is a top priority, which means SAML authentication is absolutely essential. And we got it with our Zapier Company account."Yaniv Nava, Senior Online Acquisition Manager, Outbrain

Creating a garden starts simply enough: you plant a few seeds, give them some good soil and water, and soon you have a smorgasbord of vegetables and flowers and all the rest. Birds and bees visit, taking bits and pieces of your garden to another, and bring your garden pieces of something else.

Scaling the use of a helpful tool at a business is similar: you find your use case and the app that'll solve it, like the seeds for a specific vegetable. But maybe the seeds from another plant snuck in—and you find another use for the tool. Pretty soon, you've found even more reasons to use the tool and your co-workers take notice. And it spreads from you, to them, to the team, to another team, and on until the entire company is on board.

This is what happened at Outbrain, a content and product discovery feed. Yaniv Nava, a senior online acquisition manager at Outbrain, first started using the app automation tool Zapier to manage leads.

"We wanted to enable our Sales team to reach out to leads as fast as possible," Yaniv explains. "So we started to use Zapier's leads ads integrations from the main acquisition platforms and push the leads directly into Salesforce's sellers queues."

For the simplest use cases—managing lead creation—Yaniv built a couple of Zaps, our word for automated workflows. With those Zaps, Yaniv cut out hours of work and a lot of headaches from his team. And while they initially kept their use straightforward, Yaniv and the marketing team soon saw potential to add more to these Zaps.

With Zapier, they could now add information to the leads, with an app like Clearbit, before sending them on to Salesforce. They could add the new lead to an email marketing campaign at the same time, too. In fact, the possibilities were, and are, endless.

Soon, Zapier usage at Outbrain grew beyond Yaniv and the marketing team, and into customer support, IT, and throughout the rest of the company. Now, Outbrain uses Zapier's Company plan, providing their team with shared folders and most importantly, extra security with SAML authentication.

About Outbrain

Odds are you know Outbrain, even if you haven't realized it. When you finish reading an article online, you usually see several recommended links—some from the website you're on and some that are targeted to you based on your search habits. Outbrain helps publishers and advertisers create these recommendations.

Outbrain was founded in 2006 to help online publishers replicate the experience of turning the page and finding the next article or product to pay attention to. With an emphasis on native advertising—non-jarring ads that are part of the reading experience—Outbrain helps advertisers and publishers bring relevant content front and center.

Make Security a Priority with a Company Account at Zapier

What began as a means to automatically create leads quickly became a way for Yaniv and the wider Outbrain team to work more effectively.

"We integrate our live chat solution with Salesforce, we integrate our registration with webinars, landing page solutions, with Zoom, with an email life-cycle tool—so we've built some complex processes," Yaniv says.

With usage spreading across the company, security, which was always a top priority for the Outbrain team, became a topic of discussion with Zapier. With clients that include publishers and advertisers—like CNN and Vox—maintaining privacy and data integrity is a key element of Outbrain's offerings.

And since they now had dozens of employees using Zapier across multiple teams at Outbrain, it was important that those users be authenticated properly. With a Zapier for Companies account, the Outbrain team could take advantage of SAML single sign-on.

"At Outbrain, data security is a top priority, which means SAML authentication is absolutely essential," Yaniv says.

Zapier usage at Outbrain has grown from one person to the marketing team, on to the Customer Support team, Finance team, IT team, and beyond, but all this began with the lead management Zaps we're about to show you.

Outbrain's Tools

Icon:	App:	Used For:
	Facebook Lead Ads	Lead generator
	LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms	Lead forms generator
	Salesforce	Customer relationship manager (CRM)

Automatically Manage New Leads

Managing leads by hand, whether that's copying and pasting or exporting and importing from a lead generator to your CRM, is tedious and error-prone. What happens if the file isn't formatted correctly, or if you copy the same data over again? And even if everything goes smoothly, it still takes an annoying amount of time.

That's why Yaniv put together these two Zaps, connecting Facebook lead ads to Salesforce, and Linkedin Lead Gen Forms to Salesforce. Basically, whenever a new lead comes in from one of these sources, Zapier automatically creates a matching lead in Salesforce.

Automatically creating leads means you can focus on more important work, or save your teammates from the mundane tasks that drag a workday to a halt. Give these Zaps a try and see how much time they can save you.

Need a little help with those Zaps? Check out this video to help you get the Zap up and running:

Want to see your business use Zapier as effectively as Yaniv and Outbrain? Try Zapier for Companies yourself.

Our stories explore how Zapier's users solve common problems. From marketers to CEOs, educators to real estate agents, millions use Zapier to automate their most tedious tasks. If you haven't yet, try Zapier for free to see what we're all about.

All images provided by Outbrain.

Email Marketing App Showdown: ConvertKit vs. Mailchimp

emilyesposito2@gmail.com (Emily Esposito) — Mon, 26 Aug 2019 12:44:19 +0000

Unlike many digital marketing tactics (think: social media, ads, blog posts), emails offer the opportunity to personalize communication to your customers. You don't have to broaden your message to thousands of users nor compete with other brands for real estate. With apps like ConvertKit or Mailchimp, your emails can land directly in users' inboxes, creating one-to-one conversations.

Whether you have 20 customers or 20,000, companies of all sizes need a reliable, scalable email marketing app. But, not just any email tool can do the job. You need a solution that offers personalization, automation, and robust reporting features to help you send the right message to the right person.

In this post, we'll look at ConvertKit versus Mailchimp, two of the most popular email newsletter apps for small businesses. These apps go above and beyond simple email marketing, allowing you to create complex automated email campaigns, forms to generate leads, and landing pages.

Here's how they stack up.

Important Features of an Email Marketing Tool

ConvertKit and Mailchimp provide the basic features you need to run an email marketing program: list management, email creation, automated emails, and reporting. They also offer landing pages and forms, allowing you to generate leads.

But the two apps differ in terms of sophistication of the email editor, A/B testing, and automated emails. ConvertKit and Mailchimp also offer different pricing models. For this article, we'll be primarily comparing Mailchimp's free plan to ConvertKit's features for customers with fewer than 5,000 subscribers.

Mailchimp's free plan doesn't include all the advanced features of its paid plans but does include a wide range of powerful features to send emails, build forms, and publish landing pages. And, for companies with larger subscriber bases that also want advanced features (like segmentation or custom templates), the paid plans are very affordable — the Standard plan that Mailchimp recommends is just $14.99 per month.

ConvertKit doesn't offer any free plans, but you can try the service at no cost for 14 days. After the free trial period, the paid plans start at $29 per month for up to 1,000 subscribers.

Ultimately, the best app for you will depend on the complexity of your email program and your marketing goals. Here are seven features we'll compare to help you make your choice. Click on the section that matters most to you or go directly to the comparison table.

User interface
Email creation
A/B testing
Segmentation
Automation
Forms and landing pages
Reporting

User interface

ConvertKit and Mailchimp have areas of confusion, but Mailchimp's email editor stands out.

ConvertKit's interface fluctuates between confusing and intuitive. Some experiences, like setting up workflows, are effortless thanks to bold buttons guiding you along the way. Other features, like segments or reporting, seem to be hidden away. Segments live on the lower half of the Subscribers page, tucked away in a small right-hand column. Reporting doesn't appear on the navigation, and instead, you have to go into Broadcasts to see any email metrics.

Creating automated workflows in ConvertKit is easy thanks to big, bold buttons.

ConvertKit also has its own vocabulary, making it harder for a new user to understand. "Sequences" refer to automated emails, but "Automations" are customizable workflows. ConvertKit also uses "Broadcasts" instead of "emails."

Mailchimp's interface follows a similar structure, with a top navigation listing out the various functions. Mailchimp's word choices are easier to understand thanks to familiar words like campaigns, templates, and audience. Many of the editing experiences are drag-and-drop, which is a step up from ConvertKit.

However, Mailchimp's expansion from only offering email marketing to now offering landing pages; Facebook, Instagram, and Google remarketing ads; forms; printed postcards; and social posts, has cluttered the overall user interface. For example, the Campaigns tab is where all these types of marketing assets live, but the Templates tab only houses email templates. Navigation is also confusing — you can build a landing page in the Campaign or Audience tabs, neither of which is an intuitive place to look for a landing page builder.

Mailchimp offers different types of campaigns, which can make the navigation confusing.

Email creation

ConvertKit offers basic email creation in a WYSIWYG editor; Mailchimp's drag-and-drop editor is more robust

ConvertKit's email creation experience remains at the most basic level. All formatting and content are inserted via a WYSIWYG editor, which feels like a blast from the past. The customization options are limited, allowing you to change the font size, color, and alignment, or add images and files.

ConvertKit's basic editor.

If you want to do any further customization or advanced formatting, you would likely have to go into the email's HTML and edit the code yourself. If you're not familiar enough with HTML, ConvertKit offers three basic templates to help you with layout.

To its credit, ConvertKit is working on a new editor (currently in the beta stage). The interface is much improved thanks to a totally clean text editor. As you type, a + icon appears, and when you click it, formatting options appear, including customization options (like allowing you to insert a button, HTML block, or divider).

On the other hand, Mailchimp offers more flexibility and visual aesthetic when creating an email. You can choose from 14 layout templates that have pre-placed text, image, and headline blocks so you can quickly add content and customize colors, photos, and fonts. If you need more design help, you can pick from more than 80 themes, super-charged templates that come completely designed with colors, fonts, and background images — you only need to add your own copy.

Editing a template with Mailchimp.

Whether you choose a template or build your own email from scratch, you can leverage Mailchimp's drag-and-drop editor. The editor is based on blocks, with dedicated blocks for things like an image, an image group, text, an image and a caption, and more. This makes it easy for non-designers to make changes to the layout or quickly customize the overall look.

As an added bonus, Mailchimp helps you easily solicit and gather feedback on your emails as you're building them. You can send a test email to your colleagues, and when they reply with feedback, all their comments will automatically be displayed in the *Comments * section of the email editor.

A/B testing

ConvertKit allows you to test subject lines; Mailchimp adds tests for sender name, content, and send time.

ConvertKit offers simple, no-frills A/B testing for subject lines. When you're creating your email, you'll see A/B to the right of your first subject line field. If you click it, it will expand and add another field for your second subject line variable. You only have to type in your subject lines, and ConvertKit does the rest. Each variation is sent to 15% of recipients (so the two variations are sent to a random 30%) and after four hours, the winning version will be sent to 70% of recipients. You can't control the percentages or the testing time.

Once you send the email, you can track metrics and results from the A/B test by clicking into that specific email to view the report.

Surprisingly, A/B testing is not available with Mailchimp's free plan. If you have any of the paid monthly plans, you can A/B test one of four variables: subject line, "from" name, content, and send time. What is particularly interesting is the "content" variable — you can test different email templates or blocks of content, all in Mailchimp's drag-and-drop editor.

With Mailchimp's paid plans, you can test one of four variables. Photo credit: Mailchimp.

You can only choose one variable type and create up to three variations (i.e., test up to three subject lines). Mailchimp generates the different email campaigns and sends them to distinct sets of subscribers. To choose the winning email, you can track open rate, click-through rate, or total revenue (if you have an eCommerce store connected to your account).

Segmentation

ConvertKit's out-of-the-box segmentation features are more intuitive and robust; Mailchimp offers extra, paid features to boost its standard offerings.*

ConvertKit's segmentation features are intuitive and robust. You can choose from 10 filters, like subscription date, first name, or distance from a city, or create a custom field. You can mix and match these filters using the Boolean operators "and," "or," and "not." For example, you could create a segment of everyone who subscribed after a certain date and does not live in the United States.

ConvertKit's segmentation also leverages tags to make your lists smarter. You can create a tag to track almost any type of subscriber action. For example, you can tag everyone who clicked a certain link or who downloaded a certain eBook. You can then use the segment builder to combine tags into a list or to communicate only to a certain subset of tagged subscribers (i.e., all subscribers who clicked a certain link but are not in your newsletter list).

Mailchimp follows a similar approach to segmentation. You select conditions from a dropdown menu to filter contacts based on the data you have about your audience. Each segment can include up to five conditions (ConvertKit, on the other hand, does not appear to limit the number of filters you can have in a segment).

Photo credit: Mailchimp

There are many options for segmentation, but again, it depends on how much data you store in Mailchimp (if you have connected an eCommerce store in Mailchimp, for example, you'll have purchase information for all customers).

Mailchimp also offers advanced tools to increase the segmenting options. You can use Social Profiles to segment contacts based on the sites they visit and the social networks they use. Or, Mailchimp Pro helps you organize large audiences with its Advanced Segmentation tool, allowing you to create segments that combine "any" and "all" logic in a single segment. Both of these tools cost extra, above and beyond any of the paid monthly plans, so they're not for everyone.

Automation

ConvertKit offers automated emails and workflows, but the overall experience is confusing. Mailchimp offers a more intuitive experience, but you need to upgrade to the paid plans to link multiple automated emails.

With ConvertKit, you can set up automated emails (called "Sequences"), but the process is a bit complicated. If you navigate to the "Sequences" tab, you'll see a dedicated editor to create a series of emails, with the ability to customize when you send each message (for example, you can configure an email to send X days after the last email). You can add as many emails as you want to this sequence.

Creating an automated email, or Sequence in ConvertKit.

There's also a filter icon that displays the same segmentation interface mentioned earlier, allowing you to add filters and build a list of recipients. In theory, this is all you need to do to automate emails in ConvertKit. But, there's another tab called Automation where you can trigger marketing activity based on subscriber behavior.

The automation feature is more robust than just email — it actually allows you to automate workflows. You can automate and trigger activities after subscribers make a purchase, fill out a form, or are added to a tag (for example, automating webinar registration emails once someone signs up).

The confusing part is that you can add an email sequence to this automation workflow. For example, to set up an automation, you would first select the trigger (like filling out a form). You then choose what happens once that form is filled out, with one of the options being to add those people to an email sequence (the same sequence you created in the Sequence tab). It's not clear why there are two places to configure automated emails (Sequences and Automation tabs) nor is it clear when you would create a standalone Sequence and when you would add it to an automation.

Creating automated emails in Mailchimp is simple and more straightforward thanks to many pre-built automation types. If you want to create your own automated emails, Mailchimp walks you through the steps in an easy-to-follow workflow editor.

In the email creation workflow, you simply toggle to the Automated tab where Mailchimp presents different automation types based on tags, subscriber activity, eCommerce activity, or APIs. For example, you could set up automated emails to welcome new subscribers or say happy birthday to your customers.

You can also set up your own automated email type, adding triggers like previous email not opened or purchased a product. You can then specify on what day and what time the email should be sent. If you have a standard or premium paid plan, you can create your own automation series, linking together multiple automated emails based on different triggers.

