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Christian Sewing has ‘firm confidence’ lender will hit returns target this year as it reviews weaker unitsView the full article

Starting a new business can come with numerous organizational expenses that can add up quickly. Fortunately, the IRS offers a deduction for startup costs that can help ease the financial burden. In this guide, we’ll explain everything you need to know about startup cost deduction and how to take advantage of it in the future. What is the startup cost deduction? The startup cost deduction is a tax provision that allows entrepreneurs and small business owners to deduct a portion of their startup expenses from their taxable income in the year they begin conducting business. The deduction is intended to help offset the costs involved with starting a business, which can include expenses such as market research, legal fees, incorporation fees, and advertising costs. To qualify for the startup cost deduction, the business must be a new business, the expenses must be incurred before the business begins operations, and the expenses must be necessary and ordinary for the type of business being started. The amount of the startup cost deduction is limited to $5,000 for the first year of business, with any remaining startup costs being amortized over a 15-year period. However, businesses whose startup costs exceed $50,000 in total face a reduced limit on their deduction. The best way to get you going in the right direction is to have a business startup checklist. The list can include anything from getting financing to finding legal help and even knowing tax terms. A thorough checklist can keep you from making rash decisions. Who can benefit from the startup costs deduction? New businesses that have incurred startup costs can benefit from the startup cost deduction. This includes entrepreneurs who have recently started a business, as well as those who are in the process of starting one. The deduction is available to businesses of all types and sizes, including sole proprietorships, partnerships, and corporations. What business startup costs are deductible? When starting a business, it’s essential to understand what costs are deductible. Deductible startup costs and deductible organizational costs are two categories that can help new business owners save on taxes. Understanding which expenses fit into these categories can greatly impact a business’s financial success. Deductible Startup Costs When starting a new business, there are many costs that need to be considered. Fortunately, some of these costs may be tax-deductible, helping new business owners save money on their taxes. These deductible business startup expenses include costs that are necessary when starting or buying an active trade or business, such as: Research and development expenses may include costs incurred related to the creation and testing of prototypes, the development of new technologies, labor supply, or the refinement of existing products or services. Market research expenses may include costs paid related to surveys, focus groups, or other research methods to understand potential customers’ needs and preferences. Advertising and promotion expenses can encompass costs associated with the development and distribution of marketing materials, including brochures, flyers, and advertisements. Employee training costs may include expenses related to onboarding new employees, such as training materials, instructor fees, and travel expenses. Equipment and supplies costs may include expenses related to purchasing or leasing equipment and supplies necessary to operate the business. Professional fees, such as legal and accounting fees, may be incurred to help with business registration, tax preparation, and other legal or financial matters. Rent and utilities during the startup phase such as rent for office or retail space, as well as utilities such as electricity, water, and internet service. Deductible Organizational Costs Deductible organizational costs are expenses that arise during the establishment of a corporation or partnership. These costs encompass: Legal and accounting fees associated with incorporation or partnership formation can encompass costs for preparing legal documents, including articles of incorporation and partnership agreements, along with any consulting fees from accountants or lawyers. State fees for incorporating or registering the business may include expenses such as filing fees or franchise taxes required to register the business with the state. Organizational meeting costs may include expenses related to the initial meetings of the corporation or partnership, such as travel and lodging expenses for shareholders or partners. Fees for obtaining licenses and permits can encompass the costs associated with acquiring the essential permits and licenses needed to operate the business. Costs associated with transferring assets to the new business may also be tax-deductible. These costs may include expenses related to transferring assets such as real estate, inventory, or intellectual property to the new business. What startup business expenses are not deductible? While there are many startup costs that are deductible, not all expenses qualify. Some costs, such as personal expenses or those incurred before the business is operational, cannot be deducted. Here are examples of startup costs that are not deductible: Personal expenses Capital expenses Research and experimentation costs before the business begins operations Expenses for acquiring intangible assets like patents and copyrights Costs related to acquiring an existing business Expenses related to issuing stock or other securities Fines and penalties Expenses for lobbying or political activities Costs related to tax-exempt income or other tax-exempt entities Expenses for creating or administering a pension plan or trust Costs related to issuing tax-exempt securities or financing through tax-exempt bonds When can you take the startup costs deduction? You can claim the startup costs deduction in the year your business starts. This deduction applies to expenses related to the creation or exploration of a new business, including costs for market research and advertising. The maximum amount of startup costs that can be deducted in the first year is $5,000, with any remaining balance being amortized over a period of 15 years. It’s important to keep accurate records and consult with a tax professional to ensure you are taking advantage of all available tax deductions. How do you calculate startup costs for a small business? Calculating startup costs for a small business involves identifying all expenses necessary to get the business up and running. These expenses may encompass a variety of items, ranging from market research and legal fees to equipment and supplies. To calculate the total startup costs, list each expense and its associated cost and add them together. It’s important to be thorough in identifying all necessary expenses, as underestimating startup costs can lead to financial strain later on. A solid understanding of startup costs is critical for creating a viable business plan and securing the necessary funding for a successful launch. How do you claim the startup costs deduction? Claiming the startup costs deduction can help reduce the tax burden for new businesses. To take advantage of this deduction, there are specific steps that must be followed when filing an IRS tax return. Here are the steps to claim the startup costs deduction: Determine if your business is eligible: To claim the startup costs deduction, your business must have started within the current tax year and incurred expenses related to starting up the business. Calculate your startup costs: The startup costs include any expenses incurred in preparing to operate the business, such as legal and accounting fees, market research, and advertising costs. Choose between deduction or amortization: You have the option of either deducting startup costs up to $5,000 in the first year or amortizing the expenses over a period of time, generally 15 years. File the appropriate tax form: Based on your business entity type, you must submit either Form 1120, 1120-S, 1065, or 1040. Filing the correct form is essential for claiming the startup costs deduction. Include the deduction on your tax return: After calculating the amount of the deduction or amortization, make sure to record it on the correct line of your tax return. This step is crucial to maximize the tax benefit from the startup costs deduction. How much can be claimed with the startup costs deduction? The amount that can be claimed with the startup costs deduction is limited to $5,000 in the first year of business. If your total startup costs exceed $50,000, the deduction will be reduced by the excess amount. Any remaining expenses not deducted in the first year can be amortized and claimed over a period of 180 months. Can an LLC deduct startup costs? Yes, an LLC can deduct startup costs on its tax return. However, the deduction is subject to certain limitations and eligibility requirements. The IRS considers startup costs as capital expenses that are necessary to get the business up and running. It’s important to consult with a tax professional to ensure you are accurately reporting all eligible expenses and taking advantage of all available deductions. Can a sole proprietor deduct startup costs? Yes, a sole proprietor can deduct startup costs on their tax return, subject to certain limits and requirements. The startup costs must be ordinary and necessary expenses incurred in the course of starting the business and cannot exceed $5,000 in the first year, with any remaining costs spread out over 15 years. Can an independent contractor deduct startup costs? Yes, independent contractors may be able to deduct startup costs associated with their business, such as equipment purchases and marketing expenses, on their tax returns. Just like for LLCs and sole proprietors, the deduction is limited to $5,000 in the first year of business and any remaining costs can be spread out. Can you deduct startup costs with no income? If a business owner has no income during the year in which they incur startup costs, they may still be able to deduct these costs on their tax return. The deduction may be limited in the first year and carried forward to future years. Can you depreciate startup costs? Some startup costs, such as equipment purchases or property improvements, may be depreciated over time on a business owner’s tax return. As mentioned previously, the ability to depreciate startup costs on a business owner’s tax return may be limited by certain eligibility requirements established by the IRS. Image: Envato Elements This article, "Your Guide to the Startup Costs Deduction" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

Starting a new business can come with numerous organizational expenses that can add up quickly. Fortunately, the IRS offers a deduction for startup costs that can help ease the financial burden. In this guide, we’ll explain everything you need to know about startup cost deduction and how to take advantage of it in the future. What is the startup cost deduction? The startup cost deduction is a tax provision that allows entrepreneurs and small business owners to deduct a portion of their startup expenses from their taxable income in the year they begin conducting business. The deduction is intended to help offset the costs involved with starting a business, which can include expenses such as market research, legal fees, incorporation fees, and advertising costs. To qualify for the startup cost deduction, the business must be a new business, the expenses must be incurred before the business begins operations, and the expenses must be necessary and ordinary for the type of business being started. The amount of the startup cost deduction is limited to $5,000 for the first year of business, with any remaining startup costs being amortized over a 15-year period. However, businesses whose startup costs exceed $50,000 in total face a reduced limit on their deduction. The best way to get you going in the right direction is to have a business startup checklist. The list can include anything from getting financing to finding legal help and even knowing tax terms. A thorough checklist can keep you from making rash decisions. Who can benefit from the startup costs deduction? New businesses that have incurred startup costs can benefit from the startup cost deduction. This includes entrepreneurs who have recently started a business, as well as those who are in the process of starting one. The deduction is available to businesses of all types and sizes, including sole proprietorships, partnerships, and corporations. What business startup costs are deductible? When starting a business, it’s essential to understand what costs are deductible. Deductible startup costs and deductible organizational costs are two categories that can help new business owners save on taxes. Understanding which expenses fit into these categories can greatly impact a business’s financial success. Deductible Startup Costs When starting a new business, there are many costs that need to be considered. Fortunately, some of these costs may be tax-deductible, helping new business owners save money on their taxes. These deductible business startup expenses include costs that are necessary when starting or buying an active trade or business, such as: Research and development expenses may include costs incurred related to the creation and testing of prototypes, the development of new technologies, labor supply, or the refinement of existing products or services. Market research expenses may include costs paid related to surveys, focus groups, or other research methods to understand potential customers’ needs and preferences. Advertising and promotion expenses can encompass costs associated with the development and distribution of marketing materials, including brochures, flyers, and advertisements. Employee training costs may include expenses related to onboarding new employees, such as training materials, instructor fees, and travel expenses. Equipment and supplies costs may include expenses related to purchasing or leasing equipment and supplies necessary to operate the business. Professional fees, such as legal and accounting fees, may be incurred to help with business registration, tax preparation, and other legal or financial matters. Rent and utilities during the startup phase such as rent for office or retail space, as well as utilities such as electricity, water, and internet service. Deductible Organizational Costs Deductible organizational costs are expenses that arise during the establishment of a corporation or partnership. These costs encompass: Legal and accounting fees associated with incorporation or partnership formation can encompass costs for preparing legal documents, including articles of incorporation and partnership agreements, along with any consulting fees from accountants or lawyers. State fees for incorporating or registering the business may include expenses such as filing fees or franchise taxes required to register the business with the state. Organizational meeting costs may include expenses related to the initial meetings of the corporation or partnership, such as travel and lodging expenses for shareholders or partners. Fees for obtaining licenses and permits can encompass the costs associated with acquiring the essential permits and licenses needed to operate the business. Costs associated with transferring assets to the new business may also be tax-deductible. These costs may include expenses related to transferring assets such as real estate, inventory, or intellectual property to the new business. What startup business expenses are not deductible? While there are many startup costs that are deductible, not all expenses qualify. Some costs, such as personal expenses or those incurred before the business is operational, cannot be deducted. Here are examples of startup costs that are not deductible: Personal expenses Capital expenses Research and experimentation costs before the business begins operations Expenses for acquiring intangible assets like patents and copyrights Costs related to acquiring an existing business Expenses related to issuing stock or other securities Fines and penalties Expenses for lobbying or political activities Costs related to tax-exempt income or other tax-exempt entities Expenses for creating or administering a pension plan or trust Costs related to issuing tax-exempt securities or financing through tax-exempt bonds When can you take the startup costs deduction? You can claim the startup costs deduction in the year your business starts. This deduction applies to expenses related to the creation or exploration of a new business, including costs for market research and advertising. The maximum amount of startup costs that can be deducted in the first year is $5,000, with any remaining balance being amortized over a period of 15 years. It’s important to keep accurate records and consult with a tax professional to ensure you are taking advantage of all available tax deductions. How do you calculate startup costs for a small business? Calculating startup costs for a small business involves identifying all expenses necessary to get the business up and running. These expenses may encompass a variety of items, ranging from market research and legal fees to equipment and supplies. To calculate the total startup costs, list each expense and its associated cost and add them together. It’s important to be thorough in identifying all necessary expenses, as underestimating startup costs can lead to financial strain later on. A solid understanding of startup costs is critical for creating a viable business plan and securing the necessary funding for a successful launch. How do you claim the startup costs deduction? Claiming the startup costs deduction can help reduce the tax burden for new businesses. To take advantage of this deduction, there are specific steps that must be followed when filing an IRS tax return. Here are the steps to claim the startup costs deduction: Determine if your business is eligible: To claim the startup costs deduction, your business must have started within the current tax year and incurred expenses related to starting up the business. Calculate your startup costs: The startup costs include any expenses incurred in preparing to operate the business, such as legal and accounting fees, market research, and advertising costs. Choose between deduction or amortization: You have the option of either deducting startup costs up to $5,000 in the first year or amortizing the expenses over a period of time, generally 15 years. File the appropriate tax form: Based on your business entity type, you must submit either Form 1120, 1120-S, 1065, or 1040. Filing the correct form is essential for claiming the startup costs deduction. Include the deduction on your tax return: After calculating the amount of the deduction or amortization, make sure to record it on the correct line of your tax return. This step is crucial to maximize the tax benefit from the startup costs deduction. How much can be claimed with the startup costs deduction? The amount that can be claimed with the startup costs deduction is limited to $5,000 in the first year of business. If your total startup costs exceed $50,000, the deduction will be reduced by the excess amount. Any remaining expenses not deducted in the first year can be amortized and claimed over a period of 180 months. Can an LLC deduct startup costs? Yes, an LLC can deduct startup costs on its tax return. However, the deduction is subject to certain limitations and eligibility requirements. The IRS considers startup costs as capital expenses that are necessary to get the business up and running. It’s important to consult with a tax professional to ensure you are accurately reporting all eligible expenses and taking advantage of all available deductions. Can a sole proprietor deduct startup costs? Yes, a sole proprietor can deduct startup costs on their tax return, subject to certain limits and requirements. The startup costs must be ordinary and necessary expenses incurred in the course of starting the business and cannot exceed $5,000 in the first year, with any remaining costs spread out over 15 years. Can an independent contractor deduct startup costs? Yes, independent contractors may be able to deduct startup costs associated with their business, such as equipment purchases and marketing expenses, on their tax returns. Just like for LLCs and sole proprietors, the deduction is limited to $5,000 in the first year of business and any remaining costs can be spread out. Can you deduct startup costs with no income? If a business owner has no income during the year in which they incur startup costs, they may still be able to deduct these costs on their tax return. The deduction may be limited in the first year and carried forward to future years. Can you depreciate startup costs? Some startup costs, such as equipment purchases or property improvements, may be depreciated over time on a business owner’s tax return. As mentioned previously, the ability to depreciate startup costs on a business owner’s tax return may be limited by certain eligibility requirements established by the IRS. Image: Envato Elements This article, "Your Guide to the Startup Costs Deduction" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

