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Massachusetts’ highest court heard oral arguments Friday in the state’s lawsuit arguing that Meta designed features on Facebook and Instagram to make them addictive to young users. The lawsuit, filed in 2024 by Attorney General Andrea Campbell, alleges that Meta did this to make a profit and that its actions affected hundreds of thousands of teenagers in Massachusetts who use the social media platforms. “We are making claims based only on the tools that Meta has developed because its own research shows they encourage addiction to the platform in a variety of ways,” said State Solicitor David Kravitz, adding that the state’s claim has nothing to do the company’s algorithms or failure to moderate content. Meta said Friday that it strongly disagrees with the allegations and is “confident the evidence will show our longstanding commitment to supporting young people.” Its attorney, Mark Mosier, argued in court that the lawsuit “would impose liabilities for performing traditional publishing functions” and that its actions are protected by the First Amendment. “The Commonwealth would have a better chance of getting around the First Amendment if they alleged that the speech was false or fraudulent,” Mosier said. “But when they acknowledge that its truthful that brings it in the heart of the First Amendment.” Several of the judges, though, seem to be more concerned about Meta’s functions, such as notifications, than the content on its platforms. “I didn’t understand the claims to be that Meta is relaying false information vis-a-vis the notifications but that it has created an algorithm of incessant notifications … designed so as to feed into the fear of missing out, fomo, that teenagers generally have,” Justice Dalila Wendlandt said. “That is the basis of the claim.” Justice Scott Kafker challenged the notion that this was all about a choice to publish certain information by Meta. “It’s not how to publish but how to attract you to the information,” he said. “It’s about how to attract the eyeballs. It’s indifferent the content, right. It doesn’t care if it’s Thomas Paine’s ‘Common Sense’ or nonsense. It’s totally focused on getting you to look at it.” Meta is facing federal and state lawsuits claiming it knowingly designed features—such as constant notifications and the ability to scroll endlessly—that addict children. In 2023, 33 states filed a joint lawsuit against the Menlo Park, California-based tech giant, claiming that Meta routinely collects data on children under 13 without their parents’ consent, in violation of federal law. In addition, states, including Massachusetts, filed their own lawsuits in state courts over addictive features and other harms to children. Newspaper reports, first by The Wall Street Journal in the fall of 2021, found that the company knew about the harms Instagram can cause teenagers — especially teen girls — when it comes to mental health and body image issues. One internal study cited 13.5% of teen girls saying Instagram makes thoughts of suicide worse and 17% of teen girls saying it makes eating disorders worse. Critics say Meta hasn’t done enough to address concerns about teen safety and mental health on its platforms. A report from former employee and whistleblower Arturo Bejar and four nonprofit groups this year said Meta has chosen not to take “real steps” to address safety concerns, “opting instead for splashy headlines about new tools for parents and Instagram Teen Accounts for underage users.” Meta said the report misrepresented its efforts on teen safety. ___ This story has been corrected to show one of the justices is called Justice Dalila Wendlandt, not Wendland. —Michael Casey, Associated Press Associated Press reporter Barbara Ortutay contributed to this report. View the full article

Hildene, which partners with Crosscountry Mortgage for non-QM securitizations, is doing this deal as part of its buy of an annuity provider, SILAC. View the full article

It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and all December I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past. Here are four updates from past letter-writers. There will be more posts than usual this week, so keep checking back throughout the day. 1. My boss loves being told she’s beautiful I’m afraid the ritual with the boss continues. I couldn’t find any way to say that the team might feel pressure to compliment her appearance without making it sound like I didn’t think she was good-looking. So I just caved to the pressure and decided to start talking up her career and telling her she’d be great for more senior roles so it doesn’t seem like I’m the only one not complimenting her. And to make more of a point of complimenting other team members so it’s not just all the boss all the time. 2. My new manager is upset I didn’t tell her I was pregnant when I interviewed I did end up having problems with “family friendly” culture at my hospital, although not in the way I was expecting. The frostiness from my manager subsided pretty quickly, partly because I stopped seeing her! Immediately after my orientation ended, I