We're Happy Scribe, a 100% bootstrapped startup based in Barcelona, working on one of the fundamental problems of this decade: speech-to-text technology

Happy Scribe

From the widely discussed Helpful Content Update (HCU) to the Search Generative Experience (SGE), 2022 was not the year for rest nor relaxation for most SEOs and content professionals. Google has seen more changes in the last year than in the last decade. I recently shared my experience of using for the first time. And how the AI overviews differ for different keywords and queries. Search Generative Experience (SGE) I have also been ringing the bells around Google’s visibly changing SERPs, and how it’s . killing organic reach A visual summary below 👀 Source Notice how ‘above the fold’ now comprises an AI overview, a couple of organic links, and a whole bunch of SERP elements (knowledge panels, People Also Ask, etc.). This is the beginning of a new Googleverse and a potential loss of your organic traffic. The antidote? I have five. 5 Ways to Stop the Potential Loss of Traffic to SGE and Grow Your Audience Like every other content professional, while I’m excited about SGE, I can’t help but wonder how SEO will change as SGE evolves. I’m sure you’re brimming with questions too. But at the moment, it will be a waste of time to worry about that. After all, SGE is still in the infancy stage. Over time, there are going to be many iterations and improvements to the model. So, what can you do? Other than creating valuable content, here are five ways your organic content can shine without SEO: Create content for native consumption Produce content with original research Build and document a distribution strategy Use executive branding for audience building Experiment with content formats (video, interactive product tours, webinars, podcasts, and more) Let’s explore each one in detail below. Build and document a distribution strategy Google has been cannibalizing clicks even before SGE was a thing. This happened in the form of a zero-click search. However, such zero-click responses were only relegated to straightforward queries like ‘ . What is content marketing?’ But with SGE in the picture, it’s different. You’re not just competing against the SERP elements like featured snippets or knowledge panels, but with the comprehensive AI overviews as well. This is why having a distribution strategy pays off. Instead of trying to optimize for SGE/SEO and waiting to be discovered, build a distribution system that lets you share and promote content in places where your target audience hangs out. Published a research report? Promote it via newsletter sponsorship. Released a new podcast episode? Share short clips on YouTube and Instagram. Wrote a new blog post? Share the juicy bits with a link on LinkedIn. You get the drift. Create content for native consumption Speaking of a distribution strategy, I have to mention the most abused content distribution and promotion practice: link dumping. Back when Facebook was in its prime, you could dump a blog post link and get a steady stream of traffic. Today? You’ll be happy to get a CTR of at least 1%. That’s because nobody likes moving away from the platform they’re engaged with. If someone is scrolling through LinkedIn, they want to read and engage with the content on LinkedIn instead of clicking away. By creating content for native consumption, you can keep your audience engaged and interested in learning more. And if you want to promote your content on social sites, be a little more creative. Rather than dumping the link as is, you should: Share the juiciest bit of information to compel the readers into clicking. Turn the key takeaways from the eBook to create a carousel. Visualize the data with graphs and charts. Ask the readers how they relate to the numbers. Pick a controversial or thought-provoking excerpt and get the conversation going in the comments. The key to a good content distribution (promotion) strategy is having a good repurposing strategy. Source original research and data When you think “Inbound Marketing”, you think HubSpot. When you think “zero-click search”, you think SparkToro. And when you think “sales intelligence”, you think of Gong. This is the power of brand recall. When you produce original, data-driven content, you get to shine in a sea of sameness (including SGE’s blandness) and build a loyal fanbase. One of my favorite examples of brands using content as a differentiating factor is Gong. Despite having roughly 1000+ sales tech solutions as competitors, they have managed to build a higher brand recall thanks to the original content. You’ll rarely find their company blog ranking high on SERPs, but ask any sales professional and they’ll tell you that Gong has the best sales content. These are a few reasons why. They use data sourced from real sales conversations to craft blog posts. You won’t find the information they provide elsewhere. Source: Gong Blog All their content is created for a clearly defined audience: sales leaders, AEs, and managers in tech companies. They write in a conversational, non-boring tone while providing actionable advice. Use executive branding for audience building Mark Schaefer, , shares in his why personal branding is essential in a post-SEO era: best-selling author and renowned marketer blog post “The ability to benefit from SEO depends on a special set of circumstances, and increasingly SEO isn’t going to create a return. The other option is to create content that establishes authority through thought leadership. In this way, you can earn attention and an audience without depending on search engines and ads.” Even great content gets buried between the many SERP folds. But if you’ve managed to build a trustworthy personal brand, you will have people waiting (eagerly) and going back to your opinions, values, and content. This is something SGE cannot replace. Here are a few ways to get started with executive branding. Build a following on social media. It costs nothing to get on platforms like LinkedIn, X, or Medium and share your entrepreneurial journey, what you’re building, or validate the idea for your next launch. Invest in digital PR to boost your digital footprint. It will also help shape your public image, and by extension, your brand’s. This could mean giving interviews, joining podcasts, guesting on webinars, or writing guest posts. The last tactic was how initially. Buffer’s Co-founder Leo Widrich grew the number of app users from 0 to 100000 Connect with journalists and content professionals through Help a B2B Writer (HaBw) and Help a Reporter Out (HARO). Share responses and quotes occasionally. This is a simple method of getting a mention on authoritative websites and scoring a backlink free of cost. Experiment with content formats Is a majority of your content efforts concentrated around blogging? Does your audience or reading the blog posts? Think about it. want like It makes sense for a company like Zapier or Scribe to publish 50+ blog posts every month. Since they sell a horizontal product catering to varying personas, Search is one of the best content marketing channels for them to target. This, however, would make zero sense for a company like Freshpaint, a healthcare data privacy platform, which sells to busy healthcare professionals and organizations. As their Head of Content, Mark Rogers, explains in the , SEO isn’t a priority for his team because their customers take advice from peers, not Google. Content, Briefly podcast Another example is Ahrefs. They created a ‘Blogging for Business’ video course to promote Ahrefs and , as Tim Soulo shares in his blog post. managed to snatch 500k+ views while bringing mid-five figures in revenue There’s no dearth of content formats to try – from podcasts, and webinars to seminars and more, you can dip your toes into a variety of’em. It gives you the benefit of meeting your audience where they hang out (perhaps on Instagram?) and provides the experience and content SGE cannot. So, find out what resonates with your audience and stick to it. Final Thoughts SEO has never been a passive strategy. While it’s too soon to conclusively say anything about the impact SGE will have on organic traffic, there are ways to win beyond SEO. As outlined above, methods like personal branding or doubling down on content distribution can ensure your content is consumed by the right people at the right time. Once we have more data about SGE and its impact, we’ll be able to devise better ways for sure.