I still believe that links should be a part of your SEO strategy, but they shouldn’t be your whole strategy. A while back, I answered the question, “Do links still matter for rankings?” by disavowing all links to a few blogs.…Read more ›View the full article

Is what’s good for America’s richest men also good for America?View the full article

It was the year 2000. We survived Y2K and sat at our computers obsessed with a strange new game called The Sims. It was the first game I ever played where the protagonist could be late to work, forget to take out the garbage, or be so preoccupied by the doldrums of life that they might pee themselves. I, alongside millions, was hooked and could not articulate why. Born from the mind of Will Wright—the same designer who bucked the industry’s penchant for arcade games for world simulators like SimCity—The Sims is almost as hard to define now as it was then. Is it a virtual dollhouse? A simulacrum of suburban life? A neighborhood of tamagotchis with jobs? An HGTV home improvement show crossed with Real Housewives? [Image: EA] By design, whatever you call The Sims may reflect on you more than it. From its earliest days, The Sims universe has attempted to be anything but prescriptive—right down to its progressive view on relationships without labels or gender expectations. Twenty-five years later, the franchise, now owned by EA, has amassed half a billion players. The Sims 4 came out over a decade ago at this point, but after it became free-to-play in 2022, its popularity ballooned to reach 85 million players, and it’s released 17 expansions that allow people to do everything from arguing over family inheritance to convening a court of vampires. For the 25th anniversary, I sat down with two creatives that have been with the franchise since the original game to discuss their core design approach of The Sims, what’s kept players obsessed, and why fewer of these little characters are peeing themselves these days. [Image: EA] A funhouse mirror of the world The Sims may have a quiet premise—create a character and their home, choose a profession, and socialize with neighbors—but nothing about the presentation from there is literal. Through every bit of its art, design, and animation, the world balances the mundane with the zany. That not only brings an element of fun to The Sims; it expands what’s plausible at any moment. “We definitely talk more about being relatable than realistic, which means that we do lean more dramatic in our acting and our animation,” says Lyndsay Pearson, VP of franchise creative for The Sims. “That’s partially because of the way you play the game: You’re far away [from characters], you need to be able to read it. But also because that supports the world and the stories we’re trying to enable.” Each gesture of these little characters is exaggerated, as if they’re actors on a stage being read from the audience, even though you’re just sitting at your computer. That ensures that the mundane feels interesting. [Image: EA] “When you’re cooking, or going to sleep, or making up the bed, or doing these life actions, a lot of your players actually want to experience them in this extremely whimsical and playful fashion. Nobody wants to see that in a replica of actual real life the exact same way,” says Nawwaf Barakat, senior animation director for The Sims. “So it needs to be telling its own story every single time. It needs to look interesting the 1,000th time you’ve actually seen it.” The tone of those moments isn’t merely legible or entertaining; they also highlight the farce, expanding what’s possible in the world. “We’ve described it as a fun house mirror to the world, where it looks familiar enough that you can relate to it and feel like, ‘Oh, if I if I take out the trash, I understand the chain of events and the rules of this universe,’ but it’s all skewed so that when a giant monster pops out of the trash, I’m not surprised. [The design] explains that these things can coexist.” [Image: EA] Implying so the player can infer While players enjoy rich, multigenerational stories in The Sims—complete with love, backstabbing, and sudden plot twists—in fact, the design team admits that most of this narrative takes place in your head. “The Sims is really a game of interpretation,” says Barakat. “It’s amazing how much our players will actually fill the stories in themselves.” A key idea behind fiction, born from The University of Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop, is that the writer should imply so the reader can infer. The Sims is designed to do this across a character’s relationships. The Sims speak in Simlish (gibberish that sounds almost like English). You can broach a topic, like “brag about promotion,” but responses from characters are always in either Simlish or word clouds filled with simplistic, emoji-like images. [Image: EA] Many players try to tell multi-generational stories in the game, and recently, The Sims released an expansion all about death and family legacy. The challenge was about creating an opportunity for these stories without determining the plot ahead of time. “We added enough conversation dialog choices or enough icons in the thought balloons to get them to think about the character or think about a gravestone, that you could make that story kind of happen,” says Pearson. “So, we have to carve out those spaces, particularly to leave room for that interpretation to say, ‘Oh, this could be them all mourning at a wake,’ but it could also be, ‘They’re all fighting at a wake.’” [Image: EA] These techniques almost sound silly to deconstruct, but they’re also at the core of how iconography and symbology works across culture. There are points where interpretations are shared, and points where they diverge. Everything in between is the fun of criticism IRL—and where the opportunity for differing interpretations around narrative exist in The Sims. “You see comments online sometimes about how deep our game is, how we thought of everything,” says Barakat. “And we’re like, ‘Wow, we didn’t really think about that!’ It was our players building that story based off of all the elements we provided.” [Image: EA] By avoiding labels, not only is The Sims less prescriptive, it is also more inclusive. (You won’t find Republicans and Democrats in The Sims, for instance.) Since the earliest days of the game, relationships spanned gender boundaries without specific labels around status. Today, The Sims 4 does allow players to very deeply specify a character’s gender and sexual identity (and even if they lactate), but still, the way this background plays out in actual game logic can be fluid and, again, unlabeled. Sims may fight, but they don’t judge. [Image: EA] “Is polyamory just the absence of jealousy? Because functionally, that’s kind of what it is. If you decide what gets jealous of what, the player then can infer a lot of different types of relationships of that,” says Pearson. “And we don’t have to label all of them. We don’t have to provide specific definitions and restrictions. We sort of just have to open up space, which is a really interesting design challenge . . . we say, ‘What’s the lowest common denominator that would unlock a lot of these things?’” [Image: EA] Building forgivable failure (like, why Sims still pee themselves) You cannot win The Sims 4. But you cannot lose either. The way that the franchise has handled the topic of failure has evolved over time, climbing Maslov’s hierarchy of needs to be less about survival than everything else in life. “When you go back and play The Sims 1, it is very hard to keep your Sims alive. They caught fire all the time. It was a very dangerous world in The Sims 1, the plate spinning was really hard,” says Pearson. “So, when we moved into The Sims 2, we wanted to introduce a different level of pushback, a little bit higher up the sort of chain of needs.” Sims began failing at the meta layers of life, like being too lonely. [Image: EA] But by The Sims 3 and 4, everything got a little bit easier about life. “Your Sims don’t fail so much as they just aren’t thriving, and that you can do so much more when you’re working with them, nurturing them, and pushing them along the way,” says Pearson. Screenshot Micromanaging has been tuned down in interest of choose-your-own-adventure story charting. If you aren’t spending every moment feeding yourself so you don’t starve, or showering so you don’t stink, you can spend more time, say, turning an entire town into vampires. But notably, you still need to tend to your Sim. You even need to make sure that they use the bathroom now and again, or else, yes, after 25 years, they will still pee themselves. This micromanagement isn’t just gamification to keep the player active, but core to the emotional draw of The Sims. “There’s a certain amount of pushback that the game still needs for you to believe that these are little people that need you, and that could be a mode of failure, like having an accident or starving. We try to make those entertaining as well: things like being hit by a meteor because you were stargazing for too long,” says Pearson. “Because at the end of the day, that is a reminder that there is a little bit of humanity in them that you need to pay attention to, and that you can’t just treat them like some ants and it’s fine if they die. You want to care about them.“ And perhaps that’s the real appeal of The Sims after two and a half decades. In a world where we constantly dehumanize one another, reflexively hating people as avatars on social media, The Sims offers another way—where even a few polygons and lines of code can be worthy of our care. View the full article

Reid Hoffman returns to Rapid Response to explore today’s AI landscape, and the future promised by a concept he calls “superagency.” Hoffman shares his vision for what an AI-infused workday will soon look like, how we should address society’s greatest fears about technology, and more. As we enter a daunting new era—politically, socially, and technologically—Hoffman urges listeners to choose curiosity over fear. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by Robert Safian, former editor-in-chief of Fast Company. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with today’s top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode. So you have a new book out today called Superagency with coauthor Greg Beato. Some people have called the book a surprisingly positive take on AI and on humanity. I think the surprise is less about you being optimistic than about the topic, that there’s so much skepticism right now about the future of both AI and humanity. Can you start first by defining the word agency, and then what superagency is beyond that? So agency is our ability to express ourselves in the world, to make choices, to configure our environment, to say, “This is . . . what I want to have happen to me, to my environment around me.” Obviously nobody has infinite agency, but we all have some agency, and we aspire to that as part of what we do. AI, like other kinds of general-purpose technologies that have come before, gives us superpowers. Superpowers are like a car gives you superpower for mobility, the phone gives you superpowers for connectivity and information. AI gives you superpowers for the entire world of information, navigation, decision-making, etc. And what superagency is, is not just when you as an individual get the superpower, but when you and many of the people around you, when millions of people throughout society also get that superpower. Just as a car doesn’t just transform your mobility, your ability to go somewhere, when other people’s mobility is similarly transformed, like a doctor can come for a house call, a friend can come to visit. So the society that you experience with this kind of superagency is when many people get the same superpowers, and we’re all benefiting from our own and from others’. I mean, the fears around AI, I guess, are that AI will eventually limit human control. And when you’re talking about superagency, you’re sort of positing the opposite, that we’re going to have more control. Well, it’s actually different, but more in some important ways. These technological transformations of agency are never only additive. They’re mostly additive. Like the car is broadly additive. But of course, if your agency was previously that you were a driver of a horse carriage, that agency changes. Like when you have a phone, you can reach out to other people, but other people can also reach out to you. So you’re available. Agency kind of transforms in these cases. You can already see it if you start playing with these agents. You can now do things and accomplish things that you couldn’t accomplish before, which unlocks your ability to learn things, your ability to communicate things, your ability to do things faster and in more interesting ways. That’s part of the reason why it’s really important that we actually play with these technologies. We engage with them. We do serious things with them. We do what I call in the book “iterative deployment,” and that’s what’s so important for us all engaging on this path heading towards superagency. You’ve been preaching about the potential of AI for some time. You wrote a book with ChatGPT to demonstrate the potential. You’ve made digital twins of yourself to try demystifying it. Not everyone is convinced. What do you feel like you have to fight most in getting people over this, and what prompted you to do the book now as a way to try to make that change? My biggest hope and persuasion is that people who are AI fearful or skeptical may begin to add some AI curiosity and kind of say, “Hey, look, I should try to play with this.” Part of what superagency is about is to say, look, it doesn’t just matter for yourself, but it’s other people getting exposure to this that will also be good for your life. For example, if you think about the fact that I have a smartphone, I have a medical assistant that is as good or better than the average doctor. Would you rather have a radiologist read your X-ray scan, or would you rather have a radiologist with an AI? And the answer is with an AI every day of the week, eight days a week, because that then gives me a much better health outcome. So it’s not just me and my superpowers, but other people gaining superpowers also helps me. Even if I’m not engaging quite the way you would like me to most, I’m still going to get some of the benefits of this. It’s going to be part of cultural changes. Ultimately how people get to adopting and adapting their lifestyle to these new technologies is because they begin to see, “Oh, actually, in fact, this is a new, very good thing.” As opposed to when cars were first introduced, they were considered so dangerous that they had to have a person walking in front of them, waving an orange flag. Now, we got rid of that regulation very quickly. And it’s like, okay, well, they’re dangerous, but can we contain and shape the danger in ways that are small relative to this massive benefit of superagency and mobility? AI acting on its own seems to be what scares people the most about it. But I’ve thought that the likelihood that I’m going to lose my job to an AI alone may happen at some point, but I’m more likely now to lose my job to someone who uses AI better than I do, right? Although if I’m losing my job, maybe it doesn’t matter that much either way, which one I’m losing it to. Part of the thing that I love about thinking about technology is whenever you think there’s a problem, including a problem created by technology, you think, Can technology be a solution? So, yes, I do think that a lot of jobs will then start requiring the use of AI and AI agents as part of being professional. It’s a little bit like if you said, “Hey, I’m a professional today, and I don’t use a computer,” or “I don’t use a smartphone.” It’s like, no, not really good. So there are technological requirements, which increase with new tool sets for doing jobs, and AI is definitely going to be one of those. That being said, part of the solution, you go, “Oh, my God, am I going to be out of a job?” Well, actually . . . this gets back to the book being for technologists and thinking about human agency: How do we help people have their agency to learn the new skills and say, “Hey, yes, my job is going to be taken over by a human using an AI.” Well, how about that human being me? Or, okay, so this particular one doesn’t work, but how can the AI help me find a different job? In many ways, I think we will naturally get there, but I think, you know, just because we’ll naturally get there doesn’t mean we can’t get there better by being intentional in having design. It’s one of the reasons I identify myself as a bloomer in the book versus a zoomer, because I don’t think that everything will just be great with technology. I think we have to steer it intentionally, because when human beings encounter new general-purpose technologies as early as the printing press, all the rest of them, we mess up in various ways. We handle the transition of new technologies badly. And part of the reason why I’m doing this book, this podcast, things like this, is to try to say, “Let’s do this transition much better.” It doesn’t mean we won’t have suffering in the transition. But if you embrace it with some agency, we can possibly make that both less painful and have more opportunities. We are entering into the cognitive industrial revolution, and all you have to do is look at any simple books about the industrial revolution to recognize transitions can be painful. Let’s do this one better. View the full article

Learn how to avoid overspending your campaign budget and ensure accurate conversion tracking in this latest edition of Ask A PPC. The post Ask A PPC: How Can You Tell If You’re Overspending? appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

