3 Proven Strategies to Motivate Your Team - Focus

3 Proven Strategies to Motivate Your Team - Focus Its a fresh battle every day to find the motivation to get through my to do list. But motivating your team is an entirely different challenge. Its not always as simple as cracking the whip or offering a cash bonus, either. Understanding how people respond to different types of motivation can help us be better leaders and increase the productivity of our teams. It can just take a little science to figure out what works best and which strategies to use to motivate your team. 1. Show Appreciation This first approach sounds simple, but it can make a big difference. In a survey of 2,000 working Americans, 81 percent said theyd work harder for an appreciative boss. 70 percent also said theyd feel better about themselves and their work if their boss showed appreciation more often. For a simple thanks, thats quite a good returnâ€"even if it only leads to a small increase in productivity, its worth the effort. According to Wharton professor Adam Grant, A sense of appreciation is the single most sustainable motivator at work. Grant says appreciation differs from motivators like cash bonuses or promotions, which we quickly adjust to, because the sense that other people appreciate what you do sticks with you. A review of over fifty studies from the London School of Economics in 2011 backs up the benefits of showing appreciation for your team. The review found people put in more effort at work when they feel appreciated. Another example of this effect at work comes from behavioral economist Dan Ariely, who conducted an experiment on motivation at an Intel factory in Israel. The study split employees into groups and told each group theyd receive a different reward for completing all their work each day. One group would receive a small cash bonus, another would receive a voucher for free pizza, and a third would receive a compliment from the boss. On the first day, the pizza group was most productive, with the compliment group a close second. The cash bonus group had a small bump in productivity compared to the control group (who received no bonus reward) but was far behind the pizza and compliment conditions. And on the second day of the study, the cash bonus group actually performed worse than those employees not receiving any reward. As the week finished up, productivity leveled out across all three conditions, but compliments ended up as the best option for boosting the workers performance. This study points out how little money can motivate us, and how, in fact, it can even harm our motivation. But another study showed that when we dont feel our work is appreciated, we tend to expect more money as compensation for the same work. So take some time to say thank you to your team members today. That quick act could save you money and increase productivity. Discover team productivity Try MeisterTask Its free! Try MeisterTask 2. Show Your Team the Fruits of Their Labor Research shows we like to see the outcome of our efforts. An example comes from a study that asked participants to build Lego models, paying a small sum per model that decreased for each one the participants completed. For some participants, the models were immediately disassembled by the researchers. For the rest, their models were kept under the table to be disassembled at the end of the experiment. The team whose work was kept until they were done completed an average of eleven Lego models before quitting, while those whose models were immediately disassembled only managed seven. Even though both groups of participants knew their work would ultimately be destroyed, seeing the fruits of their labor was enough to encourage participants to keep working for longer. A less tangible example comes from a study of a fundraising call center at the University of Michigan. Call center workers were visited by students who had benefited from the centers efforts, for a ten-minute chat. A month later researchers found that those workers whod been spoken to by students were spending 142 percent longer on the phone, and overall the centers income had increased by 171 percent. Even if your team isnt creating something tangible like Lego models, there are ways you can show them the outcomes theyre contributing to. Seeing how their efforts lead to a meaningful result could motivate your team to work harder. 3. Motivate Your Team by Putting Something at Stake We like to get new things, but we hate losing things even more. This principle is called loss aversion. Were so averse to loss that well go a long way to avoid it. Vassilis Dalakas, professor of marketing at California State University San Marcos tested how loss aversion could be used to increase his students motivation to study. He taught the same consumer behavior class twice, with the same material, and introduced optional pop quizzes throughout the class in both cases. The quizzes were worth one point if they were passed, and any student with five points at the end of the class could skip the final exam. The only difference between the two classes was the rule around the final exam. In the first class the exam was required, but students could earn the right to opt out by gaining five points from the quizzes. In the second class the exam was optional from the start but students could lose the right to opt out by not gaining five points. Guess which class passed more quizzes? In class one 43 percent of students earned five points by the end of the class. In class two it was 82 percentâ€"almost double. The reason is simply loss aversion. We hate to lose things that we feel belong to us. Its so upsetting that well work harder to maintain our ownership over those things rather than suffer the loss. The students in the second class believed they owned the right to skip the exam and didnt want to have it taken away, so they were more likely to study hard and pass the quizzes. The good news is even small losses work better as motivators than rewards. As we saw in the study above, it’s simply a matter of framing that changes how much we’re motivated to work hard. So you might offer your team the chance to earn an afternoon off by hitting their weekly goals. Or you could promise them an afternoon off every week unless they don’t hit their weekly goals. The outcome is the same, but the framing is different. It seems we care more about not losing something that’s already been promised to us than we do about earning something new. You can combine the various suggestions I’ve explored here to motivate your team. Show your team the fruits of their labor and remember to offer your appreciation for their work, but also try putting something at stake now and then. Each of these approaches