Forms and landing pages

ConvertKit offers a quick, simple process to create forms and landing pages. On the other hand, Mailchimp offers fewer landing page templates, and its forms are confusing.

ConvertKit gives you a variety of ways to create forms and landing pages: you can host landing pages in ConvertKit or your own domain with WordPress, and you can embed forms on your website, or on a landing page you host yourself.

Editing a template in ConvertKit.

Creating a form is simple. You choose the display format (inline, modal, or slide-in), select a template, and customize the copy, font, colors, fields, success message, and button. You can then copy the embed code in Javascript or HTML, get a shareable link, or embed using WordPress or Unbounce.

To place a ConvertKit form on a landing page, you would follow similar steps to create a landing page (all landing pages come pre-made with a form). You can choose from 24 pre-built templates, with the ability to customize the imagery, copy, form field font, colors, and more. ConvertKit automatically hosts the page for you, giving you a shareable link. You also have the option to host the landing page on your site using ConvertKit's WordPress plugin.

Compared to ConvertKit, Mailchimp's form creation process is clunky. For example, if you want to create an embedded form, you click Embedded forms in the form creation process which takes you to a page with the code to paste it on your site. However, to edit this embeddable form, you need to go to the form builder, which is on another page.

Pop-up forms, on the other hand, have yet another separate editing interface where you can customize the design and form fields and generate the code. All these separate form editing screens make the experience very confusing.

Editing a template in Mailchimp.

The landing page process is less complicated. You can choose from eight landing page templates and then further customize the page in the drag-and-drop editor (which looks exactly like the email drag-and-drop editor). If you choose a layout template that comes with a form, you can edit the form and form fields directly in the landing page editor.

Reporting

ConvertKit's reporting is spread out between each type of marketing asset (email, landing page, etc.), whereas Mailchimp offers a dedicated tab to house all data.*

With ConvertKit, it's not immediately clear where to go to view campaign metrics. The Subscribers tab shows you a graph over time based on net-new subscribers or total subscribers, with a row underneath that aggregates lifetime totals of subscribers, average open rate, average click-through rate, and emails sent.

To dig deeper into specific metrics for email or landing pages, you have to navigate to the corresponding tabs. For example, to see email metrics, you'd click the Broadcasts tab and either see an overview of each email's metrics or click into each email to display the in-depth metrics (like A/B test results). To analyze reports for automated emails, you need to go into the Sequences tab.

A report for an email in ConvertKit.

Similarly, to see landing page or form metrics, you need to navigate to yet another tab where you'll see another graph for form and landing page sign-ups over time, with an overview of individual landing page results underneath.

Mailchimp's reporting is more streamlined, with four distinct reports all living in the Reports tab. At the campaign-level, you can see basic metrics like open rate, subscribers with the most opens, click-through rate, top links clicked, bounces, and unsubscribes. You can also see how your metrics compare to industry averages, which provides helpful benchmarking data. If you connect an eCommerce store to Mailchimp, your report will also show the number of orders, average order revenue, and total revenue generated from the email.

A report for an email in Mailchimp. Photo credit: Mailchimp.

If you have a premium account, you can access comparative reports which let you compile data from different emails into a single, shareable report. This lets you identify patterns in subscriber engagement, and improve and target your campaign content.

When you create landing pages in Mailchimp, there's another dedicated report that shows views, clicks, sign-ups, orders, conversion rate, and revenue.

ConvertKit vs Mailchimp: Which App Should You Use?

ConvertKit and Mailchimp both offer powerful email marketing features, especially for small businesses.

If you want a simple way to create, send, and automate emails at no cost, Mailchimp is the clear winner. Mailchimp's free plan lets you store up to 2,000 contacts and access one-click automations and basic templates.

If you need to store more contacts and choose to go with one of Mailchimp's paid plans, Mailchimp would still come out on top in terms of pure email marketing features (it's hard to beat the drag-and-drop editor).

ConvertKit does not offer a free plan, and its paid plans are more expensive than Mailchimp's. However, ConvertKit's landing page and form features are superior. So, if you're really focused on lead generation and want to customize your own landing pages with the added benefit of email, ConvertKit would be a solid choice.

Finally, here's an at-a-glance feature comparison:

	ConvertKit	Mailchimp
Pricing	$29/mo for up to 1,000 subscribers. Pricing increases with number of subscribers.	Free version with limits. Standard version, recommended for small businesses, starts at $14.99/mo.
User interface	Confusing interface with a unique vocabulary that adds to a steeper learning curve.	Confusing navigation across marketing channels, but drag-and-drop editor is superior.
Email creation	Basic email creation in WYSIWYG editor.	Robust drag-and-drop editor.
A/B testing	Can only test subject lines.	Not available in free plan, but with paid plans, can test subject line, “from” name, content, and send time.
Segmentation	Out-of-the-box segmentation is intuitive and powerful.	Extra, paid features boost standard offerings.
Automation	Offers automated emails and workflows, but confusing experience.	More intuitive experience, but you need to upgrade to a paid plan to link multiple automated emails.
Forms and landing pages	Quick, simple process with many templates.	Fewer landing page templates and forms are not intuitive.
Reporting	Reports spread across each type of marketing asset.	Dedicated tab to house all data.

Automate ConvertKit and Mailchimp with Zapier

Whichever email marketing solution you choose, you can save yourself hours each week automating the process. Zapier's workflow automations, called Zaps, can add subscribers to ConvertKit or Mailchimp from the other apps you use.

Here are some examples to get you started:

Having trouble getting your subscribers into your email marketing app? Try these integrations designed to move contacts from one place to another.
Need to connect customers with your email marketing?

Want to make sure your CRM is updated with new subscribers? Zapier will automate that for you.

Don't see the workflow you're looking for? Browse more Mailchimp and ConvertKit integrations, or create your own workflow with the Zap editor.

Why Social Listening Matters for Growing Your Business

aleh@link-assistant.com (Aleh Barysevich) — Mon, 26 Aug 2019 06:00:00 +0000

You track mentions of your brand on social media and respond within a few minutes each time. Whether someone poses a question, files a complaint, or shouts out a feature they like so much that they tell you about it right there on Twitter, you're always sure to connect with your customers. That's awesome—but it's only a tiny piece of the social listening puzzle.

The notifications you get via direct mentions is a small percentage of the overall talk that's happening about your brand online. In many cases, people don't use @ when talking about a brand: Maybe they forget to, or maybe they don't know that you're on that social platform (or maybe they just misspell it). Other times, people are writing posts that aren't directed at you but would still make sense for you to engage with.

Basically, people are talking behind your back.

Social listening tools solve a lot of these missed opportunities by monitoring not just your brand name, but also your marketing campaigns, products, niche industry, CEO, or any other keyword you decide is relevant. Plus, social media listening apps cover not only the social platforms your brand is present on, but also other social media platforms, news, blogs, forums—basically the entire internet. You'll also get analytics that show your brand's growth, its potential, and its reputation at a glance.

Before you decide to invest in a social listening platform, see if any of the scenarios and examples below resonate with you.

1. Improve your customer service

As a small business, customer service is everything: It's a way to gain customer trust, learn about your audience, and show your personality.

Social media is your most promising customer service channel. It lets people talk to you from where they already spend their time—without waiting for someone on the other end of the line to pick up. But that also means they expect a quick response.

That's where social listening comes in. Social listening tools find all complaints and questions and thank-you-you're-a-lifesavers in real-time. With some tools, you can even reply to these customers directly from the social listening app. Even if you don't have an immediate solution to their problem, you can at least show them that you're listening.

Here's an example of a brand doing it right:

And then there are others.

Yep, our buddies Ben and Jerry didn't even respond. Which brings me to the next point.

2. Prevent a social media crisis

A lot of brand crises start on social media. It's easier over there: Information travels fast, and people feel a little more anonymous. If you don't address complaints quickly, things can spiral. All you need is a couple of vocal social media users.

Let's talk about Uber. In January 2017, when Donald Trump announced a travel ban on some Muslim-majority countries, the New York Taxi Workers Alliance supported protests by avoiding John F. Kennedy International Airport for one hour. Meanwhile, Uber took advantage of the taxi shortage: They lifted surge pricing during the protests and posted about it on Twitter.

The event resulted in a full-blown social outrage and thousands of users deleting the app.

Unless they were trying to make a political statement (they weren't), Uber should have monitored the popularity of the protest on social media to see that leaning in the other direction might lead to controversy. It would have also shown them the peak in popularity of their local competitors, New York City taxi drivers. Finally, social listening would have signaled that the idea didn't go as planned, showing a sudden spike in negative mentions after the post. Uber would have had the chance to turn the situation around before it exploded.

You may not be Uber, but the possibility of a social media crisis is just as risky for a very small business. If you lose trust from your loyal customers, it could be devastating.

A social listening app tracks mentions and then sorts them into positive, negative, and neutral, allowing you to see if and how sentiments are changing (it's known as sentiment analysis). If you see a number of negative mentions suddenly growing, it's a clear sign that something is going on, and you can review the negative mentions one by one. As an added bonus, sentiment analysis lets you see how your brand reputation changes over time and in reaction to things like campaigns, news, and product launches.

3. Get ideas for new products and services

To be sure you're offering what people want, you need feedback. You can get that feedback via surveys or direct outreach, but even if people take the time to respond, you're only getting a slice of the pie. You don't want to know only what people think about your product or service—you want to know what they think about your industry. What's missing that you can offer them?

I don't need to remind you that people freely voice their opinion on social media. And, unlike with the surveys, their opinions aren't biased by the questions asked.

When using a social listening tool, you'll want to monitor not just your own brand but also the broader category. Say you run The Fedora Emporium. You're not just monitoring for your store name: You're also looking for fedoras, hats, headwear, and other industry buzzwords (apologies to the fedora industry for likely misrepresenting their industry buzzwords). This will help you hone in on what people generally want from your type of product or service.

You can also monitor competitors' brand names. That way you can see what their products are lacking—i.e., what people are griping about to them—and what people like most about them—i.e., praise they get. From there, you can swoop in as a solution for people with complaints and emulate the best parts of your competitors. Pro tip: Choose competitors that are bigger than you as they'll have more buzz online with more data that can prove more insightful.

4. Find new customers or clients

Lead generation is a pain point for any small business. And while paid advertising can help, it's not always cost-effective. Social listening apps provide you with a different lead gen method: social selling.

Your social listening tool can pinpoint people who are looking for a product or service like yours and people who are unhappy with your competitors' products. What's social media for if not complaining and looking for recommendations?

To be able to find qualified leads, you'll want a social listening tool with Boolean search. There, you'll write search queries that describe what you're selling, plus phrases that people are likely to use when searching for it on social media. For example: "can anyone recommend"/ "looking for"/ "searching for"/ "advice on"/ "does anyone know" + "fedora". You can also set up searches to find users that are unhappy with your competitor's product, for example: "Hat Trick Co. alternative." Your feed will be populated with leads that you can reach out to directly.

This is the kind of interaction that should happen a lot more often on social media:

You can even take it one step further. For example, Hilton finds prospects by monitoring queries such as "Where should I go on vacation?". While not a direct connection, you can see how people searching that might be interested in Hilton's service—and if the hotel chain's social media managers nail the interaction, they might nab a new lead.

If you go this route, you might even offer a discount or other incentive in addition to commenting with the link to what you're selling.

5. Find influencers who want to promote your brand

Influencer marketing doesn't have to break the bank. As a small business, you'll likely be working with micro-influencers anyway, not social media stars with millions of followers. And working with micro-influencers is not only cheaper, but it can also be more effective: They usually have a specific audience that's likely to listen more closely to what they have to say and trust them more.

Social listening tools let you find social media influencers and brand advocates by identifying people who've talked about your brand a lot. You can also find people who talk about your industry more broadly. From there, you can build a relationship: engage with them, share their content, comment on their posts. And when the time is right, you can reach out and see if they're up for some collaboration.

6. Perform competitive analysis

Competitive analysis is complicated, and I'm definitely not claiming that one handy tool can take care of it all for you. But social listening tools can be an integral part of your process.

First, these tools measure your and your competitors' share of voice on social media. That means you get a social media-focused look at the market share of each of your competitors.

Image of share of voice report on Awario

Monitoring your competitors also lets you see whether their marketing campaigns and product launches were successful, if people are responding well to their customer service, and how their engagement level is. And the list goes on: You'll be able to see where people talk about your competitors, where they come from, and which forums bring up the most conversations about your competitors. You can even compare the sentiment data of your and competitors' brands.

At first blush, social listening tools might seem like a single-focus tool. But they're for way more than social media monitoring. They help you do everything from improving your customer service to performing full-blown market research.

Of course, the growth isn't handed to you on a silver platter. Using the tool is the first step, but you need to engage—and engage well—with your audience based on what the social listening tool tells you about your brand, your products, and your industry.

The 10 Best CMS Platforms for 2019

meltingpoint@gmail.com (Tim Brookes) — Fri, 23 Aug 2019 18:56:26 +0000

A content management system (CMS) is web-based software that allows you to build content-oriented websites, like blogs, eCommerce websites, or portfolios.

A CMS is a must-have if you're regularly adding content to your website. It allows you to maintain whole websites without having to understand the technologies that power it.

We've taken a look at more than 30 of the most popular CMS platforms to find the best.

Which is the best CMS for websites?

The goal of any web CMS is to present content to a website audience. Most CMSes have a back end (admin-facing) and a front end (user-facing). The back end is where you add and manage content, adjust the website's appearance, and expand functionality. The front end is what your audience sees when they visit the site.

Some CMSes, called a "headless" CMS, forgo the front end in favor of providing an API that feeds content into an existing website. These require considerably more expertise to set up since you often need to build your front end.

For our roundup, we focused largely on traditional CMS platforms in the pursuit of user-friendliness. All the platforms we evaluated allow you to create, publish, and manage text, photos, and videos, and embed other content or features.

Other important factors we considered:

User management
Expandable feature sets and plugins
Themes

There are hundreds of different CMS platforms available across the web, and many of them provide very similar functionality. This roundup favors user-friendly platforms that are within the reach of the average web user. Our selections are based on the unique appeal of each platform.

The 10 Best CMS Platforms

WordPress.org for expandability and user-friendliness
WordPress.com for a WordPress.org alternative
Drupal for high-traffic websites
Ghost for bloggers
ButterCMS for getting a headless CMS ready in minutes
Grav for small websites that need a lightweight, flat-file platform
Webflow for building a website with an integrated CMS
Squarespace for quickly building a website with an integrated CMS
PageKit for modularity
Textpattern for flexibility

WordPress.org

Best user-friendly and expandable CMS

WordPress is the most popular CMS by quite a margin, with about one-third of all websites powered by WordPress. WordPress.org is the free and open-source variant, and it rose to prominence thanks to its famously simple installation process.

