Following our first episode of GlobalLeadership Talks, this second episode of our first series continues our conversation with our global panel of HR experts on the evolution of the workplace during a pandemic – How do we Manage, Measure, Motivate?
Kathleen Procario – Head of HR Bacardi N-America Nicole Barrow – Head of HR DP DHL Group Americas Kathleen Halligan – Organizational psychologist with People Performance Ireland Co-host : Jordan Goldrich – Author of WorkPlace Warrior
HOW DO WE MANAGE, MEASURE, MOTIVATE? – KEY TAKE AWAYS Performance measurements systems: Key is through a more frequent dialogue to adjust people’s commitments and goals, e.g. weekly team conversations with goal adjustments – keep it flexible.
Motivating: performance goals & measurements are created by the individual and become part of their performance profile – not a top down approach. This ensures ownership, accountability, and clarity in conversations with their managers.
Managing the performance of your team: ask “How would I like to be managed?” Become more deliberate about your conversations. Listen to the cues of employees: “How can we work together better?” and, “What level of support do I need to provide?”
Measurements: it’s about managing the outcome. Trust your people to make decisions and be prepared to be delighted by the outcome. Press the “Pause” button if editing is needed.
Stress: often caused by the fear of the unknown. Being addressed by managers with more empathy, more flexibility, supportive of new working conditions – we are seeing an increase in the EQ coefficient.
Connecting is paramount: have multiple touch points to communicate messages, formally and informally. Town halls were found to be effective – don’t assume people know.
Strategic decision making – needs to be swift – a more dynamic environment supports this, versus hierarchical structure. Gather decision makers around the table. Trust & Empower. Cultivate & share best practice – enable freedom within a framework.
Global and Regional approaches – key is freedom within a giving framework and being empowered to act.
Preventing burn-out: improving Wellness offers to support the employees – e.g. Virtual Yoga and meditation classes.
Advice from the Panel: Stay connected to customers & employees with more diligence and a personal touch – Trust and empower.
Transparency throughout all communications, with honesty and humility.
Put on your own oxygen mask first: Ask yourself, “How do I want to be managed?”
Will we see a decline in old hierarchical structures into more partnership approaches enabling the motivation to work faster and with more transparency?
Stay tuned for Episode 3 – How do we help people Thrive in this environment?
John Reed PhD, MBA, MCEC, PCC Forbes Councils Member Forbes Coaches Council COUNCIL POST| Paid Program Leadership
John Reed has multiple master coaching certifications, a Dartmouth MBA, a University of Georgia PhD and psychologist licensure.
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Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman studied how we often make important decisions by overrelying on intuitive hunches without the benefit of detailed data and a sensible, consistent process. Dr. Kahneman, a psychologist, described this problem in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow as “what you see is all there is.” Its more common name is the halo effect.
Think of the halo effect as our tendency to like or dislike everything about someone — including things we don’t know or haven’t observed — based on a single experience with the person. A perfect example is executive coach evaluation and selection. A “chemistry” meeting between an executive and various coaches supposedly clarifies who the most effective coach will be. In person, these meetings are anything but accurate and reliable, and now, held by video or phone, they reveal even less about coaches.
Since we primarily communicate nonverbally, video meetings can be more useful than phone meetings. Eye movement and contact, facial expressions, and related head movement are noticeable. While more informative than phone meetings, video meetings still miss important dynamics (e.g., posture, most body movements, social distancing, overall appearance, etc.).
Halo Effect Victims
Professionals who could have selected coaches more effectively — for an ROI and results that could have been better — ask these two questions most in seeking advice:
• As an intelligent buyer, what did I miss in making this suboptimal choice?
• If I consider coaching again, what selection steps will improve my expected results and ROI?
Avoiding The Traps
Remember first that biases limit everyone’s decision-making skills. Three elements can help us anticipate and guard against bias.
First, pay attention to your intuition and sense of chemistry with a potential coach. While this is just one of many evaluation criteria, don’t ignore it.
Second, review published information about the coach. A LinkedIn profile, website and resume are a good start but not all you need (more on this in a minute).
A good evaluation and decision process helps us step back and, for example, notice faulty logic. If an executive is presented with coaching candidates by the human resources department or an external coaching organization, the executive may assume — incorrectly — that the coaches are all prescreened and comparably qualified so a chemistry session is all that’s left to make a smart choice. Actually, unless we specify in advance for HR or the coaching organization the criteria to use and require of potential coaches, who knows how qualified the presented coaches will be? The following guidance and criteria help us distinguish between coaches and improve decision outcomes.
A Process For Results And ROI
The process suggested here is straightforward and goes beyond public information available or presented to us about coaches. With it, we can avoid two classic decision-making dangers in coach selection: confirmation bias and overconfidence.