started getting called off for literally 90% of my shifts due to low census (too few patients on the floor). Unbeknownst to me, they had majorly over hired on the floor I worked on, and as a PRN employee I’m not guaranteed any work. However, it’s common courtesy in my experience to not hire if you don’t actually need the help, and there were many phrases like “we can use all the help we can get” and “we are always busy/slammed” thrown around in my interview, which makes me feel that they were not hiring/negotiating in good faith. It did not occur to me to include “must allow employee to work and subsequently get paid” to my list of “family-friendly” requirements! We are very fortunate that my income is not keeping our lights on or anything, but we have had to restructure the budget a little to accommodate me rarely working. The closest similar job is about an hour away, which is not workable with our family … so I’m kind of stuck. I’m hoping things will pick up in the winter, and I’m looking at cross-training to other departments to potentially be able to work more consistently. Most importantly, I delivered a healthy little boy in September, and he is a joy. I am scheduled to work again starting in November, but I suspect I will get more time off with him than I initially expected! If/when I have to take another position, I will certainly not be disclosing any medical info during my interview. Thanks for the advice and the solidarity of the commenters! 3. How can I help my dyslexic and ADHD employee write better? (#5 at the link) My staff member is doing great. To recap a couple of responses I gave in the comments of the original post: I had a chat with her of the form “how can I support you?” She had been employing a few of her own tactics like changing text colors and circulating things with others before sending things to me. I made sure the managers of other staff were aware and on board with them providing help. But I was happily proven wrong about our org’s appetite for AI, and we actually now have a limited set of tools approved. She (and others, including me!) are loving the help it provides. Roses have thorns, however, so now I have a new challenge. Without going into detail, I’ve received AI-generated work (from several people) that’s just not on point. I’m sure I’m not alone here. I wonder what the future looks like, since the reason why I pick up on this is because I cut my teeth in the pre-AI dark ages. How do we teach critical thinking and analysis using AI without requiring work that will negate the productivity benefits it provides? I’m genuinely fascinated and excited to see how this will all play out, and keen to hear the stories and advice from your readers. This particular staff member will be fine, though, because I have already seen that she has the skills required. I’m pretty sure she’s about to get promoted too :-) 4. We’re expected to provide treats for better-paid coworkers (#2 at the link) On treat day, my nosy coworker said something like, “I’ll be setting up for the potluck in the staff room at 9, so feel free to bring your … whatever you brought … any time before then!” to which I nodded noncommittally. It didn’t come up again. I’m relatively new at the job (last year was my first year), and while I haven’t experienced it myself, our principal has a reputation for taking criticism poorly and doubling down when she feels someone is challenging her authority/judgement. So I didn’t feel I had enough social capital to challenge the whole premise of “buy treats for your better-paid coworkers week.” But the good news is that my nosy coworker retired at the end of the school year, so I think going forward I should be able to get back to my plan of just quietly not signing up for anything. It was very validating to hear folks in the comments confirming that the whole thing was completely unreasonable! The post updates: my boss loves being told she’s beautiful, and more appeared first on Ask a Manager. View the full article

Google is being forced to cap all default search and AI app deals at one year. This will end the long-term agreements (think: Apple, Samsung) that helped secure its default status on billions of devices. Just don’t expect this to end Google’s search dynasty anytime soon. Driving the news. Judge Amit Mehta on Friday called the one-year cap a “hard-and-fast termination requirement” needed to enforce antitrust remedies after his 2024 ruling that Google illegally monopolized search and search ads, Business Insider reported. In September, Mehta ruled on Google search deals: “Google will be barred from entering or maintaining any exclusive contract relating to the distribution of Google Search, Chrome, Google Assistant, and the Gemini app. Google shall not enter or maintain any agreement that (1) conditions the licensing of the Play Store or any other Google application on the distribution, preloading, or placement of Google Search, Chrome, Google Assistant, or the Gemini app anywhere on a device; (2) conditions the receipt of revenue share payments for the placement of one Google application (e.g., Search, Chrome, Google