WordPress.org has an easy-to-use back end, and a clear post creation process.

WordPress is the simplest CMS out there. Having so many users has resulted in a vast number of plugins and themes, both premium and free. Both plugins and themes can be browsed, tested, and installed from within the admin area. The back end makes managing content incredibly simple, with support for static pages and blog posts out of the box.

But WordPress isn't just for blogging. It can be adapted into just about any type of website, from eCommerce solutions using plugins like WooCommerce to a message board using plugins like bbPress. Due to the immense popularity of WordPress, it is doubly important to keep the software up to date and safe from would-be hackers.

Over the years, WordPress has added more and more features. For that reason, it's not necessarily the lightest CMS you'll ever use, but it's still one of the best.

WordPress.org Price: Free

Automate WordPress with WordPress' Zapier integrations, and automatically send new posts to Facebook or push Instagram posts to your site.

WordPress.com

Best alternative to WordPress.org

If you like the look of WordPress but don't know where to begin, WordPress.com might be worth a shot. This is the commercial arm of the WordPress project, providing users with pre-hosted WordPress blogs that function much in the same way as the self-hosted version. Unlike the self-hosted version, however, WordPress.com locks some functionality behind a paywall.

The WordPress.com CMS has a user-friendly back end, but locks some functions behind a paywall.

You can sign up and blog for free, but you'll need to take on a subscription if you want to do basic things like add a custom domain name, heavily customize your design, or monetize your site. To install plugins and themes or remove WordPress.com branding, you'll need a Business subscription.

Multiple-user support is possible by inviting other WordPress.com users to your team. There are dozens of free themes available, or you can upgrade to Premium and pick from unlimited premium themes. No technical knowledge is required at all, and users on the Personal plan and above get technical support over email.

It's an ease of use not found in the free version, provided you're willing to pay for it. If you later decide that you're ready to go self-hosted, you can choose to migrate your website to your own servers. WordPress gives you the tools you need to do this, or you can pay a fee and have them help you through it.

WordPress.com Price: Free plan available. Personal plan costs $5/month, Business plan costs $25/month (all billed annually).

Automate WordPress with WordPress' Zapier integrations, and automatically send new posts to Twitter or push LinkedIn posts to your site.

Drupal

Best CMS for high-traffic websites

Drupal is one of the leading competitors to WordPress, though it's often used in different applications. It's free and open-source, which means you'll need to host it yourself on an Apache server running PHP, connected to a database.

Drupal's CMS platform is best suited for organizations with developers who can manage the system.

Drupal is primarily used by developers to build enterprise-level digital experiences, particularly for high-traffic websites. The Enterprise CMS release of Drupal specifically caters to these needs, providing everything in the core Drupal package alongside ready-made modules for multi-site setups, content moderation workflows, plus document and asset management capabilities.

Drupal uses "blocks" to add content to your front end and "modules" to add more features to your site. Taking a barebones approach to development allows you to add only the features you need, rather than including features that you won't use that can slow your site down (WordPress is guilty of this).

There are over 40,000 modules to choose from, and the number of applications is vast. Add modules to improve URL routing, install a new WYSIWYG editor, view analytics from the back end, and much more. Over 2,500 available themes remove the need to code, or design your own using a theme framework like Bootstrap.

Remember that Drupal is a complex tool with a steep learning curve. If you're a developer who knows what you're doing, or you have a team of developers at your command, Drupal can be made into something amazing. For small blogs and personal projects, it might be overkill.

Drupal Price: Free.

Automate Drupal with Drupal's Zapier integrations, and create Facebook Pages posts for new content in Drupal or post to Drupal from a selected view in Airtable.

Ghost

Best CMS for bloggers

Ghost was founded in 2013 on the back of a successful Kickstarter campaign, which makes it one of the newest CMS platforms around today. You can download and install Ghost on your own server if it meets the requirements, or you can pay for a Ghost(Pro) subscription and save yourself the time and hassle.

With Ghost, you'll find a simple and clean back end to your CMS.

Written in JavaScript, Ghost is a highly responsive and clean-looking publishing platform. It's easy to customize just about every aspect of your website in the back end, with a modern theme gallery built right in. The UI is clean and responsive, and you access all the important things in a single click, from posts to static pages, tags for organizing content, and fellow contributors who will be using your site.

Ghost uses "integrations" to refer to what other CMSes call plugins or extensions. These allow you to connect other products like Zapier, Slack, Disqus, or Google's Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) in a few clicks. Despite Ghost's somewhat limited appeal primarily as a publishing platform, this lets you vastly expand the possibilities using integrations with services like Shopify (eCommerce), Intercom (customer support), and Mailchimp (newsletters).

The self-hosted version of Ghost is much more difficult to set up than a tool like WordPress. It's much easier to opt for Ghost(Pro), though be aware of the limitations. The basic package offers 100,000 views per month for up to two users, which may be limiting in scope for your project.

Ghost Price: Free 14-day trial available. Ghost(Pro) Basic starts at $36/month (or $29/month billed annually). Self-hosted version is open source and free to download.

Automate Ghost with Ghost's Zapier integrations, and see how you can automatically add new Ghost subscribers to your customer relationship management (CRM) system or create short URLs for new stories on your site.

ButterCMS

Best headless CMS that's ready in minutes

ButterCMS is a headless CMS, which means it has no front end. Its core aim is to simplify the process of adding a CMS or blogging engine to your existing website. That means you'll have to build your website from scratch or have someone help you do it. The CMS then sends your content out to your site.

Deploying ButterCMS requires a few lines of code that can be written in Ruby, JavaScript, PHP, C#, and other languages.

ButterCMS gives you a headless CMS, letting you add content to an existing website.

You can use ButterCMS to manage a whole library of content of any type, or just as a blogging engine for an instant SEO-optimized, branded blog. The system supports posts, static pages, and content collections that can be customized to your needs. There's also a robust media library for making images, audio files, PDFs, and other downloadables available to your audience.

As a full-fat CMS, Butter provides a wealth of advanced features including custom page types, a content delivery network (CDN) for assets, localization support, a testing environment, webhooks, and support for multiple sites. It's not "expandable" in the same sense as WordPress or Drupal, but it already comes with many of the features that users would turn to extensions for.

Despite the obvious technical skill required to build a front end, ButterCMS has one of the simplest back ends of any headless platform. It's aimed at users who value the flexibility of a CMS or blog engine who don't want the hassle of setting up and maintaining a CMS themselves.

ButterCMS Price: 30-day free trial available. Basic Blog plan starts at $49/month ($40/month billed annually).

Grav

Best lightweight, flat-file CMS for small websites

Grav is a lightweight CMS that uses a flat-file architecture. That means you don't need a separate MySQL or similar database to use Grav. Everything is stored in one single file on your server. This makes Grav one of the easiest CMS platforms to install and set up since you only need to unzip and go. It also vastly simplifies the process of backing up your CMS.

Grav stores everything as a single file, making it incredibly lightweight.

Due to its flat-file nature, Grav is best suited to smaller projects. Flat-file databases can become unwieldy and inefficient when handling large amounts of data. Grav is so lightweight that even its back end admin control panel is optional. The developers designed the admin panel to be intentionally limited so as to not overwhelm less technical users. It's a user-friendly way of interacting with Grav, but developers and power users will still want to get more hands on with the code. The CMS makes use of smart caching to achieve a high level of performance, though this also depends on the hardware in your server.

Grav comes with a media library that natively supports most image, video, and audio formats out of the box. An image processor that runs within Grav makes resizing, cropping, resampling, and adding effects and filters to your images easy. There's an extensive plugin gallery at the heart of the CMS, and a well-populated theme gallery.

In addition to being easy to deploy, Grav is also a joy to use thanks to its accessible approach to back end UI and content management.

Grav Price: Free.

Webflow

Best website builder with an integrated CMS platform

Want to design your website with integrated CMS but don't know how? Webflow is one tool that will guide you through the entire process. Start with a template or a blank canvas, and build your website using the visual editor. Select website elements from the sidebar, then drop them into your design.

Webflow is a website builder that includes a CMS.

One of those elements is the CMS. Using the tools available, it's easy to design your CMS around the content you need to be displayed. Define custom fields yourself, or pick a template to get you started. You can even create some dummy content to test out your CMS before populating it with real content. At any time, you can hit the Preview button at the top of the screen to test out your site.

You can invite collaborators to feed content into your CMS without providing them access to the site designer. There's no unified media library, but it's easy to add images while designing your site or crafting content. It's all very easy to use, but there's an element of hidden depth here that developers will love, like access to the Webflow API and the ability to create custom code blocks.

It's even possible to edit content directly on the live site, provided you're logged in. Webflow also integrates with other services like Zapier, Mailchimp, and Typeform for expanded functionality.

Webflow Price: Free plan available (cannot publish websites live). Lite plan starts at $20/month ($16/month billed annually).

Automate Webflow with Webflow's Zapier integrations, and automatically send alerts to Slack when a form is filled out on your site or publish a post to your Webflow CMS when a new row is added to a spreadsheet.

Squarespace

Best CMS for building a website quickly

If your main goal is to get a website with integrated CMS online as fast as possible, try Squarespace. Another all-in-one package, Squarespace expedites the process of building your website with its rich library of customizable templates. You can choose your template based on the type of website you're building, including options for eCommerce, business, a professional portfolio, a community site, or a basic blog.

The Squarespace platform allows you to quickly build a website, and its integrated CMS makes it easy to add content.

You can adapt these themes to your tastes by changing the layout, coloring, branding, and more. You can even add custom CSS if you need to make more drastic changes. Despite its reputation as an instant website builder, Squarespace works as a CMS platform. It has multiple user support with a robust permission system, allowing you to review content from contributors before it goes live rather than sharing credentials.

Squarespace is also the only CMS on this list capable of adding content from native mobile apps for iOS and Android. It also integrates with Unsplash to provide an instant library of images to use however you like. There's no local media library to speak of, and you can't host videos, but you can embed them from sites like YouTube.

If you're going to go for Squarespace, be aware that the basic Personal plan includes limited blogging features. You'll need to opt for the Business plan for more advanced CMS applications, like an eCommerce website.

Squarespace Price: Free 14-day trial available. Personal plan starts at $16/month ($12/month billed annually).

Automate Squarespace with Squarespace's Zapier integrations, and automatically get Slack channel notifications or create Trello cards from Squarespace form responses.

PageKit

Best CMS for modularity

PageKit has the look and feel of a premium product while being completely free and open source. It's probably the most pleasant CMS to use in this entire roundup, and it's thanks to sharp responsive design that permeates both the back end and front end. Being a free project, PageKit requires you host it on your own Apache server running PHP, with a MySQL database.

The PageKit dashboard highlights analytics about your website.

After the initial setup, you'll see a clean and tidy dashboard that displays widgets of your choosing, like analytics or recently published content. There's a media library for uploading and organizing images and video files, with a file and folder structure to manipulate as you see fit. You access the file manager while crafting content in the responsive WYSIWYG editor.

PageKit has a marketplace built right into it, offering free and premium extensions and themes. You can expand PageKit's abilities with extensions like form builders, analytics tools, and galleries. There are around 30 themes to choose from, most of which are free to download and use.

This has to be one of the most considerate CMS platforms to date. It's much cleaner than WordPress, while still offering enough flexibility to serve a range of content needs. PageKit includes a split Markdown and HTML editor, with a real-time preview, and syntax highlighting. You can collaborate with other users thanks to a robust permission system, so users only see what they need to. It's a CMS without the usual clutter.

PageKit Price: Free.

Textpattern

Best CMS for flexibility

Textpattern can be used to create a broad range of websites, portfolios, business websites, product showcases, and blogs. It's not particularly suited to eCommerce out of the box, but there are around 1,000 mods, plugins, and templates available that vastly expand what Textpattern can do. Since Textpattern is a free download, you'll need to host it on your own Apache server running PHP with a MySQL database.

The Textpattern back end is easy to navigate, with clear sections to accomplish different functions.

One of the best aspects of Textpattern is its no-nonsense back end. Everything is separated into appropriate and easy to understand sections: Content for creating and organizing; Presentation for defining how your content is displayed on the front end; and Admin for changing preferences, adding plugins, and managing users. It's a breath of fresh air compared to something like WordPress.

Upload media to the media manager for use in your blog posts and other content. There's also a file manager for handling downloads. Unfortunately, there's currently no way to easily browse themes, but a dedicated Textpattern theme website is coming soon which should make finding and applying themes fairly straightforward.

For more adventurous projects, Textpattern provides complete control over all aspects of HTML and CSS. It's also multi-site ready out of the box and comes with robust templating options for displaying your content however you like—provided you know what you're doing.

Things You Should Know About CMS Platforms

All the platforms we included allow you to set roles or privileges that define what each user can do. This means if you're running a blog, you can set appropriate privileges to stop contributors from publishing content directly. You can then assign editors permission to review the work of others and publish content live on your site.

Most CMSes are modular, which means you can add more features to your CMS by adding more modules. Expandability is an important feature in a CMS if you want to add features that aren't present in the core package. These often take the form of plugins that allow you to make large changes like adding an online store to your site, or small changes like installing a new WYSIWYG editor.

Themes also fall under the realm of expandability. While many users prefer to make their own themes, others lack the technical expertise to do so. Ready-to-download themes allow you to instantly change the look and feel of your site without having to learn to code. The more popular a CMS is, the more themes and plugins are likely to be available.

Since a CMS is web software, some expertise is required for the initial setup. Usually, this is little more than checking you meet the minimum server requirements, configuring a database, and running an install script. For the ones included in our roundup, no webmaster or special expertise should be required to use or maintain the CMS.

Hosting your own CMS provides the most freedom, but it also means you'll have to do most of the work yourself. You also have hosting and domain costs, and you'll have to solve any issues that arise on your own. If you go for a remotely-hosted premium route, you forego much of the hassle, but you lose out on the added freedom that self-hosting provides.

Ultimately the right CMS depends on the content you're presenting and your level of skill. The best advice is to work out what you want to achieve, then match the tool to your skillset. And if automation is important to you, check out the ones that already work with Zapier.

How to Link Instagram to Twitter and Tweet All Your Photos

justin.pot@zapier.com (Justin Pot) — Wed, 21 Aug 2019 21:27:58 +0000

You put great pictures on Instagram. Everyone's noticed…except for your Twitter followers. Why aren't you sharing your photos on Twitter?

If the only thing stopping you is the extra work of uploading photos a second time, don't worry: You can link Instagram to Twitter, so photos tweet automatically. There are two main ways to do this.

The first, provided by Instagram, is easy to set up and allows you to decide whether or not to push an image to Twitter as you post to Instagram. The downside: the actual photo doesn't show up on Twitter. Instead, followers will see a link to the photo on Instagram. (If you remember this working differently at some point, you're right: before 2014 Instagram would push the images to Twitter.)