Although digital has taken over, having high-quality printed materials for your business remains important. Printing services can provide immense value for your brand when it comes to making a lasting impression and connecting with your customers. Printed materials can be a major differentiator for your business, and that’s why we’re going through everything you need to know about business print services and where to obtain printing services. The Importance of Print Services for Businesses Printed materials such as business cards, brochures, photo books, yard signs, and more can all be valuable tools for creating brand awareness. Printing services can also be used for promotional and custom products for marketing, adding additional value to your business. Printed materials and print services play an integral role in building and promoting a small business’s brand image. Here’s why they are so important: Brand Consistency: By using print services, businesses can ensure that their branding remains consistent across all of their promotional materials. This includes everything from business cards to brochures and yard signs. Marketing Impact: Printed materials such as brochures, posters, and banners act as powerful marketing tools that effectively promote a business’s products or services. Additionally, custom products can further strengthen these marketing initiatives. Professionalism: High-quality printed materials can convey a level of professionalism and credibility to potential customers or clients. This can help a small business stand out from the competition. Tangible Engagement: Unlike digital ads, printed materials offer physical interaction. Customers can hold a brochure, flip through a photo book, or glance at a yard sign, creating a more engaging experience. Versatility: There are many different types of printed materials, each serving its own purpose. This versatility makes it easy for businesses to find the right print product for their specific needs. Affordability: Numerous print services provide competitive pricing, particularly for bulk orders, which makes them a cost-effective marketing investment for small businesses. Local Visibility: Printed materials such as yard signs, banners, and flyers can greatly enhance local visibility, helping small businesses to engage with their local community effectively. In short, investing in high-quality print services can provide significant benefits for a small business, from enhancing brand awareness to boosting local visibility and marketing impact. Online Printing Services: A Modern Solution Online print services allow you to order printed materials and have them delivered directly to you. While you will need to cover shipping costs for the supplies and signage you order, online printing remains one of the simplest options for obtaining promotional products. When you place a print order, you can upload various files, including images like your logo, stock photos, and business images. Some print services also provide graphic design assistance for specific types of materials. During the ordering process, you will choose the materials on which you want your images printed. Additionally, you can add text, such as a slogan, message, or any other information that should appear on the printed items. Once you finalize your order, your materials will be delivered to your business, completing the task. Variety of Print Products for Business Needs Many types of print products are available for businesses depending on what is needed, but they typically include many types of marketing materials. The most common printed products include: Business cards Banners Postcards Flyers Invitations Coupons Brochures Posters Custom Prints: Tailoring to Your Business Needs A custom print order helps your business stand out, as you can customize products and marketing materials according to your brand and industry. You can tailor print materials based on specific needs and brand image and control each part of the process to ensure that every print material you create aligns with your business needs. Choosing the Right Print Services for Your Business Choosing the right print service for your business will require considering several factors. You will need to compare the quality of the printed products, the variety of solutions offered, competitive prices, any deals they may offer, and the customer service provided. Some print services may offer free shipping or volume discounts depending on the order quantity. Quality and Versatility in Print Services Depending on your business, you may need a wide range of printed materials. It’s essential to evaluate printing companies based on the quality of products (e.g., paper weight, volume, thickness) and the variety of services they offer, such as corporate-facing product examples, to ensure that the company is valid and provides the right services for your needs. Where to Find Reliable Print Services for Your Business VistaprintGotPrintMOOZazzleFast Printing Type of ServiceFull service print businessFull service print businessCustomizable print service solutionOnline printing serviceLuxury printing products ProductsPosters, banners, signage, invitations, postcards, and moreBusiness cards, signs, banners, custom apparel, promotional productsSigns, business cards, banners, custom products such as water bottles and hardcover notebooksCustomizable products, products from artists and independent creatorsBusiness cards, posters, banners, signs, invitations, event materials Ordering ProcessStraightforwardStandardFast shipping options availableHighly customizableFree and fast delivery based on order size and quantity Unique FeaturesWide range of productsOffers apparel and promotional productsNationwide deliveryOffers unique items from independent creatorsOffers luxury printing products If you’re looking for dependable, high-quality print services for your business, we have put together a list of vendors that offer printing services specifically for business clients. Vistaprint Vistaprint is a top provider of print services, offering a variety of printed materials for businesses. Ordering from Vistaprint is easy, and they provide an extensive selection of products, such as posters, banners, signage, invitations, postcards, and more. GotPrint GotPrint is a full-service print business that offers a range of printed options for marketing materials. Businesses can print business cards, signs, and banners and even opt for other solutions, such as custom apparel and other promotional products to optimize their marketing. MOO MOO is a customizable print service solution that delivers nationwide, with fast shipping options available. MOO can be used for basic marketing materials such as signs, business cards, and banners for events, but they also offer custom products such as water bottles and hardcover notebooks that can be delivered across the country. Zazzle Online printing services such as Zazzle offer a variety of products for marketing and promotions. With Zazzle, businesses can customize their products and create their own using their logo. But businesses can also purchase products from artists and independent creators, making it a creative option for businesses seeking unique items. Fast Printing Fast Printing offers luxury printing products with a wide variety of printed products for businesses, including promotional products such as business cards, posters, banners, signs, invitations, and other event materials. The Fast Printing shop also includes free and speedy delivery based on the order size and quantity. Frequently Asked Questions about Print Services Navigating print services can be daunting and perplexing, particularly if you are new to it. Grasping the printing process is essential, as is selecting the right service that meets your needs. What are print services? Print services refer to professional services that produce and fulfill printed materials for businesses and individuals. Print services include graphic design, printing, finishing, and delivery, and print service companies can have materials such as business cards, brochures, flyers, posters, banners, stationery, and promotional items. What are the benefits of online printing services? Print services have many benefits for small businesses. With print services, companies can shop for promotional products for their business from all across the country. Whether printing signs, posters, or banners, online printing offers a fast, reliable method for printing with convenient delivery options. What kinds of print products are available for businesses? Various types of print products are available for businesses, including business cards, signs, banners, posters, flyers, and additional options that companies can consider. How do I choose the right print service for my business? Choosing the right print services involves locating a business that provides the specific products you need, along with high-quality paper and appealing graphic design. Additionally, it’s important to verify whether the print services have relevant industry experience and offer benefits like free delivery. Where can I find reliable print services for my business? You can easily locate dependable print services online, as the print service industry has experienced significant growth. Print services can be discovered through various guides and online searches. This article, "Where to Find Print Services for Your Business" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

Although digital has taken over, having high-quality printed materials for your business remains important. Printing services can provide immense value for your brand when it comes to making a lasting impression and connecting with your customers. Printed materials can be a major differentiator for your business, and that’s why we’re going through everything you need to know about business print services and where to obtain printing services. The Importance of Print Services for Businesses Printed materials such as business cards, brochures, photo books, yard signs, and more can all be valuable tools for creating brand awareness. Printing services can also be used for promotional and custom products for marketing, adding additional value to your business. Printed materials and print services play an integral role in building and promoting a small business’s brand image. Here’s why they are so important: Brand Consistency: By using print services, businesses can ensure that their branding remains consistent across all of their promotional materials. This includes everything from business cards to brochures and yard signs. Marketing Impact: Printed materials such as brochures, posters, and banners act as powerful marketing tools that effectively promote a business’s products or services. Additionally, custom products can further strengthen these marketing initiatives. Professionalism: High-quality printed materials can convey a level of professionalism and credibility to potential customers or clients. This can help a small business stand out from the competition. Tangible Engagement: Unlike digital ads, printed materials offer physical interaction. Customers can hold a brochure, flip through a photo book, or glance at a yard sign, creating a more engaging experience. Versatility: There are many different types of printed materials, each serving its own purpose. This versatility makes it easy for businesses to find the right print product for their specific needs. Affordability: Numerous print services provide competitive pricing, particularly for bulk orders, which makes them a cost-effective marketing investment for small businesses. Local Visibility: Printed materials such as yard signs, banners, and flyers can greatly enhance local visibility, helping small businesses to engage with their local community effectively. In short, investing in high-quality print services can provide significant benefits for a small business, from enhancing brand awareness to boosting local visibility and marketing impact. Online Printing Services: A Modern Solution Online print services allow you to order printed materials and have them delivered directly to you. While you will need to cover shipping costs for the supplies and signage you order, online printing remains one of the simplest options for obtaining promotional products. When you place a print order, you can upload various files, including images like your logo, stock photos, and business images. Some print services also provide graphic design assistance for specific types of materials. During the ordering process, you will choose the materials on which you want your images printed. Additionally, you can add text, such as a slogan, message, or any other information that should appear on the printed items. Once you finalize your order, your materials will be delivered to your business, completing the task. Variety of Print Products for Business Needs Many types of print products are available for businesses depending on what is needed, but they typically include many types of marketing materials. The most common printed products include: Business cards Banners Postcards Flyers Invitations Coupons Brochures Posters Custom Prints: Tailoring to Your Business Needs A custom print order helps your business stand out, as you can customize products and marketing materials according to your brand and industry. You can tailor print materials based on specific needs and brand image and control each part of the process to ensure that every print material you create aligns with your business needs. Choosing the Right Print Services for Your Business Choosing the right print service for your business will require considering several factors. You will need to compare the quality of the printed products, the variety of solutions offered, competitive prices, any deals they may offer, and the customer service provided. Some print services may offer free shipping or volume discounts depending on the order quantity. Quality and Versatility in Print Services Depending on your business, you may need a wide range of printed materials. It’s essential to evaluate printing companies based on the quality of products (e.g., paper weight, volume, thickness) and the variety of services they offer, such as corporate-facing product examples, to ensure that the company is valid and provides the right services for your needs. Where to Find Reliable Print Services for Your Business VistaprintGotPrintMOOZazzleFast Printing Type of ServiceFull service print businessFull service print businessCustomizable print service solutionOnline printing serviceLuxury printing products ProductsPosters, banners, signage, invitations, postcards, and moreBusiness cards, signs, banners, custom apparel, promotional productsSigns, business cards, banners, custom products such as water bottles and hardcover notebooksCustomizable products, products from artists and independent creatorsBusiness cards, posters, banners, signs, invitations, event materials Ordering ProcessStraightforwardStandardFast shipping options availableHighly customizableFree and fast delivery based on order size and quantity Unique FeaturesWide range of productsOffers apparel and promotional productsNationwide deliveryOffers unique items from independent creatorsOffers luxury printing products If you’re looking for dependable, high-quality print services for your business, we have put together a list of vendors that offer printing services specifically for business clients. Vistaprint Vistaprint is a top provider of print services, offering a variety of printed materials for businesses. Ordering from Vistaprint is easy, and they provide an extensive selection of products, such as posters, banners, signage, invitations, postcards, and more. GotPrint GotPrint is a full-service print business that offers a range of printed options for marketing materials. Businesses can print business cards, signs, and banners and even opt for other solutions, such as custom apparel and other promotional products to optimize their marketing. MOO MOO is a customizable print service solution that delivers nationwide, with fast shipping options available. MOO can be used for basic marketing materials such as signs, business cards, and banners for events, but they also offer custom products such as water bottles and hardcover notebooks that can be delivered across the country. Zazzle Online printing services such as Zazzle offer a variety of products for marketing and promotions. With Zazzle, businesses can customize their products and create their own using their logo. But businesses can also purchase products from artists and independent creators, making it a creative option for businesses seeking unique items. Fast Printing Fast Printing offers luxury printing products with a wide variety of printed products for businesses, including promotional products such as business cards, posters, banners, signs, invitations, and other event materials. The Fast Printing shop also includes free and speedy delivery based on the order size and quantity. Frequently Asked Questions about Print Services Navigating print services can be daunting and perplexing, particularly if you are new to it. Grasping the printing process is essential, as is selecting the right service that meets your needs. What are print services? Print services refer to professional services that produce and fulfill printed materials for businesses and individuals. Print services include graphic design, printing, finishing, and delivery, and print service companies can have materials such as business cards, brochures, flyers, posters, banners, stationery, and promotional items. What are the benefits of online printing services? Print services have many benefits for small businesses. With print services, companies can shop for promotional products for their business from all across the country. Whether printing signs, posters, or banners, online printing offers a fast, reliable method for printing with convenient delivery options. What kinds of print products are available for businesses? Various types of print products are available for businesses, including business cards, signs, banners, posters, flyers, and additional options that companies can consider. How do I choose the right print service for my business? Choosing the right print services involves locating a business that provides the specific products you need, along with high-quality paper and appealing graphic design. Additionally, it’s important to verify whether the print services have relevant industry experience and offer benefits like free delivery. Where can I find reliable print services for my business? You can easily locate dependable print services online, as the print service industry has experienced significant growth. Print services can be discovered through various guides and online searches. This article, "Where to Find Print Services for Your Business" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