has been shown to increase motivation, but together theyre sure to work even better. Teamwork made simple Discover MeisterTask Its free! Discover MeisterTask 3 Proven Strategies to Motivate Your Team - Focus Its a fresh battle every day to find the motivation to get through my to do list. But motivating your team is an entirely different challenge. Its not always as simple as cracking the whip or offering a cash bonus, either. Understanding how people respond to different types of motivation can help us be better leaders and increase the productivity of our teams. It can just take a little science to figure out what works best and which strategies to use to motivate your team. 1. Show Appreciation This first approach sounds simple, but it can make a big difference. In a survey of 2,000 working Americans, 81 percent said theyd work harder for an appreciative boss. 70 percent also said theyd feel better about themselves and their work if their boss showed appreciation more often. For a simple thanks, thats quite a good returnâ€"even if it only leads to a small increase in productivity, its worth the effort. According to Wharton professor Adam Grant, A sense of appreciation is the single most sustainable motivator at work. Grant says appreciation differs from motivators like cash bonuses or promotions, which we quickly adjust to, because the sense that other people appreciate what you do sticks with you. A review of over fifty studies from the London School of Economics in 2011 backs up the benefits of showing appreciation for your team. The review found people put in more effort at work when they feel appreciated. Another example of this effect at work comes from behavioral economist Dan Ariely, who conducted an experiment on motivation at an Intel factory in Israel. The study split employees into groups and told each group theyd receive a different reward for completing all their work each day. One group would receive a small cash bonus, another would receive a voucher for free pizza, and a third would receive a compliment from the boss. On the first day, the pizza group was most productive, with the compliment group a close second. The cash bonus group had a small bump in productivity compared to the control group (who received no bonus reward) but was far behind the pizza and compliment conditions. And on the second day of the study, the cash bonus group actually performed worse than those employees not receiving any reward. As the week finished up, productivity leveled out across all three conditions, but compliments ended up as the best option for boosting the workers performance. This study points out how little money can motivate us, and how, in fact, it can even harm our motivation. But another study showed that when we dont feel our work is appreciated, we tend to expect more money as compensation for the same work. So take some time to say thank you to your team members today. That quick act could save you money and increase productivity. Discover team productivity Try MeisterTask Its free! Try MeisterTask 2. Show Your Team the Fruits of Their Labor Research shows we like to see the outcome of our efforts. An example comes from a study that asked participants to build Lego models, paying a small sum per model that decreased for each one the participants completed. For some participants, the models were immediately disassembled by the researchers. For the rest, their models were kept under the table to be disassembled at the end of the experiment. The team whose work was kept until they were done completed an average of eleven Lego models before quitting, while those whose models were immediately disassembled only managed seven. Even though both groups of participants knew their work would ultimately be destroyed, seeing the fruits of their labor was enough to encourage participants to keep working for longer. A less tangible example comes from a study of a fundraising call center at the University of Michigan. Call center workers were visited by students who had benefited from the centers efforts, for a ten-minute chat. A month later researchers found that those workers whod been spoken to by students were spending 142 percent longer on the phone, and overall the centers income had increased by 171 percent. Even if your team isnt creating something tangible like Lego models, there are ways you can show them the outcomes theyre contributing to. Seeing how their efforts lead to a meaningful result could motivate your team to work harder. 3. Motivate Your Team by Putting Something at Stake We like to get new things, but we hate losing things even more. This principle is called loss aversion. Were so averse to loss that well go a long way to avoid it. Vassilis Dalakas, professor of marketing at California State University San Marcos tested how loss aversion could be used to increase his students motivation to study. He taught the same consumer behavior class twice, with the same material, and introduced optional pop quizzes throughout the class in both cases. The quizzes were worth one point if they were passed, and any student with five points at the end of the class could skip the final exam. The only difference between the two classes was the rule around the final exam. In the first class the exam was required, but students could earn the right to opt out by gaining five points from the quizzes. In the second class the exam was optional from the start but students could lose the right to opt out by not gaining five points. Guess which class passed more quizzes? In class one 43 percent of students earned five points by the end of the class. In class two it was 82 percentâ€"almost double. The reason is simply loss aversion. We hate to lose things that we feel belong to us. Its so upsetting that well work harder to maintain our ownership over those things rather than suffer the loss. The students in the second class believed they owned the right to skip the exam and didnt want to have it taken away, so they were more likely to study hard and pass the quizzes. The good news is even small losses work better as motivators than rewards. As we saw in the study above, it’s simply a matter of framing that changes how much we’re motivated to work hard. So you might offer your team the chance to earn an afternoon off by hitting their weekly goals. Or you could promise them an afternoon off every week unless they don’t hit their weekly goals. The outcome is the same, but the framing is different. It seems we care more about not losing something that’s already been promised to us than we do about earning something new. You can combine the various suggestions I’ve explored here to motivate your team. Show your team the fruits of their labor and remember to offer your appreciation for their work, but also try putting something at stake now and then. Each of these approaches has been shown to increase motivation, but together theyre sure to work even better. Teamwork made simple Discover MeisterTask Its free! Discover MeisterTask