Happily, there's another method: You can link Instagram to Twitter using Zapier. It's a little more work to set up, but you only have to do so once for all of your Instagram photos to actually show up on Twitter.

Let's go over both methods, so you can choose the one that's right for you.

How to Link Instagram to Twitter and Automatically Tweet Links to Photos

If you want to tweet links to your Instagram photos, so that Twitter followers have to click through to Instagram in order to see your photos, you can do that from inside the Instagram app. To get started head to your profile, then tap the menu button in the top-right corner. Open Settings > Account.

Head to Linked Accounts > Twitter and you can log into your Twitter account.

You can now tweet photos while uploading them to Instagram by turning on the Twitter switch before posting.

Like we said before, this will only tweet a link to your photo on Instagram—the photo itself will not show up. If you want people to click through to Instagram and potentially follow you there, this might be a good thing. The downside, of course, is people are less likely to notice your post in the first place.

How to Link Instagram to Twitter using Zapier and Automatically Tweet Photos

Want your Twitter followers to actually see your Instagram photo as they scroll through their timelines? Instagram doesn't offer that functionality, but we do. You can connect Instagram to Twitter using Zapier to automatically tweet all of your Instagram photos going forward. Us this guided setup to get started:

You will be asked to create a Zapier account if you haven't already. Next, you will sign into your Instagram and Twitter accounts, and then decide precisely how your tweet should look.

You can decide whether to include the link to Instagram or not, for example, or add some custom text explaining that the photo is from your Instagram account. It's entirely up to you.

Follow all the steps, including sending a test tweet to your account. Eventually you'll be asked to turn on your Zap, so make sure you do that.

From now on your Instagram photos will automatically also show up on Twitter.

Connect Instagram to Other Apps

Want your Instagram photos to show up on other social networks? Here are a few tools for setting up exactly that.

Check out our Instagram integrations for more, and to learn how to make your own.

Use These 33 Google Search Tricks to Find Exactly What You're Looking For

melanie.pinola@zapier.com (Melanie Pinola) — Tue, 20 Aug 2019 06:00:00 +0000

Google knows everything. Want the weather forecast? Ask Google. Need directions to a restaurant? Search Google. Have a weird rash or wonder why your dog won't stop eating grass? Google it. At your own risk.

In a fraction of a second, Google gives you links to hundreds of millions of answers to your questions—ranging from helpful to absurd. But if you've ever clicked through to the second or third page of search results, you know that basic Google searches will only get you so far. You need advanced Google search tricks to find exactly what you're looking for.

And since Google knows everything, it provides built-in tools to narrow down your search and give you the answers you want without even having to click through to another website. You just need to familiarize yourself with a few—or 33—Google Search tricks.

1. Perform Quick Calculations

Handheld calculators are for mathematicians. Type an equation in the browser address bar (omnibar), and Google will immediately show the result in the search suggestions.

You can also access calculators directly in Google's search results. Search for calculator, tip calculator, or mortgage calculator to get the calculator you need to appear at the top of the search results.

Google even has advanced calculators that can graph functions such as sin and cos—or solve geometry problems such as area of circle with radius of 4.

Would have made high school a lot easier.

2. Perform Quick Data Conversions

If you're trying to figure out the weather in another country or need to know how much flour to use when you don't have a small enough measuring spoon, Google has you covered. Search with this formula: [value of first unit] to [second unit].

Conversely, you can search for "unit converter" to populate a conversion calculator in Google's search results. Then, use the dropdown box to select the type of data you're converting.

Using Google's unit converter, you can convert:

Area (for example, square foot to square mile)
Data transfer rate (for example, kilobyte per second to gigabyte per second)
Digital storage (for example, megabyte to gigabyte)
Energy (for example, joule to kilocalorie)
Frequency (for example, hertz to kilohertz)
Fuel economy (for example, kilometer per liter to miles per gallon)
Length (for example, foot to yard)
Mass (for example, pound to ounce)
Plane angle (for example, degree to radian)
Pressure (for example, pascal to bar)
Speed (for example, miles per hour to kilometers per hour)
Temperature (for example, Fahrenheit to Celsius)
Time (for example, second to minute)
Volume (for example, tablespoon to fluid ounce)

3. Perform Quick Currency Conversions

If you need to convert currency, you can do that in both the omnibar and search results, too. To perform the calculation in the omnibar, use this formula: [value of first unit] to [second unit].

Or type "currency converter" to populate a converter in the search results that lists dozens of convertible currencies.

You can even use the tool to convert a few cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Etherium, and Litecoin. Assuming you know what those are.

4. Plan Upcoming Vacations and Business Trips

Search for [city] to [city] to see the cost of flights from multiple airlines:

Scroll down the page a little further to see the distance between the two locations and estimated times for the commute if you're driving, taking a bus, walking, or riding a bike.

If there's an ocean between where you are and where you want to go, the distance and directions map won't appear. But if you need to know the distance, add the word "distance" to your query (e.g., "New York to London distance") to get the distance in miles (or kilometers, based on your settings) between the two locations.

Another helpful Google Search trick for travel is searching for hotels [city] to find hotels and prices:

And you can see what events are happening in a city you're traveling to in the next few days, next week, or next month by searching for [city] events.

5. See What Time It Is Anywhere in the World

You can search for time in [city] to see what time it is in another city right now, or you can search for [city] to [city] time to see the time difference between where you live and somewhere else.

6. Get Customer Support Information

Search for a company's name plus customer service to get the company's customer service phone number.

7. Get Word Definitions and Etymologies

Add define before a word or phrase to get a definition of it, or add etymology before a word to see its origins (except for etymology define, which gives you the definition of etymology).

8. Translate Words to Other Languages

And add in [language] after a foreign language word to have Google translate that word into a language you understand.

9. Get Current Stock Prices

Enter a stock symbol—such as APPL—into Google to get the current stock price and other financial details.

10. Find Out When the Sun Will Rise and Set

Get the time the sun will rise or set in your area by entering sunrise or sunset. You can also add a city name to your search to get the sunrise and sunset times for a different city.

11. Set a Timer or Stopwatch

Enter stopwatch to use a stopwatch in Google Search, or search for set timer for [amount of time] to automatically start a timer.

12. Find Your IP Address

If you don't know what your IP address is, search for IP address, and Google will reveal your public IP address.

13. Find Your Android Phone

If you can't find your Android phone, enter find my phone to locate it on a map or make it ring. If you believe it's been lost or stolen, you can also secure your device or erase all content from it.

14. See the Dates of Upcoming Holidays

Not sure when Thanksgiving falls this year? Enter the holiday name plus the year to find out its date.

15. Get the Current Weather or See a Weather Forecast

Type weather to see the current temperature in the omnibar and the weather forecast for the week in the search results. If you want to see the weather forecast for an area you're not currently located in, type weather [location].

16. Get an Update on a Flight Status

You can find out the status of a flight by searching for the flight number. Bonus: If anyone's emailed you about the flight, it'll populate with that information too.

17. Drag and Drop a URL to Open it in a New Tab

If you want to open a webpage you're currently viewing in another tab, highlight the URL and then drag and drop it to a tab position to duplicate the page in a new tab—no cutting and pasting required.

18. Filter Search Results by Type of Information

At the top of every Google Search results page, you'll find tabs to refine your search by category: All, Images, Videos, News, Books, and, under More, Maps, Shopping, Flights, and Finance.

So when searching for cat gifs, for example, I can head to the Images tab to view cat GIFs, or I could go to the Videos tab to watch cat videos. Sadly, there are no cat GIF-related flights.

19. Narrow Down Search Results by Publish Date

Just below the search bar on the default Google Search results page, you'll see a tab titled Tools. If you click the Tools tab, the navigation bar will expand to display two additional dropdown features: Any time and All results.

Using the Any time tab, you can filter results by when the content was published or updated.

For example, if I check for cat GIFs every day, the Past 24 hours filter will help me find only the newest cat GIFs. If I'm looking for recent research studies, I might apply the Past year filter. And if I'm looking for something very specific and know when it was published, I can use the Custom range filter to find content published within a specified timeframe.

20. Narrow Down Image Results by Image Type

If you're using Google Image Search to find images, the Tools tab lets you filter the results by size, color, usage rights, type (face, photo, clip art, line drawing, or animated), and time (date published). You can also click More > Show sizes to have image sizes listed below images.

If you need an image that's, for example, labeled for reuse and at least 800px wide, these filters can help narrow it down.

21. Narrow Down Video Results by Duration and Quality

You can use the Tools filters in Google Video Search to filter your results by video duration (short, medium, or long), publish date (Any time), quality (filter to show high-quality videos only), and source, as well as by whether or not videos are closed captioned (All videos).

Say you're looking for a video to embed on your blog, but everything you're finding is low-quality and really short. You want something that's high-quality and lengthy. These filters will help you find exactly what you're looking for.

22. View Cached Pages

Next to the URL of each search result, you'll see a dropdown arrow. Click on that to choose to load the cached version of that page—a snapshot of the page as it appeared the last time Google's robots visited that site.

This is useful when a site goes down and you still want to access some of its content.

You can also access the cached version of a page using the cache: search operator; add cache: in front of the URL you want to view, and Google will open the cached version of that page.

23. View Similar Pages

The dropdown next to the URL of any search result also sometimes (but not always) includes an option to find similar pages. Selecting Similar takes you to a list of related sites.

For example, if you select the Similar option on the search result for Mailchimp's homepage, Google will send you to a list of search results for tools like Mailchimp.

24. Only Show Results from a Specific Website

If you use the site: search operator, Google will only show you the results from a specific website. To use the site: search operator, type site:[website address], but don't include http://, https://, or www in the website address. Here's an example:

If you only include the website address in your search, Google will display every result it has indexed for that website. This is helpful if you own a website and want to make sure Google has indexed all of your pages (or if Google has indexed pages it shouldn't have).

But you can also add search terms to your query to look for certain information on that website. For example, if I'm writing a blog post for Zapier and want to link to another Zapier post about the best Kanban apps, I can use the site: search operator plus a search term to find only pages on Zapier that are about Kanban apps.

It's also really helpful when you can't find the information you're looking for on a specific website. Instead of clicking through multiple pages trying to find an answer, use the site: search operator and a relevant search term.

25. Create Shortcut Keys in Chrome for Searches You Conduct Frequently

If you find yourself searching for the same thing over and over again, you can create shortcut keys in Chrome to trigger that search with only a few keystrokes.

For example, I often use the site: operator to find content on the Zapier blog, so I have a shortcut key that lets me type a few letters ("ZSS") to trigger that specific search query:

To create shortcut keys in Google Chrome for your commonly used searches, click the three vertical dots at the top-right corner of Chrome, and select Settings.

Then click Search engine and select Manage search engines.

Then click the Add button that's to the right of Other search engines.

Under Search engine, give your shortcut a name. Under Keyword, enter the shortcut key you want to use to trigger that search. Under URL with % in place of query, enter the search query you want that shortcut to trigger. When you're finished, click the Add button.

Once you're finished, you can type your shortcut key into Chrome's omnibar and tap Enter/Return to populate the omnibar with your frequently used search.

26. Search Internationally

Normally when you search Google, results are customized to the country Google thinks you're in based on your IP address. If you're in India, for example, you'll be directed to Google.co.in instead of Google.com. If you'd like to get results for other countries, however, you can do that with a couple of tricks.

To use Google.com instead of your local version, visit google.com/ncr and bookmark it for future use. NCR stands for no country redirect.

Alternatively, if you're redirected from Google.com to another Google site, such as Google.co.in, click the "Use Google.com" link at the bottom right corner of the page to get the international version of Google.

Depending on where you are, you might also see an option to search local Google in English, which is handy when you're traveling to places where English isn't the primary language.

27. Search for Sites that Use Specific TLDs

You can also do a country-specific search using the site: search operator plus the TLD for that country. For example, if you want to look for naan recipes and get the information only from sites in India, the search would be naan recipes site:.in.

Here's a list of the TLDs for countries and regions around the world.

You can also use this Google Search trick to search other types of domains, such as government sites (.gov), education sites (.edu), and organization domains (.org).

28. Exclude Specific Sites/Words from Search Results

Following a hyphen - directly with a word is another Google Search operator, and this one tells Google to exclude whatever follows that hyphen from the search results.

For example, if you're looking for remote marketing jobs but don't want to see results from Upwork, you could search for remote marketing jobs -Upwork to tell Google not to show any results with the word "Upwork" in them.

29. Find Only Exact-Match Search Results

If you want to find results that use a very specific phrase, surround your search term in quotation marks to tell Google you only want to see results that use that exact phrase.

This is helpful on multiple occasions. Maybe you're trying to determine if something is plagiarized. Pick a unique sentence from the text in question and search for it in quotation marks to see if any exact matches show up in search results.

Or say you're trying to find the original source of a statistic you found on a website. Search for that statistic in quotation marks to find other sites citing that exact statistic.

More Google Search operators for narrowing down your search results

Here's a little cheat sheet for some of the most useful Google Search operators, including the ones we've already mentioned:

Operator	How to Use It	Examples
* (Asterisk)	Add the asterisk as a placeholder for an unknown word or fact	Find quotes that start with "Life is like a": Life is like a *
" (Quotation marks)	Look for an exact word or phrase by putting it in quotes	Find pages that talk about the book One Hundred Years of Solitude: "One Hundred Years of Solitude"
- (Hyphen)	Use a hyphen before a word or site to exclude it from your search results	Omit Wikipedia pages from search results: -site:wikipedia.org. Narrow results to the band R.E.M., not rapid eye movement: R.E.M. -sleep
.. (Two Periods)	Separate numbers with two periods without spaces to search for numbers within that range	Find phones that cost between $200 and $400: Android phone $200..$400. Find computer milestones that took place between 1950 and 2000: "computer milestones" 1950..2000
allintitle:	Use allintext:[search phrase] to find pages with all of those words in the title of the page	Show pages that have both "Apple" and "notebook" in the title: allintitle:Apple notebook
allintext:	Use allintext:[search phrase] to find pages with all of those words in the body of the page	Show pages that mention Roth, IRA, and investments in the body: allintext:Roth IRA investments
allinurl:	Use allinurl:[search phrase] to find pages with all of those words in the URL	Show pages that have both "Microsoft" and "Surface" in the URL: allinurl:Microsoft Surface
AROUND(n)	Add AROUND(n) between two search terms to find pages where those terms are written on the page in close proximity. The number you choose in place of n sets the maximum distance between the terms. This is useful for finding relationships between two search terms.	Find pages that mention Facebook and Microsoft in the same sentence or paragraph: Facebook AROUND(7) Microsoft
site:	Use site:[URL] to limit search results to a specific website	Find pages on Zapier that mention Trello: site:zapier.com trello
related:	Use related:[URL] to find sites similar to a specific website	Find websites similar to Zapier: related:zapier.com
filetype:	Use filetype:[suffix] to limit results to a certain file format, such as PDF or DOC.	Find keyboard shortcuts for Microsoft Office that are shared as PDF: filetype:pdf office keyboard shortcuts
intitle:	Use intitle:[search phrase] to search for pages that have at least one of your search words in the title	Show pages that have "Apple" or "notebook" or both in the title: intitle:Apple notebook
intext:	Use intext:[search phrase] to search for pages that have at least one of your search words in the body of the page	Show pages that mention Roth, IRA, and/or investments in the body: intext:Roth IRA investments
inurl:	Use inurl:[search phrase] to search for pages that have at least one of your search words in the URL	Show pages that mention Roth, IRA, and/or investments in the body: intext:Roth IRA investments
OR	Perform two search queries at the same time by separating your search terms with OR. This will find pages that have one of several words.	Search for pages that reference "Google Drive," "Dropbox," or "OneDrive": "Google Drive" OR Dropbox OR OneDrive

Also, it's worth noting that you can use as many search operators as you want in a single query. For example, say you wanted to find remote jobs for marketing managers, but you didn't want to see results from Glassdoor because you've already looked at all of the listings there.