Confirmation bias — related to the halo effect — is our tendency to look for evidence confirming a conclusion (that we jumped to prematurely without a good process) and ignore evidence challenging or contradicting our premature conclusion. Overconfidence is having unjustified faith in our guesses, predictions or intuitions. We don’t know what we don’t know, so without a process to remind us to apply the right evaluation criteria, we’re prone to errors.
What criteria should we apply, then? There are four well-known disciplines that together fuel executive coaching performance: business, psychology, coaching and ethics. Unfortunately, in the fragmented and disorganized coaching field, these four selection criteria are somehow not always applied. My book Pinpointing Excellence: The Key to Finding a Quality Executive Coach includes the following guide to help ensure that coaches have the key foundational skills and training you expect.
In addition to using publicly available data about coaches, ask these four questions to uncover information that may not be public.
1. What coaching organization certified you and at what level, and how many documented hours of coaching experience and training do you have? A number of certifying organizations offer fine training in general coaching, though without business and psychology content needed for executive coaching. The International Coach Federation, for example, has three certification levels. Becoming an associate certified coach requires 100-plus hours of experience and 60-plus hours of training. A professional certified coach designation demands 750-plus hours of experience and 125-plus hours of training, and a master certified coach involves 2,500-plus hours of experience and 200-plus hours of training.
2. What is your business education, training and experience? Ask if the coach has an MBA, and research the quality of the program. Learn about the scope, level and years of their leadership and management experience.
3. What is your education, training and experience in psychology or a related science (e.g., psychiatry)? See if the coach is licensed or board-certified with a doctoral degree. Confirm skills in behavior change, emotional intelligence, adult development, neuropsychology, assessment, etc.
4. What ethics code(s) are you governed by? Examples are codes from the American Psychological Association, the International Coach Federation, the MBA Oath, etc.
The more bias-free, consistent and thorough our evaluation and decision process, the better our expected ROI, results and satisfaction with executive coaching. This is particularly true now with Covid-19 because our preselection contact with coaches is limited to video at best or the phone.
Careers I write about career and leadership development topics.
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This year has been a year like no other. A global pandemic, racial injustices, and political uncertainty have created a perfect storm of upheaval and uncertainty. Many people have been feeling an unwelcome cocktail of anxiety, depression, grief, and even trauma. Nearly eight out of ten executives have reported poor mental health during this time and 70% of working professionals report that they have never felt more stressed or anxious throughout their careers as they do now. For those who are trying their best, but may not be at their best, it’s ok to give yourself a break, take care of yourself, and show yourself some compassion.
I recently spoke with Kristin Neff, author of Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself and The Mindful Self-Compassion Workbook, about the importance of self-compassion in these trying times and how to practice it. Neff describes in her book that compassion, by definition, is relational. It’s something we offer others, but we can also offer it to ourselves. Moreover, self-compassion is a muscle we can build that makes us more resilient over time and allows us to be more optimistic. It encompasses three main components.
Being Mindful. Practicing self-compassion first requires that we notice our suffering. It’s not avoiding, rejecting, or suppressing it, which can make things worse – the axiom “What we resist persists” is quite true here. Mindfulness involves the nonjudgmental awareness and acceptance of our current experience. We can’t show ourselves compassion if we don’t acknowledge what we’re feeling. Instead of unconsciously being in the thick of our emotions, mindfulness allows us to step back and say, “I’m going through a really hard time right now.” Neff says, “Recognize that this is hard for you. Call attention to it. Be aware of it instead of shoving it away or being lost in it….the first thing has to be to become aware that you’re suffering.”
Often, unpleasant emotions will register first in the body, and we may notice a physical sensation before we recognize exactly what we are feeling. It might be that our heart starts racing, our muscles tighten, or we feel “a pit in our stomach.” Naming the associated emotion can help raise our awareness about what it is that we’re experiencing. Your body will never lie to you. It will tell you exactly what you are feeling. You just need to listen to what it is saying and put it into words. Like tuning into a clear signal on a radio dial, tuning into exactly what message your body is sending you can take some practice, but becomes easier over time.
Being kind to ourselves. This is not about self-pity or self-indulgence – it’s about being kind and understanding with ourselves versus self-critical and judgmental. We all have some version of an inner critic that causes us to beat ourselves up and demand, “Why can’t you just get it together?!” Being kind to ourselves when we’re having a hard time involves showing ourselves the same care, concern, and desire to help as you would with a good friend, colleague or loved one. Neff describes that showing kindness to ourselves, “actually helps us feel safe…and that sense of safety helps us feel less overwhelmed.” It’s asking ourselves, “What do I need in this moment to take care of myself?” It might be taking a day off, taking a nap (one of the perks of working from home) or going on a walk.
