How to Stay Productive While Working from Home

The spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19) has drastically changed the way we live, work, and play. We will perhaps be forever changed by this unprecedented world we now live in.

In recent years, remote work has become popular and fairly commonplace. But today, as the pandemic continues, working from home has become something entirely different. It has become the only way that work gets done. 

For traditionally office-bound professionals, working from home means taking advantage of the many perks that come with being remote. You’re able to save time and money by avoiding the daily commute to the office. You can create your own work environment and tailor your office space to your needs. No longer are you confined to one desk or one dedicated space; you can work wherever you want so long as it’s at home. 

Despite the convenience, there are certainly challenges of working at home. There are increased distractions from kids and spouses that are also forced into the same shelter-at-home situation. There are no physical boundaries between work life and home life, which means you have to stay focused, even while knowing there’s beer in the fridge and a gaming console in the next room. And, working with colleagues now requires a little more formality without impromptu brainstorming sessions by the water cooler or meeting follow-ups in the hallway.

Although there are certainly challenges to working from home, the benefits of greater autonomy and the promise of more hours in the day have overwhelming upsides. Here are a few tips I’ve come across that make some of the challenges easier to master and help to boost productivity: 

Stick to a Schedule

Just as you’ve done in the past, get up at the same time each day and start your morning routine. Set aside important tasks and goals the day before so that when you sit down in front of your computer you know exactly what you need to address first. 

Take Breaks

Working without breaks can lead to burnout, but admittedly this is something I’m really bad at when I’m at the office. However, working nonstop at home poses an even greater risk of burnout because I don’t have the luxury of “going home” at the end of the day. To avoid burnout, and feeling like I’m chained to my desk, occasional breaks throughout the day are essential. 

Move

Exercise is always something I try to do regularly, but while being cooped up it’s absolutely essential. Getting the heart rate up works wonders for both physical and mental health, especially while in confinement. Without a commute, there’s more time in the day so make use of it! For once I’m actually able to carve more time out of the day for exercise. It’s been such a treat to get up early and break a sweat before hitting the emails. 

Stay connected 

“Self-isolation” doesn’t have to mean you’re always on your own. Use technology, like email, instant messaging, and video conferencing services, to keep up relationships with friends, family, and colleagues. 

Control Communication

Don’t let the technology mentioned above control you. Set specific times to check in with your manager or co-workers so that you don’t get overwhelmed or distracted. When setting meetings, schedule them around the times that make the most sense for the way you work so that they don’t prevent you from other solo tasks that require more focus.

Get Fresh Air

Eat lunch outside, go for a walk, or simply open your window. Sunlight, fresh air, and the sounds of birds chirping can have a powerfully positive effect and prevent cabin fever. 

Use To-Do Lists

Whether you’re at home or at the office, there’s only so much time in a day so you’ve got to prioritize. Keep a running list of your tasks to prevent any distractions from getting in the way. I like to use Google Keep to organize my to-dos. Layout everything you need to achieve before the workday is done so that you know where to pick-up the next day. 

Set Clear Finish Times

In the past, whenever I would work from home I would end up putting in many more hours than I normally would at the office. Now, without ever physically leaving the “office” it’s more important than ever to set boundaries to achieve proper balance.

Digital Marketing Will Evolve in 2019. Here's How.

Keeping up with the latest trends in all areas of digital marketing including search engine optimization, social media marketing, web design, and user experience, is naturally essential for small businesses and large brands alike to reach consumers who are glued to their devices. But just because you’ve conquered digital marketing in 2018 doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re positioned for automatic success this year.

Digital marketing is in a constant state of flux; changing and evolving, shaped by new technologies and the habits of users. With this in mind, marketers need to be masters of adaptation.

By integrating these six strategies into your digital marketing plans this year, you’ll gain optimal traction with your customers while your competitors flounder in your wake.

Prepare for Google’s “micro moments”

We live in a fast-paced environment where we predominantly access digital content through mobile devices in short bursts on the train, waiting in line to get coffee, or (let’s face it) in the bathroom. The changing nature of our interactions with digital content is not making attention spans any longer. Today’s users don’t want, but demand instant gratification. They’re less likely than ever to take the time to scroll deeply or make dozens of clicks to navigate through your content.

Google understands this and its “micro moments” is a mental model for marketing that’s already changing the rules. This model distills user behavior into three distinct micro moments including:

• “I want to go” moments

• “I want to do” moments

• “I want to buy” moments

These are the moments in which a user will now instinctively turn to a device. They will do so out of a desire to “go” and learn something through a specific piece of content, to “do” something like signup or registration, or to make a purchase and “buy” a product or service. These are fleeting but critical moments which are ripe for opportunity. How will you capitalize on them in 2019?