You could really narrow down your search results with a multiple-search-operator query like this:

The "-jobs" in this query helps narrow the results down to show only single jobs so that results like "the 20 best sites for remote marketing jobs" don't appear.

30. Use Google's Advanced Search Pages

If you don't want to remember all of those search operators, you have another option. Bookmark Google's advanced search page and use it to narrow your search results instead. You can specify language, region, update time, file type, and more to refine your search queries.

Google also has an advanced search page just for images and one for videos as well.

31. Use Ridiculously Long Search Queries

Often, we use shorthand when we search on Google or type a few words explaining what we're looking for. And Google is really good at interpreting what you need in most cases. But when you're looking for something very specific that's probably not searched for very often, one of the best ways to find what you're looking for is to be long-winded when searching.

Here are a few of the search queries I've used recently that I found in my search history:

"can Amazon hear everything you're saying on Alexa"
"80% of customers use directories while researching a product or company"
"does Moz have an organic traffic estimation tool"
"how to use UTM codes for email marketing Google Analytics"
"is there a way to see all questions on a paginated Google Form"
"video recording tool for Mac that shows your picture alongside a shared screen"

And yes, I've filtered out some of the more embarrassing ones.

When you're searching for something really specific, the more information you give Google, the more likely Google will be to find results that contain the information you're looking for.

32. Use Evernote's Web Clipper to Save Things You Might Want to Reference Later

I can't tell you how much of my life I've wasted looking for things I remember reading at some point but 1) don't know where I saw it and 2) can't remember when I saw it. If you have the same issue, Evernote's Web Clipper is a huge time saver.

When you find a study or article online that you think you might want to reference again later, use the Web Clipper to save that webpage to your Evernote account.

You can then search through your Evernote clips later right from Google's search results. Type a query as you would normally, and if any of your clips in Evernote match that query, you'll see those clips in a side panel of your Google Search results.

33. Conduct a Reverse Image Search

In addition to searching for images using words in Google Image Search, you can actually search for images using… images.

To search for images with images, open Google Image Search and click the camera icon:

After that, you can search for images by uploading a file or pasting a URL where the image lives.

There are multiple reasons why you might want to search for images using images. You might want to see if other sites are using your original images without crediting you. You might need to find the original source of an image so you can reach out and ask if it's okay to use it on your site. Or you might have just taken a picture of something weird and you want to know what it is.

There are no competitions to show off your Google searching skills—and most likely the only people who will be impressed with your abilities are me and you—but you can save yourself time and clicks by mastering these tricks.

5 Ways Teachers Can Save Time Using Free Google Apps

jg@jessicagreene.marketing (Jessica Greene) — Wed, 14 Aug 2019 06:00:00 +0000

For most K-12 teachers, a standard teaching day is roughly 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.—but that's just time spent inside the classroom. Add in all the additional work—grading, lesson planning, scheduling, conferences, and so on—and teachers end up looking at 12-16 hours of work per day.

Google's suite of cloud-based apps can help teachers save time. In this article, we'll explore a few ways that educators can use Google's free apps to automate some of their less engaging responsibilities and spend more time doing what they do best: teaching.

Grade Tests and Quizzes Automatically with Google Forms
Calculate Grades and Gather Important Insights with Google Sheets
Grade Papers More Efficiently with Google Docs
Build Presentations Quickly with Google Slides
Save Even More Time with Zapier's Google Automations

1. Grade Tests and Quizzes Automatically with Google Forms

If you've ever wished you had your own personal Scantron system to grade simple-answer tests and quizzes for you automatically, you're in luck: Google Forms has a feature that does exactly that.

To create a test/quiz in Google Forms, log in to Google Forms with your Google account, and click the Template Gallery link. Scroll down, and you'll see a section of form templates for educators. Select Blank Quiz.

Using this template, you can create, distribute, and automatically grade multiple choice, checkbox, or dropdown quizzes and tests. You can also choose what test-takers see during the quiz—keep scores private, or let students know whether they got the answer right immediately.

Creating a quiz in Google Forms

To use Google Forms to automatically grade your quizzes and tests, you have to create both the quiz and answer key in Google Forms. To build your quiz:

Click the plus symbol to add a question to the quiz.
Use the dropdown menu to choose the type of question you're asking (short answer, multiple choice, checkbox, dropdown, etc.).
Type in your question and, if applicable, any answer options.
Add images or videos to the question if needed for explanations or examples.

Adding an answer key to your Google Forms quiz

Once your question is complete, it's time to add an answer key, assign a point value to the question, and provide any feedback you want students to see after answering the question:

Click the Answer Key link below the question.
Choose the correct answer for the question.
Assign a point value for the question.
Click the Add Answer Feedback link if you want to provide students with feedback after answering a question. Enter the feedback you want to provide for correct and/or incorrect answers, and click Save.

Adjusting quiz settings

Repeat all of the steps above for each question you want to add to your quiz. When you're finished, click the Send button, and adjust your quiz's settings:

General Settings:

Check the boxes next to Collect email addresses and Response receipts if you want your students to turn in a printed confirmation that they completed the quiz.
Check the box next to Restrict to users in [your school's domain] and trusted domains if you want to force your students to take the quiz from their school-provided Google accounts.
Check the box next to Limit to 1 response if you don't want students to be able to take the quiz more than once.

Presentation Settings:

Check the box next to Show progress bar if you want students to see a visual indicator that shows how many more questions they have to answer.
Check the box next to Shuffle question order if you want all of your students to receive the questions in random order.
Customize the text in the Confirmation message box. This is the text that displays when students complete the quiz and is a good place for reminders like "Make sure to print this page and turn it in tomorrow morning."

Quizzes Settings:

Choose when students should receive their grade by selecting the radio button next to either Immediately after each submission or Later, after manual review.
Check the box next to Missed questions if you want students to be able to see which questions they answered incorrectly.
Check the box next to Correct answer if you want students to be able to see the answer key after their quiz has been graded.
Check the box next to Point values if you want students to be able to see how many points each question is worth.

Sending your quiz and collecting results

After saving your settings, click Send again. Choose how you want to send the quiz to students: You can send it by email, create a custom URL for the quiz, or embed the entire quiz on your class website. If you're sending the quiz via email, enter your students' email addresses, and click Send.

After your students have completed the test, return to the quiz to see the grades for each of your students. You can type these into your gradebook software manually, or click the spreadsheet icon to send your quiz grades to a new or existing Google Sheets gradebook.

2. Calculate Grades and Gather Important Insights with Google Sheets

If your school uses gradebook software, it probably calculates your students' grades for you—you just have to enter the grade and assignment weights into the system. But if your school hasn't invested in gradebook software, Google Sheets simplifies the process of tracking and calculating student grades.

Creating a Google Sheets gradebook

If you're a master spreadsheet user and know how to set up formulas quickly and easily, you may not need help setting up the complex formulas you'll need to calculate and weight grades. But if you're not familiar with spreadsheet formulas—or if you want a tool that does the heavy lifting for you—you may want to use the GradeBook for Google Sheets & Classroom add-on.

GradeBook for Google Sheets & Classroom creates a gradebook in Google Sheets using data you enter manually or import from Google Classroom (if your school subscribes to G Suite for Education). To create a gradebook using the GradeBook add-on:

Navigate to Google Sheets, and create a new, blank spreadsheet.
Click the Add-ons tab, and select Get add-ons.
Type GradeBook for Google Sheets & Classroom into the search bar and click enter.
Click the Free button in the GradeBook for Google Sheets & Classroom row to install the add-on.
Select the Google account you want to use with the add-on.
Review and accept the required permissions.

Once the add-on has completed its installation, click the Add-ons tab in your Google Sheet again, hover over GradeBook for Google Sheets & Classroom, and select Create and View GradeBooks. When the system is finished creating your gradebook, a new window opens to the right of your spreadsheet. Use it to set up your new gradebook:

Choose a gradebook type to automatically set up the calculations for weighting assignments.
Enter a name for your course.
Fill out any other details you want to include in your gradebook.
Click Create Course to continue.

When your course gradebook is ready, click the link at the top of the Course Gradebooks sidebar to open your new gradebook. Your Google Sheets gradebook will open in a new tab.

If you're calculating grades by weighting assignments in different categories, you need to first set up your categories and weighted percentages in the Settings tab of your new Google Sheets gradebook.

Now, you just need to add each student to their own row in the GradeBook sheet and add your assignments, assignment categories, and assignment details. When you finish grading an assignment, add students' grades, and GradeBook automatically calculates the grades for you.

GradeBook for Google Sheets & Classroom Price: Free for all Google Sheets features. From $18/year for the premium add-on that includes the ability to export course reports to Google Docs or PDF.

Gather important insights with Google Sheets' Explore function

Hiding at the bottom of any Google Sheets spreadsheet is an Explore feature that helps you visualize the data in your gradebook and gather important insights.

Use Explore to quickly track student progress or test results. Because it's automatic, you'll be able to gain insights you might not have thought to ask for.

Let's say you want to find the average grade in your class or on a test. Rather than figuring that out yourself, Explore does it for you automatically. Open your gradebook; highlight the column, cell, or data cluster that you want information for; and click the Explore button.

The Explore function also creates different graphs and visuals of your data that you can drag and drop into the spreadsheet.

Finally, if you have questions about your data, you can type them into the Explore Answers box. A nice time-saver is being able to use natural language (e.g., "Which person has the top score") to ask questions instead of formulas. Keep in mind that the answers are found using your column titles, so make sure your question matches the information in your gradebook. For example, if column Z in the screenshot below said "Grade" instead of "Score," I'd phrase my question as, "Which student has the highest grade?"

3. Grade Papers More Efficiently with Google Docs

Having your students submit their papers electronically using Google Docs makes it easier to avoid some of the excuses your students rely on to avoid late work penalties; "the printer broke" no longer cuts it. Plus, you don't have to worry about students using sneaky fonts or odd line spacing to turn a four-page paper into the required five pages—you can see exactly what fonts and formatting they've used.

But Google Docs is helpful for a lot more than policing your requirements. Teachers can also use it to fact- and plagiarism-check, suggest copy edits, leave comments, and review previous drafts.

Check facts and test papers for plagiarism using the Google Docs Explore function

The Explore function isn't exclusive to Google Sheets; Google Docs also offers this feature. Like in Google Sheets, the Explore button in Google Docs can be found in the bottom-right corner of the window.

When you click Explore, a menu on the right side of the document appears. Use it to search the web like you would on Google—it instantly pulls up research, image, and content suggestions from the web.

To fact- or plagiarism-check while grading student papers, click Explore, and either type a topic into the search bar or copy and paste text directly from the doc. You'll receive research, article, and image suggestions for that specific text.

If a student includes a fact that you're not sure is correct, use Explore to quickly search the web and check its accuracy.

Explore is particularly helpful if you think a student may have plagiarized some (or all) of the content of their paper. Copy and paste a suspicious phrase, and Explore will populate results for any content that's been published online that uses the exact same words.

Suggest copy edits and leave comments on student papers

Google Docs' suggesting mode lets you suggest copy edits on student papers easily—no red pen required. After opening a student's paper, click the pencil icon, and switch to Suggesting mode. Now, you can suggest changes for your students to review when it's time to revise the paper.

You can also leave comments for things you want students to revise, expand upon, or remove. Highlight the respective text and click the comment icon to attach a comment to that section of the copy.

Review previous drafts of student papers

It makes life easier when you're grading final drafts of papers if students turn in earlier drafts with your comments, but some students always seem to lose track of earlier drafts and fail to turn them in. With Google Docs, that's no longer an issue.

Google Docs saves copies of every revision that's made to the document, so you can easily see what you revisions you asked for in previous drafts. Plus, you can compare earlier drafts to later ones to see the exact changes students made.

To review previous versions of Google Docs, click the All changes saved in Drive link in the app's toolbar. Then, you can click through previous versions to see exactly what was changed in each.

4. Build Presentations Quickly with Google Slides

Google Slides makes it easier than ever to create slideshows to use in your lessons. First, take advantage of a number of predesigned, education-focused templates so you don't have to start building every slideshow from scratch:

Navigate to Google Slides.
Click the Template Gallery link at the top-right corner of the page.
Scroll down. At the bottom of the page, you'll see a variety of education templates designed specifically for teachers and students.

If you can't find the perfect template, you can also create your own. After finalizing a slideshow you'd like to use as a template in the future:

Navigate to the Google Slides homepage.
Click the Template Gallery link.
Click the tab to the left of the General tab. If you're using a school account, the tab you want to click will display your school's/district's name. If you're using a personal account, it displays your name.
Click the Submit Template button.
Click Select Presentation, and navigate to the slideshow you want to use as a template. Click Open.
Select a category for your template, then click Submit.

Now, you can use that design as a template for all future slideshows by selecting it from your template gallery.

Build your slideshow quickly with Explore

While creating a slideshow, use Google Slides' Explore function to build and design your presentation quickly. You'll find Explore in a familiar location: at the bottom-right corner of the screen.

Like the Explore function in Google Docs, Slides' Explore lets you search the web without leaving your presentation. Use it to search for and find information quickly, or to find images and insert them directly into your presentation.

Explore also helps you create a professional-looking presentation with as little effort as possible. Type some information into your slide and click Explore, and Slides will recommend a few different designs to use. Click the one you like, and it reformats the slide for you instantly.