Assistant, or the Gemini app) on the placement of another such application; (3) conditions the receipt of revenue share payments on maintaining Google Search, Chrome, Google Assistant, or the Gemini app on any device, browser, or search access point for more than one year; or (4) prohibits any partner from simultaneously distributing any other GSE, browser, or GenAI product search access point for more than one year; or (4) prohibits any partner from simultaneously distributing any other GSE, browser, or GenAI product.” Why we care. A more fragmented search landscape means user queries could start anywhere. If AI-powered rivals like OpenAI, Perplexity, or Microsoft make even small gains in search, you’ll face a broader and more complicated world to compete in. Reality check. This is a speed bump, not a shake-up. Google’s cash, brand power, and user habits still give it a big edge in yearly talks. View the full article

Chief says deal with data streaming platform will allow company to deploy generative artificial intelligence ‘faster’View the full article

President Donald The President is planning a $12 billion farm aid package, according to a White House official — a boost to farmers who have struggled to sell their crops while getting hit by rising costs after the president raised tariffs on China as part of a broader trade war. According to the official, who was granted anonymity to speak ahead of a planned announcement, The President will unveil the plan Monday afternoon at a White House roundtable with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, lawmakers, and farmers who grow corn, cotton, sorghum, soybeans, rice, cattle, wheat, and potatoes. Farmers have backed The President politically, but his aggressive trade policies and frequently changing tariff rates have come under increasing scrutiny because of the impact on the agricultural sector and because of broader consumer worries. The aid is the administration’s latest effort to defend The President’s economic stewardship and answer voter angst about rising costs—even as the president has dismissed concerns about affordability as a Democratic “hoax.” Upwards of $11 billion is set aside for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farmer Bridge Assistance program, which the White House says will offer one-time payments to farmers for row crops. Soybeans and sorghum were hit the hardest by the trade dispute with China because more than half of those crops are exported each year with most of the harvest going to China. The aid is meant to help farmers who have suffered from trade wars with other nations, inflation, and other market disruptions. The rest of the money will be for farmers who grow crops not covered under the bridge assistance program, according to the White House official. The money is intended to offer certainty to farmers as they market the current harvest, as well as plan for next year’s harvest. China purchases have been slow In October, after The President met Chinese leader Xi Jinping in South Korea, the White House said Beijing had promised to buy at least 12 million metric tons of U.S. soybeans by the end of the calendar year, plus 25 million metric tons a year in each of the next three years. Soybean farmers have been hit especially hard by The President’s trade war with China, which is the world’s largest buyer of soybeans. China has purchased more than 2.8 million metric tons of soybeans since The President announced the agreement at the end of October. That’s only about one quarter of what administration officials said China had promised, but Bessent has said China is on track to meet its goal by the end of February. “These prices haven’t come in, because the Chinese actually used our soybean farmers as pawns in the trade negotiations,” Bessent said on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” explaining why a “bridge payment” to farmers was needed. During his first presidency, The President also provided aid to farmers amid his trade wars. He gave them more than $22 billion in 2019 and nearly $46 billion in 2020, though that year also included aid related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The President has also been under pressure to address soaring beef prices, which have hit records for a number of reasons. Demand for beef has been strong at a time when drought has cut U.S. herds and imports from Mexico are down due to a resurgence in a parasite. The President has said he would allow for more imports of Argentine beef. He also had asked the Department of Justice to investigate foreign-owned meat packers he accused of driving up the price of beef, although he has not provided evidence to back his claims. On Saturday, The President signed an executive order directing the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission to look at “anti-competitive behavior” in food supply chains — including seed, fertilizer and equipment — and consider taking enforcement actions or developing new regulations. ___ An earlier version of this story incorrectly attributed the connection to tariffs to a White House official. —Seung Min Kim, Josh Funk, and Didi Tang, Associated Press Associated Press writers Michelle L. Price, Bill Barrow, and Jack Dura contributed to this report. View the full article