Users have been conditioned to expect brands to deliver exactly what they want when they want it. It’s incumbent upon businesses to be able to meet users’ needs faster with fewer clicks. This means producing more content, prompt and responsive user assistance, real-time communication and a range of options for a more personalized user experience.

Embrace video marketing

It may have killed the radio star, but video can also be a kingmaker. In a time where users’ attention spans are getting shorter and shorter, long form written content still has its place. However, video is fast becoming the preferred medium for the kinds of time-strapped users upon whom you have your sights set. Video communicates ideas quickly, making them more effective than text and even infographics.

Video marketing grows more important with each passing year and it is expected to reach new heights of importance in 2019. Consider this: brands that use video get 41-percent more search engine traffic than their counterparts that don’t. Businesses with a wealth of competitors who need every inch of inside track they can get in terms of SEO are tempting fate if they don’t embrace video marketing.

Content is still king

 It’s as true today as it was when Bill Gates first said it in 1996. However, in a “mobile first” era, it stands to reason that the way in which your users consume said content will be different to how it was when the only way you could access the internet was from a desktop computer with a dial-up modem (go ahead and remember the sound of an old dial-up with fond nostalgia).

Mobile use has been the primary means by which users consume digital content since 2016, and as such it behoves marketers to consider how your content looks, how it feels, and how it is navigated through, on a mobile device.

Sure, this means that your web design will need to be responsive, but you must also consider how your content is laid out, how easy it is to navigate via touchscreen, and how long your content takes to load through a 4G or even a 3G connection. Remember that a page load time of just 7 seconds can increase your bounce rate by over 30-percent! 

What’s more, in the wake of Google’s “mobile-first” index, failing to keep mobile optimization at the heart of your content is SEO kryptonite.

Tell more social stories

In an era where brands are stepping over one another to get the attention of their audiences, a little authenticity goes a long way. Authenticity helps users to establish a personal connection to your brand and allows them to invest in it emotionally. It adds to the value your brand provides and ensures that users will consider you before your competitors.

Let users peek behind the curtain with behind-the-scenes content. Allow them to get to know your employees a little better. Use polls to provide a degree of interactivity and ensure that your users feel that they have a voice. Use instagram stories to give users a flavor of daily life in your business. While it’s understandable that you may want to save time and resources by outsourcing much of your content, make sure that you leave plenty of space for some User Generated Content to give your content marketing strategy the personal touch.

Social stories are quick, fun, and easy to consume, and they also help to add that much-needed human dimension to your brand.

Champion user-centered design

Gone are the days when web design was all about aesthetics. No longer is it enough to merely have a website that looks beautiful and professional. Everyone has that now! In 2019 the future of web design is about User Experience (UX). UX is especially important in the “mobile-first” era as your content must be easy and intuitive to navigate through.

Today’s users are web savvier than they would have been 15, 10 or even 5 years ago. They have been conditioned to expect polished and seamless UX, and failing to provide it could be damaging to your brand. In an era where 55-percent of users spend less than 15 seconds on a website, brands can’t afford to send their bounce rates through the roof with an impenetrable UX.

Think about natural language

Digital assistants like Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant continue to evolve, and as they become more sophisticated users are entrusting them more and more. Needless to say this is bound to impact the way in which people seek answers to questions, make purchases, and otherwise interact with brands.

With this in mind it, marketers should think about the natural language used via voice searches and how it differs from a traditional typed search engine query. Today 39 million people in the US alone own a voice operated smart speaker. As they grow more sophisticated and reliable, that number is likely to rise proportionately. With more and more users turning to voice search, it is increasingly considered to be the next SEO frontier.

These machines derive user intent from conversational voice commands as well as previous search queries, and the better you’re able to understand how they work the more luck you’ll have tapping into the vast and growing market of voice search users in 2019.

Closing thoughts

The year ahead offers some exciting opportunities and new challenges for brands of all shapes and sizes. However, when you keep this digital marketing checklist in mind, you’ll be perfectly positioned to respond to user demand in 2019 and beyond.

Are Open Offices Killing Productivity?