Save Even More Time with Zapier's Google Automations

Once you're saving time by automating some of your work with Google apps, you may be interested in finding even more ways to reduce the number of tasks you're responsible for. With the following Zapier automations for Google apps, you can get back even more of your day by letting technology take care of repetitive tasks for you.

If the format of your test/quiz doesn't lend itself naturally to Google Forms' automatic grading, you can still use the tool to administer tests automatically. Use the following Zap to have each student's quiz responses automatically sent to your email, and you'll no longer have to worry about printing or misplacing test papers.

Want to send students an email confirmation—or further instructions—after they've taken a quiz in Google Forms? Use the following Zap to send your students an email from Gmail after they've completed a Google Forms test.

Google Docs are automatically saved to Google Drive, but what if your school uses OneDrive or Dropbox for file storage? Use these Zaps to automatically copy your Google Docs files to your school's preferred file storage app.

Google apps are not only convenient and free, but they also have a low barrier to entry. All of the apps have similar features, so learning one helps you learn all of the others. This convenience helps teachers become more time-efficient.

Even if your school doesn't pay for G Suite for Education, you can still shave off hours of additional teaching work each week—things like grading and lesson planning—with Google's free apps, letting you focus more of your time and effort on your students.

Integration How To: Connect JotForm to Salesforce and Automatically Send Leads to Your CRM

joey.blanco@zapier.com (Joey Blanco) — Tue, 13 Aug 2019 22:15:27 +0000

Integration How To: Connect JotForm to Salesforce and Automatically Send Leads to Your CRM

Create leads in Salesforce from JotForm responses:

Integration How To: Connect Wufoo to Salesforce

joey.blanco@zapier.com (Joey Blanco) — Tue, 13 Aug 2019 22:10:42 +0000

Integration How To: Connect Wufoo to Salesforce

Try the Zap from the video to automatically create leads in Salesforce from Wufoo:

Integration How To: Connect Google Forms and Salesforce to Automate Lead Creation

joey.blanco@zapier.com (Joey Blanco) — Tue, 13 Aug 2019 22:06:19 +0000

Integration How To: Connect Google Forms and Salesforce to Automate Lead Creation

Connect Google Forms and Salesforce to automatically manage new leads:

Integration How To: Connect Cognito Forms to Salesforce

joey.blanco@zapier.com (Joey Blanco) — Wed, 07 Aug 2019 15:01:34 +0000

Integration How To: Connect Cognito Forms to Salesforce - Add Leads from Form Responses

Try the Zap from the video and watch your Cognito Forms responses create leads in Salesforce:

Integration How To: Connect Gravity Forms to Salesforce

joey.blanco@zapier.com (Joey Blanco) — Wed, 07 Aug 2019 14:35:54 +0000

Integration How To: Connect Gravity Forms to Salesforce - Create Leads from Responses

Automate your lead creation and watch as responses in Gravity Forms become leads in Salesforce:

Integration How To: Connect Formstack to Salesforce and Automatically Create Leads

joey.blanco@zapier.com (Joey Blanco) — Wed, 07 Aug 2019 14:23:07 +0000

Integration How To: Connect Formstack to Salesforce and Automatically Create Leads

Use the Zap from the video to create leads in Salesforce from Formstack responses:

How to Build an Email List: 6 Ways to Get New Subscribers

matt.ellis.8@gmail.com (Matt Ellis) — Tue, 06 Aug 2019 21:43:43 +0000

Google email marketing statistics and you'll be met with confetti-laden numbers about the power of email marketing. But all of these statistics fail to account for one glaring oversight: Email marketing only works if you have people to email. And a lot of companies—small businesses in particular—never reach the tipping point where they have enough email addresses to make the most of that (very real) power.

To get on the winning side of those statistics, you'll need to get qualified email addresses on your mailing list. Here are a few ways to grow your email list.

1. Master the Placement of Your Sign-Up CTAs

Your email sign-up call to action (CTA) is the last thing subscribers will see before they bite the bullet and click Sign Up. (Please spell it right, while you're at it: As a verb, sign up is two words, no hyphen.)

A standard email sign-up CTA from Walmart.com.

If you don't have an email sign-up form on your website, you need one. If you have one, you need more. To get rid of any possible friction for your almost-subscriber, it's best to use a form field where users enter their email and that's it. You can create the form yourself if you know some CSS, but most website builders, like WordPress and Squarespace, will have features or plugins that do the work for you. They'll give you loads of options for how, where, and when to display your sign-up field.

There are plenty of reasons CTAs don't work: the messaging, the coloring, the placement—the list goes on. Cover all your bases by having multiple CTAs on the page. If email sign-ups are your top business priority, put your email CTAs in the most prominent areas of the screen:

Front and center on your home page
In the top menu bar, in the upper-right corner

If you have a long-scrolling or one-page site, it's also good to break up each section or screen with a CTA. Visitors pause momentarily at these areas, making it a good place for a commercial break. And if your site is organized into pages, you'll need a fresh CTA on each. There are also more outside-the-box options, like a link in the author bio for blog articles. Of course, if growing your email list isn't your top priority, reserve these spots for higher-priority CTAs.

Lifewire has two newsletter CTAs, one in the section break and one in the footer

2. Test Your Designs and Copy

So you need multiple CTAs and you need them in multiple places on your site. But as important as placement is design: style, color, size, font, button type, microcopy…the list goes on. There's no magic answer for the best CTA design—it depends on the tone of your website and the audience you're trying to reach. That's why, rather than guess, it's better to conduct user tests and find out for sure.

The copy on your sign-up CTA is more important than you might think, so you definitely want to test it out. Does Sign Up do the trick? Or do you need to personalize it more? For example, if you run a hair salon, maybe your button text is Get salon tips at home—something that indicates more what the user will be getting by giving you their email address.

For CTA designs, A/B tests (or "split tests") work best. An A/B test compares the performance of two variables against different sample sets. For example, an A/B test might show one version of your page with a blue CTA to half your visitors and one version with a green CTA to the other half, all other factors being the same. Then you can see which converts better.

Just be sure to test one variable at a time so you don't corrupt the data. For example, conduct one A/B test to optimize the color of the CTA and then another to test the copy. Some website builders or lead capture tools have an A/B test feature built in. Otherwise, you can use tools like Optimizely or AB Tasty to conduct these tests for you.

3. Reassure Would-Be Subscribers That You Won't Spam Them

We'd bet that you don't sign up on every email newsletter CTA you come across. You don't want your inbox full of spam or daily offers on the same product—and neither do your visitors. But there's a solution, and it's so simple that it's not always obvious: Just tell them you won't do that.

You have lots of wiggle room with your microcopy (all those little bits of text outside of the main content of the page, like "Please enter your credit card details" or "Search for new products here"). Your CTA microcopy might tell people what exclusives subscribers will receive, but it can be equally as effective to use that space to calm your visitors' sign-up fears.

The email sign-up CTA from Bizarro Devs

The trick to good microcopy is to keep it micro: Make it succinct and to the point. Here are some examples:

"We won't share your email."
"We only send newsletters once a week."
"Unsubscribe anytime."

Those few words can make people feel better about signing up. And if you think it's too obvious to mention, it's not. The reason it works is that most of us have messed up by giving our email addresses to the wrong people before.

4. Create a Sign-Up Landing Page

The email sign-up CTAs on your main website pages are isolated to in-between sections without much space for copy or explanation. They get eyeballs, but people might also scroll right past them. If you have an entire landing page dedicated to your email sign-up, you have the breathing room to add all the content you want without congesting the screen. It's a great way to shine a light on why your emails are so valuable.

Moz has a separate landing page just for its Top 10 newsletter.

A sign-up landing page also gives you a separate URL to link to. You can launch social media posts and blog articles that include that link and optimize campaigns specifically for email growth. (Note: Your email sign-up page should still be part of your main site, usually as a subdirectory, and not an entirely separate site.)

The anatomy of a good landing page for emails is fairly basic because you want to keep it simple. Best practices include:

Placing the form field CTA front and center
Including all the reasons to sign up, such as exclusives or giveaways
Extra encouragement, like testimonials or examples of what they'll get in a newsletter, that you don't have room for on your main pages

Don't use a landing page as an excuse not to incorporate CTAs into your main pages. They serve totally different purposes.

5. Offer Exclusives and Giveaways

You already know how to create the perfect email newsletter, but what are you supposed to use it for? Leverage is a good start.

You'll see an increase in email subscribers if you include exclusive features in your newsletters or other emails. More often than not, this means discounts and special deals, like coupon codes or a "members-only" link. In fact, a study by GetApp showed that 22.6% of email subscribers said discounts and special deals were one of the top reasons to sign up; for female respondents, it was the number one reason.

ModCloth puts its email exclusives in bold to capture the attention of people scanning.

So if you want more email subscribers, offer them something in return for their email address. Give them incentive with exclusive deals or content—things they can't get from visiting your website. And be sure to publicize these email exclusives wherever they're most visible. Let the world know that not only does this "exclusive" club exist, but also that anyone can join.

You can take this one step further and give new subscribers a free gift. This strategy has many names ("lead magnet" is a common one), but really it's just an old-fashioned giveaway. Sign up for our email list, and we'll give you something for free.

Usually this means you'll need to create new content for this purpose: things like eBooks, white papers, or videos. Something people can't get from visiting your site—or anyone else's. HubSpot is the master of this.

HubSpot wants your email address in exchange for all of the goodies it offers.

The more valuable your content, the more email addresses you'll get. If you're deeply entrenched in your niche, you can use that to your advantage by discussing topics your target customers are interested in and can't find info on elsewhere, or answering their most common questions with how-to guides.

6. Break Out the Pen and Paper

If you have a local presence, take advantage of that. Go to frequently trafficked locations or events—community events, conventions, trade booths—and let people know who you are and why they should sign up for your newsletter. As long as you have the right incentive—a free sample, a future discount—it's not too much to ask for an email in exchange. And if you have a brick-and-mortar store, have an email sign-up list front-and-center for people who come in.

If you get people to sign up, you have the added bonus of them connecting your newsletter to you, the business owner, which gives it a more personal touch. As long as you're not a jerk.

Even if your business is completely virtual, you can still partner with local businesses. Find businesses that are relevant to your audience—they'll be more likely to want to partner—and leave a sign-up sheet there. In return, you can offer to shout them out in the footer of your websites.

Once you've tackled these strategies, dig deeper into more granular ways to build your email list. You never know what out-of-the-box strategy will get you the momentum you need to take advantage of the power of email.

Integration How To: Connect Typeform to Salesforce

joey.blanco@zapier.com (Joey Blanco) — Tue, 06 Aug 2019 19:51:36 +0000

Integration How To: Connect Typeform to Salesforce to Automate Your Lead Management

Turn your Typeform responses into leads in Salesforce with this Zap:

Integration How To: Connect LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms to Salesforce

joey.blanco@zapier.com (Joey Blanco) — Tue, 06 Aug 2019 15:05:26 +0000

Connect LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms to Salesforce - Automatically Add Leads

No more importing or exporting leads; with this Zap, you'll automatically add leads to Salesforce from LinkedIn:

Integration How To: Connect Facebook Leads Ads to Salesforce

joey.blanco@zapier.com (Joey Blanco) — Tue, 06 Aug 2019 14:53:04 +0000

Connect Facebook Leads Ads to Salesforce and Automatically Create Leads

Automate your lead creation with this Zap:

When Perfect Is (and Isn't) the Enemy of Good

jg@jessicagreene.marketing (Jessica Greene) — Tue, 06 Aug 2019 06:00:00 +0000

Perfect is the enemy of good. Done is better than perfect. The best is the enemy of the good.

You've heard some version of this, whether it was in your college philosophy class or, more likely, from your Silicon Valley boss. The idea, of course, is that striving for good—or even just done—instead of perfect can increase productivity. But like most blanket statements, it doesn't always work. You don't want your surgeon to finish the operation and think, "eh, it's good enough." You don't want a structural engineer to get 80% of the way through a bridge build and decide that "done is better than perfect."

But if you're working on less life-or-death kinds of projects, as most people are, it can be a productivity boon. The key is to decide when perfect is needed, and when good is good enough.

Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

I've written about MVP before and how it can be used from a personal, decision-making perspective, but this time, I want to focus on how it can be used in product development.

MVP stands for either "minimum valuable product" or "minimum viable product": It's the release of a product that consists of the smallest number of features possible to provide value to users. In a perfect world, new products and features would have all of the bells and whistles upon initial release. But if you add all those bells and whistles only for the product or feature to flop, that's…not good.

Releasing an MVP—something good enough, but not perfect—allows you to get feedback earlier and start profiting from the product sooner. Let's look at an example.

One of my favorite new tools is Animalz Revive: It's a tool that helps content marketers find specific pieces of content on their blogs that are losing traffic and need to be updated.

Let's say you want to build a similar tool. Building a perfect version of the product—one that connects to Google Analytics, programmatically reviews all content a site has published, and automatically produces a list of content that needs to be updated—will require two years of development work. But you're not really sure if people need or want that tool. One of the best ways to find out: release an MVP.

Maybe that means you don't automate the process at first. You have users submit requests, and for all users can tell, it's automated. But you actually have people identifying the needed updates in the background and manually populating the reports.

This would prevent you from spending lots of time and money developing a tool before you knew if there was enough demand for it. Instead, you could release a good-enough MVP and see if people want it. If so, you can move forward with building the code needed to automate the process.

Products on Product Hunt are also great examples of MVPs: A lot of them get upvotes without being perfect, beautifully designed, or even fully functional. Take the job site Hey Marketers, which has received 239 upvotes and reached the number-five product of the day in May 2019. If you look at the site, it's not perfect. Job descriptions appear as one giant paragraph.

But it's not critical for the tool to be perfect right out of the gate because it still delivers value. If I'm a marketer looking for a new job, I don't have to read the job description on Hey Marketers. I can just look at the list of job openings and then go to the website for any company with an opening I'm interested in. It's not the job descriptions that necessarily provide the most value; it's the compilation of jobs from multiple sources into a single list. So as an MVP, it's perfect.

When MVP Isn't the Right Approach

In his book Lost and Founder, Rand Fishkin argues against the idea that product developers should always start with an MVP. He tells the story of launching an MVP for a new Moz tool called Spam Score. Ultimately, the decision to launch an MVP did more damage than good.

Before building the tool, they conducted extensive customer research to find out exactly what people wanted and needed from a tool of that kind. But exactly what people wanted was, as Fishkin describes, "an exceptional product." Since they didn't really have the time or resources to build an exceptional product, they built and launched an MVP instead.

Fiskin says that they spent at least $500,000 developing the tool, and it essentially flopped: "It had no observable impact on free trials, vesting rate, retention, or growth of the Moz Pro subscription overall," Fiskin writes. He concludes the story with a statement that contradicts the idea that "perfect is the enemy of good":

"Sometimes, something is better than nothing. Surprisingly often, it's not."