How to Conjugate Protéger (to Protect) in French

You will use the French verb  protà ©ger  when you want to say to protect. The verb conjugation is required if you want to use it for the past tense protected or the future tense will protect. This word has a couple of tricks to it, but a lesson in its simplest conjugations will explain everything you need to know. The Basic Conjugations of  Protà ©ger Protà ©ger is both a stem-changing  and  spelling change verb. While that may seem scary at first, both issues have a purpose and are relatively easy to handle. The stem change occurs with the accented  Ãƒ ©Ã‚  in  protà ©ger. You will notice that in some forms—the present tense, in particular—the accent changes to an  Ãƒ ¨.  You will also notice that the future tense gives you the option between the stem changes.  Pay attention to this while studying so you can spell it correctly when needed.   The stem change pops up in the regular -er  conjugations where the ending begins with an  a  or  o.  For these, the  e  is retained to ensure the  g  has a soft pronunciation as it does in gel. Without the  e, the vowels would make it a hard sound as in gold. The indicative mood and the basic present, future, and imperfect past tenses are covered in this first chart. These should be your top priority to memorize because youll use them most often. All you need to do is pair the subject pronoun with the corresponding tense to learn which endings to use. For example, je protà ©ge means I am protecting and nous protà ©gions means we protected. Present Future Imperfect je protà ¨ge protà ©geraiprotà ¨gerai protà ©geais tu protà ¨ges protà ©gerasprotà ¨geras protà ©geais il protà ¨ge protà ©geraprotà ¨gera protà ©geait nous protà ©geons protà ©geronsprotà ¨gerons protà ©gions vous protà ©gez protà ©gerezprotà ¨gerez protà ©giez ils protà ¨gent protà ©gerontprotà ¨geront protà ©geaient The Present Participle of  Protà ©ger The spelling change is also required in the  present participle  of  protà ©ger because of the -ant  ending. The result is the word  protà ©geant. Protà ©ger  in the Compound Past Tense Another way to express the past tense in French is with the  passà © composà ©. This requires both the  past participle  protà ©gà ©Ã‚  and the present tense conjugate of the auxiliary verb  avoir. For example, I protected is  jai protà ©ge  and we protected is  nous avons protà ©gà ©. More Simple Conjugations of  Protà ©ger Once again, youll find some spelling and stem changes in the following conjugations. Also, the conditional—used for if...then situations—offers the option between the accented es. However, if you pay careful attention to those things, these forms of  protà ©ger  can be quite useful. The subjunctive, for instance, allows you to call the act of protecting into question. When reading or writing French, youll likely encounter  the passà © simple  or  the imperfect subjunctive  because these are literary tenses. Subjunctive Conditional Passà © Simple Imperfect Subjunctive je protà ¨ge protà ©geraisprotà ¨gerais protà ©geai protà ©geasse tu protà ¨ges protà ©geraisprotà ¨gerais protà ©geas protà ©geasses il protà ¨ge protà ©geraitprotà ¨gerait protà ©gea protà ©geà ¢t nous protà ©gions protà ©gerionsprotà ¨gerions protà ©geà ¢mes protà ©geassions vous protà ©giez protà ©geriezprotà ¨geriez protà ©geà ¢tes protà ©geassiez ils protà ¨gent protà ©geraientprotà ¨geraient protà ©gà ¨rent protà ©geassent The French imperative  may be useful for a verb like  protà ©ger. Its used for short and assertive statements, and when you use it, theres no need to include the subject pronoun.   Imperative (tu) protà ¨ge (nous) protà ©geons (vous) protà ©gez

The Yellow Wallpaper By Charlotte Perkins Gilman - 1982 Words

Inside of â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper† Charlotte Perkins Gilman short story â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper† was written in the early nineteenth century, which was during a time of great change. During this time â€Å"domestic Ideology† was placed American women as spiritual and moral leaders of their home. Basically society prescribed a women’s role in life but, Gilman disagreed this totally. Gilman shows us this in her short story â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper† She creates a fictional story based upon her own experiences. â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper†, depicted a depressed woman who slowly descends into madness in her room, while her well-meaning husband is often away due to his work at the hospital. Gilman successfully illustrates how society suppresses women and how dangerous it can be to a women’s mental health. American writer, and lecturer, an early theorist of the feminist movement, Charlotte Perkins Gilman refused to call herself a †Å"feminist†. Gilman would be referred to as a â€Å"humanist.† Gilman fought for equality amongst all people. Amazingly, Gilman wrote over two hundred short stories and ten novels. Her main goal was the cause of women’s suffrage. Gilman attempted to reach a wide variety of people, especially women, in an attempt to awaken them to her revolutionary ideas. She wanted absolute equality for women and rejected all special privileges (Daniel 52). With her social commentaries she advocated her life to inspire womanShow MoreRelatedThe Yellow Wallpaper By Charlotte Perkins Gilman885 Words   |  4 Pagesbeen a stigma around mental illness and feminism. â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper† was written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in the 1900’s. â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper† has many hidden truths within the story. The story was an embellished version her own struggle with what was most likely post-partum depression. As the story progresses, one can see that she i s not receiving proper treatment for her depression and thus it is getting worse. Gilman uses the wallpaper and what she sees in it to symbolize her desire to escapeRead MoreThe Yellow Wallpaper By Charlotte Perkins Gilman846 Words   |  4 PagesHumans are flawed individuals. Although flaws can be bad, people learn and grow from the mistakes made. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper†, gives one a true look at using flaws to help one grow. Gilman gives her reader’s a glimpse into what her life would have consisted of for a period of time in her life. Women were of little importance other than to clean the house and to reproduce. This story intertwines the reality of what the lives of woman who were considered toRead MoreThe Yellow Wallpaper By Charlotte Perkins Gilman1362 Words   |  6 Pagesas freaks. In the short story â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper† by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, both of these elements are present. Gilman di d a wonderful job portraying how women are not taken seriously and how lightly mental illnesses are taken. Gilman had, too, had firsthand experience with the physician in the story. Charlotte Perkins Gilman s believes that there really was no difference in means of way of thinking between men or women is strongly. â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper† is a short story about a woman whoRead MoreThe Yellow Wallpaper By Charlotte Perkins Gilman1547 Words   |  7 PagesCharlotte Perkins Gilman s career as a leading feminists and social activist translated into her writing as did her personal life. Gilman s treatment for her severe depression and feelings of confinement in her marriage were paralleled by the narrator in her shorty story, The Yellow Wallpaper. Charlotte Perkins Gilman was born in 1860 in Hartford, Connecticut. Her parents, Mary Fitch Perkins and Fredrick Beecher Perkins, divorced in 1869. Her dad, a distinguished librarian and magazine editorRead MoreThe Yellow Wallpaper By Charlotte Perkins Gilman2032 Words   |  9 Pagesâ€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper† by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a poem about women facing unequal marriages, and women not being able to express themselves the way they want too. Charlotte Perkins Gilman was born in 1860, and died in 1935. This poem was written in 1892. When writing this poem, women really had no rights, they were like men’s property. So writing â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper† during this time era, was quite shocking and altered society at the time. (Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the Feminization ofRead MoreThe Yellow Wallpaper By Charlotte Perkins Gilman904 Words   |  4 Pagescom/us/definiton/americaneglish/rest-cure?q=rest+cure). Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote The Yellow Wallpaper as a reflection of series of events that happened in her own life. Women who fought the urge to be the typical stereotype were seen as having mental instabilities and were considered disobedient. The societal need for women to conform to the standards in the 1800s were very high. They were to cook, clean and teach their daughters how to take care of the men. Gilman grew up without her father and she vowedRead MoreThe Yellow Wallpaper By Charlotte Perkins Gilman999 Words   |  4 Pages â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper† is a story of a woman s psychological breakdown, which is shown through an imaginative conversation with the wallpaper. The relationship between the female narrator and the wallpaper reveals the inner condition of the narrator and also symbolically shows how women are oppressed in society. The story, read through a feminist lens, reflects a woman s struggle against the patriarchal power structure. In the â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper†, Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses the wallpaperRead MoreThe Yellow Wallpaper By Charlotte Perkins Gilman Essay1208 Words   |  5 Pagesthat wallpaper as I did?† the woman behind the pattern was an image of herself. She has been the one â€Å"stooping and creeping.† The Yellow Wallpaper was written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. In the story, three characters are introduced, Jane (the narrator), John, and Jennie. The Yellow Wallpaper is an ironic story that takes us inside the mind and emotions of a woma n suffering a slow mental breakdown. The narrator begins to think that another woman is creeping around the room behind the wallpaper, attemptingRead MoreThe Yellow Wallpaper By Charlotte Perkins Gilman846 Words   |  4 PagesThe dignified journey of the admirable story â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper† created by Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s, gave the thought whether or not the outcome was influenced by female oppression and feminism. Female oppression and feminist encouraged a series of women to have the freedom to oppose for their equal rights. Signified events in the story â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper† resulted of inequality justice for women. Charlotte Perkins Gilman gave the reader different literary analysis to join the unjustifiableRead MoreThe Yellow Wallpaper By Charlotte Perkins Gilman1704 Words   |  7 PagesEscaping The Yellow Wallpaper Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935) whom is most acclaimed for her short story The Yellow Wallpaper (1891) was a women’s author that was relatively revolutionary. Gilman makes an appalling picture of captivity and confinement in the short story, outlining a semi-personal photo of a young lady experiencing the rest cure treatment by her spouse, whom in addition to being her husband was also her therapist. Gilman misused the rest cure in The Yellow Wallpaper to alarm other

Bookmaster Free Essays

Bookmaster Case Case Study Questions MGMT357 Professor Janet Steinke March 10, 2013 Background The case bookmaster explains how Drew went to bookmaster to buy a book he wanted to enjoy reading. When Drew arrived at the bookstore and explained to the CRA what book he wanted. The CRA informed Drew that the book was instock and that there were actually two copies of the book on the shelf. We will write a custom essay sample on Bookmaster or any similar topic only for you Order Now However, when Drew and the CRA went to the shelf to get the book there were no copies available. Drew would have to drive to another store that was 15 miles away to get the book. The CRA then suggested to Drew to buy the ebook which was almost $20 cheaper. Drew would have to download the ebook on his computer since the Kindle and iPad’s were too costly for him at the time. Kindle an Ipad both have many restrictions on their work and try to prevent piracy to maximize profits. Case Questions 1. Each player in the above value chain makes money by creating value for the stakeholders. 2. 