A report from AdWeek claimed Google privately told clients it plans to introduce ads in its Gemini AI chatbot in 2026 — but Google’s top ads executive is publicly denying it. Driving the news. AdWeek reported that Google reps, in recent calls with major advertisers, suggested that Gemini would get ad placements in 2026, separate from the company’s existing ads in AI Mode, the AI-powered search experience launched in March. Buyers said no prototypes, formats, or pricing were shown. The conversations were described as exploratory and lacked technical detail. Google says that’s wrong. Dan Taylor, Google’s VP of Global Ads, disputed the report directly on X, writing: “This story is based on uninformed, anonymous sources who are making inaccurate claims. There are no ads in the Gemini app and there are no current plans to change that.” Why we care. Advertisers are watching closely for monetization inside AI assistants, seen as the next major ad frontier. Conflicting signals about ads in Gemini hint at where Google may be headed with AI monetization, even if the company publicly denies immediate plans. Any move to bring paid placements into a high-engagement chatbot could reshape budgets, shift user behavior, and introduce an entirely new ad surface separate from search. Between the lines. The tension highlights a broader industry debate: whether AI chatbots should remain utility tools or evolve into new ad surfaces. Even speculation about ads inside Gemini is enough to spark planning discussions among agencies. What’s next. For now, Google insists Gemini remains ad-free. But with rivals exploring AI monetization and advertiser demand growing, the question isn’t going away — even if the timeline is. Dig Deeper. Report from AdWeek (registered account needed). View the full article

In oral arguments held Monday morning, a majority of Supreme Court justices seemed poised to overrule a 90-year-old precedent validating multimember independent commissions, but it remains uncertain what limits — if any — the court may impose on the president's removal powers. View the full article

The new Pentagon press corps gathered last week for their first in-person briefing. That’s since almost all credentialed reporters from traditional media companies surrendered their passes in October to protest new Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s strict media policy. Refusing to sign a 21-page Pentagon document that in effect banned journalists from trying to solicit any kind of information that was not pre-approved, the Pentagon instead issued passes to a newly credentialed corps of influencers, conspiracy theorists, and conservative commentators who happily agreed to the strict rules. The handpicked press corps were active on social media last week as they documented their first few days on the jobs. “The Fake News is OUT,” Wade Searle, who works for LifeSiteNews, a right-wing Catholic publication, posted on X. “LifeSiteNews is IN.” “The A-Team press corps has taken over type beat,” 23-year-old MAGA influencer Lance Johnston posted. He also uploaded a slideshow of photos of himself posing with Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. Others were otherwise occupied fighting over the desks of former press corp reporters. “The Pentagon cubicle that used to belong to @DanLamothe is now mine,” RC Maxwell, a reporter at the conservative outlet RedScare, posted on X, referring to a journalist at The Washington Post. “Out with the propagandists and hacks. In with the truth tellers who love America.” Conservative influencer ​​Cam Higby and conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer also shared photos of themselves claiming to be sitting in Lamothe’s old spot. The Post reporter shared a compilation of the images on X, writing, “Y’all are going to have to work this one out for yourselves.” During the three-day event, the new press corps didn’t miss an opportunity to take shots at their predecessors. “MSM Journalists wreaked havoc on the Pentagon during their time in the building,” posted Higby on X. He claimed that the “adversarial media” created a “hostile work environment” for staff, echoed by Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson who spoke of former press corp members “waltzing” into her office and “eavesdropping” on officials’ meetings. The new press corp instead brought the heat and kept the public informed on issues relating to national security. “Hegseth answered my questions. It’s off the record so no details but I am very pleased with his leadership,” John Konrad, a former ship captain and social media personality, reassured his X followers Wednesday. Last week also saw the release of the long-awaited inspector general’s report on Hegseth’s sharing of highly sensitive military attack plans on the unclassified app Signal earlier this year. “JUST IN: Advisor to @SecWar tells @RedState the IG report on SignalGate is an exoneration given that it proves no laws were broken, no classified