To be clear, this doesn’t preclude you from reaching out to others for support. Neff adds that “actual support [from others] is also good…That’s part of caring for ourselves is helping ourselves get the support we need from others.” Neff also explained that “We still need to give ourselves that warmth and sense of worthiness ourselves. Our friends aren’t with us at three in the morning when we wake up and thoughts are going through our heads.” It’s in these times that we can ask ourselves what we would say to a good friend who is in the same situation.
Reminding ourselves of our common humanity. When we are struggling in some way it can often feel like we are the only one, which leads to feelings of isolation and even envy of those who seem to be doing well, and can create a downward spiral of despair. Our perspective can become myopic, creating what Neff calls “a type of emotional tunnel vision,” making us feel even more disconnected. By broadening our lens to see ourselves as part of the human race, in which everyone is imperfect and fallible, we help to normalize our painful experience. It’s recognizing that at one point or another in life, we all experience difficulty, frustration, challenge, and even failure. It’s what she called “the wisdom of remembering we aren’t alone.” Developing this wisdom and seeing our common humanity allows us to feel more connected to others and not so alone in the world. Neff shared that in her workshops, one of the most powerful ways she helps to build a sense of common humanity is by having people talk in small groups where they invariably say, “Oh, really? You do that, too?”
I asked what might get in the way of self-compassion – both practicing it and actually “letting it in.” Neff shared two main barriers – one physiological and the other cultural. Whenever we detect something negative (like a pandemic, for example), or we fail in some way, our brain perceives this negative information as a threat. Our sympathetic nervous system is activated and we go into reactive mode – fight, flight, or freeze – to try to make ourselves feel safe. Neff explained, “We’re less thoughtful. We’re less able to see the big picture, like ‘Oh wow, everyone suffers in this way.’”
A key cultural barrier to self-compassion is the belief that self-compassion will undermine our motivation; that we need to be hard on ourselves to be motivated to do our best, when in fact, self-encouragement is shown to be a more effective motivator than self-criticism. The other cultural barriers are gender-related. Women, who tend to be socialized to put others first, are more prone to the fallacy that practicing self-compassion is selfish. Neff explains that “It’s not a zero-sum game…It’s just including ourselves in the circle of compassion.” For men, the obstacle tends to be viewing self-compassion as a type of weakness.
Practicing self-compassion is not about letting ourselves off the hook or making excuses. People who are self-compassionate still set high goals for themselves – but they aren’t as rattled if they fall short of these goals, as they are more likely to adopt a growth mindset and learn from their failure or difficulty. Moreover, they continue to set high goals for themselves after a set-back. Self-compassion also doesn’t make our suffering automatically go away, but it allows us to deal with our negative thoughts and feelings more directly – and in a caring way. It creates the space for them to run their natural course, so we can restore our sense of equilibrium and build our resilience so we can weather the next storm that passes through.
Take this short test to see how self-compassionate you are.
I am an Executive Coach and founding Partner at Next Step Partners, a global leadership development firm that provides Career Transition Services, Executive Coaching, Group Leadership Development and Team Development Programs. Follow me on Twitter @rszucker and download my tips on “How To Get The Most Out Of Coaching” at https://nextsteppartners.com/10tips/.
When you ask a friend “How are you?” you usually get a short, surface-level response, some variation of:
I’m fine.
Eh, tired.
Hangin’ in there.
Rarely does the recipient reveal much, if anything, about how they’re actually doing — even if we sincerely want to know the answer. Why is that? As journalist Ashley Fetters wrote for The Atlantic in April, it’s because the question often “functions as a perfunctory greeting and nothing more.”
DELMAINE DONSON VIA GETTY IMAGES Therapists share tweaks to the generic “how are you” question that are more likely to elicit an honest answer.
In other words, humans are savvy social creatures who understand that “how are you” is generally employed as a “well-intended nicety,” said San Francisco psychotherapist Kathleen Dahlen deVos — not a genuine inquiry about their well-being.
“As such, we usually supply an answer that’s of equivalent depth and on par with what’s expected by the greeter: ‘Fine, thanks,’” she said.
So if it’s an honest answer you’re after, you’re probably asking the wrong question. By changing up your phrasing, you can send the message that you’re looking to have a deeper conversation — not just exchange pleasantries.
“People not only need to feel that the other person truly wants to know how they are doing,” said Los Angeles marriage and family therapist Abigail Makepeace, “But they also need to know that confiding in someone else will not scare them away.”
When one of deVos’ dear friends was going through a difficult loss, someone in her life would always ask, “How are you today?” Adding that one word made such a difference.
“It changed the nature of this whole question from something that felt hollow, overwhelming and nonspecific, to a question she felt more safe and sure of answering,” deVos said. “‘How are you today’ is an inquiry into what is true for someone in this moment, in the past few hours and can feel more approachable because it’s specific.”