3. The ebook has many advantages and disadvantages. the first advantage is the development, marketing, and decreasing costs for eReaders. The second advantage is its easy accessible and can be read on any device if it’s an apple because they are linked together. The third advantage is that marketing the product is easier on line than in a book store. The first disadvantage is that the sale price is lower so the profit margin is relatively the same. The second disadvantage is that piracy is more common and the content is easier to duplicate. The third disadvantage is that competition is very high in the digital industry. The hard copy book also has many advantages. The first is that hardcopy books are easier to stay focused on because the web-surfing variable is eliminated. The second advantage is that you can jot down your thoughts while reading. The third advantage is hardcopy books are not subject to the failure of technology. Some disadvantages to hard copy books are as follows; The cost to make the books are high. Books are harder to carry around if you have more than a few with you. The third disadvantage is the costs of books are high. 4. The role of operations in the hardcopy value chain is to print books. The role of operations in ebooks is to produce digital content and to store the content. 5. The other issues that are important on critiquing both of these is the future. Where are books headed in the future? It is important to try and forecast whether ebooks or hardcopy books will be a thing of the past. How to cite Bookmaster, Essay examples

Mumbaki Essay Example

Mumbaki Paper Every individual has its own culture, belief and different practices but we should respect each everyone about this matter even though sometimes it is very difficult to understand their practices. The word Mumbaki has its own meaning. It is about an Ifugao religious specialist meaning sayer of prayers in the Christian world they called them Intercessors. Almost every adult in the region is a Mumbaki who practices the tenets of the religion which they are associated with. These Mumbakis offers prayers during wedding, thanksgiving, funeral and other occasions. They have memorized almost every oral traditions, stories and lineages which are passed on from generation to generations which they perform as rituals. The story is about the son of an Ifugao Chieftain named Joseph who returns to his tribe after the death of his father (an Ifugao Chieftain who was killed in a tribal dispute with the Alimit tribe. He was about to live the Philippine to US with his fiancee, however was obliged to return to the Lidum tribe where he was chosen to lead the battle againts the Alimit tribe. Joseph is a young doctor who return to bury his father. While there, he discovers his rich heritage and acquire pride in his being an Ifugao. He is unable to resist the urge to help his village, which has resisted modern medicine and is in the midst of pneumonia epedemic and civil war. It covers the adaptation new way of curing illness of people but it will disobey their beliefs where they believe that their Baki or Gods may perish them in any curse. We will write a custom essay sample on Mumbaki specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now We will write a custom essay sample on Mumbaki specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer We will write a custom essay sample on Mumbaki specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer The story begins with the conflict between the unsettled marriage. And also they argued about the boundaries of their territories, where who should own the old tree between the two tribe. Each them ask explanation that ends up the leader of Lidum tribes death and those start of the beginning of war for revenge and justice. The Lidum tribe believes that once they cannot have the justice of death of the leader they will suffer like experiencing different illness and wars that may cause to death of other people too. And all the tribe in Ifugao does not believe the medicine that given to them by their doctor. They believe that only their Mumbaki can help and save them with help of their Baki because he is the one sent by Baki to save them. But the epedemic disease become worst which lead to death of many people. Nowadays, scientist, doctors, engineers, etc†¦ discover many things that could help our society to become more progressive to cure many diseases and illness and in terms of communication and transportation we are now more advance. But sometimes because of our culture, all belief and practices hinder our minds to accept those things and also the tradition of different people there are instances because of hatred it will only caused a never ending war but we have one country, one government to maintain the peace and settled every problems we have through peace talk and court trials, we should respect the value of life of every individual. When youre trying to use new changes it doesn’t mean you betrayed your traditions. You are only open minded that could help for a certain circumstances.

The Nile River and Nile Delta in Egypt

The Nile River and Nile Delta in Egypt The Nile River in Egypt is among the longest rivers in the world, running for a length of 6,690 kilometers (4,150 miles), and it drains an area of roughly 2.9 million square kilometers, about 1.1  million square miles. No other region in our world is so dependent on a single water system, especially as it is located in one of our worlds most extensive and severe deserts. More than 90% of the population of Egypt today lives adjacent to and relies directly on the Nile and its delta. Because of ancient Egypts dependence on the Nile, the rivers paleo-climatic history, particularly the changes in the hydro-climate, helped shape the growth of dynastic Egypt and led to the decline of numerous complex societies. Physical Attributes There are three tributaries to the Nile, feeding into the main channel which flows generally northward to empty into the Mediterranean Sea. The Blue and the White Nile join together at Khartoum to create the main Nile channel, and the Atbara River joins the main Nile channel in northern Sudan. The Blue Niles source is Lake Tana; the White Nile is sourced at equatorial Lake Victoria, famously confirmed in the 1870s by David Livingston and Henry Morton Stanley. The Blue and Atbara rivers bring most of the sediment into the river channel and are fed by summer monsoon rains, while the White Nile drains the larger Central African Kenyan Plateau. The Nile Delta is roughly 500 km (310 mi) wide and 800 km (500 mi) long; the coastline as it meets the Mediterranean is 225 km (140 mi) long. The delta is made up mainly of alternating layers of silt and sand, laid down by the Nile over the past 10 thousand years or so. The elevation of the delta ranges from about 18 m (60 ft) above mean sea level at Cairo to around 1 m (3.3 ft) thick or less at the coast. Using the Nile in Antiquity The ancient Egyptians relied on the Nile as their source for reliable or at least predictable water supplies to allow their agricultural and then commercial settlements to develop. In ancient Egypt, the