information was shared, and the mission was a success,” Maxwell posted on X. That is despite the report explicitly saying that Hegseth’s actions could have led to U.S. soldiers being harmed. The new press also kept the public informed with reports of festivities in the Pentagon. “SANTA @ PENTAGON,” Higby posted. “Today Secretary of War Pete Hegseth introduced the children of America’s warfighters and civilian DoW staff to Santa, escorted in an armored military vehicle. Two soldiers in elf hats rapelled from the building as the vehicle arrived.” Johnston also captured the Pentagon Christmas tree lighting party for the public’s benefit. Last week, The New York Times sued the Pentagon and Hegseth over limits on press reporting. They alleged that the ban “seeks to restrict journalists’ ability to do what journalists have always done – ask questions of government employees and gather information to report stories that take the public beyond official pronouncements”. View the full article

Planner vs. Engineer is a well-known professional rivalry in the infrastructure world. The arguments are sometimes friendly, sometimes hostile, sometimes about important issues, sometimes insignificant. I’m in a peculiar spot because of my career as a “plangineer.” My parents helped me buy a civil engineering degree, but several years into my career, I bought the certified planning certificate. I know the two camps very well. The roundabout question Roundabouts are one of the many Planner vs. Engineer debates, and it happens to be a very important issue where emotions cloud good judgment. As much as I criticize the engineering profession, they are generally correct on this one. But that wasn’t always the case. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the status quo transportation engineering community believed wholeheartedly that roundabouts were not only good, but were silly, dangerous, would lead to gridlock, couldn’t be understood by American drivers, etc. The primary reasons for opposing roundabouts and defending traffic lights (the typical alternative) were speed and delay. That is, if an intersection design slowed down vehicles, that was bad. If there was real or perceived delay for drivers at intersections, that was bad. The status quo certified planners, spotting a thing engineers hated, praised the thing. Their reasons for supporting roundabouts included their function as a community gateway, a traffic calming feature, an environmentally sustainable design, and something that wasn’t so car-oriented like seemingly everything else dreamt up by traffic engineers. But in the 2000s, a fringe group of practitioners and academics who were claiming that roundabouts were [Gasp!] actually good started growing in numbers. Case studies were repeatedly finding the same results: roundabouts dramatically reduced vehicle speeds, reduced crashes, maintained or reduced overall travel time, and made it safer for pedestrians to cross the street. When the engineers became pro-roundabout, the planners became roundabout skeptics or flat out anti-roundabout. I lived through this transition. It was wild to behold. Modern roundabouts have been proven to be the safest form of at-grade intersection, and the most common claim from skeptics is “but cars don’t stop at roundabouts, so they must be dangerous for pedestrians.” That seems like a reasonable explanation, but it’s wrong. There are two reasons pedestrians are safer at roundabouts: slower vehicle speeds and shorter crossing distances. Speed is the difference between life and death Speed is the fundamental factor in crash severity. The difference between a person struck at 45 MPH (the standard American arterial speed limit) and one struck at 20 MPH (the standard design speed at a roundabout) is the difference between death and life. Roundabout geometry forces drivers to slow down. Even on a high-speed road, roundabouts are designed to slow approaching vehicles. Once drivers enter the circle itself, speeds drop even lower, giving them ample time to yield to people in crosswalks on the exit leg. The physical design of the roundabout makes speeding through nearly impossible. When drivers are moving slowly, they have time to see pedestrians, react, and stop. Shorter crossings are safer crossings Multi-lane roads get even wider at intersections, with multiple left-turn and right-turn lanes added to process vehicle queues during each signal cycle. Without these additional lanes, traffic would back up to adjacent signals. For pedestrians, this means crossing not just two lanes but potentially six or more, with threats coming from all directions. The longer pedestrians remain exposed to moving vehicles, the greater their risk. Turn lanes extend hundreds of feet before intersections, meaning a series of signalized intersections produces bloated corridors between them. These wide corridors invite speeding, and speeding leads to more severe crashes. Roundabouts eliminate the need for long turn lanes in every direction. Without them, the corridors between intersections can remain narrow, which naturally discourages high speeds throughout the entire