2. How are you holding up?
Posing the question this way acknowledges that things are hard right now and implies that you don’t expect the other person to say they’ve been well.
“The slight modifications signal to us that it’s OK to shift a bit away from the standard ‘good’ or ‘fine’ answers, and acknowledge, perhaps, that we are not ‘good’ or ‘fine’ in general right now,” deVos said.
3. I’ve been thinking about you lately. How are you doing?
Telling this person they’ve been on your mind shows you do care, which may make them feel more comfortable opening up.
“Prefacing the question [this way] signals to the other person that you’re truly invested in their reply and that you’re eager to hear whatever it is that they feel comfortable sharing,” Makepeace said.
“People not only need to feel that the other person truly wants to know how they are doing, but they also need to know that confiding in someone else will not scare them away.”
– ABIGAIL MAKEPEACE, MARRIAGE AND FAMILY THERAPIST
“You might also follow up on a worry or concern they’ve mentioned before, and check in on how they’re feeling about it now,” she added.
5. Is there any type of support you need right now?
“This not only telegraphs to your loved one that you are interested in what they may be struggling with, but reinforces that you care about that struggle and are eager to help,” Makepeace said.
6. Are you anxious about anything? Are you feeling down at all?
If the suggestions above aren’t getting much of a response, try asking a more pointed question about what you suspect this person might be feeling.
“Providing ‘feeling state phrases’ can help your friend begin the process of verbalizing their experiences,” Makepeace said. “Also, wording your questions in this manner lets your friend know that their answer won’t catch you off guard and that you’re seeking truly intimate and honest communication.”
Another way to encourage them to open up? Lead by example: By being vulnerable about your own mental or emotional state, you may prompt your loved one to talk more openly about theirs.
“When you speak truthfully about your own experience, you give the other person permission to share without fear or risk,” Makepeace said.
And if they’re still not opening up to you, that’s OK. Just checking in shows your deep care and concern — and that alone is powerful. Let them know that when they’re ready to talk, you’ll be there to listen.
Challenges of the C-Suite Special Guest – Susan Curtin, MCEC Tuesday, Oct 27th @ 12pm MDT
Susan Curtin, MCEC, is President & Owner at Insights4Results, LLC., Executive Coach & Consultant who partners with clients in igniting new insights, innovations & increased results.
Susan started a coaching/consulting firm after 20 years of experience training & coaching internal/external personnel in San Diego County & City organizations. Soon after, she noticed gaps in coaching provided to individuals and teams that were not being addressed by existing coaching models & programs.
The first gap was that there was no coaching to hire the right individual for the job in the first place.
Approaches of existing coaching programs tended to coach everyone the same & didn’t account for each individual having a unique set of skills, challenges or their current performance State.
Then there was no support to coach leaders when they were in the Slipping State.
After coaching leaders to become better managers, there was no plan to coach these developed leaders to succession.
The gaps led to the creation of Managing4Results™ a successful, comprehensive management program that incorporates development of a department managers’ role as a coach for ongoing employee engagement and increased retention. This program helps managers learn: “How to be, What to do and When to do” in order to build stronger relationships with their direct reports through giving constructive feedback, coaching, and communicating in ways that truly motivate and enable teams to achieve greater results. Managing4Results™ provides a certification program for coaches, consultants and trainers interested in utilizing this proven training program for their current and future client organizations.
Susan’s coaching includes leadership development, transition to the next stage of leadership, succession management & work on key competencies including interpersonal savvy/EQ & political acumen. She specialize in utilizing Managing4Results™ program to facilitate managers & leaders in developing personnel while building their own capacity to coach their teams ensuring greater employee engagement. “Behind Every Good Result Is a Great Insight.”
Susan is a member of the Association of Corporate Executive Coaches https://www.acec-association and is a certified Master Corporate Executive Coach with the MEECO Leadership Institute.
Ask the #1 Leadership Thinker in the world your questions.
Do you have leadership challenges right now? Is coaching changing? What new skills do I need to lead post COVID? How do I find balance and calm in such uncertain times?
Marshall Goldsmith joins #MG100 coaches CB Bowman, Rhett Power, Andrew Nowak, and Mitali Chopra and shares his insights on leadership, life, and finding balance.
This is your chance to ask Marshall your burning questions.
Date: July 9th Time: 6 am PT, 9 am ET, 2 pm London, 9 pm Hong Kong
Productivity isn’t about getting more done. It’s about what you get done. Three aspects of perfectionism can interfere with your ability to prioritize the most important tasks.
1. You’re reluctant to designate decisions as “unimportant.”
There’s an argument that, for unimportant decisions, you should either decide quickly or outsource the decision.
But perfectionists have a hard time
designating decisions as unimportant. They like to be in control of
everything. Why? Because imperfections bother them more than they do
other people. If something goes wrong, perfectionists might feel
explosive frustration or a niggling sense of irritation that’s hard to
ignore, and they don’t want to take that risk.