Paola Antonelli has a litmus test for worthy design. People often ask the Museum of Modern Art’s senior curator of architecture and design how she decides what to add to the museum’s collection, and she gives them simple instructions: “Close your eyes and think, If this object did not exist, would the world miss out?” she says. Of course, filling one of the world’s preeminent art museums is not quite that easy. Antontelli says you also have to consider an object’s form, function, and problem-solving utility—but her litmus test is something she returns to again and again. “It doesn’t mean that something has to be necessary,” Antonelli clarifies. Take, for example, the Tamagotchi. “Totally superfluous,” she says. “[But] I think it would be a pity that it didn’t exist, right?” Antonelli is telling me this at a preview of MoMA’s newest exhibition, Pirouette: Turning Points in Design, which opened on a snowy New York City Sunday. The show examines design objects as change agents that have had a deep impact on society, as far ranging as the humble Post-it note, first Apple desktop computer, and a portable handwashing station developed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Design changes human behavior, Antonelli contends, and this exhibition proves her case in dozens of design inventions. “Objects have consequences,” she says. “That’s really, in a way, the motto for the exhibition.” [Photo: Jonathan Dorado/courtesy MoMA] This isn’t the first time Antonelli has examined the social impact of designers and the objects they introduce to society. She launched the content series Design Emergency with Alice Rawsthorn in 2020 to examine the many ways design solves problems in moments of crisis. The series later became a book. “Designers are trained to traditionally and classically solve problems,” Antonelli told me in 2020. “Design is a word that is as big as art or culture,” she added. “So it’s difficult to say what design can do in a particular situation. But it definitely is a lot more than just chairs and posters.” [Photo: Jonathan Dorado/courtesy MoMA] Pirouette encompasses, yes, chairs (the Eames’s RAR rocking armchair; the Monobloc chair; the Aeron office chair, to name a few) and posters (okay, let’s say signs: a parking sign; a route sign for British roadways) but also a wide range of objects pulled mostly from MoMA’s collection spanning furniture, electronics, symbols, fashion, wearables, industrial design, product design, and information design from the 1930s to the present. Milton Glaser, I ♥ NY concept sketch, 1976, the Museum of Modern Art, New York [Photo: © 2024 NYS Dept. of Economic Development] The I love New York concept sketch, NASA worm logo, Tabi boots, Crocs, a Telfar bag, a Bic pen, an infographic depicting Brazil’s deforestation rates: What these objects have in common is their invention. They changed the way people thought, saw, or interacted with the world. “They all represent experiments with new materials, technologies and concepts, and offer unconventional solutions to conventional problems,” reads part of the exhibition’s opening text. “In these objects, designers have channeled their vision and ingenuity, distilling energy into momentum and setting them in motion like ballet dancers performing pirouettes.” Ed Hawkins, Warming Stripes 1850-2023, 2018-ongoing [Image: © Ed Hawkins] I asked Antonelli how she curated an exhibition with such a range of seemingly unrelated objects. “In some cases, it’s very free-flowing. It’s almost like word association,” she says. “In others, it’s really juxtaposition”—and putting objects into conversation with each other. I pointed out how she had situated a pair of Crocs, Tabis, a Telfar bag, and a plastic Monobloc chair near each other in one corner of the exhibition. “The Telfar bag is there, and the conversation that it’s having really directly, in my opinion, is with the Margiela Tabis. But also it’s having a conversation with the Crocs next to it because Telfar’s motto is ‘This is not for you, it’s for everyone.’ So there’s also this idea of making things for everybody.” Antonelli then connects the Crocs and Monobloc chair. “They’re so ambiguous,” she says. “[They’re] amazing mass products enjoyed by billions of people.” But they also have this flip side. The Monoblock chair “has become almost synonymous with waste and with consumerism,” she says. Meanwhile, Crocs are at the center of an eternal discussion that gives the design tension: “Are the Crocs beautiful? Are they ugly?” “There are all these different associations that somebody like you, who’s conversant in design might catch,” she says. “Others who are less erudite, because everybody knows design, will catch them anyway, but at a different level. And maybe they will not catch them at all, but they will focus on every single object.” Shigetaka Kurita, Emoji, 1998-1999, the Museum of Modern Art, New York [Image: © 2024 NTT DOCOMO] Each object, Antonelli says—whether M&Ms candies, a Moka Express, Sony Walkman, or Bernadette Thompson’s “money manicure” artificial nails—shifted the way we operate in the world. Some designs are so intuitive and intrinsic to our day-to-day lives as to be imperceptible, like the flat-bottomed paper bag. Other objects are more subtle and esoteric, like Sabine Marcelis’s resin “Candy Cube,” which might have an effect on other designers and percolate into society that way. As she said of information design in 2020: “Our actions don’t have reactions in a very unequivocal way, but rather have reverberations that can go in many directions.” [Photo: Jonathan Dorado/courtesy MoMA] The exhibition text warns that “objects have the power to shift the ways we behave, for good and for bad.” The objects in this exhibition exemplify human ingenuity, providing new answers to previously unsolved challenges that you can see with your own eyes. Some of those solutions, like the injection-molded plastic Monobloc chair invented in the 1950s—a quintessential mass-market product that provides people around the world an easy to clean and cheap place to sit—have consequences that aren’t so black and white as good and bad. “It’s always time to make people understand how important design is,” Antonelli says. “But right now, I would love people to have something constructive to think about. Design is a lens to look at the world in a constructive way. It’s a beautiful expression of human creativity, positively directed, in the case of the objects that are in this exhibition, at least.” View the full article

Starbucks’s new CEO, Brian Niccol, made a bet last September that the company could draw customers back into its stores by reintroducing personal touches you might see at smaller, third-place sort of coffee shops, like handwritten names on to-go cups. Here we are about four months later, and Starbucks has beaten Wall Street expectations, announcing $9.4 billion in revenue for the fourth quarter of last year during its earnings call Tuesday. Niccol attributed the chain’s performance to “getting Back to Starbucks and those things that have always set us apart.” (Though it’s worth noting that the company’s sales are still down year over year.) Starbucks developed a back-to-basics approach to reintroduce itself to consumers. Changes include a simplified menu, a new no-loitering policy, an expanded refill policy, ceramic mugs for in-café sipping, and the return of handwritten notes on to-go cups “to better connect with customers and elevate the café experience for those who choose to stay and work,” Niccol said. The strategy comes after the chain experienced falling sales at its struggling coffee shops due to factors like rising prices and longer wait times. Niccol, a former Chipotle CEO, wrote in a letter after assuming the top post at Starbucks that its stores “have always been more than a place to get a drink,” but admitted that the company hasn’t always delivered on that experience and that telling its story would be part of its comeback. Bringing back handwritten notes on coffee cups is the focus of a new ad spot launched last weekend. Set to the 2008 hit “That’s Not My Name” by the Ting Tings, it shows baristas putting pen to coffee cup to write out messages like “Let’s goooo!” and “Shine on.” The closing message is “Your pick-me-up is ready,” with “pick-me-up” styled to look like it’s written out by hand. Ad agency Anomaly developed the spot, which received mostly positive reactions online, even among people who said they didn’t like Starbucks coffee. At least when it comes to ecommerce, a study published in the Journal of Interactive Marketing in 2022 found that handwritten thank-you notes have the potential to double future sales. “Despite the technological advances in online retailing, the human touch continues to be essential to relationships between retailers and customers,” the study’s authors wrote. Improving its app is another step Starbucks says it’s taking as part of its comeback, but a simple analog solution could also prove useful. Might what works for online retailers prove equally successful for selling Iced Brown Sugar Oatmilk Shaken Espressos? Starbucks certainly hopes so. View the full article

As climate change causes increasingly severe natural disasters, it’s also increasingly threatening our art, culture, and shared history. In the recent Los Angeles wildfires, billions of dollars in fine art may have been consumed; architectural gems by Richard Neutra, Gregory Ain, and others were destroyed; and the warehouse of Belmont Music Publishing, a repository chronicling Austrian-American composer Arnold Schoenberg, was lost in what the composer’s son called “a profound cultural blow.” For museums, archives, and libraries, which often operate as nonprofits on limited budgets, meeting these increased risks poses significant financial constraints. This challenge has sparked global efforts to bolster the resilience of a range of cultural artifacts. “We’ve now had three pretty large fires in a row, starting with the 2021 Marshall Fire in Colorado, to Lahaina in Hawaii in 2023, and now L.A.,” said Christina Cain, emergency programs manager for the Foundation for Advancement in Conservation (FAIC). “Unfortunately, this isn’t going away.” More than half of U.S. galleries, libraries, archives, and museums reported increased water and moisture damage between 2017 and 2019, with 10% of that coming directly from natural disasters. Climate change mapping by the FAIC has shown that coastal areas and those near rivers remain at high risk of flooding. A third of U.S. museums reside within 62 miles of the coast, according to Elizabeth Merritt, the “in-house futurist” at the American Alliance of Museums. Studies from Greece and elsewhere have shown that changing climates, especially increased heat and humidity, will take a toll on ancient monuments, buildings, and artworks. A conservator stabilizes the surface of a painted wooden boat model from Egypt. [Photo: Penn Museum] The initiatives working to combat ths are as varied as the sites, collections, and cultural treasures they’re meant to protect. There’s even a National Heritage Responders helpline in the U.S., a phone and email resource staffed with conservation experts meant to provide institutions with emergency assistance before, during, and after disasters. Cain worked the phone lines during wildfires in her home state of Colorado; during the Marshall Fire, she assisted curators at the Superior Historical Museum, which was consumed by the blaze. In addition to helping them find professionals for salvage operations, figure out how to deal with smoke damage, and process insurance claims, Cain also helped other museums in the pre-evacuation zone prepare in case the fire spread. There has long been an understanding that artwork, institutions, and cultural sites are threatened by natural disasters. In 1966, the Arno River flooded its banks in Florence, Italy, submerging churches, museums, and storehouses of historical treasures with up to three meters of mud. The work of volunteers and citizens–called “angeli del fango,” or the Mud Angels, became an international story. More than half a century later, such storms have become more common and severe. In 2018, Hurricane Maria wreaked havoc on Puerto Rico’s cultural scene; many institutions sustained millions of dollars in damage, with curators trying to limit the long-term impact. At one contemporary art museum, workers cut vents into the wall to allow air to circulate, preventing art-wrecking mildew and humidity from building up in a building bereft of mechanical systems. Historic Buildings and Sites’ staff assessing the Interior Cupula at the Puerto Rico State Capitol in March 2022. The assessment included a detailed report on the conditions of Venetian mosaics, ornamental plasterwork, and stained glass elements. [Photo: Héctor J. Berdecía-Hernández/CENCOR/Centro de Conservacion y Restauracion de Puerto Rico.] The recent Los Angeles wildfires, which spread to dense urban neighborhoods, have been a “worrisome development,” says Sarah Sutton, cofounder and CEO of Environment and Culture Partners, which focuses on the cultural sector’s environmental leadership. They underscore how climate change has placed more areas where we live—and store our records and artifacts—in harm’s way. Rising awareness—and sea levels—have meant some sites have received` outsized attention, and expensive investments in resiliency. The Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. is building a system of flood gates and stormwater systems, while San Francisco’s Ferry Building may be lofted up to seven feet by the Army Corp of Engineers in an effort to protect it from rising sea levels, part of a proposed $13.5 billion waterfront protection plan for the city. This kind of engineering feat, however, isn’t possible for the vast majority of sites. For other institutions, the typical playbook involves revisiting disaster and evacuation plans and creating more sustainable operations. Many have taken to hardening existing structures to help prevent flooding and wind damage. In 2021, for instance, Miami’s Vizcaya—a landmark 1916 home and garden on the waterfront—installed a system of Tiger Dams, water-inflatable tubes to prevent flooding, to protect the grounds from hurricane storm surges. Groundskeepers have also slowly swapped out plants across the site, planting gardens that can better handle saltwater infiltration. And in 2019, a floating flood wall installed at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. helped protect the Bill of Rights and other treasures from flooding. Alternatively, museums can invest in shoreline restoration and natural defenses to absorb floodwaters. In 2023, the Ford House museum and residence on Lake St. Clair in Michigan was awarded a $7 million grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to restore damaged coastline, which will stop erosion, absorb floodwaters, and better protect the site. The Ford House museum. [Photo: Andrew Jameson/Wiki Commons] Digitizing collections to serve as a backup is also something that is underfunded and underappreciated; many small museums have their databases on site. Communicating proactively with local emergency management professionals can help make them aware of at-risk collections and include them in the institution’s own evacuation planning. Curators have also moved collections from basements to upper levels, and even created the museum equivalent of a go bag, storing the most important artifacts in a way that makes it easy to pick them up and move when disaster strikes. UNESCO, the United Nations cultural heritage organization, recently held a global conference, “Fire Resilience for Heritage in a Changing Climate,” which included the release of best practices for prevention, including how to develop fire risk management plans and how to integrate Indigenous and native knowledge to manage landscapes for fire prevention. There’s funding available to help institutions plan for disaster: The National Endowment for the Humanities offers grants for its Resilience Resources project, and some states, like Colorado, offer their own grants. In Alaska, which has some of the fastest-rising temperatures due to climate change, the National Park Service has enlisted Inflation Reduction Act funds to help prepare historic sites for climate shifts by collaborating with tribal elders to map out key monuments and utilize Indigenous knowledge to protect the landscape. Like with the wider impact of climate change, the damage will be spread in an inequitable manner, in many cases threatening smaller institutions that don’t have the resources to adapt. “When you lose a small-town history museum, which had archives about that town and collections from families that had been there for decades, it’s irreplaceable and heartbreaking,” said Cain. “You can’t tell the story of that place without them. Without them, is there a community? What holds that town together?” View the full article

SEO tips for photographers include optimizing images, getting links to your site, and writing useful blog posts. View the full article