When Is Good Better Than Perfect?

In product development, sometimes you need to be perfect. Other times, good is good enough. Here are some questions to ask yourself when trying to figure out which you need.

Is there another product that does this thing that other people are already using?

If your product is the first of its kind—if there's nothing else out there that does what your product does—an MVP is the way to go. Putting an early version of your product out there will help you measure demand, and it might even help you find a few evangelists who will stick with your product and help you promote it as you and develop even-better versions.

On the other hand, if you're asking people to switch away from something they're already using and learn a new product, an MVP may not be the right approach. People who take the time to switch and learn a new product will throw things at their computers if it's not what they wanted, which could do long-term damage to your brand.

Are you building a new product for a new company or an add-on product/feature for an established, well-used company?

Fishkin says that MVPs can often work really well for early-stage companies who need to test assumptions. If you can rely on a group of supportive customers who understand that the product isn't designed to be perfect yet, you can use what you learn to work toward something perfect.

But Fiskin also says, "If you've reached a certain scale, perception and reputation are huge parts of your current and future success. A not-up-to-par product launch can hurt that reputation in the market and be perceived as a reason to avoid your company/product by potential customers. It can carry an MVP hangover for years, even if you do improve that product."

So for established companies, an MVP can sometimes do more harm than good.

Can you find beta testers for the tool?

If you're an established company that needs to launch an MVP—or if you're in a competitive market where you need to take customers from competitors—a beta release may help you determine whether or not good is good enough.

If you can find some people to agree to beta test your MVP and provide feedback before a wide launch, you can find out if people believe it's good enough as-is or if you need to get a little closer to perfect first.

What are the implications of imperfection?

If something isn't perfect, what implications does that have on the end-user? Does it make the product unusable? Does it fail to provide ample value? Or does it just create minor inconveniences?

Zapier's Danny Schreiber believes that it's sometimes worth moving forward with changes—even if they create minor inconveniences—because it gives you more data on whether or not changes will deliver value.

But if your MVP doesn't really show off the value of what the user will eventually get, then it's not worth it. And in that case, it's not really an MVP anyway.

Perfect Versus Good in Other Areas of Work

As it turns out, not everyone works in product development. But the MVP mindset works for a variety of roles and situations.

Writing

In an article on Medium, Simone Michaud recommends that writers don't worry about the micro-editing (grammar, mechanics, word choice) while writing. Instead, she suggests only macro-editing while writing; that is, editing "just enough to complete an idea or sentence that makes sense."

Easier said than done, especially when you have red squigglies mocking every one of your misspellings—and even some correct spellings. To avoid getting caught up with micro-editing while writing a first draft, try turning off all of your spelling and grammar checking tools. In Google Docs, you can do this by selecting Tools, hovering over Spelling and grammar, and unchecking Show spelling suggestions and Show grammar suggestions.

When you're finished with your draft, invite the squigglies back to play.

Leadership

In an article for Harvard Business Review, Aaron J. Nurick, author of The Good Enough Manager, says there are three types of managers:

The good enough manager (GEM) who "facilitates employee autonomy while providing well-structured parameters."
The not good enough manager who "lacks presence and engagement."
The über manager who is a "perfectionist who creates an atmosphere where compliant employees are pressured to meet established goals but keep their heads down and offer few new ideas."

To no one's surprise, he found that people preferred to work for the "good enough manager" (and the least favorite was the über manager). To be a good enough manager, Nurick says you must act as a teacher and mentor, help employees find their strengths, and give them the freedom to fail and learn from their mistakes. And letting people learn from their mistakes means abandoning perfection.

Applying for jobs

In another article for Harvard Business Review, Tara Sophia Mohr presents the results of a study she conducted trying to find out why women don't apply for jobs when they don't meet all of the stated requirements.

It's not about a lack of confidence, she says. Instead, people don't apply because they assume they won't be considered. Mohr writes: "What held them back from applying was not a mistaken perception about themselves, but a mistaken perception about the hiring process." The stated requirements often describe a perfect candidate—which, by the way, may or may not exist. It's usually more of a wishlist than a list of demands. So if your qualifications are good enough, it might mean you're a perfect fit for the job.

Sometimes, perfect is the enemy of good. Other times, good is the enemy of success. As with most things in life, blanket rules don't apply. No matter how catchy the phrase is, always think about the specifics of the task at hand before deciding what's worth perfection—and what just needs to get done.

Guest Posting on the Zapier Blog

deborah.tennen@zapier.com (Deborah Tennen) — Tue, 30 Jul 2019 14:34:57 +0000

Shaped by the spirit of Zapier—get more done with less work—the Zapier Blog offers productivity tricks and workflow best practices along with tips for growing a small business.

Guest posting on the Zapier blog is your chance to write for an audience that cares deeply about improving their efficiency and effectiveness and growing their business without draining resources. They’re ready to learn about a new process or approach—and a set of accompanying apps and tools—that could make an impact on their work.

We're always thrilled to hear from potential guest posters, so please read on to find out how to submit your pitch. Thanks for your interest, and we look forward to hearing from you!

Topics for which we accept guest posts:

Growing your business (especially if you've done so yourself!). These can be industry- or role-specific tips, ideas for scaling a business, or actionable suggestions for developing company culture.
Productivity at work. This includes productivity strategies, professional development strategies, tech tips, and more. Anything that helps individuals be more productive at work.
Automation. If you have easy-to-implement automation strategies, we'd love to share them with our audience.

We also accept book excerpts from recently published books.

Topics for which we do not accept guest posts:

Remote work (than an in-house speciality)

Requirements

Guest posts need to match our content: well researched, long-form pieces (2,500+ words) that take a deep dive on one of the aforementioned topics, offering examples and actionable outcomes for the reader.

All guest posts must be original content; they cannot have been previously published, unless you're submitting an excerpt from a book you've written.

Attribution

As a guest poster, you'll of course have the byline on the piece, along with a photo next to your name. At the end of the post, we'll add a note that it's a guest post written by you, and we can link back to your company. Your name and photo will also appear just below the article, along with a 250-character bio.

How to Submit

Please submit the pitch form before writing your piece. We have a backlog and can't guarantee that we'll publish your post.

Complete this pitch form, which asks for your information along with writing samples (in addition to the pitch itself).
The Editorial team will review your pitch, and we will email you to let you know if we'll be able to move forward with it.
If we approve the topic, you'll be provided with more information, including the process for outlining, writing, and editing.

Note: The Zapier team reserves the right to edit posts before publishing. If you’d like to review our edits before we publish, just ask.

How to Prioritize When Everything Feels Important

jg@jessicagreene.marketing (Jessica Greene) — Tue, 30 Jul 2019 06:00:00 +0000

There's never enough time to do everything you want to do. It's a universal problem. And we all accept that fact and live with its reality until the worst-case scenario rears its ugly head: There's not enough time to do everything you have to do.

When everything on your to-do list feels like it's of crucial importance (or when someone you answer to feels that way), it's time to use one or more prioritization techniques to make your to-do list more manageable and conquerable.

What is a Prioritization Technique?

You have 300 tasks on your to-do list. Which one is the most important?

A prioritization technique helps you answer that question by providing you with a formal method for evaluating the necessity of completing each task on your list. The process of prioritizing lets you make informed decisions about what you need to do, what you don't need to do, and when you need to focus on certain tasks.

Prioritization techniques address two key issues:

Should you really go to that meeting/answer that email? If you let other people create your to-do list for you via meeting requests and incoming emails, you'll never get your important work done. It's easier to feel justified in declining a meeting invite or delaying an answer to an email when you know exactly what you need to be focused on and why.
Everything is critical! If you feel like you spend your day fighting fires because everything everyone asks you to do is "urgent," a prioritized list can help you regain control of your time and push back against unreasonable last-minute panic assignments.

When I worked in product development, our prioritized lists were our shields against delays and distractions. When stakeholders showed up with new, urgent requests, we simply showed them the prioritized list and asked, "What should we cut in order to accommodate this request?" After seeing the importance of the other things on the list, urgent requests often suddenly became much less urgent.

But it doesn't only work in product development. You can use it to manage priorities with your boss, coworkers, family, and even that part of your brain that's always on the lookout for new ideas for things to do/new ways to procrastinate that deter you from accomplishing important work.

Focus on Your Most Important Work with These 9 Prioritization Techniques

Finding the right prioritization technique is personal: The method you choose has to make sense and feel right. Luckily, there are plenty of prioritization techniques to consider in your quest to find a method that works for you.

Prioritization Matrix
MoSCoW
ABCDE
Scrum Prioritization
Bubble Sort
Most Important Task
Ivy Lee Method
1-3-9
Two Lists

1. Priority Matrix

The priority matrix technique consists of laying all of your tasks out on a four-box matrix. The x-axis represents one value, and the y-axis represents another. Each quadrant, then, represents priority based on the defined values.

It's a technique that's easier to show than to tell:

Eisenhower Matrix

A popular example is the Eisenhower Matrix, which uses importance as its y-axis value and urgency as its x-axis value. You evaluate each task based on its urgency and importance and then place each task in the correct quadrant based on your evaluation.

Important and urgent tasks are your top priorities.
Important but not urgent tasks are lower priorities—things you should schedule for later.
Urgent but not important tasks are good candidates for delegation.
Not urgent or important tasks are things you probably just shouldn't do.

By placing each task on your list into a quadrant on the Eisenhower Matrix, you can determine what you need to work on now, what you need to work on later, what you need to delegate, and what you need to delete from your list.

But you can substitute the x- and y-axis values in the Eisenhower Matrix for any values that make sense for you. Here are a few more examples:

Effort-Impact Matrix

In the effort-impact matrix, you evaluate tasks based on how much effort they'll require to complete and the impact that completing them will have. The tasks in the two right-side quadrants are your priorities. "Low effort, high impact" tasks are likely your highest priorities because they represent quick wins.

Value-Cost Matrix

In the value-cost matrix, the top two quadrants are your priorities. "High value, low cost" items are your quick wins, and "low value, high cost" items are things you should probably avoid doing.

If the priority matrix model feels like the right prioritization technique for you, you can build your matrices on paper or in a spreadsheet, or you can use an app that's designed for building priority matrices like Eisenhower Matrix (free) or Priority Matrix (from $12/person/month, billed annually).

2. MoSCoW

The MoSCoW method (pronounced like Russia's capital city) is a simple prioritization technique where you assign every task on your to-do list to one of four categories:

M – Must Do: M tasks are things you absolutely have to do.
S – Should Do: S tasks are things you should do, but they're a lower priority than M tasks.
C – Could Do: C tasks are nice-to-dos. You'd like to do them, but if you don't it's probably not a big deal.
W – Won't Do: W tasks are things that just aren't worth doing.

To use this technique, go through your to-do list and assign each task a MoSCoW category. Then, sort the list by category. Your M tasks should be at the top. Those are followed by S tasks, which are followed by C tasks. W tasks should be deleted.

If you're always working on your list from the top-down, you can ensure that you're always working on your highest-priority tasks.

A Kanban app like Trello (free plan available) works well for the MoSCoW method. Create a master list of unsorted tasks and then drag each task into the appropriate category. You can also drag and drop tasks up and down within lists to specify the order in which you want to work on them.

But for MoSCoW to really work, you have to make sure all of the tasks you have to do get added to your master list so you can categorize them. An easy way to make sure tasks get added to your list is to use a Zap (automated workflow by Zapier) to automatically move tasks from places like your email inbox and Slack to your master to-do list. Here are a few examples:

3. ABCDE

One thing the MoSCoW method doesn't account for is tasks you need to delegate to someone else. That makes MoSCoW great if you don't have anyone to delegate to, but if you can delegate tasks, it makes it unclear which tasks should be delegated. An alternative is Brian Tracy's ABCDE method from his book Eat That Frog.

Similar to MoSCoW, the ABCDE method starts with putting each task on your list into a category:

A tasks are things you must do (same as MoSCoW's M tasks).
B tasks are things you should do (same as MoSCoW's S tasks).
C tasks are nice-to-dos (same as MoSCoW's C tasks).
D tasks are tasks you should delegate to someone else (or automate).
E tasks are tasks you should eliminate (same as MoSCoW's W tasks).

The process for ABCDE is the same as it is for MoSCoW: Go through every task on your list, assign it a letter based on its priority, then sort your tasks by letter. Delegate D tasks and delete E tasks so you're left with A, B, and C tasks only, then work from the top down to make sure you're always focusing on your most important tasks.

Kanban apps also work really well for this technique. You'll have one master list followed by additional lists to contain A, B, C, D, and E tasks. Drag and drop tasks from the master list into the appropriate category, then get started on your A tasks.

4. Scrum Prioritization (Ordering)

Scrum prioritization (also referred to as Agile prioritization) is a method of prioritization that relies on ordering. If you have 20 to-dos on your list, you assign each an order, numbered 1-20, based on both priority and sequence.

Scrum prioritization works really well when you have to take sequence into account.

For example, say your highest priority task is to re-tile your bathroom floor. However, you know that you also need to have plumbers run new pipes in your bathroom, and they'll have to cut into the floor to do so. Getting new pipes run may be a lower priority, but since it will impact your highest-priority task of re-tiling the floor, it needs to be completed first.

In Scrum prioritization, you evaluate each task on your list using three criteria:

How important is this task?
How important is it compared to the other tasks on this list?
Is any other task dependent on this task?

Then, using the answers to those questions, you assign each a number 1-n (where n is the total number of tasks on your list). You can't have two tasks that are #1. You have to make one #1 and one #2. Every task gets a unique number.

Scrum prioritization works well on its own, but it also pairs really well with other methods like MoSCoW and ABCDE. After categorizing your tasks by priority (as M, C, and W or A, B, and C), you can begin sequencing the tasks in the order in which you plan to complete them, considering any task dependencies that should impact that order.

Any to-do list app that allows for drag-and-drop ordering works well for Scrum prioritization. However, you can also use a Scrum-specific tool like Yodiz (free plan available), to assign actual numbers to tasks instead of dragging and dropping them.

5. Bubble Sort

I mentioned that a good question to ask when prioritizing using Scrum ordering is "How important is this task compared to the other tasks on this list?" But the reality is that it's a good question to ask for any prioritization exercise, particularly if you're suffering from the "everything is urgent, everything is #1" problem.

Bubble sort is a good method for answering this question. It's a process for comparing the importance of every task on your list to the importance of every other task on your list.

You start by laying every task out on a horizontal grid:

Next, you take the first two tasks and evaluate them against each other by asking, "Which task is more important?"

Whichever task is most important gets moved to the left. So in this example, if Task 2 is more important than Task 1, the two tasks switch places.

Next, you compare the next two tasks. Which is more important? The more important task stays on/gets moved to the left.

