Author: Franz Malten Buemann

Hey, does anyone know of an automation software which allows you to practice it in sandbox environment? Something similar to Salesforce’s trailhead practice environment for admins. submitted by /u/4enthusiastia [link] [comments]

As marketers find more innovative ways to attract audiences, video has become a meaningful part of the strategic conversation.
Video marketing is no longer an “up-and-coming” content strategy. It’s here, and it’s an increasingly powerful way to communicate your brand story, explain your value proposition, and build relationships with your customers and prospects.

The HubSpot Blog surveyed 550 marketers to learn about the latest video trends. The most recent data shows that video content isn’t just effective — the demand for it is growing at an impressively rapid pace. Here are the key video marketing statistics you should keep in mind to inform your strategy.

General Video Marketing Stats

36% of marketers say the primary goal of their company’s video marketing efforts is to increase brand awareness and reach new audiences.
37% of companies exclusively create video content in-house, 14% rely on an agency, and 49% share a mix of both in-house and agency-created video content.
69% of marketers say their company owns the production equipment used to create video content.
The most popular video editing software is Adobe Premiere Pro, which is used by 61% of marketers.
44% of marketers use an iPhone as their primary camera for video content.
88% of companies surveyed have a team dedicated to creating video content, and 45% of companies with dedicated video support have a team of two to five people.
81% of marketers say their primary company has a budget specifically for video marketing, and 52% of marketers said their video marketing budget remained the same for 2022.
42% of marketers surveyed say creating video content through an outside agency has resulted in better videos.
69% of marketers claim the biggest benefit of creating video content in-house is having more creative control and flexibility.
When asked what the biggest benefit of working with an agency to create video content is, 68% of marketers point to higher-quality videos that look more professional.
77% of marketers say their company uses YouTube to host marketing videos.
14% of marketers say their company spends between $7,000 to $10,000 to produce a video.
When asked how long it takes to create a marketing video from start to finish, 30% of marketers say it takes two weeks.
According to 65% of marketers, production (filming, lighting, and audio) is the most expensive part of the video creation process.
38% of marketers say pre-production (ideation, writing the script, and casting) is the most time-consuming part of the video creation process.
74% of companies optimize videos for silent auto-play.
78% of companies leverage accessibility features in video content. The most common accommodation is video captioning, which is used by 65% of companies.
31% of brands publish two to four videos per month.
29% of companies started prioritizing video marketing in 2019.
When asked what the three biggest challenges are when creating video content, the top responses were lack of time to create video content (39%), difficulty creating an effective video strategy (33%), and inadequate budget to create video content (31%).

Video Marketing Performance Stats

According to marketers the top three most important factors for creating effective video content are capturing viewers’ attention in the first few seconds (36%), effectively promoting videos (36%), and keeping videos concise (33%).
The most effective video promotion strategies according to marketers are promoting videos on social media platforms (63%), adding videos to the company website or blog, optimizing the title and description for SEO, and running paid ads for videos (47%).
44% of marketers describe creating video content as somewhat easy.
59% of marketers found video marketing to be somewhat effective for reaching their company’s overall business goals.
47% of marketers say video marketing is moderately important to the overall marketing strategy at their company.
55% of marketers claim video marketing has an average ROI, and 41% of marketers report video marketing having a high ROI.
32% of marketers found the most effective way to generate leads from marketing videos is to place links to landing pages on social media video ads.
The top metrics marketers use when measuring video content performance are view count (44%), watch time (43%), and engagement (41%).
36% of marketers say the optimal length of a marketing video is one to three minutes.
39% of marketers report that short-form videos generate the biggest ROI.
64% of marketers surveyed claim say the optimal length of a short-form marketing video is 20-60 seconds.
41% of marketers found the average watch percentage of their short-form videos is between 61-80%.
26% of marketers say the optimal length of a live video is seven to nine minutes.
40% of marketers claim the biggest benefit of creating video content is to help customers understand its products and services. 36% of marketers say the biggest benefit of video content is that it gets more engagement than other types of marketing.
68% of marketers say content showcasing their products and services generates the biggest ROI.
Per 63% of marketers, content related to cultural moments and news stories generates the most video engagement.
59% of marketers have created a video that has gone viral.
According to marketers, the most important factors in creating a viral video are making relatable content (28%), keeping videos short (27%), and capturing viewers’ attention in the first few seconds (26%).
24% of marketers say funny content is most likely to go viral.