In 2019, President Donald Trump appointed a lawyer named Mark Lee Greenblatt to root out fraud, abuse, and corruption in the Department of the Interior. Greenblatt quickly got to work, directing his 270 staff members to conduct audits, inspections, and investigations across the agency of 70,000 federal employees, which oversees 30% of the United States’s natural resources, 20% of its public lands, and its relationships with 573 Native American tribes and villages. He found that a gas marketing outfit conspired to defraud oil and gas companies on leased federal land, a Bureau of Land Management employee viewed pornography on a government computer, a tribal police officer stole $40,000 earmarked for a tribal youth diversion program, and three offshore oil rig workers and three companies acted negligently in a 2012 incident that resulted in a deadly explosion. And that was just in the span of two months in 2019. Until last week, Greenblatt was one of 73 inspectors general working within the United States government—independent watchdogs that keep tabs on federal agencies, which all in all collect more than $4 trillion in revenue every year and spend more than $6 trillion. On Friday night, he and 17 of his colleagues were summarily dismissed, in contravention of U.S. law. “President Trump fired me last night,” Greenblatt wrote in a post on LinkedIn over the weekend. “It’s all just so surreal.” The firings leave the Department of Interior, the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, and other departments that shape the country’s environmental and climate policy without independent oversight. This comes at a moment of extreme tumult and uncertainty as Trump attempts to transform the federal government in his image. In his first several days in office, the Trump administration instructed federal health agencies to temporarily stop communicating with the public and ordered a freeze on the disbursal of federal grants, though that order was later rescinded. “All of this is so corrosive,” said an EPA employee who asked Grist not to name them out of fear of retaliation. Trump is “corrupting the health of every federal office with paranoia and distrust. How is anyone supposed to operate under such conditions?” Legal experts and nonprofit groups suspect Trump will replace the fired inspectors general with devotees who will ignore malfeasance, corruption, and abuse—a shift that would put the country’s environmental policies and American public health at risk. “Trump’s effort to terminate the current roster of IGs and, if one allows oneself to speculate, install loyalists who will turn a blind eye to what is to come, is unprecedented and profoundly troubling,” said Michael Burger, the executive director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University. Federal employees at regional offices and agency headquarters in Washington, D.C. fear their internal reports and complaints will be ignored or dismissed outright, putting Americans at risk. One important role of inspectors general is to offer federal employees protection if they experience reprisal at work after reporting corruption or impropriety. EPA scientists who raised alarms in 2019 and 2020 about the agency improperly downgrading the cancer risks of chemicals, for example, called their inspector general hotline to report that they were retaliated against by their own agency for blowing the whistle. Sean O’Donnell, who Trump appointed as the EPA’s inspector general in 2020, launched an investigation to determine whether there had been a violation of these employees’ rights under U.S. whistleblower protection law and found that three of the five scientists had had their requests for vacation time rejected, monetary awards withheld, and arbitrarily received poor performance reviews. The office of the inspector general recommended that the EPA administrator “consider appropriate corrective action.” O’Donnell, who has been scrupulous about monitoring the disbursal of funds from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act passed under former president Joe Biden was one of the 18 inspectors general fired by Trump last week. The Inflation Reduction Act, which authorized more than $300 billion in clean energy incentives and grants, allocates money to support independent oversight of this spending, including new funding for inspector general offices. The majority of the funding from that law has already been disbursed, and Trump has moved to freeze what remains as he attempts to restructure the government. Legal experts say that move is illegal and unconstitutional, but even if a judge lifts the freeze, the watchdogs tasked with scrutinizing these funds will no longer be at their posts. “All of the checks and balances have been stripped,” said Kyla Bennett, Northeast and Mid-Atlantic director for Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a group that offers pro bono assistance to whistleblowers within federal agencies. Federal employees, she added, “can’t do the work that they need to do to protect the American people. And that is the point.” The president downplayed the firings over the weekend. “It’s a very standard thing to do,” he told reporters. But the only other president who fired more than a dozen inspectors general in one go was Ronald Reagan, and Congress has since imposed restrictions on abrupt changes to these positions. Burger explained that the dismissals are “in violation of the law, which requires notice, and an explanation to Congress.” The White House is supposed to give 30 days warning before removing an inspector general. The firings disturbed lawmakers on both sides of the aisle., “I don’t understand why one would fire individuals whose mission is to root out waste, fraud, and abuse,” Republican Senator Susan Collins, from Maine, told Politico. Senator Elizabeth Warren, from Massachusetts, said in a post on X that Trump is “paving the way for widespread corruption,” and many other prominent Democrats voiced similar concerns. Many Republican members of Congress, however, were unruffled. “He’s the boss,” Senator Tommy Tuberville, a Republican from Alabama, told Politico. “We need to clean house.” This article originally appeared in Grist, a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Sign up for its newsletter here. 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Today’s fast-paced workplace requires us to change and adapt at increasing speeds, while managing complex interpersonal demands. Despite these challenges, we can utilize emotional intelligence to meet these continually increasing demands and excel in our new reality. The basis of emotional intelligence is the ability to recognize, understand, and manage our emotions—as well as know how they impact others. Beyond that, emotional intelligence gives us greater ability to understand the emotions of others, allowing for greater empathy. This in turn increases our ability to work effectively with others of different backgrounds and perspectives. Glenn Llopis, author of Make Reinvention Your Superpower, argues that a lack of emotional intelligence traps people in what he calls “career quicksand.” He explains that this occurs when individuals lose sight of their unique capabilities because they are rewarded for following the corporate playbook instead of their own. As a result, they are not encouraged to explore new ideas, having been trained to believe that success relies on executing old ones. How to encourage emotional intelligence Organizations are increasingly becoming aware that being successful today requires more collaboration, creativity, and adaptability. Research at Lawrence Technological University found that emotional intelligence “improves one’s ability to be socially effective, and can lead to improved collaborative outcomes.” Successful organizations in today’s climate will be comprised of emotionally intelligent people who can pivot quickly. The good news is that emotional intelligence is not some innate quality; it’s something you can build. Employees at all levels of the organization will need to boost their collaboration, problem-solving, and teamwork skills. One way to encourage these traits is for leaders to ask every employee to share examples of collaboration, good teamwork, and problem-solving during staff meetings. They can set up an easy-to-use process whereby staff can recognize each other when they demonstrate using emotional intelligence in their daily work. Having an emotional intelligence employee-of-the-month recognition program can also help keep the focus on continuous improvement. Finally, managers can also ensure that employees are aware that empathy and resilience are attributes that will make workers more likely to get a promotion. Building collaboration and conflict-resolution skills Organizations of the future will need to collaborate more both internally and externally. Having employees who are able to work with various people of different cultural backgrounds will increase team and organizational cohesiveness. Llopis emphasizes the importance of using emotional intelligence to approach workplace diversity with curiosity. This mindset helps uncover valuable insights and opportunities for growth. “When we look around with intentionality and expect to discover something new, we open ourselves to seeing possibilities we might have overlooked,” he says. Conflict and problems inevitably arise at work. But because organizations must move so quickly, teams must be able to solve these issues quickly and effectively. Unresolved frustrations, unexpected changes, anxiety, and disappointment in organizations can lead to a negative and toxic workplace quite quickly if workers don’t have the tools they need. Emotional-intelligence training teaches people to work through these common workplace issues without losing track of what they are trying to accomplish. These workers are better able to navigate difficult conversations that lead to better acceptance and understanding with their peers and leaders. The ability to work through difficult interpersonal relationship challenges leads to increased optimism and stronger growth mindsets for those who go through them. Llopis says that self-trust is central to emotional intelligence and reinvention, enhancing one’s ability to manage workplace conflict. “By cultivating a deep understanding of oneself and confidence in one’s abilities, self-assurance empowers employees to navigate their own challenges and support others, fostering deeper connections and adaptability in high-stress work environments,” he says. The value of an emotionally intelligent culture Companies that invest in supporting emotional intelligence find that their culture shows improvement. The results of an environment of collaboration are greater freedom to be creative and experiment with new solutions and innovations. Open communication and dialogue become part of how everyone in the organization is expected to conduct themselves. This results in an atmosphere of psychological safety, which allows everyone the freedom to experiment, take some risks, and push their own boundaries so they can reach their full potential. Organizations that put a high emphasis on emotional intelligence in their recruitment, onboarding, and training process will find they are molding their organizations in a manner that allows all of their people to have more fulfilling careers. Nurturing empathy and resilience means everyone has a supportive environment where everyone can reinvent themselves while keeping the organization moving forward. View the full article

A confirmation email is useful in various situations. Whether it’s for confirming a restaurant reservation, online or offline events, or other meetings, a confirmation email plays a significant role in the communication strategy. To help you write a thorough confirmation email that includes all the necessary information, you can utilize a confirmation email template. What Is a Confirmation Email? Confirmation emails are used to communicate important information to customers after specific events. There are many types of confirmation emails, including: Restaurant reservation confirmation Order confirmation Webinar confirmation email, including registration confirmation email Subscription confirmation emails Booking confirmation emails Shipping confirmation email Purchase confirmation email Flight confirmation email Cancellation confirmation emails There are many other types of email confirmations, but the goal of each type of email confirmation is to provide the customer with immediate feedback to let them know they have been successful and that your business is aware and taking the necessary next steps. With each confirmation email type, it’s essential to ensure you’ve included all of the relevant information in one place. It’s a type of transactional email that is written in a clear and intuitive manner to make it easy for customers to read and understand the information in the confirmation. After receiving the confirmation email, they should be able to reference it when they need to if they have questions or issues with their order. How to Write Confirmation Emails A confirmation message is an essential tool in digital communication, serving as an acknowledgment that an action has been completed or that information has been received. The content of a confirmation email can vary based on its type. In this guide, we explore essential elements of email confirmations to help you create effective and informative confirmation messages for your audience. Step 1: Write a clear subject line Creating an effective subject line for a confirmation email template is crucial. Regardless of whether it pertains to a registration, purchase, or another form of confirmation, the subject line acts as the email’s initial impression. Commonly, for scenarios like a registration or shipping confirmation email, it should encapsulate key details like the order number coupled with a confirmation alert. The golden rule is simplicity combined with informativeness. Your subject lines should act as a quick snapshot, giving the recipient clarity on the email’s content, thereby allowing them to prioritize its relevance and decide whether it warrants immediate attention. Step 2: Include order confirmation and order details The main content or body of your email is where the bulk of the information resides. For order confirmation, it’s imperative that customers are presented with a clear picture of what they’ve procured. This encompasses not only the confirmation that their order has been successfully placed but also information such as the number of items, the total cost, and a brief description of each product. On the other hand, for an account creation or registration email, it’s pivotal to furnish them with their login credentials, reassure them of a successful sign-up, and provide any additional context or actions required. For instance, you may need to prompt them to verify their email address, thereby solidifying their account security. Following such a structured format ensures that your client is kept in the loop, fostering trust and transparency. Step 3: Add shipping details or other item information When it comes to shipping or order confirmation emails, furnishing precise details can alleviate any anxieties customers might have post-purchase. It’s essential to incorporate not only the shipping address but also the billing address. This double-checking mechanism ensures clarity and avoids any future discrepancies. Furthermore, provide an estimated delivery window so customers can anticipate when their package will arrive. This sort of meticulous detailing isn’t restricted to physical products. For instance, when dealing with a subscription-based service, convey when the subscription gets renewed, along with the exact amount that will be charged. Moreover, for more niche confirmations like restaurant reservations, it’s paramount to provide specifics. From the date and time of their booking to the exact location of the establishment, every little detail can enhance their dining experience. You might even hint at the reservation particulars in the subject line itself, ensuring the recipient has a clear idea from the get-go. Step 4: Provide contact information It’s pivotal for any customer-centric business to have accessible channels for communication. Be sure to incorporate all the relevant contact details, such as a direct phone number, dedicated customer service email address, or even a chat link if available. This inclusion not only instills a sense of reliability but also signifies your readiness to assist. The more accessible and transparent your contact mechanisms are, the more trust you can cultivate with your clientele. Step 5: End with a thank you and any other essential information As the saying goes, “it’s the small things that matter.” Ending your email with a heartfelt expression of gratitude can significantly enhance the relationship between your brand and the customer. Beyond just a simple “thank you,” consider adding value to their next interaction with your brand. This could be in the form of a discount code for their subsequent purchase, details about a referral program to benefit both them and their friends, or an invitation to engage with your brand on various social media platforms. This not only fosters loyalty but also opens up avenues for more personalized and engaging future interactions. Confirmation Email Example Effective confirmation email templates should be concise, straightforward, and include essential information that establishes clear expectations for the customer. Dear _____ Thank you for your _____. The details of your ____ are below; please let us know via email or telephone at _____ if you need to make any modifications. All the best, ____ More Effective Confirmation Email Templates Because there are many types of confirmation messages, here are some more confirmation email examples to help you create your own. Order Confirmation Email Template Order confirmation email examples or order confirmation email templates usually look like the following: Dear ___. Thank you very much for your order! Please find a complete order summary ____ (include item name, quantity, and price). We’ve received your order and are getting ready to have it shipped. It should be with you in ____ (shipping time). We will send another email when your order is out for delivery. As a thank you for your purchase, here is a discount code for future purchases. We thank you again for your order and hope you have a wonderful day. Shipping Confirmation Template A shipping confirmation email template needs to include details for the customer to understand how and when they will receive their order. Shipping confirmation email templates can look like below: Dear ____. Thank you for your order. We’re pleased to let you know that it is on its way to you! Your order is being shipped via ____ (shipping method) and will arrive in ____ (shipping time). You can track your order using the tracking link provided. If you have experience delays or issues with your order, please contact us via email or phone. Thank you again for your order, and we look forward to serving you again! Interview Confirmation Email Template If you are confirming an interview, you will need to create personalized communication with the person, including key details, such as the example below: Dear ____, Thank you for confirming your availability for the interview. We are happy to inform you that it has now been scheduled. Your interview will be held on [DATE] and [TIME] via [INTERVIEW METHOD, e.g., via Zoom, Teams, or in person). You will be speaking to [NAME OF INTERVIEWER, TITLE] for approximately [TIME]. Please let us know if you have any questions or need to reschedule. All the best, ___ Payment Confirmation Email Payment confirmation emails need to include basic payment details so that customers know their purchase went through. Dear ___ Thank you for your purchase on [DATE]. This is a confirmation email to let you know we have received your payment. Payment details are below for your reference: [include payment method and amount]. Please get in touch with us via phone or email if you need to make changes or modify your purchase. Tips for Writing Confirmation Emails A consistent communication process ensures that customers feel confident working with your business, which helps drive more sales and repeat purchases. Whether you’re putting together a booking confirmation email or confirmation emails for eCommerce stores, there are a few tips you can use to make your communication go beyond transactional emails. These tips can help with all kinds of confirmation emails to make them stand out immediately. Make an instant connection with the customer For both new customers and existing customers, it’s important not to treat them as just a number transaction. Personalize your email confirmations with names and other special touches to make them feel special. Write in your brand voice Your brand voice should come through in your confirmation emails to ensure that customers have a consistent experience, so think about what your brand stands for and how it communicates when crafting these messages. Save a great example when you see it Look at the confirmation letters you receive. If you’re seeing a great example, such as clear shipping information, account confirmation, and unique ways to cross-sell items, save them! You can use them as inspiration for your confirmation emails. Use email marketing software If you want to create a seamless, automated confirmation email process, use email marketing software. You can create templates personalized with details depending on the type of confirmation you’re sending, including relevant information. For example, email software can be used for a registration confirmation email, an online purchase confirmation email, and other types of customer purchases. How Do You Politely Confirm Through Email? A polite confirmation via email should include details of the order, registration, or reservation in the subject line. Then, in the body of the email, you can thank them for their time and let them know that everything is confirmed. Finally, outline any next steps the customer should thank, if necessary, at the end of the email with a short sign-off. Is an Order Confirmation Email a Receipt? An order confirmation email can act as a receipt when it contains a detailed order summary, which includes the items ordered, their quantities, payment information, and shipping methods. What Is the Best Confirmation Reply? The best confirmation reply can serve as a double confirmation. First, you can thank the sender for providing the information and let them know it has been received and noted. If you have questions or concerns about the confirmation, you can include them in the reply if needed. Elements of Effective Confirmation Emails As we’ve delved into the world of confirmation emails, it’s evident that their significance goes beyond mere acknowledgments. Each type of confirmation email, be it for an order, reservation, or interview, has its unique components tailored to provide clear, relevant information to the recipient. As a quick reference, we’ve consolidated the critical elements of various confirmation emails in the table below. Use this as your handy guide when crafting your next confirmation message: Type of Confirmation EmailMain Elements to IncludePurpose Restaurant Reservation- Date and Time - Restaurant Address - Booking or Cancellation PoliciesConfirm a booked spot and provide reservation details Order Confirmation- Item details - Quantity - Total ChargesAcknowledge a received order and provide a summary Webinar Confirmation- Registration details - Date - Time - LinkConfirm participation in a webinar and provide access details Subscription Confirmation- Renewal date - Amount chargedAcknowledge a new subscription and provide renewal details Shipping Confirmation- Shipping address - Billing address - Expected delivery dateConfirm item shipment and provide tracking details Booking Confirmation- Date and Time - Venue or PlatformConfirm a booking for an event or service Purchase Confirmation- Item details - Total costAcknowledge a completed purchase and provide a summary Flight Confirmation- Flight details - Date - Time - GateConfirm flight booking and provide necessary travel details Cancellation Confirmation- Original details of the booking or order - Cancellation policiesConfirm cancellation of a service, order, or event Image: Depositphotos This article, "Confirmation Email Template Examples" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