flooding of the Nile was predictable enough for the Egyptians to plan their yearly crops around it. The delta region flooded annually from June to September, as a result of monsoons in Ethiopia. A famine resulted when there was inadequate or surplus flooding. The ancient Egyptians learned partial control of the flood waters of the Nile by means of irrigation. They also wrote hymns to Hapy, the Nile flood god. In addition to being a source of water for their crops, the Nile River was a source of fish and waterfowl, and a major transportation artery linking all of the parts of Egypt, as well as linking Egypt to its neighbors. But the Nile does fluctuate from year to year. From one ancient period to the next, the course of the Nile, the amount of water in its channel, and the amount of silt deposited in the delta varied, bringing abundant harvest or devastating drought. This process continues. Technology and the Nile Egypt was first occupied by humans during the Paleolithic period, and they were undoubtedly affected by the Niles fluctuations. The earliest evidence for technological adaptations of the Nile occurred in the delta region at the end of the Predynastic Period, between about 4000 and 3100 B.C.E., when farmers began building canals. Other innovations include: Predynastic (1st Dynasty 3000–2686 B.C.E.)- Sluice gate construction allowed deliberate flooding and draining of farm fieldsOld Kingdom (3rd Dynasty 2667–2648 B.C.E.)- 2/3 of the delta was affected by irrigation worksOld Kingdom (3rd–8th Dynasties 2648–2160 B.C.E.)- Increasing aridification of the region leads to the progressively advanced technology including the building of artificial levees and enlarging and dredging of natural overflow channelsOld Kingdom (6th–8th Dynasties)- Despite the new technologies developed during the Old Kingdom, aridification increased such that there was a 30 year period in which flooding of the delta did not occur, contributing to the end of the Old Kingdom.New Kingdom (18th dynasty, 1550–1292 B.C.E.)- Shadoof technology (so-called Archimedes Screw invented long before Archimedes) first introduced, allowing farmers to plant several crops a yearPtolemaic period (332–30 B.C.E.)- Agricultural intensificatio n increased as population moved into the delta regionArab Conquest (1200–1203 C.E.)- Severe drought conditions led to famine and cannibalism as reported by the Arabic historian Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi (1162–1231 C.E.) Ancient Descriptions of the Nile From Herodotus, Book II of The Histories: [F]or it was evident to me that the space between the aforesaid mountain-ranges, which lie above the city of Memphis, once was a gulf of the sea,... if it be permitted to compare small things with great; and small these are in comparison, for of the rivers which heaped up the soil in those regions none is worthy to be compared to volume with a single one of the mouths of the Nile, which has five mouths. Also from Herodotus, Book II: If then the stream of the Nile should turn aside into this Arabian gulf, what would hinder that gulf from being filled up with silt as the river continued to flow, at all events within a period of twenty thousand years? From Lucans Pharsalia: Egypt on the west Girt by the trackless Syrtes forces back By sevenfold stream the ocean; rich in glebe And gold and merchandise; and proud of Nile Asks for no rain from heaven. Sources: Castaà ±eda IS, Schouten S, Ptzold J, Lucassen F, Kasemann S, Kuhlmann H, and Schefuß E. 2016. Hydroclimate variability in the Nile River Basin during the past 28,000 years. Earth and Planetary Science Letters 438:47-56.Krom MD, Stanley JD, Cliff RA, and Woodward JC. 2002. Nile River sediment fluctuations over the past 7000 yr and their key role in sapropel development. Geology 30(1):71-74.Santoro MM, Hassan FA, Wahab MA, Cerveny RS, and Robert C Balling J. 2015. An aggregated climate teleconnection index linked to historical Egyptian famines of the last thousand years. The Holocene 25(5):872-879.Stanley DJ. 1998. Nile Delta in its destruction phase. Journal of Coastal Research 14(3):794-825.

User Engagement Metrics How to Apply Them to Boost Your SEO

User Engagement Metrics How to Apply Them to Boost Your SEO It feels great to rank on the first page of Google for your primary keywords. You get all the love with tons of organic traffic. Ranking on the first page is complicated, however. Brian Dean compiled a list of over 200 ranking factors  that Google uses.  If you’re serious about improving your search visibility, you need to find a way to attend to these factors. I know how challenging this can be. And not everyone is ready to put in the hard work. But what if I told  you that there’s a rather easier way to rank high in the organic results pages?  Would you be interested? No, I’m not going to teach you some blackhat techniques or a secret to hacking Google’s index. Can I be straight up with you? From my personal experience, I observed that the most credible way to improve search performance is by focusing on user engagement metrics.   From the chart below, you’ll notice that shares, engaged time, and comments are the core metrics  for measuring user engagement. Not backlinks or content length. If you play your cards right, you can reverse-engineer user engagement to rank higher, with or without any so-called powerful links. The guide below will show you how to do it. Download Your Free User Engagement Resource Bundle User engagement metrics are driven by strong content. Understanding those metrics requires strong knowledge of analytics tools. To help you apply the advice in this post, weve pulled together these free resources you can use: Five free Google Analytics Custom Reports that show when your social media and email content drive the most traffic to your site (in just a couple clicks). 2017 Content Calendar Template to help you schedule all your content for optimal engagement. Using Google Analytics to Create Smarter Content guide to help you create content readers want, based on real data. How to Apply Powerful User Engagement Metrics to Boost Your SEOWhy User Engagement Matters User engagement is determined by observing user’s behavior. What do they do after they land on your website? Where do they click? How much time do they spend on your website? Understanding user engagement metrics helps you see what works and what doesn’t work. It helps you see what users love on your website. It’s not just about content. Design matters, too. Why? Because great design creates a great first impression and gets better marketing results. According to The Design Council, through your design, you can increase brand visibility by 200%.   