Social Media Video Marketing Stats

According to 58% of marketers, short-form videos (such as TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts), are the main video format they leverage in their roles.
The top channels for sharing or hosting marketing videos are social media (76%), blog or website (55%), email (44%), and Vimeo (31%).
67% of marketers say sharing marketing videos on social media (YouTube, Instagram, TikTok) has the biggest ROI.
The top social media platform for sharing videos is YouTube (70%), followed by Instagram (60%) and TikTok (35%).
54% of companies plan on increasing their investment in videos for TikTok this year.
64% of marketers say their company has the highest engagement when sharing marketing videos on Instagram.
According to marketers, the top social media platforms for generating leads from videos are Instagram (66%) and YouTube (59%).
56% of brands plan on increasing their investment in videos for Instagram this year.
When posting marketing videos on social media, 55% of marketers say they leverage a mix of organic and paid content.
27% of marketers said YouTube is the platform they plan to invest the most in for sharing marketing videos in 2022.
When comparing the two platforms, 78% of marketers said YouTube was more effective for reaching overall business goals, compared to 8% of marketers who felt Vimeo was more effective for reaching business goals.

As online platforms and consumer habits trend towards video, brands will need to invest in the medium to keep the attention of audiences and grow their reach.

Leadership isn’t just about control — it’s also about actions and behaviors. As a leader, do your current leadership behaviors align with both your and your team’s goals? And does your behavior boost your team’s morale or bring the mood down — resulting in high turnover and less efficiency? To help you answer those questions, we’ve put together a breakdown of the kind of conduct that leaders should exhibit.
Leaders who don’t possess these behaviors may struggle with completing objectives, maintaining a healthy work environment, or managing their team members.
With that in mind, let’s take a look at 30 examples of leadership behaviors that will benefit both you and your team.

Effective Leadership Behaviors Examples
1. Compassion
Compassion means having sympathy and concern for others, especially when they are experiencing misfortune. Leading with compassion builds trust and promotes collaboration. Your employees will feel more comfortable confiding in you about issues that may be disrupting their workflow.
2. Adaptability
An excellent leader is always prepared to shift priorities and processes to adapt to changing market conditions. New viral social media sites are popping up every day. State-of-the-art technologies are always in development and changing the ways consumers interact with products and services. Adaptable leadership means working to keep up with these changes and ensuring that your business model is always up-to-date and evolving.
3. Coaching mindset
Having a coaching mindset means wanting to help your employees improve their skill set and grow both personally and professionally. As a leader, you should also act as a mentor by taking the time to get to know your employees and their goals to help set them up for success. Consider having training sessions that focus on specific areas of the business or set aside time for your employees to shadow colleagues in different departments — based on their interests.
4. Active listening
According to a 2021 global survey by The Workforce Institute at UKG, 74% of employees say they are more effective at their job when they feel heard. That same study also showed 88% of employees whose companies financially outperform others in their industry feel heard compared to 62% of employees at financially underperforming companies.
Active listening means giving the person who is speaking your full, undivided attention. In tandem with listening to their words, you’re also analyzing what’s being said —paying close attention to the content, intentions, and emotion of the speaker. Employees appreciate this because it means they’re not only being heard they’re also being understood.

