Tag Archives: HubSpot

This last year has been a blur. At the start of 2016 I was working in Product Management at Twitter, and then I moved to the other side of the world to work at Atlassian in Sydney, Australia. Despite the massive geographic and timezone change, I’ve learned a lot from both places about being a better product manager. These lessons are based on my own experiences and feedback from managers, peers, and direct reports. I can’t thank these individuals enough for taking the time to share this feedback with me, as it’s the most valuable information I, (and anyone for that matter) can use to grow as a product manager. […]

What do marketers and Sesame Street monsters have in common? They LOVE cookies. For years, we’ve been using them to track our website visitors, improve the user experience, and collect data that helps us target ads to the right audiences. We also use them to learn about what our visitors are checking out online when they aren’t on our websites. But the way we use cookies could change dramatically with Google’s announcement that it will phase out the third-party cookie on Chrome browsers by 2022. A Google blog post announcing the phaseout explains, “Users are demanding greater privacy–including transparency, choice, and control over how their data is used–and it’s clear […]

Ever seen the movie The Social Network about Mark Zuckerberg and the founding of Facebook? In the movie, people kept saying “he’s wired in” or “they’re wired in” over and over again in reference to people coding intensely with their headphones on. Not knowing anything about programming, I always imagined that being “wired in” meant the programmers were somehow listening to the computers, or that they were connected to the code somehow … or something weird that us non-programmers would never understand. Turns out it just meant they were concentrating really hard with headphones on. Well, good thing I never hypothesized out loud. We all misinterpret some of the techy terms […]

Here’s a reality check for 2020 — only one-third of businesses make it to the 10 year mark. No market demand, running out of cash, and getting out-competed are among the leading reasons businesses fail. The good news? You don’t have to figure it all out on your own, because I’ve done a lot of the legwork for you. When I served as the VP of Marketing at Sales Hacker (a publication and community for B2B salespeople), I uncovered strategies and processes that exploded our growth. In fact, the results were outstanding: in just over a year, we were able to grow Sales Hacker’s traffic from 19,000 monthly organic sessions […]

Back in the late ’90s (way back when), SEO was in its infancy. It was almost like the Wild West — anything goes. Since the rules were loose, both white hat and black hat SEO tactics began to develop. While white hat tactics are an ethical way of improving your organic traffic and search rankings, black hat tactics go against guidelines set by search engines in an unethical way. However, as the industry has rapidly changed and search engine algorithms improved, it’s become harder to use black hat SEO tactics. And thus a new, unethical strategy was born: negative SEO. Below, let’s learn more about negative SEO from what a […]

How much do you know about website indexation? If it’s next to nothing, you’re not alone. Website indexation is not something you do as a marketer, but a process the search engine carries out when you publish new content online. What marketers need to know is how to ensure you’re set up correctly for indexation. An indexed website helps a site or page actually appear in search engine results — which is typically the first step to ranking and generating traffic. Now that we’ve covered why an indexed website matters for SEO, let’s explore how you can prepare to index your own site, next. What Does It Mean to Index […]

When I was a child, I really wanted an Easy Bake Oven. Every time I saw a commercial for one, I was glued to the TV, marveling at the kids on the screen baking mini treats with their friends and parents. Seeing those ads, I knew they were made just for me. In reality, though, the main — or primary — audience was my parents. I was the secondary audience. As a child, I had no buying power, so I wasn’t going to be a good Easy Bake Oven consumer. I was the secondary audience for toy commercials. My parents, with the power to make purchase decisions, were ultimately the […]

Do you remember in 2012 when Mark Zuckerberg bought Instagram for $1 billion? It was a gamble. At the time of the acquisition, the platform was valued at half the purchase price, had 30 million users, and wasn’t generating revenue. But as it turns out, Zuckerberg absolutely nailed it. Instagram blew up, and six years after the acquisition, Bloomberg estimated it was worth roughly $100 billion. The application’s 100-fold increase in value was paralleled by an equally meteoric rise in popularity. Today, the platform has over 1 billion active users worldwide. People of almost every background and walk of life are represented on Instagram — making it prime territory for […]

Emails and IMs and shared docs — oh my! With all the different communication channels we use every day at work, it’s easy to miss their nuances. Sure, email seems like a good go-to, but it has its downsides. And what about Google Docs or Confluence pages? When should they be open vs. restricted? Let’s be real: these are not questions that keep us up at night. Nonetheless, choosing the right channel for the message is a great way to boost productivity and reduce the frustrations of working with others. That’s why we put together this handy-dandy guide to using email, chat, documents, and real-time communication. You’ll notice a strong […]

Let’s talk about online advertising. Specifically, banner ads. You know the ones: when you’re scrolling through your favorite website, (Today, mine is The New Yorker), and are greeted with one of these beauties: Source Banner ads, also called web banners, are ads displayed on web pages. Generally, they’re more image-based than other digital ads to catch the web browser’s attention. They usually contain an image or short animation, like a gif. The goal of a banner ad is to drive traffic to a website. This happens when a browser clicks on the ad. Also, if your banner ad is a potential customer’s first introduction to your brand, it could make-or-break […]