Sometimes, perfectionists are so
accustomed to micromanaging that it doesn’t even occur to them that any
decision is unimportant. They’re blind to it. They habitually and
automatically classify everything as worthy of their full effort.
Solution: In modern life, decision
fatigue can be intense. A perfectionist can learn to love giving up
control over some choices if they pay attention to how good it feels to
be relieved of the decision-making burden. Try using heuristics to quickly decide
or delegate with the expectation that you will get much faster and
pretty good decisions overall but not perfect ones. For instance, one of
my heuristics is: if I’ve thought about doing something three times, I
will get on and do it without further deliberating. For a useful
decision-making matrix, see this tweet.
2. You feel morally obligated to over-deliver.
The belief that you need to beat expectations in any situation can manifest in many ways.
Let’s say someone offers to pay you $1,000 for a service. If you’re a perfectionist, providing $1,000 of value might not seem like enough. You might think that you need to give what your competitors would charge $1,500 for because you want to outperform. You think: “If I don’t over-deliver, I’m under-delivering.”
Or if you judge that 24 hours is a respectable time frame in which to respond to a colleague’s email, you might set your own bar at within six hours. The key point is that you believe what’s generally reasonable doesn’t apply to you, and your own standard needs to be different.
Sometimes this line of thinking comes from wanting an excessive cushion; for instance, you think “if I aim to deliver 1.5X or 2X value for all the services I provide, then I’m never going to under-deliver.” It can also be driven by anxiety, insecurity or imposter syndrome; for instance, you think the only way to prevent anyone from being disappointed or unhappy with you is by always exceeding expectations. Perfectionists also sometimes imagine there will be catastrophic consequences if they fail to over-deliver; for example, they worry a client won’t want to work with them if they take a day to answer an email request, even if it’s a non-urgent query and they’re happy with everything else.
Solution: Have a plan for how you’ll course-correct if you notice these thought patterns. Understand what it’s costing you to always aim for out-performance. What else don’t you have time, energy, attention, and willpower for? Perhaps your own health, your big goals, or your family. If you assess that the costs are significant, try having a rule of thumb for when you’ll over-deliver. For instance, you might decide that in three out of ten situations in which you have the urge to do so, you will, but not in the other seven.
Situation-specific habits can help
you, too. For instance, if a reporter sends me more than six questions
for an article they’re working on, I’ll generally answer six or so
questions in detail, and either minimally answer or skip the others. (I
probably give better answers using this strategy because I focus on the areas in which I have the most interesting things to say.)
3. You get excessively annoyed when you aren’t 100% consistent with good habits.
When perfectionists want to adopt
new habits, they tend to fall into one of three categories. They bite
off more than they can chew and their plans are too onerous to manage;
they avoid starting any habit unless they’re 100% sure they can hit
their goal everyday, which leads to procrastination; or they take on
only those habits that they can stick to no matter what.
Flexibility is a hallmark of
psychological health. You need to have the capacity to take a day off
from the gym when you’re sick or just got off a late flight, even if it means breaking a streak.
You should also be able to shift away from habits that were once
important to your productivity or skills development but that you’ve
outgrown. Maybe as a beginning blogger, you vowed to always post three
times a week, but now that’s burning you out or, as a new real estate
investor, you always attended a monthly meetup, but now you get little
out of it.
Sometimes the more-disciplined behavior (deviating from an
ingrained habit or pattern of behavior) looks like the less-disciplined
one (taking a break). But when conventional self-discipline turns into
compulsion, perfectionists may actually be held back by it.
Solution: Have a mechanism
in place for checking that you’re not sticking to a habit just because
you’re worshiping at the altar of self-discipline. If you’ve never
missed a workout in two years (or any other habit), it’s likely there
were some days when getting it done wasn’t the best use of your time.
Regularly review the opportunity cost of any activities or behaviors you
diligently do to make sure they are currently the best use of your
physical and mental energy.
Perfectionism is often driven by striving for excellence, but it can be self-sabotaging if it leads to sub-optimal behavior like continuing habits beyond their usefulness, over-delivering when you don’t have to, or overthinking every decision you make.
Original Article appears here: https://hbr.org/2020/03/dont-let-perfection-be-the-enemy-of-productivity?utm_source=pocket&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pockethits
Five years ago on a summer day, we set
out to learn more about this thing called blogging. We made a little
survey, did a lot of outreach and eventually got 1000 bloggers to
respond.
You are now reading the 2019 Annual Blogging Survey. In it, you’ll
find a goldmine of blogging statistics, data and trends. Together, the
numbers tell the story of huge changes in blogging and content
marketing.