5. Motivation
You can’t expect your team to be motivated to reach new heights if you aren’t. Leaders set the tone for their team’s morale. Being a motivational leader means showing enthusiasm for the company’s future. It also means setting the vision for the company and getting team members equally excited about what’s to come.
6. Self-awareness
Being a self-aware leader means understanding your character and feelings. Knowing your character is important because it means you are aware of your strengths, weaknesses, and the way you respond to situations. This provides a foundation from which you can work to make improvements where need be. Being aware of your feelings also allows you to approach situations with clarity and a calm mind.
7. Confidence
In order for your team to believe in you, you must first believe in your own leadership abilities — that’s why confidence is key. To build your confidence, repeat positive affirmations to yourself, practice good posture, speak clearly, and make eye contact while speaking. It’s easier said than done, but with good practice and repetition, your confidence will grow and your team will notice.
8. Assertiveness
Assertive leaders stand up for themselves, others, and what they believe in —but being assertive does not mean being “pushy” or “disrespectful.” Stand up to others while remaining calm and positive.. Be direct and clear in your communication, and don’t just passively accept unfavorable responses.
9. Time management
An effective leader knows how to use their and their team’s time wisely. Leaders properly manage time by streamlining workflows to make processes more efficient. They also implement detailed plans that prioritize important tasks and take the amount of time it takes to complete them into account.
10. Detail-oriented
Completing a project on time is important, but timeliness means nothing if the project is riddled with errors or missing key components. A true leader pays close attention to detail to ensure high standards of quality are met. However, that does not mean a good leader lets their attention to detail interfere with important developments —it simply means they use their attention to detail to deliver thorough results.
11. Communication
As a leader, you must be able to clearly articulate your objectives. Communicating effectively means you can spend less time repeating yourself and more time taking action. So make sure your verbal communication is easy to understand. Another aspect of great communication is understanding how your team prefers to communicate. Do email updates help? How about weekly scheduled Zoom meetings and town halls? Pay close attention to the types of communication that yield the best results and implement them into your strategy.
12. Accountability
Accountability doesn’t just mean holding someone else to task for their behaviors —it also means holding yourself accountable. No leader is perfect, and part of establishing trust with your team is taking responsibility for your own shortcomings. If you missed a deadline or forgot to update your team on a project, take ownership and make a point to do better. Your team will respect your honesty and reflect it by holding themselves accountable as well.
13. Dependability
A dependable leader can be trusted to do what they say they’ll do, when they say they’ll do it, and the way it needs to be done. This instills confidence in the team and can inspire them to do the same. A leader who lacks dependability can shake a team’s morale, reduce efficiency, and lose out on important opportunities.
14. Proactiveness
Proactive leadership means taking the time to plan, improve your team’s processes, and put initiatives in place to prevent problems before they arise. As a proactive leader, you should identify areas of risk for your team and work to minimize negative impacts or remove them altogether before issues pop up.
15. Planning
The key to being proactive is to plan. Plan the route to meet your goals and what you’ll do after. Plan for when things go right, and plan in case a project fails. Devise a plan for how each member in your team will contribute to the company’s objectives. Remember, if you stay ready, you’ll never have to get ready.

16. Problem solving
A leader must be able to find solutions to difficult or unpredictable problems, and in an ever-changing professional landscape, unpredictable problems happen by nature. A good leader also understands that they must also utilize the strengths of their teams to get over hurdles.
17. Responsibility
Responsible leaders own the fact that they have an obligation to make tough decisions, lead, and are in control of their team. They do not shy away from responsibility or accountability — and they’re not afraid to be decision-makers.
18. Goal-Oriented
As a goal-oriented leader, you must set clear and realistic goals for both yourself and your team — and be driven to achieve them. Consistent goal setting builds motivation and pushes the team to achieve important objectives and meet deadlines. To maintain a goal-oriented outlook, you must approach each task with a positive attitude.
19. Purpose
Purpose goes hand-in-hand with goal-setting. As a leader, you must have a clear future envisioned for your team that drives everyone forward. Where do all your goals lead to? What drives you to succeed and is that purpose clear to your employees?
20. Commitment
No matter your objective as a leader, reaching it requires commitment. A committed leader will give their time and energy to their company, team, and goals. Their go-getter attitude will also inspire their team to be committed to their tasks as well.
21. Resilience
Being a leader isn’t easy. Sometimes plans fail, markets shift, consumers change, and frustrations can arise. However, a resilient leader finds the strength to persevere through uncertainty or disappointment and helps their team stay the course to their goals.
22. Transparency
Lack of transparency can create distrust between you and your team. To be a transparent leader, you have to make yourself clear and easy to understand. You must also ensure the words you say match your tone and body language to avoid confusion. A transparent leader may not be able to tell the team everything, but they don’t leave questions as to what they can or can’t share.
23. Personal fulfillment
A leader gets a sense of personal fulfillment when a project is completed successfully. That personal fulfillment is the result of alignment between their drive, purpose, and desire to achieve their goals alongside their team.
24. Reflection
A leader who practices reflection is an efficient leader. Reflection allows leaders to look back on previous experiences, learn from them, and make improvements going forward. As a leader, getting external feedback on your decisions can sometimes be difficult. Therefore, practicing self-reflection and taking careful consideration of your past actions can be great ways to help yourself expand your skill set.
25. Empathy
An empathetic leader is able to understand or feel what another person is experiencing by figuratively putting themselves in that person’s position. Being in tune with your team’s feelings and concerns can help you adjust expectations, get to the heart of certain issues, and instill trust. To build empathy, step outside your comfort zone and ask “How would I feel if this were happening to me?”
26. Constructive feedback
The individual members of your team have their own goals — just like you. As a leader you should be comfortable giving constructive feedback to your team members to help facilitate their growth and improve performance. Constructive feedback is informative, issue-specific, based on observation, and is delivered in a way that is not meant to offend or deter. Instead, constructive feedback is delivered to encourage a positive outcome.
27. Empowerment
Empowering your team means delegating specific tasks to team members and giving them authority over those tasks. This shows that you believe in your team’s capabilities and trust them to take charge of projects when necessary. This form of empowerment can also help team members broaden their skills and boost efficiency.
28. Interactive
Leadership isn’t just about keeping to yourself and making decisions solely on your own. It also means working with your team. An interactive leader keeps open lines of communication with their team, connects individuals to their teams via team building, and embraces new perspectives with enthusiasm.
29. Influential
In order to lead, an effective leader must exhibit high-influence behaviors that have an effect on the character, beliefs, actions, and development of their team. With words and examples, leaders set the tone for how projects are executed and have the power to change direction if need be. With low-influence behaviors, leaders will have to work harder to be heard and to have projects completed to their liking.
30. Emotional Intelligence
Empathy, self-awareness, reflection, and compassion are all components of emotional intelligence. Any emotionally intelligent leader is aware and in control of how they express their emotions. By being in control of their emotions, an effective leader can handle their relationship with their team judiciously and respectfully. Emotional intelligence creates a healthy work environment in which everyone feels validated, heard, and respected.
If you don’t possess all the above listed behaviors, don’t worry. These are behaviors that can be honed over time with practice and initiative. Write down the behaviors you wish to develop, and start crafting a clear plan to do so. There is no better time to get started than the present.