The same report also states that, "Shares in companies where design plays a critical role consistently outperform key stock market indicators by 200%," and that â€Å"for every $130 spent on design, businesses that are focused on design realized a $298 return.† Recommended Reading: How to Redesign Your Website (Like ) In 10+ Easy Steps How to Work With Designers With Authentic Advice From 's Designer How to Design the Best Blog Graphics With Free Tools and Design Theory For instance, consider bounce rate. If the bounce rate of a specific blog post is higher than the rest of the posts, this means your readers don't like it as much as they do the rest of the posts. To find the bounce rate for your posts and pages in Google Analytics, here’s that path to follow once you’re logged in: BEHAVIOR = Site Content = All Pages When the statistics load, you’ll see a column for the bounce rates: Similarly, if a post has exceptionally low bounce rate, it could mean that your audience is in love with it. All things being equal. I’m sure you’re asking, â€Å"but, what is a good bounce rate?† Well, the answer isn’t straightforward because we need to consider the industry, content quality, and so on. However, all hope isn’t lost yet. You can see the average bounce rate for different industries. Additionally, GoRocketFuel conducted an exclusive study  to determine what a good bounce rate is. According to their findings: â€Å"Most websites will see bounce rates fall somewhere between 26% and 70%. The average bounce rate for the websites in my sample set was 49%. The average bounce rate for all visits in the set was 45%. I threw out the outliers- the 1% bounce rates. The highest bounce rate was 90.2%; the low (from a properly functioning profile) was 27.33%. The low across all (including broken implementations) was 1.23%.† So when you find blog posts with a good bounce rate, replicate. Create similar posts that your readers will love again. Your chances of ranking higher in Google top pages are high, because Google appreciates  a web page with a low bounce rate. Recommended Reading: How to Create a Killer Content Strategy for Your New Blog The Ultimate Blog Writing Process to Create Killer Posts How to Promote Your Blog With 107 Content Promotion Tactics Determine What Users Are Doing On-site It’s high time you get to know what users are doing on your website. Neil Patel  identified five engagement factors that will affect influence your search engine rankings. These include: Traffic. This includes visitors from organic sources. Pageviews and bounce rate. Brand mentions. Mobile-responsive design. Technical SEO (structured for users). Other engagement metrics are: Clicks on internal and external links. Social shares. Scroll depth. Form submissions.Are you paying attention to these important user engagement signals?Note:  All of these metrics and factors don’t influence search rankings at the same time. Most website owners and SEOs find it hard to rank higher in Google when they try to manipulate search rankings. But the truth is, SEO  Ã¢â‚¬â€œ as daunting and complicated as it may seem – still boils down to one simple practice: provide value. The illustration below  shows that the more value you provide, the more of it you’ll get. Source: HubSpot Good #SEO boils down to one simple practice: providing value.According to Search Engine Watch, the correlation between user engagement metrics (i.e., time on site, bounce rate and average pages per visit) and search engine ranking reveals that not all the signals are equally important. These user engagement metrics can be accessed from Google Analytics. This will help you identify the best performing landing pages on your website. These engagement metrics are the results of user’s behavior while on your website. To see these metrics in your Google Analytics account go to: Acquisition - All Traffic - Channels When you’ve identified your best performing landing pages, you need to install a heat map script  so that you can study the user behavior properly. To find your best performing landing pages, follow this path in Google Analytics: Behavior = Site Content = Landing Pages Here's how to find your best-performing landing pages using Google Analytics:Use Heatmaps to Understand Vantage Positioning A heat map tool like Crazy Egg  can show you the exact sections of your website that users are clicking and why? It uses mouse-tracking to determine scroll and clicks. To fully understand what users do on your website, where they click, how deep they scroll, and what they don’t like, you have to use heatmaps- it gives you better insights about users. Source: Piktochart For instance, you saw five pages in Google Analytics with below average bounce rates. At that point, you should ask yourself, â€Å"why do people like these pages more than other pages on the same website?† Do they like the video? Or the infographic? Or the GIFs or something else? This is where a heat map tool gets the job done. You can determine the following using a heat map: How users move their mouse on any given page. Do they move their mouse on the title and images? A click map shows where users click on the page. Are they clicking the new video that you just created? Scroll maps show how deep users scroll. It’s one of the best user engagement metrics that show the point users exit the page. This makes it easier to adjust the length of your page. For a demonstration of CrazyEgg and how to use it to interpret your website data, see the Koozai Guide to Using CrazyEgg. This information,  alongside data from Google Analytics will help you identify the most interactive parts on the best-performing pages. When you’re armed with such insights about your users, it’s easy to create compelling content that will improve your search visibility. Based on Google Analytics and your heatmaps, you can determine what type of content is most suitable for your audience. Lim Cheng Soon  used heatmaps  to track the user behavior on Pair’s landing page (now rebranded as Couple). Here’s what  the homepage looked like  before: Now, see what their  heatmap revealed: The navigation bar at the top left was getting more clicks than the conversion button. It was a distraction. Though they were getting a decent traffic on the homepage, pageviews were counting, and everything was working fine. But they weren’t getting as many downloads as expected. So, Lim removed the navigation bar and conversion rate quickly increased by 12%. He also removed the ‘download for free’ text above the button and it increased conversion rate by an additional 10%. Create More Interactive Content If you want to increase user’s time on your website, you need to add more interaction to your content. You could add interactive infographics  to your post, or embed quizzes. However, there are two forms of interactive content  that truly boost engagement. These include: a).   