The average blog post takes 3 hours and 57 minutes to write …up 65% from 2014
The average blog post is 1236 words long …56% longer than in 2014
52% of bloggers report that it’s getting harder to get readers to engage with their content
One of the final questions is about success, and we correlate that
answer with the other answers, we can see what’s working today. Here is
the summary, ordered by effectiveness. It shows not only shows which
tactics are the most effective, but how few bloggers use them.
Note: “Strong results” data is self-reported and naturally
depends on the goals of each blogger. Because results such as traffic,
engagement and revenue vary widely across content programs, we did not
ask bloggers to provide Analytics or revenue data. You’ll find more info
about the methodology and data at the end of this report.
Here are the final statistics, analysis and input from blogging and content marketing experts.
1. How long does it take to write a blog post?
The average blog post takes 3 hours and 57 minutes to write.
The time invested in each article rises every year. This year the
average time spent per post jumped 30 minutes and is up 65% since 2014.
The data from 2014 to 2016 showed big drops in bloggers who spent two
hours or less per article. This year we see big jumps in the percentage
of bloggers who spend four hours or more.
Note: 30% of bloggers reported “strong results.” That’s the benchmark. We’ll discuss this in the final section.
2. How long is the typical blog post?
The average blog post is 1236 words long.
That’s 53% longer than six years ago. Articles keep getting longer,
as bloggers invest more time and effort in long-form, detailed articles.
Look closer and we see the big jump is in the 1500-2000 word range.
It’s as if editors everywhere updated their guidelines for length from
1000 to 1500 words.
Compare the percentage of bloggers at the far ends of the spectrum. An approach that was once rare is now quite common.
Perhaps we’ve seen a tipping point in the awareness of the benefits
of big content. Lots of studies have found a correlation between
long-form content with higher rankings, greater social engagement and
better results in general. Here’s one more: bloggers who write longer content are far more likely to report success. More than half of the bloggers who go big report “strong results” from blogging.
Joe Pulizzi, Founder, CONTENT MARKETING INSTITUTE“In looking through the data, it’s almost like going into the
past where longer, meatier articles were king, and each article took
hours of time. This gives me hope for the future of content consumption.
At least for blogging, snackable content is clearly dead. Audiences
expect more, and bloggers are giving them better researched more
advanced and well-thought-out content.”
Gill Andrews, COPYWRITER AND WEB CONSULTANT“I am surprised by how much the average blog post length has increased over time. It either means that more bloggers have finally realized that they need to try harder to get results or that the reader’s expectations increased drastically. If it’s the latter, I wonder if that means that at some point in the future, small businesses won’t be able to blog at all, because they won’t have the resources to produce the content an average online reader expects.”
Gini Dietrich, founder and author, SPINSUCKS“There are many days I complain about how I have six hours of meetings without time to pee or eat, let alone write or record a podcast. And then I read this survey that shows a significant number of bloggers now spend six hours writing one blog post. Six hours! ONE blog post. This means that kind of time, research, and collaboration results in cold, hard cash. So pack your desk drawer with protein-packed snacks and get to work!”
3. How frequently do bloggers publish?
About half of bloggers publish weekly or several times per month.
Has the increase in time and length affected how often bloggers hit
the publish button? Yes. There has been a steady decline in the “several
per week” category since 2014.
Around half of all bloggers publish 2-4 posts per month. That’s holding steady, but notice the jump in daily blogging.
Is there a relationship between publishing frequency and results? Yes. Bloggers who write more (either in length or in frequency) are more likely to report strong results.
But there seems to be a point of diminishing returns with frequency.
Bloggers who publish daily are more likely to report strong results than
bloggers who publish several times per day.
4. What content formats are bloggers using?
We’ve seen the size. Now let’s look at the shape of the content.
Practical, how-to content is dominant in content strategies.
About half of bloggers publish news. About half publish opinion.
Just one-third of bloggers use collaborative formats: round ups and interviews.
Here is the correlation between content formats and blogging
performance. This reinforces the previous findings about the value of
in-depth, visual and collaborative content.
Most likely to succeed: Bloggers who create long-form guides, ebooks and original research
Least likely to succeed: Bloggers who publish news and opinion
Mega-Trend: Research on the rise
Last year, 25% of bloggers added original research to their mix. Now
we see a big jump up in that number. More bloggers are conducting and
publishing original research as the word gets out about its
effectiveness.
35% of bloggers conduct and publish original research
85% of bloggers who publish original research report some/strong results from blogging (39% of them report strong results)
To gate or not to gate
This year we asked if bloggers are putting content behind lead gen
forms, requiring readers to give their email address prior to getting
access. About one-third of bloggers do this, even though almost half of
bloggers publish guides and ebooks.
32% of bloggers gate content
88% of bloggers who gate content report some/strong results from blogging (35% of them report strong results)
5. What does the typical blog post include?
Now let’s look at the features of specific articles, including
images, video, statistics and contributor quotes. These statistics show
how visual, scannable and collaborative blog posts are in general.