Google is not a social media channel per se, but one of its features, Google Web Stories, is similar to the stories format that you’d see on popular sites like Instagram.
It poses a unique opportunity for creators, so read on to learn all about Google Web Stories, what they can do for your business, and how to create them and make an impact.

Table of Contents:

What are Google Web Stories?
Google Web Stories Examples
How to Make Google Web Stories
Best Practices for Creating Google Web Stories
Google Web Stories SEO Checklist

What are Google Web Stories?
Google Web Stories are interactive, video-first pieces of content that creators can use to share information with audiences through tappable pages featuring audio, images, and text. The Web Story format was formerly known as AMP Stories.
Google says that styles that work the best with the format are first-person narratives, evergreen or updating stories, live stories, educational and experiential stories, and quizzes and polls.
Web Stories appear in standard Google Search results and as carousels in Google Discover, and you can also add them to a newsletter and link to them from your social media accounts. The image below shows a Web Story in Google Discover on the left and Google Search on the right.
Web Stories are also individual pages on your website, so they can be indexed and surfaced in relevant results. You can feature them as individual pieces of content within your website or embed them like podcast episodes or YouTube videos. The video below from Google for Creators goes into more detail.

Google Web Stories Format
Web Stories have three parts: a poster, a cover page, and story pages.
The poster is the first thing someone sees in your Story, and Google describes it as the packaging. Your cover page is the first page of the content of your story, and story pages are where you begin to tell your story and narrative with video, text, and your preferred assets.

There is only one poster and cover page per story, but you can have multiple story pages.
Can you monetize Google Web Stories?
You can monetize Google Web Stories with AdSense, Ad Manager, and display ads. You can also include affiliate links as attachments or CTAs.

Google Web Stories Examples
1. INPUT – Ford’s Mustang Mach-E 1400 Prototype

Source
This Web Story begins with what feels like a real-life experience as a car zooms across the screen and speeds across a race track. Ford’s Mustang Mach-E 1400 Prototype is a standout Web Story because of its expert use of video to draw users in.  It embodies the video-first elements Google recommends and continues to be interactive throughout the rest of the piece.
2. Nylon – 10 Black-Authored Books To Add To Your Summer Reading List

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Nylon’s 10 Black-Authored Books To Add To Your Summer Reading List Story is an excellent example of expertly using attachments and shoppable links to inspire interaction with viewers and make the user experience seamless. Viewers can tap through and read summaries of each book and, when interested, can click a link to be automatically directed to a site where they can purchase the book.
3. Vice – The Burger Sisters of Kenya

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The Burger Sisters of Kenya is a Web Story about two sisters who own a famous burger food truck in Kenya. This Story is a great inspiration as it features a first-person narrative that feels like a conversation, high-quality video and visuals, and it minds accessibility with captions and audio transcriptions.