How to Stop the Potential Loss of Traffic in the Era of AI-Powered Search

এআই-চালিত অনুসন্ধানের যুগে ট্র্যাফিকের সম্ভাব্য ক্ষতি কীভাবে থামানো যায়

So stoppen Sie den potenziellen Traffic-Verlust im Zeitalter der KI-gestützten Suche

Cómo detener la posible pérdida de tráfico en la era de la búsqueda impulsada por la IA

Comment arrêter la perte potentielle de trafic à l'ère de la recherche basée sur l'IA

एआई-संचालित खोज के युग में ट्रैफ़िक के संभावित नुकसान को कैसे रोकें

AI を活用した検索の時代に潜在的なトラフィック損失を阻止する方法

AI 기반 검색 시대에 트래픽 손실 가능성을 막는 방법

Como impedir a perda potencial de tráfego na era da pesquisa baseada em IA

Как остановить потенциальную потерю трафика в эпоху поиска на основе искусственного интеллекта

Yapay Zeka Destekli Arama Çağında Potansiyel Trafik Kaybı Nasıl Durdurulur

Cách ngăn chặn khả năng mất lưu lượng truy cập trong kỷ nguyên tìm kiếm được hỗ trợ bởi AI

如何阻止人工智能搜索时代潜在的流量损失

Sir Roger Dies

267 Stories To Learn About Internet

A LITTLE HERO

The Curious Idea of a Church

CHARMIDES, OR TEMPERANCE

The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language : Chapter IV - Humor