When we check the correlation data, you can see which specific elements correlate with success when included in blog content.
You can see that video makes the biggest difference. We’ve seen the correlation between video and success grow year after year.
Just how visual is blog content?
Most bloggers add a few images to their content. But fewer than 10%
of bloggers are producing very visual content with 7+ images per
article. Does that sound high? The average article here on the Orbit
Media blog includes 14 images, not including the author’s picture.
There is a clear correlation between highly visual content and
success. The more images a blogger adds to a typical article, the more
likely they are to win at the content game.
Just 3% of bloggers add 10+ images per article, but they are 2.5x
more likely to report “strong results” than the average blogger.
This along with the trends in video shows the importance of visuals.
It shows just how visual blogging has become. Is blogging more about
images or words? Are blogs post written or designed? It seems the more
visual the content strategy, the more likely it is to succeed.
Just how collaborative is blog content?
Seeing the big trends of influencer marketing inspired us to ask
about the popularity of collaborative content, which we define as
content that includes contributor quotes, roundups or interviews. The
response indeed shows that most bloggers do collaborate.
32% of bloggers never collaborate
1% of bloggers always collaborate
Is there a correlation between collaboration and success? Yes. The
more often bloggers collaborate with influencers, the more likely they
are to report “strong results.”
Here at Orbit, as a rule, each article we write includes a
contributor quote from at least one expert. Just as a journalist
wouldn’t publish an article without a source, we would never publish an
article without an expert POV.
6. How many draft headlines are bloggers writing?
The average blogger writes four headlines before selecting one.
Everyone sweats over headlines, or so we assume. As an all-important
element for blog posts, it’s worth the extra attention. After hearing
that some content teams consider 20+ headlines before selecting one, we
decided to pose the question.
We see that most bloggers write a couple of headlines before choosing
one and a tiny percentage are writing more than ten. Fewer than 1% of
bloggers write 20+ draft headlines per article.
Yet bloggers who consider more headlines are far more likely to
report success. Very few bloggers are doing the thing that correlates
with results.
Ann Handley, Cheif content officer, MARKETING PROFS“We all recognize the value of a great headline. Well done, us! Now let’s spend as much time thinking about the first line of a piece. PRO TIP: Write as many first lines as you do headlines. Why? Because the headline makes a reader click. And the first line makes them actually read the piece.”
7. Are bloggers working with editors?
30% of bloggers have a formal process for editing.
For our final question about process, we ask about working with
editors. Most bloggers edit their own work or get “a second set of eyes”
on their content before publishing. Only 30% have a formal process for
editing. That’s way up from five years ago when just 1 in 10 bloggers
had a formal process.
Bloggers with a formal editing process were about 50% more likely to
report strong results. Working with multiple editors doesn’t seem to
make strong outcomes more likely. And bloggers who edit their own seem
to be doing pretty well.
Another tip from Ann: “Behind every decent writer is a fantastic
editor! If you want to be a better writer… get yourself a great editor
to work with you.”
8. How is your content typically promoted?
Social media, of course. But just one in five bloggers uses influencer outreach and paid promotion.
Obviously, the fast, easy and cheap promotion channel is the most
popular. Virtually all bloggers share their content on social media.
Two-thirds use search and email, both of which have become much more
popular over the last five years.
The percentage of bloggers using email marketing has increased 2x since 2014
The percentage of bloggers using paid promotion has increased 3x since 2014
1 in 5 bloggers leverages influencers to help drive traffic (that’s down from two years ago)
1 in 5 bloggers buys traffic (that’s leveled off after a dramatic rise)
Let’s see what’s working. The less popular promotion channels are
more strongly correlated with success. This may be because they are more
difficult (or expensive) and this is another example of hard work
paying off.
9. How often do bloggers research keywords?
Half of bloggers research keywords for the majority of their content.
As SEO has grown in popularity and importance, keyword research as a skill and practice has become more common. Most bloggers do it sometimes. Half of all bloggers do it most of the time.
It’s work that pays off. The more the blogger researches keywords,
the more likely they are to report success. Bloggers who are also SEOs
report “strong results” at much higher than average rates.
10. Are bloggers using analytics?
Half of bloggers usually check the analytics for a post. The other half check occasionally, rarely or never.
The trend here is mostly flat. Use of Analytics has remained steady
for years. But it remains one of the big indicators of blogging
performance. Bloggers who measure the performance of every post are far
more likely to report “strong results” than the average blogger.
If they aren’t using analytics, you have to wonder how they even know if they’re getting results.