Business leaders have always sought ways to boost the productivity of their employees. In the 20th century, the open office was considered to be the smartest design to boost the productivity of desk-bound workers. In 1906, the opening of Frank Lloyd Wright's Larkin Administration Building was considered to be the first modern office, embracing an open office plan for the first time. The open-office concept continued throughout the years, but it was really popularized in the 2000s by tech giants like Google, Apple and Facebook.In 2012, Mark Zuckerberg hired famed architect Frank Gehry to design Facebook's new headquarters, which would ultimately be "the largest open floor plan in the world." The campus is actually a single room stretching 10 acres.These layouts were praised for their ability to encourage productivity, collaboration, and creativity. Architects and business leaders believe that open design focuses on mobility, empowers individual boundaries and encourages chance encounters. But, so employees who have to work in these spaces share the same sentiment?

Less Focus, More Distraction

In 2015, The Washington Post published an article that sated this design trend “is destroying the workplace” at places like Google because it’s too “oppressive.” In 2017, The Wall Street Journal reported that Apple's open-office design was producing to be too noisy and distracting for programmers.A recent study by students at Harvard also noted that open designs are effectively hindering face-to-face communication, rather than building those "chance encounters" that Facebook had hoped. Rather than prompting collaboration, open architecture appeared to trigger a natural human response to socially withdraw from officemates, and interact instead over email and instant messaging, particularly through services such as Slack.

A Closer Look at Office Interaction

While open offices remain the trends, more studies around office interactions are showing that these spaces tend to yield employees who are more un-collaborative and unfriendly. Moreover, a study in 2016 by the Auckland University of Technology found that people who work from home or share a space with just one or two others enjoy better relationships with colleagues.Additionally, some argue that openness creates a sense of transparency, and therefore motivates people to work more because others can see what they're doing. Columbia professor and productivity expert Cal Newport suggests that this simply fuels busyness as a proxy for productivity and that it fails to foster quality work in favor of the perception of working more.

Alternatives to Openness

There are alternatives to designing a new workspace that isn't reliant on open layouts. Hub and Spoke is just one approach that's a hybrid of an open office and a closed office. While there are central spaces and hallways that are open, there are still individual offices. MIT’s Building 20 is an excellent example of Hub and Spoke.Ultimately, businesses need to design spaces that are more likely to encourage great work. One thing that should be avoided at all costs is the notion that a space that's swanky or impressive, offering a football-field of openness, is going to be the sliver bullet that leads to the next great idea. Chances are, according to research, it probably won't.

How Mobile is Changing the Customer Journey

The Zero Moment of Truth is a term coined by Google that refers to online research performed by a consumer before they purchase a product or service. According Google, 88% of customers in the U.S. do online research on a product before they buy. This Zero Moment, or ZMOT, is changing the way marketers think about branding and online commerce.

Marketing used to revolve around the 3 to 5 seconds a consumer would spend deciding on a product while at the store shelf. It was the moment where all of a brand’s incessant advertising would payoff, in what Proctor & Gamble called the "First Moment of Truth", or FMOT. But technology has completely altered the way consumers decide on a product to buy.

Today, FMOT isn’t the only brand interaction that counts. Marketers have to consider ZMOT as much as they do traditional advertising. Consumers have infinite means available to research products: comparison-shopping websites, user-generated ratings & reviews, social media posts, and the list goes on. More importantly, they can perform their research anywhere — at home, at work, or while waiting in line at Starbucks — and it can be done in real-time.

No longer are consumers at the mercy of messages being pushed to them. The consumer is now largely in control, seeking out the information they need to decide on the product that will satisfy their specific wants and desires.

ZMOT poses new challenges for brands, but there are ways to optimize for these new interactions.

• Start by thinking about the customer’s journey, especially the specific customer that you’re trying to reach. Research the types of questions they may ask at the start of their journey. This should lend insights into what content and messaging a brand should be communicating across ads, websites, and other touch points.

• Consumers are using more than just a desktop computer. They’re also increasingly on the go and highly mobile, so brands need to make sure they have mobile-friendly content that consumers can consume on any device. Responsive design and other mobile-centric marketing are now essential.

• It’s also important to understand that consumers are not waiting for a single advertisement to tell them what to do. They’re empowered and ready to do their research, so help them out by developing high-quality content around a product, such as blog posts, buying guides, comparison charts, and videos -- not just ads. Remember that engaging content is critical for establishing an emotional connection with consumers, and that emotional bond is fundamentally what ZMOT is all about.

• Provide good customer service. Reviews matter at ZMOT. So, make sure your customers are happy, especially after the sale is complete. Find ways to encourage reviews and place positive ones front and center whenever possible.

Don’t forget to target people who have already shown interest in your brand. With remarketing, you can help establish brand loyalty and retention.These are just some of the high-level ways that brands can optimize for ZMOT.

SEO is Dead. Are You Ready for Search Experience Optimization?