You continue this process until you get to the end of the list. After that, it helps to start from the beginning and ask those questions again for each set of tasks. Continue the exercise until every task that's more important is to the left of a less important task. Your priorities are now listed left to right.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find any tools designed specifically for use with the bubble sort technique, but you could easily get around this problem using a Kanban, to-do, or project management app that allows for drag-and-drop prioritization. You'll just need to work on sets of tasks from top-to-bottom instead of left-to-right.

6. Most Important Task (MIT)

Most Important Task (MIT) is an exceptionally simple prioritization method from Zen to Done's Leo Babauta. Instead of trying to prioritize your entire to-do list, start every morning by picking 1-3 MITs—things that you must do that day.

At least one of your MITs each day should be related to your goals to ensure you're doing something daily to help you reach your goals. And while you'll most likely complete more in a day than only your MITs, selecting your MITs in the morning and setting a deadline ensures you're dedicating time every day to working on important, high-priority tasks.

The nice thing about MIT is that you don't technically even need a to-do list to use the technique. However, free Chrome extension Momentum offers a nice way to keep your MIT top of mind. It prompts you to choose a focus for the day the first time you open Chrome, and then it shows you that focus each time you open a new browser tab.

7. The Ivy Lee Method

The story behind the Ivy Lee Method is that Charles M. Schwab once hired a productivity consultant named Ivy Lee to help him improve efficiency at his steel corporation. Lee asked for no upfront payment for the consulting. Instead, he told Schwab to wait three months and then pay him whatever amount of money he felt was appropriate based on the results.

Three months later, Schwab wrote Lee a check for $25,000.

The Ivy Lee Method is simple (and similar to the MIT method):

At the end of every workday, choose the six most important tasks on your list to work on tomorrow.
Then, order those six tasks in terms of priority.
When you get to work the next day, work on task number one until it's complete.
Then work on task number two until it's complete, number three, etc.

Continue until all six tasks are complete, and repeat the process every single day.

Again, any to-do list/Kanban/project management app works well for the Ivy Lee Method. However, if you find that you're struggling to complete your six tasks because of meetings and other distractions, you might want to consider building your to-do list in a time blocking app that lets you schedule time for that work on your calendar.

8. 1-3-9

The 1-3-9 priority technique feels a little like a blend of MoSCoW and MIT/Ivy Lee. It encourages you to focus on important tasks, but it also gives you a method for prioritizing the less important tasks you'll inevitably need to work on.

Every day, you plan to complete 13 tasks:

one very important task (an M task from MoSCoW or A task from ABCDE)
three somewhat important tasks (S from MoSCoW or B from ABCDE)
nine low-importance tasks (C from MoSCoW or ABCDE)

You could even pull from an Eisenhower Matrix:

Order your lists of 3 and 9 tasks in terms of priority, then work on and complete your 1 task first, followed by your 3 tasks in order, and finally your 9 tasks in order.

In an ideal world, we'd all be able to work only on our highest-priority, most important, goal-meeting tasks, but work rarely works that way. The 1-3-9 method addresses that reality by giving you a way to make sure you're at least working on the most important of your less important tasks.

The priority matrix apps mentioned before—Eisenhower Matrix or Priority Matrix—work well for the 1-3-9 method, as does a Kanban app with a master list followed by subsequent lists for your 1, 3, and 9 tasks.

9. Two Lists

Warren Buffett's Two Lists technique is another really simple approach to prioritization.

First, you write down a list of 25 things you want to accomplish. When the list is complete, circle the five most important items on that list.

When you're finished, compile the results into two lists:

The first—containing the five tasks you circled—becomes your to-do list.
The second—containing the 20 tasks you didn't circle—becomes your don't-do list.

You shouldn't spend any time on tasks in the don't-do list until you've completed everything on your to-do list.

The Two Lists technique is really designed to be done on paper, but you could accomplish the same thing with any to-do app that lets you move tasks from one list to another. Or if you want to get really creative, you turn your 25 goals into a doodle.

Picking the Perfect Prioritization Technique

Every technique on this list gets you to the same goal: Ensuring that you're always working on your most important tasks. So in the end, it doesn't matter which technique you use. It doesn't matter if you use multiple techniques. And it doesn't matter if you blend parts of the different techniques to make your own custom method.

Pick something that makes sense and feels natural, and get to work.

Your Commute Is Bad for You, Here's How to Make It Better

jg@jessicagreene.marketing (Jessica Greene) — Tue, 23 Jul 2019 06:00:00 +0000

We've all been there: You tell people your commute is 45 minutes each way, but every day, there's a delay. An accident. A broken down train. Inclement weather. A barge hitting the bridge you have to cross to get to work and causing a four-hour traffic backup (true story).

To compensate for the inevitable delays, you leave the house earlier and earlier. And to leave earlier, you have to go to bed earlier—or be exhausted for the whole day. You spend most of the commute staring at the clock and panicking at the first sign of brake lights in the distance.

And once you're finally at work, you realize: You have to do it all over again tomorrow.

If your commute is making you miserable, join the club. There's ample scientific research showing that the length of your commute negatively impacts your productivity, your satisfaction at work and home, and both your physical and mental well-being.

What Research Says About the Impacts of a Long Commute

Countless studies have been conducted to measure the impacts of long commutes on productivity, health, and happiness, and the findings are bleak.

A 2017 study from the University of the West of England found that "every extra minute of commute time reduces job satisfaction, leisure time satisfaction, and mental health."
A 2015 study of European commuters conducted by Ford Motor Company found that 63% of people are late to work once a month due to traffic, and nearly all commuters leave for work early to avoid being late because of traffic hold-ups.
A 2006 study led by Daniel Kahneman found that people feel more negative emotions during their morning commutes than any other activity they engage in throughout the rest of that day.
A 2017 study from Mercer found that people with longer commutes are more likely to suffer from depression, to have financial concerns, to report feeling stressed by work, and to be obese—and less likely to get seven hours of sleep each night.
A 2019 study of Australian commuters found that people with longer commutes take more unplanned absences than those with shorter commutes. Additionally, people with shorter commutes are more "relaxed, calm, enthusiastic, and productive."

No matter how you slice it, commutes are never good for you.

"People feel more negative emotions during their morning commutes than any other activity they engage in throughout the rest of that day."

Of course, there are times when having a long commute is unavoidable. There may not be jobs in your field close to your home. You may need to live further from work to take care of family members or to avoid moving your kids to a new school district. You may simply not be able to afford a home in the area where your workplace is located.

But other times, we put ourselves into a position where we suffer through commute-related stress in favor of some other incentive.

Is a Higher Salary Worth a Longer Commute?

In a 2017 article published in Harvard Business Review, researchers discussed the results of a study they conducted where they asked subjects to choose between two jobs:

Job #1 had a 50-minute round-trip commute and paid $67,000 a year.
Job #2 had a 20-minute round-trip commute and paid $64,000 a year.

84% of the participants in the study selected job #1, as researchers wrote, "expressing a willingness to forfeit one hour each workday to their commute—250 hours per year—in exchange for just $3,000. That's $12 an hour of commuting time—less than half their hourly rate at work!"

They concluded that people were unable to "fully appreciate the psychological, emotional, and physical costs of longer travel times."

And beyond the actual costs of commuting long distances—in terms of hours invested and travel costs like insurance premiums, gas, and car maintenance—another study found that adding an additional 20 minutes per day to your commute has the same effect on your job satisfaction as taking a 19% pay cut.

If you have a choice in how far you live from where you work, it's worth examining if the costs of a long commute are truly worth it. Taking a pay cut to work closer to home—or paying a higher cost of living to live closer to work—may be worth it if the actual and psychological costs of your commute are more detrimental than the benefits of earning a slightly higher salary.

But if there are reasons why you don't want to/can't move or find a job closer to home, there are some ways to combat the stress of a long commute to feel happier and be more productive both at work and at home.

How to Increase Your Productivity by Combating Commute-Related Stress

You may be stuck with a long commute, but that doesn't necessarily mean you have to suffer through the more detrimental consequences of commuting long, highly trafficked distances to and from work.

Researchers have found multiple ways that you can make commuting less stressful so you feel refreshed, engaged, and ready to be productive both when you get to work in the morning and when you get home in the evening.

Use your commute to prepare yourself to transition into your next role

At home, you play one role. Maybe you're a roommate, a parent, a partner, or a caregiver. At work, you play a different role.

While studying the impacts of commuting, researchers from Harvard Business School found that people who use their commute to mentally prepare for the transition into their next roles were less likely to suffer the negative impacts of a long commute.

They took four groups of people and instructed each group to engage in a different activity during their morning commutes:

One group was instructed to do something they enjoyed like listening to music, looking at social media, or reading the news.
One group was told to spend the time planning for what they would do that day/week at work and thinking about how those activities would help them reach their goals.
One group was told to split their time between doing things they enjoy and planning for the day/week of work.
The final group was given no specific instructions and told to just do whatever they normally did during their commutes.

They found that many people—particularly those who experience "greater work-family conflict"—were able to bypass the negative consequences of a long commute by planning ahead for the day at work.

Here's the specific prompt participants were given:

Many people find it helpful to focus on making a plan of their workday, or week ahead, and reflect on how those plans will help them achieve their personal and career goals. Ask yourself, for example, what are the strategies you have for the week to be productive? What steps can you take today and this week to get closer to your work goals, as well as your personal and career goals?

If you're suffering from commute-related stress, it's worth trying this exercise for a few weeks to see if it helps. By thinking about big-picture work items and goals on your way to work—and making personal life plans on the way home from work—you may find it easier to switch into the role you're moving into during each commute, improving your work-life balance.

Find an alternative to driving to work

There are a lot of different ways to get to work. You could drive, take public transportation, hail a cab, ride a bike, or walk. Of all of those methods, driving is the most stressful.

You'll suffer fewer of the negative consequences of a long commute if you choose a method of transportation that doesn't require you to drive. If you have a choice between driving and riding a train/subway or taking a bus/cab, you'll be less stressed and more productive after your commute if you avoid driving.

However, multiple studies have found that the best way to commute is actually to ride a bike or walk:

A 2019 study of Australian commuters found that people aged 35-54 who walk or bike to work self-report higher performance at work.
A 2017 study from researchers at McGill University found that people reported feeling much more energized when arriving at work after walking or biking—as opposed to driving or taking public transportation—even when the weather was bad.

Loong, C., van Lierop, D., & El-Geneidy A. (2017). On time and ready to go: An analysis of commuters' punctuality and energy levels at work or school. Transportation Research Part F: Traffic Psychology and Behaviour, 45, 1-13.

A 2017 study from the University of the West of England found that walking or biking to work increases people's satisfaction in their time away from work.

Of course, if it takes you 45 minutes to drive to work, it's unlikely that you're going to make that walk or ride a bike that distance. But there are some alternatives. For example, you could walk or ride a bike to a bus/train stop instead of driving to get some of the benefits of a more active commute and avoid driving altogether.

Find a way to make your commute more social

The lower the score in the Net affect column, the more negative feelings people reported having during that activity.

Earlier, we mentioned that a study led by Daniel Kahneman found that the morning commute inspires more negative feelings than any other activities people engage in during the day. But interestingly, Kahneman found that people felt far fewer negative feelings about the morning commute when they were accompanied by someone.

Other studies support the finding that commuting is less unpleasant when it's a more social experience. A series of studies conducted by researchers at the University of Chicago found that people reported having a much more positive commute when they spent time speaking with strangers while using public transportation.

But if striking up conversations with strangers on the train sounds like your worst nightmare, there are some other options for making your commute more social.

You could carpool with coworkers who live near you. This gives you the benefit of being social and lets you split the driving between your carpool participants so that no one has to deal with the stress of driving every single day.
If no one you work with lives near you, you could form a carpool with people who live and work near you using a service like Rideshare or Waze Carpool.
You could take a cab and chat with the driver on your way to work or use an on-demand carpool service like UberPool or Lyft's shared rides and chat with the other passengers.

If your commute is making you miserable, it may even be worth adjusting your schedule slightly or driving a little out of your way to share your commute with a roommate, partner, friend, or spouse so that you both get to enjoy the stress-free benefits of socializing during your commute.

Develop a morning routine

In the previously mentioned 2017 article published in Harvard Business Review, behavioral scientist Francesca Gino discusses the results of a study she conducted that found that people who "maintain small routines on the way to work—such as checking the news on the train—feel more excited about the day ahead, more satisfied with their jobs, and less stressed-out than those who had no set routine."

And this approach actually nicely supports the research that shows that having a commute isn't inherently a bad thing. A 2001 study from the University of California Transportation Center found that people enjoy having a commute—as long as that commute is reasonable. The ideal commute time they calculated was based on the mean of all responses: 16 minutes.

They write: "On the whole, these results support the contention that commute time is not unequivocally a disutility to be minimized, but rather that there is an optimum to be achieved which can be violated in either direction—i.e. it is possible (although comparatively rare) to commute too little as well as too much."

A commute is, in its own way, a routine. And as we discussed before, if you spend it thinking about the role you're switching into, it helps prepare you to make that switch and makes the transition less stressful. So even if you work from home and your commute consists of—as mine does these days—walking up a flight of stairs, it can still help to have a morning routine you follow to create some predictability for your day—to have something to look forward to in the morning.

That might be getting a cup of coffee from your favorite coffee shop, catching up on social media or the news, or listening to your favorite podcast. This can help you prepare for the day whether you drive for an hour to get to work or just move from the couch to your desk.

Considering the Impacts of a Long Commute as an Employer

While you should certainly consider the impacts of a long daily commute on yourself, as an employer, it's also important to consider how your employees are being affected by long commutes.

Allowing employees to work from home—even if only occasionally—can help ease the stress of a long commute. And according to a Mercer study, accommodating flexible working arrangements has an even more positive impact on productivity than any work—even fully remote work—with an inflexible schedule.

And according to a 2015 article in TLNT, some companies have even gone as far as offering incentives like annual bonuses for employees who choose to live closer to work, while others have reduced turnover by weighting location more heavily when hiring to fill open positions.

If You Can't Improve Your Commute, Abandon It

If you simply can't move closer to work or find a job closer to home—and if none of the strategies in this piece help you transform your commute into a more positive daily experience—there's one more option: Find a job where you can work from home.

Look at remote-only job boards like We Work Remotely.
Filter jobs on AngelList by those that are fully remote or remote-friendly.
Include the term "remote" when searching for jobs on sites like Glassdoor and LinkedIn.
Take a look at the open roles for these 25+ fully remote companies.
Zapier is a fully remote company, so check out our job openings.

Street traffic image by Alexander Popov via Unsplash; crowded train image by Free-Photos via Pixabay; exhausted commuter by Lily Banse via Unsplash