roadway network, not just at intersections. Most modern roundabouts are designed so pedestrians never cross more than one or two lanes at a time without reaching a refuge island. The splitter islands that separate entering and exiting traffic create natural stopping points, breaking what would be a long, dangerous crossing into manageable segments. Retrofitting suburbia In the United States, the greatest life-saving potential for roundabouts lies in sprawling suburban areas along multi-lane arterials—precisely the environments where traffic engineers were trained to maximize vehicle flow at the expense of all else. These are the locations where pedestrians face the longest crossing distances, the highest speeds, and the most complex traffic movements. On tight urban streets with traditional grid patterns, signalized intersections can work well for pedestrians. But in suburban contexts, where intersections are spaced far apart and roads are designed for high speeds, roundabouts offer a proven solution for protecting vulnerable road users. As a certified planner who has worked as an engineer for many years, I don’t care which team gets the bragging rights for promoting pedestrian safety. I only care that we stop designing intersections and corridors in ways that are proven to be deadly. In suburbia, especially, every new or retrofitted multi-lane arterial crossing should default to a roundabout. View the full article

A B2B customer journey map outlines the stages and interactions a business customer experiences when engaging with a brand, from initial awareness to renewal. It highlights key touchpoints and the roles of various decision-makers involved in the purchasing process. Comprehending this journey is essential for identifying customer needs and pain points, which can guide organizations in crafting customized strategies. As you explore this topic further, consider how effectively mapping these journeys can drive customer satisfaction and loyalty. Key Takeaways A B2B customer journey map visualizes the stages and touchpoints in a customer’s interaction with a brand, enhancing understanding of their experience. It identifies pivotal moments that influence customer satisfaction and retention throughout the awareness, research, and decision-making stages. By recognizing touchpoints and pain points, businesses can streamline processes and foster stronger relationships with multiple decision-makers involved. Emotional engagement and personalized communication during the journey can significantly boost customer loyalty and retention rates. Continuous evaluation of the customer journey using data and feedback helps optimize strategies, improving overall customer experience and satisfaction. Understanding the B2B Customer Journey Grasping the B2B customer path is essential for any business aiming to succeed in today’s competitive market. The B2B customer experience consists of various stages, including awareness, research, decision-making, onboarding, usage, support, and renewal. Each of these stages involves specific touchpoints where customers interact with your brand. Recognizing these B2B customer experience stages helps you identify the pivotal moments that notably impact satisfaction and retention. Furthermore, effective B2B buyer experience mapping allows you to tailor your messaging and strategies to the needs of different stakeholders involved in the decision-making process. By analyzing touchpoints, you can address customer pain points, ensuring a cohesive experience that meets their nuanced needs, eventually driving long-term success. Key Stages of the B2B Customer Journey In the B2B customer progression, the awareness stage is vital as it marks the point where potential customers recognize their problems and start looking for solutions. You’ll often rely on content marketing and thought leadership to attract attention during this phase, guiding prospects toward your offerings. Once they move into the conversion stage, comprehending the dynamics of their decision-making process becomes fundamental, as it involves evaluating options and making commitments based on various factors, including product features and vendor reputation. Awareness Stage Insights What does it take to effectively engage potential customers during the awareness stage of the B2B customer experience? In this initial phase of the B2B customer progression, buyers identify their problems and start searching for solutions. Since research indicates that buyers spend merely 17% of their time interacting with vendors, it’s essential to provide quality content that helps them understand their needs and available options. You need to guarantee your presence across multiple channels to capture their attention, whether through blogs, social media, or informative webinars. This approach not only addresses their pain points but additionally builds brand recognition, setting a strong foundation for the next steps in the b2b marketing customer progression and b2b digital customer progression. Conversion Process Dynamics As potential customers move from the awareness stage to the conversion process, they