How to Make Google Web Stories
This Google format can bring various benefits to your business, like sharing a unique and engaging brand story with your audience, inspiring engagement with interactive elements, driving traffic to your different channels, and the ability to monetize and generate revenue.
Let’s go over how to make them.
1. Storyboard your narrative.
The first step is to storyboard and draft a narrative. Google created a storyboard script template to use to draft your Web Story narrative.

Image Source
2. Choose an editor.
After you’ve created a final draft, pick the editor you’ll use to create your Story. If you have developer skills, you can follow a tutorial from AMP that will guide you through the process of creating a Story with custom functionality.
If you don’t have developer skills, you can use one of the recommended no-coding necessary editors.
If you’re a WordPress user, you can use the Web Stories Plugin.
Google Web Stories Plugin
The Web Stories for WordPress plugin, built by Google, will help you easily create and publish your Web Stories on your WordPress site. The editor includes templates, a drag and drop builder, space for custom branded elements, and you can grab existing assets from your WordPress Media Library.

Image Source
3. Create your Web Story
Once you’ve chosen your editor, begin building your Web Story.
4. Test your web story before publishing.
The final step is to enable your Web Story on Google, and this requires testing it with various tools.

Test if it is AMP valid using the AMP test tool or AMP Test Validator.
Check if your Story can be indexed by Google using the Sitemaps Report and URL Inspection Tool.
Check if your story renders appropriately for different devices with Chrome Developer Tools.

To embed a Web Story on your WordPress site, you’d use the Web Stories block. If you’ve created your Web Story with any AMP tools, you’ll receive an embed link that you can paste within your site code.

Best Practices for Creating Google Web Stories
Let’s go over some best practices for creating your Web Stories.

1. Champion video-first storytelling.
Google meant for Web Stories to be video-first. It favors video over all else but welcomes audio, images, and animations that help you create a narrative. You can include text, but when you use it, aim for less than 280 characters, or approximately 40 to 70 words per page.
2. Use engaging elements.
Stories are meant to be interactive and engaging for users, so aim to use interactive elements.
The best way to do so is to have multiple story pages so you capture viewer attention and get them excited to tap and learn more. You can also include interactive quizzes and polls, CTAs, and links to different pages to increase viewer interaction with your content sources.
3. Use your brand identity.
Stories show up in SERPs and Google Discover, so you want to include your unique brand elements, so audiences know it’s you.
4. Ensure your stories are AMP valid.
Web Stories run on the AMP framework, so they need to be AMP valid. We recommended various testing tools above, so make sure to use them throughout your process to ensure your Stories can appear on the web.
5. Make your Web Stories accessible.
Although you want to champion visual storytelling, your Web Stories also need to be accessible. Add alt text to your images, transcribe audio, use subtitles and captions, and add metadata to your Stories to ensure everyone can benefit from them.
6. Be mindful of Google’s SEO standards.
As mentioned above, Web Stories are pages on your website. As a result, you want to be mindful of SEO best practices when creating your Web Stories so they can be indexed and ready to appear in SERPs.

Google Web Stories SEO Checklist
The same standard SEO best practices apply to Web Stories. If you already have an SEO strategy for your business, reference it throughout your process. However, there are key Web Story SEO factors to be aware of.

You want to add metadata to all elements of your Web Story, as it will speak directly to search engines and discover features that want to learn what’s in them. You can optimize for this by following along with AMP metadata guidelines.
Your Web Stories are pages on your website, so you want them to be self-canonical. Each of your Stories should have a link rel=“canonical” to itself.
Story titles should be shorter than 90 characters.
Add Web Stories to your site map and don’t include noindex attributes. You can check if you’ve been indexed using the Index Coverage Report.
All Web Stories need AMP structured data.
All Images need alt text to improve discoverability, and video needs subtitles.

Over To You
The story format provides similar benefits on Google as it would on your other channels, so it’s worth considering. If you’re ready to use the feature, leverage the instructions on this list to begin creating a unique, interactive piece of content that is sure to delight your audience.