Search engine optimization has always been an exciting space full of changes and ever-evolving algorithms. Figuring out how to exploit those algorithms has been the main objective of countless SEOs.

These exploits have really given SEO a bad name in the process. Scaling the development of low-quality content, purchasing links, getting meaningless directory inclusions, and many other offenses that were focusing on optimizing for search engines, once made a difference.

That was then. Today, Google is much smarter and has refined its algorithm to better understand what makes a great website. In short, a great website — one that Google will rank higher — is one that can provide a great user experience. A website that is optimized for people, not just search engines.

What Changed?

Over the last few years, experienced SEOs have been calling for a rebranding for what we do. Many have settled on Search Experience Optimization (often abbreviated SXO).

The term search experience optimization better marries together a few disciplines, including search engine optimization, conversion rate optimization, and user experience. In addition to SEOs becoming more focused on optimizing for the user, search engines have made significant changes to how they evaluate content. Among the most crucial updates to Google's search algorithm was Panda, a series of updates that that includes real human evaluations (along with algorithmic assessments that mimic these human evaluations). These changes help Google gauge the quality of a website more efficiently.

While Google doesn't explicitly divulge much when it comes to their ranking factors, it's advised that SEOs and all web professionals adhere to Google's prescribed best practices to avoid any ranking penalties.

How to Optimize for Experience

Good SEO has always been about upholding a great user experience. Unfortunately, some unethical marketers have given the field a bad name, seeking to game Google’s algorithm while failing to consider the user.

Focusing on search experience optimization is really about legitimizing what good SEOs have been doing all along. This includes improving all aspects of the searcher’s experience, including:

• Building content that meets of expectations of the searcher.

• Ensuring that content loads quickly.

• Making content that speaks directly to its intended audience.

• Aligning on-page SEO elements with the topic so that Google and users alike know exactly what you’re setting out to communicate.

These are just some of the basic tenets of optimizing content to provide a search engine friendly website. But the evolving demands of good SEOs now incorporate aspects of user experience (UX) as well. These include:

• Making sure content is accessible across all browsers and all devices, ideally through a responsive design.

• Building a clear information architecture (IA) so that users can easily perform their task or goal with little friction.

• Taking a more active role in wireframing and prototyping processes to ensure the IA informs the content strategy throughout the website.

• Upholding the accessibility of your website, ensuring that all of your potential users, including people with disabilities, have a decent user experience.

User Experience and SEO

SEO still manages to play a significant role in search engine results and influences how websites get found online. But SEO has become much more than simply trying to stay ahead of Google and their algorithm tweaks.

These days, it's important to have a broader perspective. To better satisfy a user's needs, marketers might have to turn to focus groups, web analytics data, keyword research, field interviews, and usability tests. It's no longer enough to gather search data alone. Data on interactions, as well as finding insights direct from users, will be paramount.

Truth is, the search experience is just one part of the larger overall user experience, and SEOs need to adjust their thinking and processes to better address UX. Ultimately, introducing new designs, features, and structures will likely keep users more engaged. This in turn, will have lasting results on your rankings.

Physical Books Offer Better Comprehension, Usability Than eBooks

Thanks to the rise of tablets and e-readers like Amazon's Kindle, traditional booksellers have been hurting over the last few years. And while the popularity of the ebook and digital publications has eaten away at book sales, Nielsen BookScan -- which tracks what readers are buying -- found that paper book sales actually increased 2.4-percent last year. This figure includes sales of books through Amazon and other bookstores.

GreekWire writer Frank Catalano dove deeper into this increase and considers some of the not-so-obvious reasons for the paper book's sudden resurgence.For starters, Catalano noted that numerous studies have been conducted that prove we read text differently when it’s printed on a page, compared to on a screen. On websites, text is often skimmed. And, studies have shown that the same is true when it comes to the text of ebooks. As a result, readers tend to have far better comprehension when they're reading from a physical book.

Additionally, when it comes to making highlights, annotations, or just bookmarking a page, tablets and e-readers have some amazing tools. However, studies have shown that many of these added tools and virtual sticky notes are often too complicated to use. Different platforms also have different menus, icons, and conventions, often making them less user-friendly than simply grabbing a pen or highlighter and marking up a page.The author notes other factors as well, such as the general feel and smell of a book that gets lost when they’re in digital form. Many studies have suggested that using backlit screens can also interfere with sleep.

Personally, I love the convenience of digital books. They’re usually less expensive and I can download a new book in a matter of seconds. But there’s something about reading a paper book that is definitely more enjoyable. As this article says, "real" books also have a UI and UX that benefits from centuries of refinement.