Jay Baer, luminary, CONVINCE AND CONVERT“What’s most interesting to me is the combination of expanded blog post length and corresponding time spent per post with the decline in attention paid to Analytics and keyword research. It’s remarkable to me that bloggers would spend nearly 4 hours to craft an 1800 word post, yet only 57% of them check their analytics with any degree of frequency and only about 50% of the time are they actually thinking about keywords when writing that post. If I was going to spend four hours on something, I would want to make sure that I had a measurement and success schema identified before I wrote the first of those 1800 words.”
11. Is it part of your strategy to update older blog posts?
Two-thirds of bloggers update previously published blog posts.
An obvious trend has emerged since we started asking this question a
few years ago. Nearly 70% of bloggers now report going back to older
content and making updates.
ian cleary, founder, RAZOR SOCIAL“Updating old content is an essential part of any online strategy
so it’s good to see that this year the percentage of people updating
old content. It’s great for SEO, especially when combined with keyword
research, adding more media and careful internal linking.”
Ian’s right. Updating old content appears to be an SEO tactic.
Bloggers who research keywords are 3x more likely to update old posts.
It’s a powerful way
to improve rankings and search traffic quickly. Also, bloggers who
publish news and original research are more likely to update old posts.
Makes sense.
This is another of those tactics that have a very strong correlation
with success. Bloggers who update old posts are 2x more likely to report
success.
35% of bloggers who update old content report “strong results”
16% of bloggers who do not update old content report “strong results”
12. Are bloggers getting results from their content?
Most bloggers are getting results, but just 30% are getting strong results.
We’ve seen this correlated with other statistics throughout the
survey. Now here’s the raw data on success. Naturally, the definition of
success varies as bloggers have a wide range of goals, from rankings to
revenue, likes to leads.
If you put 10 bloggers in a room…
5 would report getting some results
3 would report strong results
1 would report disappointing results
1 wouldn’t even know if they’re getting results
Is there a trend here? No. These numbers have changed very little over the last four years.
Bonus: What are the biggest blogging challenges?
This year we added a few questions about the challenges. What is the
hardest thing about blogging. The most common answer is personal: finding time.
We included an “other” category and gave respondents the opportunity
to add their own answers. The most common responses were related
specifically to business blogging: getting internal buy-in and
measurement/attribution.
The challenges are timeless, but when we ask bloggers what’s getting harder now, we see where the headwinds are coming from.
Henneke Duistermaat, ENCHANTING MARKETING“If reader engagement feels like your biggest challenge, it’s worth asking yourself whether your content strategy needs fine-tuning. Do you have a clear idea who your ideal reader is and how you can help them solve their problems, answer their questions and achieve their aims? Is the traffic to your site relevant? Are you writing to engage your reader or to impress Google? How human is your writing?”
Robert Rose, founder, THE CONTENT ADVISORY“It’s no surprise, but it’s very refreshing to see the quantity and quality challenge expressed in such contrast. Time spent on each post is up. Length and exploration of depth is up. And the biggest mentioned challenge to not only attract attention but hold it. A loud noise gets your attention – but it’s what kind of noise you’re making that determines whether people stay and listen.”
Bloggers are struggling with search and social more than email
marketing. This is probably because search and social are dominated by
digital monopolies, which control user experience. Google and Facebook
have reduced clickthrough rates to websites in order to keep visitors on
their platforms. But email isn’t owned by anyone. There’s no
intermediary between the blogger and their audience. Bloggers are
reporting an easier time.
Most bloggers (54%) are finding it harder to keep visitors engaged
with content. It’s a constant struggle. The signals that indicate that a
reader is connecting with the post aren’t looking good.
Two key takeaways
There are a few big themes here. There seem to be two main factors
that are the strongest indicators of success: depth and consistency.
Deep Content
Bloggers who do more are getting better results. These are the bloggers most likely to report success:
Bloggers who write 2000+ words
Bloggers who include 10+ images per post
Bloggers who consider 20+ headlines
Consistent Performance
Bloggers who are more consistent are getting better results. These are the bloggers most likely to report success:
Bloggers who always research keywords report strong results
Bloggers who always collaborate on content report strong results
Bloggers who always check Analytics report strong results
These tactics are so effective because bloggers are using them every time.
Methodology and Data
The respondents to this survey are self-described bloggers that we
connected with over many years on social media and at live events. The
data set is heavily populated with my network, which skews toward
LinkedIn users, B2B marketers and people in the US. Responses were
gathered from July through September 2019.
No one was incentivized to take the survey. This is a survey of
bloggers (individuals), not companies or brands (groups). Here are the
three ways we gathered responses along with our estimates for their
contribution:
Email to past respondents (30% of responses)
Social media and shares by influencers (30% of responses)
Individual outreach through messages and email (40% of responses)
Susan Curtin, MCEC, is President & Owner at Insights4Results, LLC., Executive Coach & Consultant who partners with clients in igniting new insights, innovations & increased results.