A confirmation email is useful in various situations. Whether it’s for confirming a restaurant reservation, online or offline events, or other meetings, a confirmation email plays a significant role in the communication strategy. To help you write a thorough confirmation email that includes all the necessary information, you can utilize a confirmation email template. What Is a Confirmation Email? Confirmation emails are used to communicate important information to customers after specific events. There are many types of confirmation emails, including: Restaurant reservation confirmation Order confirmation Webinar confirmation email, including registration confirmation email Subscription confirmation emails Booking confirmation emails Shipping confirmation email Purchase confirmation email Flight confirmation email Cancellation confirmation emails There are many other types of email confirmations, but the goal of each type of email confirmation is to provide the customer with immediate feedback to let them know they have been successful and that your business is aware and taking the necessary next steps. With each confirmation email type, it’s essential to ensure you’ve included all of the relevant information in one place. It’s a type of transactional email that is written in a clear and intuitive manner to make it easy for customers to read and understand the information in the confirmation. After receiving the confirmation email, they should be able to reference it when they need to if they have questions or issues with their order. How to Write Confirmation Emails A confirmation message is an essential tool in digital communication, serving as an acknowledgment that an action has been completed or that information has been received. The content of a confirmation email can vary based on its type. In this guide, we explore essential elements of email confirmations to help you create effective and informative confirmation messages for your audience. Step 1: Write a clear subject line Creating an effective subject line for a confirmation email template is crucial. Regardless of whether it pertains to a registration, purchase, or another form of confirmation, the subject line acts as the email’s initial impression. Commonly, for scenarios like a registration or shipping confirmation email, it should encapsulate key details like the order number coupled with a confirmation alert. The golden rule is simplicity combined with informativeness. Your subject lines should act as a quick snapshot, giving the recipient clarity on the email’s content, thereby allowing them to prioritize its relevance and decide whether it warrants immediate attention. Step 2: Include order confirmation and order details The main content or body of your email is where the bulk of the information resides. For order confirmation, it’s imperative that customers are presented with a clear picture of what they’ve procured. This encompasses not only the confirmation that their order has been successfully placed but also information such as the number of items, the total cost, and a brief description of each product. On the other hand, for an account creation or registration email, it’s pivotal to furnish them with their login credentials, reassure them of a successful sign-up, and provide any additional context or actions required. For instance, you may need to prompt them to verify their email address, thereby solidifying their account security. Following such a structured format ensures that your client is kept in the loop, fostering trust and transparency. Step 3: Add shipping details or other item information When it comes to shipping or order confirmation emails, furnishing precise details can alleviate any anxieties customers might have post-purchase. It’s essential to incorporate not only the shipping address but also the billing address. This double-checking mechanism ensures clarity and avoids any future discrepancies. Furthermore, provide an estimated delivery window so customers can anticipate when their package will arrive. This sort of meticulous detailing isn’t restricted to physical products. For instance, when dealing with a subscription-based service, convey when the subscription gets renewed, along with the exact amount that will be charged. Moreover, for more niche confirmations like restaurant reservations, it’s paramount to provide specifics. From the date and time of their booking to the exact location of the establishment, every little detail can enhance their dining experience. You might even hint at the reservation particulars in the subject line itself, ensuring the recipient has a clear idea from the get-go. Step 4: Provide contact information It’s pivotal for any customer-centric business to have accessible channels for communication. Be sure to incorporate all the relevant contact details, such as a direct phone number, dedicated customer service email address, or even a chat link if available. This inclusion not only instills a sense of reliability but also signifies your readiness to assist. The more accessible and transparent your contact mechanisms are, the more trust you can cultivate with your clientele. Step 5: End with a thank you and any other essential information As the saying goes, “it’s the small things that matter.” Ending your email with a heartfelt expression of gratitude can significantly enhance the relationship between your brand and the customer. Beyond just a simple “thank you,” consider adding value to their next interaction with your brand. This could be in the form of a discount code for their subsequent purchase, details about a referral program to benefit both them and their friends, or an invitation to engage with your brand on various social media platforms. This not only fosters loyalty but also opens up avenues for more personalized and engaging future interactions. Confirmation Email Example Effective confirmation email templates should be concise, straightforward, and include essential information that establishes clear expectations for the customer. Dear _____ Thank you for your _____. The details of your ____ are below; please let us know via email or telephone at _____ if you need to make any modifications. All the best, ____ More Effective Confirmation Email Templates Because there are many types of confirmation messages, here are some more confirmation email examples to help you create your own. Order Confirmation Email Template Order confirmation email examples or order confirmation email templates usually look like the following: Dear ___. Thank you very much for your order! Please find a complete order summary ____ (include item name, quantity, and price). We’ve received your order and are getting ready to have it shipped. It should be with you in ____ (shipping time). We will send another email when your order is out for delivery. As a thank you for your purchase, here is a discount code for future purchases. We thank you again for your order and hope you have a wonderful day. Shipping Confirmation Template A shipping confirmation email template needs to include details for the customer to understand how and when they will receive their order. Shipping confirmation email templates can look like below: Dear ____. Thank you for your order. We’re pleased to let you know that it is on its way to you! Your order is being shipped via ____ (shipping method) and will arrive in ____ (shipping time). You can track your order using the tracking link provided. If you have experience delays or issues with your order, please contact us via email or phone. Thank you again for your order, and we look forward to serving you again! Interview Confirmation Email Template If you are confirming an interview, you will need to create personalized communication with the person, including key details, such as the example below: Dear ____, Thank you for confirming your availability for the interview. We are happy to inform you that it has now been scheduled. Your interview will be held on [DATE] and [TIME] via [INTERVIEW METHOD, e.g., via Zoom, Teams, or in person). You will be speaking to [NAME OF INTERVIEWER, TITLE] for approximately [TIME]. Please let us know if you have any questions or need to reschedule. All the best, ___ Payment Confirmation Email Payment confirmation emails need to include basic payment details so that customers know their purchase went through. Dear ___ Thank you for your purchase on [DATE]. This is a confirmation email to let you know we have received your payment. Payment details are below for your reference: [include payment method and amount]. Please get in touch with us via phone or email if you need to make changes or modify your purchase. Tips for Writing Confirmation Emails A consistent communication process ensures that customers feel confident working with your business, which helps drive more sales and repeat purchases. Whether you’re putting together a booking confirmation email or confirmation emails for eCommerce stores, there are a few tips you can use to make your communication go beyond transactional emails. These tips can help with all kinds of confirmation emails to make them stand out immediately. Make an instant connection with the customer For both new customers and existing customers, it’s important not to treat them as just a number transaction. Personalize your email confirmations with names and other special touches to make them feel special. Write in your brand voice Your brand voice should come through in your confirmation emails to ensure that customers have a consistent experience, so think about what your brand stands for and how it communicates when crafting these messages. Save a great example when you see it Look at the confirmation letters you receive. If you’re seeing a great example, such as clear shipping information, account confirmation, and unique ways to cross-sell items, save them! You can use them as inspiration for your confirmation emails. Use email marketing software If you want to create a seamless, automated confirmation email process, use email marketing software. You can create templates personalized with details depending on the type of confirmation you’re sending, including relevant information. For example, email software can be used for a registration confirmation email, an online purchase confirmation email, and other types of customer purchases. How Do You Politely Confirm Through Email? A polite confirmation via email should include details of the order, registration, or reservation in the subject line. Then, in the body of the email, you can thank them for their time and let them know that everything is confirmed. Finally, outline any next steps the customer should thank, if necessary, at the end of the email with a short sign-off. Is an Order Confirmation Email a Receipt? An order confirmation email can act as a receipt when it contains a detailed order summary, which includes the items ordered, their quantities, payment information, and shipping methods. What Is the Best Confirmation Reply? The best confirmation reply can serve as a double confirmation. First, you can thank the sender for providing the information and let them know it has been received and noted. If you have questions or concerns about the confirmation, you can include them in the reply if needed. Elements of Effective Confirmation Emails As we’ve delved into the world of confirmation emails, it’s evident that their significance goes beyond mere acknowledgments. Each type of confirmation email, be it for an order, reservation, or interview, has its unique components tailored to provide clear, relevant information to the recipient. As a quick reference, we’ve consolidated the critical elements of various confirmation emails in the table below. Use this as your handy guide when crafting your next confirmation message: Type of Confirmation EmailMain Elements to IncludePurpose Restaurant Reservation- Date and Time - Restaurant Address - Booking or Cancellation PoliciesConfirm a booked spot and provide reservation details Order Confirmation- Item details - Quantity - Total ChargesAcknowledge a received order and provide a summary Webinar Confirmation- Registration details - Date - Time - LinkConfirm participation in a webinar and provide access details Subscription Confirmation- Renewal date - Amount chargedAcknowledge a new subscription and provide renewal details Shipping Confirmation- Shipping address - Billing address - Expected delivery dateConfirm item shipment and provide tracking details Booking Confirmation- Date and Time - Venue or PlatformConfirm a booking for an event or service Purchase Confirmation- Item details - Total costAcknowledge a completed purchase and provide a summary Flight Confirmation- Flight details - Date - Time - GateConfirm flight booking and provide necessary travel details Cancellation Confirmation- Original details of the booking or order - Cancellation policiesConfirm cancellation of a service, order, or event Image: Depositphotos This article, "Confirmation Email Template Examples" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

We‘ve rounded up the best social media campaign examples from X, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, and more. View the full article

Happiness over one’s lifetime has been popularly described as looking like a U-shaped curve: The joys of youth are followed by the challenges of our 20s and 30s before an upswing later in life that reaches a peak after retirement. While that may be true—or not—in wealthier countries such as the United States, it doesn’t apply to low-income, nonindustrialized societies. That is the main finding of a study I led that examined aging in rural, subsistence-oriented communities in 23 countries across the Global South. And our results have implications for global health amid aging populations and growing economic insecurity. In our study, we found that happiness levels did not consistently follow the U-shaped trajectory commonly observed in industrialized societies. In some cases there was a U-shape. But more often we observed an inverted U-shape, where middle-aged adults reported the highest level of happiness, or no significant age-related trend at all. Overall, well-being often declined after middle age among resource-poor populations lacking social security and other institutionalized forms of protection. This aligns with prior research among low-income countries and even of wealthy nations during economic crises. That being said, age itself was a weak predictor of life satisfaction everywhere. Sickness, disability and loss in productivity do a better job of explaining well-being than age. In fact, the few positive effects of age we did find usually disappeared when including measures of these misfortunes in our analysis. Along with other developments showing lower well-being among adolescents and young adults in recent years, my research challenges the assumption that the U-shaped happiness curve is universal. The trend showing that average well-being improves after middle age might be more typical of urban, affluent societies with formal retirement and strong safety nets for older adults. By examining a broader range of settings, we gain insight into how environmental and socioeconomic factors shape well-being over a lifespan, offering a more nuanced perspective on happiness that could guide policies for different age groups and cultures. I believe understanding well-being across diverse cultures is crucial, especially amid global aging and mental health crises. By reconsidering the determinants of happiness outside the U-shaped model, we’re all better positioned to improve quality of life for different populations worldwide. Michael Gurven is a professor of anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. View the full article