Calculators: Integrating a simple calculator into your written content can improve your content’s perceived value and take your engagement to the roof. For example, SilkRoad, a HR software for Talent Management created a calculator  to show prospective clients they could become more productive and save with its employee onboarding automation solution. Within 3 months, the company saw an increase in lead generation and content engagement. You'll need to work with your development team to make something like this happen. However, the results are worth it. b).   Interactive video: Video marketing still works. Data from Convince and Convert  shows that audiences are 10x more likely to engage with video content. Sadly, they’re still a static medium, which means that you have a lot of opportunities right now to make your videos interactive. But how? In an interactive video, you’re giving viewers the opportunity to participate in your video as opposed to just viewing it. You could add interactive hotspots so that a viewer can click to learn more about the person, an event, or a topic. Some of the handy tools that you can use to create interactive videos are: Wirewax Thinglink RaptMedia Truth is, interactive videos can quickly improve your audience’s perception of your brand. Interactive videos can quickly improve your audience’s perception of your brand.According to Tom Whatley: â€Å"One of the best examples of interactive video I've seen is the Guardian's "Seven Digital Deadly Sins." In it, viewers can explore the stories of seven users of digital media and how it affects their lives. A 'burger menu' to the side adds to the user interface, and there are several "easter eggs" in the form of one-question surveys that show real-time stats.† Here's a quick look at it: Recommended Reading: How to Make a Video Content Marketing Strategy To Boost Your New Series How to Get Started With Twitter Video Marketing How to Do Facebook Video Marketing the Right Way When you’re looking to create more engagement on your page, adding more interactivity can help. But again, it comes after studying your users closely using tools. Statistics  show that interactive content converts better than passive content. In the study, interactive content converted more than 70% of buyers while the passive content only converted 36% of buyers. Two of the reasons why most people don’t build interaction into their content is because they don’t know what type of interactive content to create that users will love. This challenge can be solved using Google Analytics and heatmaps. What #interactive #content will your audience love? Find out with Google Analytics and @CrazyEgg:To get started, you can create different forms of interactive content with these tools: Qzzr: A simple tool for creating online quizzes for free. SnapApp: It’s a powerful content platform which allows you to turn static content (e.g., PDF document) into an interactive slide presentation). Mapme: Build interactive maps with videos, words, and photos. Infogr.am: Use this tool to create interactive infographics and charts. Once you start creating interactive content, your audience will start engaging with it at a better level. And because Google follows users, your web page will start to gain more visibility in the organic search. Don’t just create any type of content. But rather, make content marketing  decisions based on the feedback from your best-performing content which you found on Google Analytics. It must be based on what your audience is already engaging with. For instance, if feedback from analytics and heat maps reveal that infographics perform better than text. You'd then want to create more infographics to engage with your readers. Recommended Reading: How to Make an Infographic in 7 Easy Steps Craft Beneficial Headlines, Not Clickbait You can use user engagement metrics and insights from Google Analytics and heatmaps to write better headlines. Here’s how. Let’s assume that one of your best performing landing pages has this headline: 12 Smart Ways To Launch a Successful Online Course Then all things being equal, your readers are telling you that they prefer ‘number headlines.’ So, you’re expected to create more of them. If that’s the case, then your subsequent posts might read thus: 11 Product Launch Tools That I Use Every Time 7 Steps To Hack a Winning Product Idea 3 Must-Have Pricing Strategies You Should Adopt More importantly, you can get more clicks on your headlines if you make them beneficial. According to Brian Clark, 8 out of 10 people  will click on your headline. Real headlines that offer value is what you should craft for your interactive content. Clickbait headlines may seem to do the trick, but they will only cause search users to bounce the moment they land on your page and discover that you’ve tricked them. This is not what you want, right? Here are a few techniques to help you write headlines: Make them benefit-driven.  Clearly state the benefit that the readers will get from the content. Here are some examples of such headlines: 7 Ways To Get Your First 1,000 Email Subscribers Here’s another example from Neil Patel’s blog: Keep headlines descriptive. Inappropriate, ambiguous, and unclear headlines might send untargeted traffic to your page. Use A/B test  to prove your best headlines. Optimize headlines. Include a keyword in the headline that will help you drive traffic from search engines. Bonus Tip: Use 's free Headline Analyzer to make sure every headline you write is a winner. A killer headline combined with the content that your users and search engines have shown great interest in initially will rank exceptionally well in search engines. A killer headline + content your users want = search rankings.This type of content doesn’t need a lot of backlinks to rank. As long as users like the content, they’ll share it, and Google will naturally rank it. Maybe not on the first page right away, but as the user engagement increases, this page will climb to the top. More so, if users like it so much, they’ll link to it as well. So, you may not be out to build links, but you’ll earn them nonetheless. Recommended Reading: How to Write Awesome Social Media Headlines Your Audience Will Love How to Write Emotional Headlines That Get More Shares How to Write Headlines That Drive Traffic, Shares, and Search Results How Will You Use User Engagement Metrics to Create Better Content? Focusing on your users and what interests them is truly the best way to create content that ranks highly in Google organic pages. It may seem like a lot of work, and it’s true, but if you dare to listen to your audience more it becomes a lot easier to answer their questions.