Microsoft will shutter LinkedIn in China by the end of the year
Microsoft will shut down its localized version of LinkedIn in China by the end of the year, the company announced Thursday.
“A significantly more challenging operating environment.” The company cited a difficult operating environment, enhanced compliance requirements and a lack of success with the social aspects of its platform as reasons for shutting down LinkedIn in China.
“While we’ve found success in helping Chinese members find jobs and economic opportunity, we have not found that same level of success in the more social aspects of sharing and staying informed,” the company said, “We’re also facing a significantly more challenging operating environment and greater compliance requirements in China. Given this, we’ve made the decision to sunset the current localized version of LinkedIn, which is how people in China access LinkedIn’s global social media platform, later this year.”
InJobs to launch in China. As it sunsets LinkedIn, Microsoft plans to launch InJobs, a new, standalone jobs application for China, later this year as well. Unlike LinkedIn, InJobs will not have a social feed or the ability to share posts or articles.
Source: Microsoft will shutter LinkedIn in China by the end of the year
Why automation is the future of lead management (and RevOps)
RevOps is trending toward low-code automation that closes software gaps and solves fundamental marketing and sales challenges.
Fast and reliable lead routing is extremely important for lead management.
Delays in your revenue processes, especially in lead follow-up, decimate funnels. Slow lead processing makes it 7x less likely you’ll ever qualify your leads. Most RevOps pros understand this, but lead management is a deceptively complex set of processes, oftentimes built on the back of a house of cards.
Consider the overall “jobs to be done” of the lead lifecycle:
- Lead Intake – Capture a lead from a given source (e.g., website forms, live chat, list uploads, Ad vendors, etc…)
- Validation – Ensure an email is valid before allowing it into any system of record
- Creation – Create leads in the system of record if there are not any existing records for the prospect already
- Enrichment – Programmatically enrich data required for routing or accurate scoring. Send those still missing important data to manual enrichment
- Lead to account match – If lead belongs to an existing account in system of record, associate to account
- Attribution – Give credit to programs driving engagement for each touch
- Scoring – Apply a score using demographic, firmographic, and behavioral attributes
- Routing – Check rules of engagement for a prospect in order to route appropriately (e.g., round robin, direct assignment, etc…)
- Sequencing – Start sales outreach asap
The future of revenue ops
By learning to leverage General Automation Platforms (GAP) like the Tray Platform. These automation platforms close the resource gap for semi-technical ops professionals, empowering them to build multi-step, automated processes called “workflows.” These workflows focus on the job to be done first, not the technology vendor that does it.
Introducing RevOps frameworks: Lead management
Using a lead management framework built on the Tray Platform provides your team with control and visibility into every possible aspect of your lead funnel. You can quite literally measure your funnel’s reliability and speed at every step. Meanwhile, you will prepare yourself for a future in which Citizen Automators (that’s you) build processes tailor-made to your organization’s needs, without ever having to worry again about whether your software tools “do that” or wait for engineering support.
The Foundation: A lead processing pipeline workflow
At the center of this framework is a workflow we call the “Lead processing pipeline.” The pipeline is responsible for orchestrating each of the essential lead management jobs to be done. From intake to creation to enrichment and beyond, you can use this process for any lead, no matter the source.
Source: Why automation is the future of lead management (and RevOps)
Where Do SEO Professionals Spend Time & Budget? [Survey Results]
How Do Decision-Makers in SEO Allocate Digital Marketing Budget?
In the last 12 months, 6.2% of SEO professionals said they applied all of their digital marketing budget to content marketing. With a weighted average of 2.98, content marketing has the greatest budget allocation in digital marketing.
Meanwhile, 17.9% of SEO professionals said they didn’t apply any budget to digital PR and 30.4% said they allocated little budget. With a weighted average of 2.55, Digital PR has the least budget allocation in digital marketing.
The Difference in Budget Allocation Between Agencies and In-House Brands
- An agency is more likely to spend most of its budget on SEO than an in-house brand at 29% compared to 20%.
The Differences Between B2B and B2C for Digital Marketing Budget Allocation
- 19% of B2B SEO professionals spend no budget on digital PR, compared to 14% of B2C.
- 17% of B2C SEO professionals spend most of their budget on digital PR compared to 12% of B2B.
- 23% of B2C SEO professionals spend most of their budget on social media compared to 18% of B2B.
- 28% of B2C SEO professionals spend most of their budget SEO compared to 23% of B2B.
When Working on SEO, Where Do We Allocate Our Time to Tasks?
- 36.3% of SEO professionals say they apply most of their time to keyword research. With a weighted average of 3.28, keyword research has the most time allocated as a task for SEO.
- Local SEO has 11.4% of SEO professionals applying no time and 7.1% applying all their time. This polarized split of results indicates that local SEO is an area of specialization in SEO.
- 8.2% of SEO professionals said they apply all their time to analytics and this is the one task that is most likely to have all time allocated in SEO.
Source: Where Do SEO Professionals Spend Time & Budget? [Survey Results]
WordPress Proposes Team to Improve Core Web Vitals
WordPress Admits Falling Behind Wix, Shopify and Squarespace
The proposal by the WordPress Core Developer was blunt in its assessment that WordPress was falling behind:
“Compared to other platforms (e.g., Wix, Shopify, Squarespace), WordPress is falling behind.
Other platforms are on average faster – and becoming increasingly faster – than WordPress websites…”
That’s not an opinion, it’s a statement of fact that WordPress is falling behind Wix.
WordPress Needs a Performance Team
The proposal states that it needs an official team to coordinate the performance side of WordPress core development.
So instead of performance being almost an afterthought to improvements to other areas of WordPress, speed performance can move to the front because of advocates who can now help coordinate improvements.
Why WordPress Needs a Performance Team
“Users expect and prefer fast experiences (consciously or otherwise). Research shows that fast websites can provide a better user experience, increase engagement, benefit SEO, increase conversion, and be more economically and ecologically friendly.”
WordPress Speed Should Not be the Job of a Plugin
The proposal says that the job of optimizing WordPress should not fall to third party plugins and that it should not be the burden of those who use WordPress to fix it and make it better.
Source: WordPress Proposes Team to Improve Core Web Vitals
WhatsApp now offers encrypted backups. Here’s how to opt in
WhatsApp is finally letting users encrypt the backups of their messages.
Facebook owner Mark Zuckerberg announced on Thursday that the feature is now being rolled out to iOS and Android users globally.
The feature secures backups stored on Google Drive or Apple’s iCloud with end-to-end encryption.
This encryption will provide more privacy and security, but it’s not enabled by default. Here’s how to turn the feature on:
- Make sure you’ve got the latest version of WhatsApp.
- Open Settings.
- Tap Chats > Chat Backup > End-to-end Encrypted Backup.
- Click Continue, then follow the prompts to create your password or 64-digit encryption key.
- Hit Done, and wait for your end-to-end encrypted backup to be prepared. You may need to connect to a power source.
Source: WhatsApp now offers encrypted backups. Here’s how to opt in
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