It’s January, and you’re fired up—new year, new strategy, new wins. Or maybe it’s March, and you’re side-eyeing your social media, wondering if you missed the reset window. Spoiler: You didn’t. Whether it’s the first week of January or the last day of October, the best time to get your social media on track is right now. This checklist is your blueprint for momentum in 2025. Whether you’re aiming for more consistency, kickstarting your creator journey, or landing your first brand deal, this guide will help you build a strategy that sticks. So grab your notepad, open your planning app, or start a fresh Google Doc and let’s dive in. Callout: P.S. Scroll to the end for a simplified checklist 1. Audit & optimize your profilesBefore you dive into posting, take a step back to check on your profiles across all your active (and inactive) social platforms. Refresh your bioYour profile picture should be high-quality, on-brand, and consistent across platforms. If you’re using a logo, make sure it’s clear and properly cropped. If you’re the face, choose a shot that clearly shows your face. Your bio is your elevator pitch in 150 characters or less. Skip the fluff and focus on who you help, how you help them, and why they should follow you. For example, on LinkedIn Instead of having: “Marketing Professional | Growth Enthusiast | Helping Brands Succeed”Try: “I help SaaS startups scale with data-driven content & demand generation”Here are some more resources to help you as you craft your bios: 📚 How to Craft the Perfect Instagram Bio for Your Business 📚 6 Ideas to Make the Most of Your Instagram Bio Update your contact info & linksPeople shouldn’t have to play detective to find your website, book a call, or shop your products. Check that your email, website, and any other key links are updated. If you need to direct people to multiple places, use a simple link-in-bio tool like Start Page. Callout: Try Start Page → Align your brandingBranding isn’t just about fun colors and fonts—it’s about recognizability. A follower on TikTok should immediately know they’re seeing the same brand whether they find you on Instagram, LinkedIn, or YouTube. Do a quick check: Are your colors and fonts consistent across platforms?Is your messaging consistent even if you change the tone and style slightly?Do your visuals (thumbnails, banners) feel cohesive?Small tweaks can make a huge difference in how professional and credible you look online. 2. Define your goals for 2025If you don’t know what you’re aiming for, you’ll waste time posting without purpose. Setting clear, measurable goals keeps your content focused and your efforts productive. Instead of just saying, “I want to grow on social media,” get specific about what growth looks like for you and how you’ll track it. Set SMART goalsYour goals should be SMART — Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Instead of vague aspirations, define clear targets: Instead of: “Post more on Instagram.”Try: “Post four Reels per week to increase engagement by 20% over the next three months.”Other examples of SMART goals: Reach 10,000 TikTok followers by June by posting five times per week.Grow newsletter subscribers by 25% through social media traffic.Increase website clicks from Instagram by 30% in Q1 testing different calls-to-action in posts.With this system, you give yourself the flexibility to switch up your goals as time passes and you see the results of your efforts. Learn more about goal-setting for social media: 📚 9 Social Media Goals You Can Set for Your Business (and How to Track Them) Identify key metrics to trackLikes and follower counts are surface-level. To understand what’s really working, focus on deeper engagement metrics: Reach & impressions: Are more people seeing your content?Engagement rate: Are people interacting (likes, shares, saves, comments)?Click-through rate (CTR): Are your links driving traffic?Conversion rate: Are social media visitors taking action (buying, subscribing, signing up)?Tracking these numbers helps you tweak your strategy based on real data, not guesswork. 📚 10 Content Marketing Metrics to Track (+5 Experts on the Ones that Matter to Them) 📚 3 Qualitative Social Media Metrics That Matter More Than Follower Count 📚 61 Key Social Media Metrics, Defined Figure out your prioritiesEvery creator and business has different priorities. Ask yourself: Do you want more brand awareness or direct sales?Are you focused on building a community or landing sponsorships?Is your goal to drive traffic to your website, grow an email list, or get more leads?Anna Burgess Yang, a solopreneur & content marketer, talked about prioritization in terms of managing workload efficiently. She emphasized focusing on what’s sustainable and building systems to support it. She advises, “…think about what's reasonable for you and grow from there." [Link to interview] 3. Review & improve your content strategyIf your content wasn’t driving the engagement, conversions, or growth you’d hoped for in 2024, it might be time to rethink your approach. Social media success isn’t about posting more—it’s about posting smarter. This step helps you analyze what’s working, refine your strategy, and experiment with new formats to keep your audience engaged. Analyze your best-performing contentLook at your posts from the last six months and identify trends in what performed well. Keep your social media goals in mind — if you want to build community because you’re an events business, focus on increasing engagement. If you’re new and focused on increasing your brand's exposure (brand awareness), pay attention to what gets the most impressions. Thinking about these things helps you balance your content strategy with repeating specific formats. Ask yourself: Which posts got the most engagement (likes, shares, saves, comments)?What content drove the most website clicks, inquiries, or sales?Are certain formats (videos, carousels, memes, text posts) consistently outperforming others?Once you spot patterns, double down on what works. If short-form videos generate the most engagement, prioritize them. If educational carousels drive conversions, create more of them. Here are our top resources on analyzing content: 📚 23 Top Social Media Analytics Tools in 2025 — Free and Paid Options 📚 6 Social Media Analytics and Reporting Tips for Becoming a Data-Savvy Marketer 📚 2024 Social Media Benchmarks You Should Use to Guide Your Strategy Repurpose & refresh existing contentYou don’t always need to create from scratch. Take high-performing content and repurpose it into different formats: Turn a blog post into an Instagram carousel or Twitter thread.Clip long-form video content into bite-sized reels or TikToks.Combine multiple posts into a downloadable guide or email series.This saves time while maximizing the reach of your best ideas. Here are our best resources on repurposing content: 📚 How to Automate Your Content Repurposing in 5 Steps (From Someone Who Has Done It!) 📚 How I Repurpose Blog Content into LinkedIn Posts to Expand My Reach 📚 How to Create a Social Media Report and Explain It to Your Boss or Client Test new content formatsSocial media changes really fast. If your current approach feels stale, experiment with new formats: Pay attention to trending topics and formats in your niche.Experiment with interactive content like Q&A sessions or AMAs.Test short-form video strategies—many platforms now prioritize video content.Try out new formats alongside proven content types to keep things fresh without losing what already works. For some more knowledge on content formats: 📚 9+ Ideas for Your Next LinkedIn Carousel (+Examples) 📚 7 Winning Video Marketing Strategies You Can Implement Today 📚 Posting Like a Pro: What Should You Post on These 8 Social Media Platforms Plan for consistency to avoid burnoutA solid content strategy is sustainable. Posting every day for a month and then disappearing won’t help you grow. Instead, set a realistic posting frequency based on your capacity and schedule your content ahead of time. 📚 Consistent Posting Means 5x More Likes, Comments, and Shares: Study 📚 7 Simple Habits to Help You Get Better at Creating Content More Consistently 📚 5 Tips That Made Me A Consistent Content Creator 4. Create a content calendarConsistency wins on social media, but without a plan, it’s easy to fall into the post-when-you-remember trap. A content calendar keeps you organized, ensures variety in your content, and helps you stay ahead instead of scrambling for last-minute ideas. Map out key themes and campaignsInstead of coming up with random posts each week, organize your content around core themes. This could be: Educational content: Tips, tutorials, industry insightsPromotional content: Product launches, sales, lead generationEngagement-focused content: Polls, Q&As, behind-the-scenesUser-generated content: Customer stories, testimonials, repostsPlan for big moments, too—seasonal trends, product launches, collaborations, or industry events. Check out our 2025 content calendar to start working some of these into your strategy: 📚 Social Media Calendar For Every Holiday of 2025 (+ Ideas for Posts) 📚 How to Create a Swipe File for Your Social Media Ideas 📚 Types of Social Media Content: 30+ Ideas for Your Next Post (With Examples) Batch-create content to save timeInstead of creating content one post at a time, batch similar tasks together: Write captions for a week’s worth of posts in one sitting.Film multiple short-form videos in a single session.Design graphics or templates for upcoming promotions.Batching content helps you stay consistent without constantly feeling like you’re playing catch-up. 📚 How I Designed a LinkedIn Thought Leadership Content Creation System 📚Ask Buffer: How Can You Batch Content for Social Media? 📚The Essential Guide to Content Curation Keep it flexibleA content calendar is a guide, not a rigid rulebook. If something isn’t performing well, tweak your approach. If a trend emerges, adjust your schedule to join the conversation. The goal is consistency with adaptability. 📚 7+ Free Social Media Calendar Templates to Help You Plan Your Content 📚 Buffer’s Content Calendar Template + How Our Content Team Collaborates 5. Adopt AI and automationAI and automation aren’t just trends—they’re tools that can streamline your workflow, generate fresh content ideas, and help you stay consistent without burning out. If you’re still doing everything manually, you’re making social media harder than it needs to be. Use AI to boost your content creationAI can help speed up the creative process without replacing your unique voice. Try AI tools for: Content ideas: Generate post topics, video scripts, or social media captions.Captions & hashtags: Use AI-powered copywriting tools like Buffer’s AI Assistant to test different engagement-driven captions.Video & image generation: AI tools can help with basic video editing, subtitles, and even graphic creation.📚 7 of the Best AI Image Generators for Creators and Marketers + Example Images 📚 The 7 Best AI Video Tools for Creators and Marketers, Tried and Tested 📚 14 Must-Try AI Social Media Content Creation Tools in 2025 Automate your scheduling and postingManual posting can be overwhelming, especially if you’re juggling multiple platforms. Not to toot our own horn, but Buffer offers multiple features that can actively improve your content creation journey, especially stress-free scheduling to multiple social media platforms. Buffer’s one of the most affordable tools for scheduling content and offers multiple features to aid your growth: Ideas, so you can keep track of all your spur-of-the-moment thoughtsBuffer’s AI Assistant to help you quickly come up with contentAnalytics to track your performance and figure out where to make improvementsevery social media platform your audience might be onSchedule in advance, but leave room for real-time content—reacting to trends, engaging with comments, and sharing timely updates. 📚 How Passionfroot's Creator Akta Streamlines Content Scheduling with Buffer However, although automation saves time, social media is still about relationships. Use AI to streamline tasks—not replace real engagement. Show up, interact, and keep your content personal. 📚 5 Powerful Automations for Creators to Streamline Your Content Workflow 📚Social Media Automation Strategy: 10 Tasks You Can Automate 6. Strengthen engagementSocial media isn’t just about broadcasting your content—it’s about building relationships. If your engagement strategy is limited to posting and walking away, you’re missing out on one of the most powerful ways to grow. The more you interact with your audience, the more visible your content, and the stronger your community becomes. Engage with others to receive engagementDon’t just wait for engagement—go out and create it. Set aside 10–15 minutes a day to actively engage with your audience. Whether it’s replying to comments, interacting with other creators, or sharing user-generated content, consistency builds stronger relationships. Comment on posts from industry leaders, potential collaborators, and engaged followers.Start engaging conversations, participate in threads, and leave thoughtful comments.Use platform-specific features (like TikTok duets or Instagram collaborations) to interact with others.The more visibly engaged you are, the more engagement you’ll receive in return. 📚 Social Media Engagement: Why it Matters and How to Do it Well Go Live & start conversationsLive video fosters real-time connection. Whether it’s a Q&A, behind-the-scenes look, or an industry discussion, going live helps deepen relationships. Host a weekly or monthly live session to answer audience questions.Collaborate with another creator or business to expand reach.Use live shopping features (if relevant) to showcase products.If going live feels intimidating, start with short, informal sessions to get comfortable. 📚 TikTok Lives Can Help Boost Your Following — Here’s How to Go Live + Why You Should 📚 How to Use Instagram Live: A Guide to Take You From Beginner to Pro Success on social media is built — not wished forHoping for growth won’t make it happen. You need to show up consistently, refine your strategy, and adapt to what works well. Social media success isn’t (just) about luck or viral moments but intentional, sustained effort over time. As Gigi Robinson, creator economy educator and speaker, said, “Some people blow up. Some people get signed to big agencies and see a lot of money, that's what happens. But that is the exception, not the rule. The rule, in my opinion, should be that creators, if they want to be self-employed as a creator, have to work their butt off to build in a certain way, so that they are seen as a thought leader and a figure of authority in their niche.” Stay consistent, and we’ll see you at the end of 2025 with all your goals checked off. Your Social Media ChecklistCopy and paste this checklist and mark off each item as you achieve it: Profile & branding refreshUpdate profile pictures to be high-quality and consistent across platformsRewrite bios to clearly state who you are and what you offerVerify and update all contact information and linksEnsure branding (colors, fonts, messaging) is cohesive across platformsSet up a link-in-bio tool for easy access to important linksSet your goalsDefine three SMART goals for social media growthIdentify the key metrics you will track (engagement, clicks, conversions)Choose the platforms that align with your goals and audienceCreate an engagement strategy (replying to comments, interacting with peers)Content planning & creationAnalyze past content to determine what performed bestPlan content themes for the next three months (educational, promotional, engagement-focused)Batch-create at least one week’s worth of posts (captions, graphics, videos)Schedule posts in advance using BufferEngagement & growthSet a daily reminder to spend 10–15 minutes checking on your comments and DMsFollow and interact with industry leaders and potential collaboratorsGo live at least once to connect with your audience in real timeShare and encourage user-generated content from your followersOngoing tasksMonitor your analytics weekly and adjust strategy based on performanceExperiment with new content formats (reels, carousels, polls, live Q&As)Keep an eye on industry trends and adapt your strategy accordinglyView the full article