The ability facilitate collaborative meetings is a critical skill for leaders. When done well, the facilitator creates an engaging discussion that has high attendance and prevents boredom. Most importantly, it creates an advantage for the team by aligning the group on the meeting’s topics. Accomplishing these goals with consistency as a facilitator takes time. Each discussion will put your decision making, time management, and leadership skills to the test. You will mess up at times, but the experience will provide important skills. I’ve been doing this for years, and I still screw up. I recently forgot to introduce the leading questions for a large retrospective discussion! We lost a ton of time from this mistake. The purpose of  this post is to teach you five methods of facilitation I’ve learned over the years.  I’ll also throw in a story or two where I’ve completely screwed everything up so you can avoid my mistakes. Method 1: Prepare for the Meeting Meetings have the stereotype of being a boring waste of time. Your goal as the facilitator is to make the discussion worthwhile for people to attend. To achieve this, you need to prepare. How I Learned the Importance of Preparing for Collaborative Meetings At my first job, I gave a presentation to college students about my career path as a software engineer. I enjoy giving presentations, but I didn’t practice the story I would tell. It wasn’t a big deal – I knew the main details from telling friends. I didn’t even need to make a slide deck! Fast forward to the day of the presentation. I walk up to the podium and start talking. What do you think happened? I bombed the entire story. I still knew the main beats of it, but without practice, I didn’t know how to connect them. I froze to think of the right words. Whenever I looked into the crowd, I saw… Blank stares. Silence. After five agonizing minutes, I finished and went back to my seat. No questions, zero engagement. I walked away from that day with an important lesson around public speaking. Regardless of whether I’m giving a presentation or facilitating a meeting, the same lesson applies: Always prepare. Being prepared provides clarity on how to engage with the audience. It gives you confidence in how to guide the group. You will know your stuff and everyone will see that. How I Prepare for Collaborative Meetings The first step towards preparation is understanding the goal of the meeting. The common goals I’ve seen are: Making a decision Gathering feedback Sharing information Group collaboration and interaction Depending on the goal, the content will vary. Let’s look at a meeting where a group makes a decision. For this discussion, you will have to outline the questions to answer, acquire contextual information, and figure out who should attend. For a discussion focused on gathering feedback, the goal is different. Your goal is to get attendees to talk and share information. You can do this with an activity that gets people talking to one another. You could also provide a list of questions for the group to answer over the session. Once you understand the goal of the meeting, you can use the following checklist of questions to prepare: What do I want the group to walk away thinking about? What will the agenda be? Which questions need to be answered by the end of the discussion? How much time should I give each topic? How will I get attendees engaged with the content? Who needs to attend the discussion? With preparation, you will facilitate meetings with confidence. Method 2: Find a Note-Taker for the Discussion Recording the notes of a meeting is important for our future selves. They provide important context. Sure, some people will miss the meeting and use the notes to catch up. In my experience, the real value comes when you need to refer to the notes a year from now. Meeting notes provide more than the details of the conversation. They capture specific decisions are made. why Considering the value of meeting notes, you may think that it’s your job as the facilitator to write them down. This is wrong. Facilitating a meeting demands your full attention. You need to focus on sticking to the agenda and guide the discussion. Having to record the meeting notes prevents you from doing all those tasks well. You’ll be too busy keeping up with what everyone is saying. You should be focusing on how to guide the discussion. In order to focus on creating collaborative meetings, an important method of facilitation is to find someone else to record the meeting notes. Rotate Who Records Meeting Notes Don’t have the same person take your meetings’ notes. The job comes with the cost of not being fully present in the meeting. Also, this role often gets delegated to the women on the team. This is because we have been socialized to associate “supportive” work with women. To create an , rotate the role of the scribe to different people. This will allow everyone to equally contribute to your discussions. inclusive environment Method 3: Manage the Time to Prevent Boredom How I Failed Managing Time as a Meeting Facilitator Earlier this year, I was facilitating an org-wide meeting of forty engineers. We had a bunch of topics to work through within an hour, so time management was critical. During the meeting, everything was going great! Good questions from the audience, we presenters sticking to the time, and I had a great note-taker. Then we got to the open discussion topic. I knew this topic was going to take a lot of time, and I reserved twenty minutes for it. The presenter was handling questions with ease, and nothing was surprising us. People were staying engaged, but we weren’t coming to a decision. At this point, I decided to have this conversation take over the rest of the meeting. This meant bumping the last topic off the agenda. I made the wrong choice. While the discussion worked out fine, the presenter of the topic I removed wasn’t happy. I could tell he spent a lot of time on his slides to make sure people understood the work his team was producing. This peer of mine deserved the space to celebrate the progress his team was making. I instead allowed the larger group to talk in circles. This wasn’t the first time I allowed a topic to go past its time. I’ve done it a bunch in retrospective meetings. It was the first time where I saw the negative impact of disrespecting the schedule of a meeting. How You Can Effectively Manage Time in a Meeting Time management is one of the methods of facilitation to focus on. It’s also one of the most difficult tasks to oversee. To effectively manage time, you will need to cut people off. This feels so rude. It feels like you’re not creating a collaborative meeting whenever you do it. You must overcome this feeling. To get past this internal hurdle, remember two things: The goal of the meeting. Your job as the facilitator. Understanding the meeting’s goal will provide the resolve needed to interrupt others. If you want the discussion to achieve the goal of the meeting, it’s up to you to ensure that