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. Offering a job to multiple people and giving it to the first one who accepts Decades ago, in the early 2000s, my friend was offered an assistant professor position at a university. She was told that the same job was being offered to several other candidates too, and that only the first person to accept the offer would be hired. Presumably as soon as one person accepted, the other offers would be withdrawn. I have never seen this practice anywhere else. This makes me curious: is this legal? (We are in the U.S.) What do you think of employers doing this? What advice would you give someone who gets an offer like this? It’s legal. It’s astonishingly terrible, though! First, it’s a crappy way to treat candidates, who deserve time to think over an offer and make sure it’s the right decision for them and not face pressure to beat everyone else to say yes. Second, good employers want new hires to have had time to mull over the offer so they’re confident in their decision (and thus less likely to cut and run soon after starting). Third, it implies that willingness to jump at the job is more important than who the strongest candidate actually is. Fourth, it’s just weirdly unnecessary. If there’s time pressure for making the hire, you can offer the job to your top candidate and explain the situation; you don’t need to turn it into the Hunger Games. Related: company offered me a job but wants an answer the same day 2. Reference checker asked how much sick leave an employee used What do you do when a reference checker asks you something you don’t believe in providing? I recently received an email regarding a reference for a former direct report. She was an excellent employee, and I was happy to provide it. They provided a list of questions via email and asked me to respond in kind. One of the questions was, “How many sick days leave has she taken during her employment?” I don’t think that’s appropriate information to provide. I have no idea if it’s legal — I’m in the U.S. and the new company is in the UK — but regardless, I don’t believe an employee’s usage of sick leave should impact their reference or their hireability. (And if it does, in workload or reliability, then that’ll show up in the rest of the reference, so it’s still unnecessary.) In this case, I was pressed for time, so I wrote: “An appropriate number, within allowable sick leave. I do not have exact figures.” (Which is true!) I think if it had been a phone reference, I would have been able to push back more clearly, but with an email, I wasn’t sure what else to do. Was that a reasonable response? Is there a better way to communicate “I will not help you fish for ways to not hire people who have human bodies and get sick sometimes”? Yeah, that’s a gross question. As you say, there are far better ways to get at whether someone was a reliable, productive employee — by asking about their actual work, not digging into their sick leave and thus their health. It’s also interesting that they didn’t ask about attendance in general, but about sick leave in particular. Your response was perfect. Also, while I can’t speak to UK law, in the U.S. that’s not a question any reference checkers should be asking, because it’s too likely to elicit information about a disability in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. 3. My boss is pretending to answer emails as my coworker who no longer works here One of my coworkers, Jack, recently left the company. Rather than setting up an automatic response to emails that are sent to Jack, his boss has all Jack’s emails automatically forwarded to him. Jack’s boss then responds to the emails as Jack (not just from Jack’s account — he signs off with things like “Thanks! -Jack”). I understand that the email account belongs to the company, not Jack, but am I wrong to think this is strange and might look bad to a client who receives an email from “Jack” only to learn that he’s been gone for months? What! You are not wrong in your take at all. If his boss wasn’t signing off as Jack, I’d give him the benefit of the doubt and figure he just found it easier to answer from Jack’s account (and was maybe a little technologically inept so didn’t realize there are better ways of handling it). But the fact that he’s signing off with Jack’s name is extremely weird and risks blowing up the trust of any client who finds out it wasn’t actually Jack who has been emailing him (at least, assuming this is the sort of work where clients have a relationship with Jack and aren’t just sending one-off questions to be answered by anonymous, interchangeable strangers). Related: my company pretends that former employees still work here 4. My office keeps forgetting my birthday, while they go all-out for others I do outreach in a nonprofit organization, which requires me to travel between three locations in the county. At one location, staff birthdays are loudly recognized with balloons, cards, desserts, the works … except for mine. It has been overlooked for seven years. I talked to the manager of that location last year about it and her reasoning was that since my birthday is right before Christmas, that it’s easy to overlook. So, she put my birthday on the staff calendar. However, as you can probably guess, my birthday was just forgotten again. There are four people at this location and I have worked there longer than all of them except one person. I work at that location two days a week with just as many hours as two of the other staff members there. I am starting to feel really resentful and hurt that I am not as important or appreciated as the other staff, just because my birthday falls before a major holiday. Am I reading too much into this issue and should I just let it go? Do you think it’s worth it to bring it up again to the manager of that location? I think you are probably reading too much into it, but that you don’t need to let it go! I do think it’s probably true that your birthday is getting overlooked because it’s right before Christmas and a lot of people are out then. It’s very unlikely that it’s personal — especially if your coworkers are generally friendly people. You should let it go in the sense of “you shouldn’t keep stewing about it” (to the extent that that’s within your control), but you absolutely can and should point out to your manager that it happened again this year and that it doesn’t feel great, especially when you’d specifically raised it ahead of time. However, since it’s important to you, it also makes sense to change what you do this year! At the start of December, why not approach your manager and say, “Since it’s slipped through the cracks in the past, I was hoping we could plan our normal birthday stuff for my birthday this year. It’s on (date).” 5. I’m contributing a substantial portion of my team’s charitable goal My organization, like many, has an annual appeal for charity where employees can pledge as little as $1 per pay period (or as much as the fairly generous maximum) to charities of their choosing. The website lists thousands of charitable organizations covering almost any issue area that one could imagine. I have been contributing for several years and have increased my contribution each year along with my salary. An off-site administrator manages the campaign and distributes the funds and relays back an aggregate report on how much our organization has contributed. Based on that report, the org has had an overall pledge goal each year that we’ve routinely met. So far, so good. However, over the past few years, the team has been highlighting the progress towards the goal and the final total, and it’s clear that my pledge is a substantial part of each annual total for the entire organization. We are a small-to-medium organization so it’s not surprising that a few people could make a big difference, but my pledge is around 10% of the organization’s pledged total (or more!). I am well aware that many people have good reasons not to contribute to this particular appeal (they have financial constraints on giving, they have charities to which they prefer to give directly, they believe in direct mutual aid or in person-volunteering instead, etc.), and I would never consider it my business to press others to contribute, but it is unnerving to see just how much my single pledge means for the organization meeting this annual challenge. I am not currently planning to leave, but obviously employment across many sectors is in flux and I can’t predict the future. What, if any, responsibility would I have to share with the staffers who manage this campaign for my organization if I did leave? I am wondering if they’d even set a different pledge goal entirely if they knew my single pledge would no longer be included in the total. You have zero responsibility to give the campaign organizers any heads-up when you start thinking about leaving! They can see who contributes what, and they are definitely aware that any of their top givers could leave at any time, or could change their giving patterns. That’s built into the system. They should already be looking at the fact that a single employee is providing 10% of their funds and trying to find ways to balance that out. In any case, if you leave, they will either not meet their goal that year or they will adjust it or they’ll come up with some other plan to meet the goal. It’s not a big deal. (I mean, it might be a big-ish deal to the person charged with organizing the campaign — which ultimately is about PR for your company — but it’s not the sort of big deal where you’d owe anyone any special warning.) View the full article

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. Offering a job to multiple people and giving it to the first one who accepts Decades ago, in the early 2000s, my friend was offered an assistant professor position at a university. She was told that the same job was being offered to several other candidates too, and that only the first person to accept the offer would be hired. Presumably as soon as one person accepted, the other offers would be withdrawn. I have never seen this practice anywhere else. This makes me curious: is this legal? (We are in the U.S.) What do you think of employers doing this? What advice would you give someone who gets an offer like this? It’s legal. It’s astonishingly terrible, though! First, it’s a crappy way to treat candidates, who deserve time to think over an offer and make sure it’s the right decision for them and not face pressure to beat everyone else to say yes. Second, good employers want new hires to have had time to mull over the offer so they’re confident in their decision (and thus less likely to cut and run soon after starting). Third, it implies that willingness to jump at the job is more important than who the strongest candidate actually is. Fourth, it’s just weirdly unnecessary. If there’s time pressure for making the hire, you can offer the job to your top candidate and explain the situation; you don’t need to turn it into the Hunger Games. Related: company offered me a job but wants an answer the same day 2. Reference checker asked how much sick leave an employee used What do you do when a reference checker asks you something you don’t believe in providing? I recently received an email regarding a reference for a former direct report. She was an excellent employee, and I was happy to provide it. They provided a list of questions via email and asked me to respond in kind. One of the questions was, “How many sick days leave has she taken during her employment?” I don’t think that’s appropriate information to provide. I have no idea if it’s legal — I’m in the U.S. and the new company is in the UK — but regardless, I don’t believe an employee’s usage of sick leave should impact their reference or their hireability. (And if it does, in workload or reliability, then that’ll show up in the rest of the reference, so it’s still unnecessary.) In this case, I was pressed for time, so I wrote: “An appropriate number, within allowable sick leave. I do not have exact figures.” (Which is true!) I think if it had been a phone reference, I would have been able to push back more clearly, but with an email, I wasn’t sure what else to do. Was that a reasonable response? Is there a better way to communicate “I will not help you fish for ways to not hire people who have human bodies and get sick sometimes”? Yeah, that’s a gross question. As you say, there are far better ways to get at whether someone was a reliable, productive employee — by asking about their actual work, not digging into their sick leave and thus their health. It’s also interesting that they didn’t ask about attendance in general, but about sick leave in particular. Your response was perfect. Also, while I can’t speak to UK law, in the U.S. that’s not a question any reference checkers should be asking, because it’s too likely to elicit information about a disability in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. 3. My boss is pretending to answer emails as my coworker who no longer works here One of my coworkers, Jack, recently left the company. Rather than setting up an automatic response to emails that are sent to Jack, his boss has all Jack’s emails automatically forwarded to him. Jack’s boss then responds to the emails as Jack (not just from Jack’s account — he signs off with things like “Thanks! -Jack”). I understand that the email account belongs to the company, not Jack, but am I wrong to think this is strange and might look bad to a client who receives an email from “Jack” only to learn that he’s been gone for months? What! You are not wrong in your take at all. If his boss wasn’t signing off as Jack, I’d give him the benefit of the doubt and figure he just found it easier to answer from Jack’s account (and was maybe a little technologically inept so didn’t realize there are better ways of handling it). But the fact that he’s signing off with Jack’s name is extremely weird and risks blowing up the trust of any client who finds out it wasn’t actually Jack who has been emailing him (at least, assuming this is the sort of work where clients have a relationship with Jack and aren’t just sending one-off questions to be answered by anonymous, interchangeable strangers). Related: my company pretends that former employees still work here 4. My office keeps forgetting my birthday, while they go all-out for others I do outreach in a nonprofit organization, which requires me to travel between three locations in the county. At one location, staff birthdays are loudly recognized with balloons, cards, desserts, the works … except for mine. It has been overlooked for seven years. I talked to the manager of that location last year about it and her reasoning was that since my birthday is right before Christmas, that it’s easy to overlook. So, she put my birthday on the staff calendar. However, as you can probably guess, my birthday was just forgotten again. There are four people at this location and I have worked there longer than all of them except one person. I work at that location two days a week with just as many hours as two of the other staff members there. I am starting to feel really resentful and hurt that I am not as important or appreciated as the other staff, just because my birthday falls before a major holiday. Am I reading too much into this issue and should I just let it go? Do you think it’s worth it to bring it up again to the manager of that location? I think you are probably reading too much into it, but that you don’t need to let it go! I do think it’s probably true that your birthday is getting overlooked because it’s right before Christmas and a lot of people are out then. It’s very unlikely that it’s personal — especially if your coworkers are generally friendly people. You should let it go in the sense of “you shouldn’t keep stewing about it” (to the extent that that’s within your control), but you absolutely can and should point out to your manager that it happened again this year and that it doesn’t feel great, especially when you’d specifically raised it ahead of time. However, since it’s important to you, it also makes sense to change what you do this year! At the start of December, why not approach your manager and say, “Since it’s slipped through the cracks in the past, I was hoping we could plan our normal birthday stuff for my birthday this year. It’s on (date).” 5. I’m contributing a substantial portion of my team’s charitable goal My organization, like many, has an annual appeal for charity where employees can pledge as little as $1 per pay period (or as much as the fairly generous maximum) to charities of their choosing. The website lists thousands of charitable organizations covering almost any issue area that one could imagine. I have been contributing for several years and have increased my contribution each year along with my salary. An off-site administrator manages the campaign and distributes the funds and relays back an aggregate report on how much our organization has contributed. Based on that report, the org has had an overall pledge goal each year that we’ve routinely met. So far, so good. However, over the past few years, the team has been highlighting the progress towards the goal and the final total, and it’s clear that my pledge is a substantial part of each annual total for the entire organization. We are a small-to-medium organization so it’s not surprising that a few people could make a big difference, but my pledge is around 10% of the organization’s pledged total (or more!). I am well aware that many people have good reasons not to contribute to this particular appeal (they have financial constraints on giving, they have charities to which they prefer to give directly, they believe in direct mutual aid or in person-volunteering instead, etc.), and I would never consider it my business to press others to contribute, but it is unnerving to see just how much my single pledge means for the organization meeting this annual challenge. I am not currently planning to leave, but obviously employment across many sectors is in flux and I can’t predict the future. What, if any, responsibility would I have to share with the staffers who manage this campaign for my organization if I did leave? I am wondering if they’d even set a different pledge goal entirely if they knew my single pledge would no longer be included in the total. You have zero responsibility to give the campaign organizers any heads-up when you start thinking about leaving! They can see who contributes what, and they are definitely aware that any of their top givers could leave at any time, or could change their giving patterns. That’s built into the system. They should already be looking at the fact that a single employee is providing 10% of their funds and trying to find ways to balance that out. In any case, if you leave, they will either not meet their goal that year or they will adjust it or they’ll come up with some other plan to meet the goal. It’s not a big deal. (I mean, it might be a big-ish deal to the person charged with organizing the campaign — which ultimately is about PR for your company — but it’s not the sort of big deal where you’d owe anyone any special warning.) View the full article

Discover the top 16 best practices for a successful website migration. Avoid SEO performance issues and maximize the benefits of your site changes. The post Website Migration SEO Best Practices To Preserve Rankings And Avoid Common Pitfalls appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

From streamlining administrative tasks to enhancing brainstorming sessions, AI is becoming an essential workplace companion. Yet, despite its transformative promise, its integration isn’t as simple as flipping a switch. We recently conducted research at Lucid Software to uncover AI usage in the workplace. We found that more than a third of workers globally are already using AI for fundamental tasks like generating ideas (39%), creating content (37%), communicating summaries (33%), and finding documentation (31%). When thinking about how we’ve adopted the technology into our products, our decade-long investment in intelligence has been key to building an AI-ready platform that automates data visualization and enables rapid iteration while aligning seamlessly with how people work. The true potential for AI to continue transforming daily tasks and even larger strategic work will only be possible if AI fits into employees’ workflows in iterative and practical ways that allow teams to master the technology. Employees feel optimistic about AI The global survey of over 2,500 knowledge workers revealed critical insights about AI’s growing impact on the workplace. Overall, the findings paint an optimistic picture: nearly two-thirds (63%) of employees view AI as the gateway to more fulfilling work and improved work-life balance. When we more deeply explored what’s fueling this positive outlook, three key benefits emerged: 62% of employees highlight productivity gains, 40% value cost savings and tech stack consolidation, and 38% see enhanced communication and decision making. But what really caught my attention is the striking tangible impact on productivity; more than 50% of workers believe AI will save them at least three hours of work per week. That’s time they can plan to redirect and invest in strategic, higher-value initiatives. In fact, 45% of employees are already using AI to effectively advance projects. And while saving three hours per week is meaningful to workers, it’s likely just the beginning. As AI tools advance and adoption increases, the time saved could grow significantly in the years ahead. Barriers to AI adoption persist In conversations with customers and prospects, we’ve noticed an interesting sentiment: While they’re excited about what AI can do, they’re overwhelmed by the number of available AI tools. This feedback underscores a key insight—AI shouldn’t feel like an extra layer of complexity. When AI is seamlessly integrated into the tools people already know and love, it streamlines their everyday workflows without adding another system to learn or manage. When we looked further into the barriers holding back AI adoption, our survey uncovered a large divide between organizational levels. While 83% of executives actively use AI-powered collaboration tools, this drops to just 42% of entry-level workers. We’re also seeing a direct correlation between usage and confidence, too. Ninety percent of executives feel confident using AI-powered features, whereas 41% of entry-level employees feel hardly or not at all knowledgeable. AI regulation is top of mind Proper regulation and security are important for companies and employees. AI is a powerful and exciting tool, but there must be guidelines in place to keep company information safe. Our research reveals that 88% of companies are implementing strict guidelines to safeguard their business and employees—but effective implementation proves to be the larger obstacle at hand. The current disconnect between policy creation and awareness in the workforce is significant: While 70% of executives say their company has established AI policies, only 29% of entry-level employees are confident that these guardrails exist. Executives must spend time communicating and implementing these systems so teams are empowered to use AI with security top of mind. The path to more strategic AI AI’s impact extends beyond productivity and efficiency—it’s about enhancing how we work, improving job satisfaction and cultivating better work-life balance. It must be rolled out strategically and practically through comprehensive employee training and transparent AI integration strategies, bridging knowledge gaps across organizational levels, and addressing security and privacy concerns. AI isn’t about replacing people; it’s about empowering them. The future of work is collaborative and AI is a powerful partner that will amplify human potential. At Lucid, our goal is to make AI feel approachable, trustworthy, and impactful—something that genuinely helps teams get things done better and faster. Embracing this technology thoughtfully and inclusively will be key to organizational success and employee empowerment. Dave Grow is CEO of Lucid Software. View the full article