happens. Regarding your job as the facilitator, your role in the meeting is to move the discussion forward. It is to take part in the conversation. primary not No one cares about the goal of the meeting as much as you do. No one else is paying attention to the clock as much as you. It’s your job to make the time productive for everyone. Getting over this feeling will be hard at first. I hope that remembering your goal and job will give you the resolve you need. People will respect you for respecting their time. Method 4: Create an Inclusive Space for ALL Voices in the Room Have you ever been in a meeting where someone said nothing for an hour, only to come to the group later with plenty to say? Every time this happens to me, I always wish they spoke up sooner. Then there are the people that talk to process their thoughts. They always mean well, but can often fail to listen to others. As a facilitator, you’re going to need to figure out how to engage with these communication styles. Understanding these styles will make it easier to create collaborative meetings. Every meeting will have a mixture of extroverted and introverted communicators. Extroverted Communicators often process information in the meeting on the fly. Their primary model of communication is “talking to think”. These people will often be the most active members of the meeting. Extroverted communicators Depending on the meeting type, they are great additions to the group. They will get others to talk and engage. For these situations, you won’t need to do anything to get these people to engage. In other meetings, this communication style may be a detriment. Frequent interruptions. No space is given to others to speak. A lack of listening. This is where you need to manage the situation as the facilitator. I recommend paying attention to how everyone else in the room is responding to how the person is talking. Look for people that are failing to get their word in on the conversation. When you see this, take the step to interrupt the current speaker and create that space. You’ll also need to pay attention to when people interrupt others. Introverted communicators put a lot of thought into their words. It sucks if they get interrupted after a couple of words. Pay the most attention to this group in a meeting. If they get interrupted, stop the interrupter, and give the space back to the original person. Introverted Communicators The “quieter”, or , communicators in the room need a different management style. I focus on making sure they come prepared for the meeting. introverted Introverted communicators spend a lot of their mental energy in deep thought. They want to make sure they have a full understanding of a topic before responding. This is why they are often quiet in meetings – they are processing the information. They want their words to be meaningful and clear when they speak. To support this communication type, share preparation materials before the meeting. This will provide others time to understand the topics of the meeting. When they come to the meeting, they will be more focused on contributing to decisions. The result will be a more engaging conversation from the most thoughtful members of the team. Book Recommendation To learn more about navigating different communication styles, I highly recommend the book . Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking As an extroverted communicator, I often struggled to talk with introverted communicators. This book helped me in understanding how to engage with my teammates. Method 5: Define Action Items for the Discussion Depending on the meeting type, the method of facilitation you will need to use defining action items. While it’s easy to collect these items, the real challenge is following through. To process action items, use this checklist when preparing for the meeting: Work with your note-taker to record action items throughout the meeting. Reserve 3 to 5 minutes at the end of the meeting to review existing action items and ideate on others. Ensure there is an owner for each action item. . If no one owns an action item, they won’t do it. This step is critical Decide how you wish to follow up on the action items. Will it be a week later at the team meeting, through email, or something else? Depending on your relationship with the team, some action items will be assigned to you. If you are a leader of the team, this is normal. Your job is to support the team. These tasks will often be things focused on the people of the team. Configure Jira, get in touch with a stakeholder, make sure that Dale’s birthday cake is delivered, etc. you tackle these action items on top of everything else is a post for another day. Remember that you can ask for help from the team. Maybe people didn’t feel like speaking up in the group to own an action item. They may be more amiable to own it after a one-on-one conversation. How For tasks that are assigned to others, your best bet is to check in with the owner about a week later. Often, people forget they had to look into the work and you asking about it will remind them. Conclusion A fundamental skill you need on the journey to become a great leader is the ability to facilitate collaborative meetings. Putting the work into preparation will give you the confidence to hold the group accountable to an agenda. Finding a partner to record notes will provide you the space to pay attention to the dynamics of the conversation. In the meeting itself, it’s up to you to be focused on the goal of the meeting, the time left, and how the group interacts. Do the work to understand the communication styles of the group beforehand. Look to create space for different types of communicators. Collaborative meetings are worth the time if you make them engaging for the audience. Your teammates will feel productive if they walk away feeling aligned with the decisions made from the discussion. What methods of facilitation do you use? I’m always interested in learning new ways to improve my facilitation skills. What other methods do you use that I didn’t cover here? Let me know on or . Twitter LinkedIn If you want to learn more techniques to improve your leadership skills, . sign up for my newsletter Previously published at https://buildthestage.com/five-methods-of-facilitation-i-use-for-collaborative-meetings/

Successfully Change Collaborative Meetings With These Five Proven Methods of Facilitation

HAPPY SCRIBE

happyscribe.com

-- employees

Since n.d.

COMPANY RANKING

HAPPY SCRIBE

EVERGREEN INDEX #5145

Representing this company? Click here to claim and customize this page!

Happy Scribe WIKI

Apply to get your Tech Company News Page live on HackerNoon.com today!

HAPPY SCRIBE

happyscribe.com

-- employees

Since n.d.

COMPANY RANKING

HAPPY SCRIBE

EVERGREEN INDEX #5145

RELATED COMPANIESRANK

STORIES ABOUT HAPPY SCRIBE

Representing this company? Click here to claim and customize this page!

Happy Scribe WIKI

Apply to get your Tech Company News Page live on HackerNoon.com today!