enter a critical phase where the decision-making becomes paramount. During this stage of the B2B customer experience map, buyers assess options, negotiate terms, and require clear communication. They often spend a limited amount of time interacting directly with companies, therefore necessitating efficient engagement strategies. In the context of a B2B ecommerce customer experience or a B2B SaaS customer experience, it’s essential to provide customized solutions that address specific pain points. As you guide prospects through this process, focus on delivering thorough information and quality content that resonates with their needs. Continuous optimization of this stage will improve customer satisfaction and drive repeat business, eventually leading to loyalty and advocacy. The Role of Multiple Decision-Makers Maneuvering the B2B customer pathway can be particularly challenging due to the involvement of multiple decision-makers, typically ranging from six to ten individuals, each bringing unique perspectives and requirements to the purchasing process. You need to tailor your communication strategies to address the distinct motivations and pain points of each stakeholder. Research shows that buyers spend only 17% of their time interacting directly with vendors, making it vital to create effective engagement strategies that resonate with various decision-makers. Decision-Maker Role Key Focus Area Budget Holder Cost-effectiveness Technical Buyer Product specifications End User Usability and support Executive Sponsor Strategic alignment Understanding these dynamics is important for optimizing your B2B SaaS customer experience map. Importance of Customer Journey Mapping Mapping the customer experience is essential for enhancing your engagement strategies and identifying pain points that might hinder the buying process. By visualizing each stage and touchpoint, you can pinpoint where customers face challenges, allowing you to address these issues proactively. This approach not just streamlines the customer experience but additionally nurtures stronger relationships and improves overall satisfaction. Enhancing Engagement Strategies Comprehending the significance of customer pathway mapping is vital for improving engagement strategies in B2B environments. A well-structured B2B customer pathway map visualizes touchpoints, allowing you to identify gaps in engagement. By grasping the nonlinear nature of these pathways, you can tailor communication to meet the needs of various stakeholders involved in decision-making. Mapping additionally highlights friction points that hinder customer interaction, enabling targeted solutions to improve overall satisfaction. Implementing feedback mechanisms within your pathway map allows for continuous adaptation based on real-time customer insights. In the end, these improved engagement strategies lead to increased customer loyalty and retention, driving long-term success for your business. Prioritizing effective pathway mapping is important for optimizing customer experiences and nurturing lasting relationships. Identifying Pain Points Identifying pain points within the B2B customer progression is essential for enhancing overall customer satisfaction and driving business success. Customer experience mapping visualizes the entire process, helping you pinpoint specific areas where customers face obstacles or dissatisfaction. By analyzing interactions at various touchpoints, you can uncover friction points that hinder conversions and reduce overall satisfaction. Research shows that addressing these pain points can boost retention rates by up to 5%, greatly impacting your revenue. Continuous feedback collection allows for real-time adjustments, enabling you to proactively resolve issues before they escalate. Implementing a structured approach to mapping improves communication among teams, ensuring all departments are aligned in addressing pain points and enhancing the customer experience effectively. Identifying Touchpoints in the B2B Journey In the B2B customer experience, touchpoints represent vital interactions that occur throughout various stages, including awareness, consideration, conversion, service, and advocacy. Identifying these touchpoints is important for addressing the diverse needs of multiple decision-makers involved in the purchasing process. Each touchpoint, whether digital or analog, greatly influences customer perceptions and decisions. Consider focusing on these key touchpoints: Website Visits: Engaging content can attract potential buyers during the awareness stage. Social Media Interactions: Posts and responses can improve brand visibility and trust. Support Inquiries: Prompt and helpful responses can boost customer satisfaction and loyalty. Analyzing Customer Pain Points As you navigate the B2B customer path, recognizing and analyzing customer pain points becomes crucial for enhancing the overall experience. Research shows that 70% of B2B buyers encounter obstacles during their purchasing process, often because of unclear information or complex website navigation. By identifying these pain points—like long sales response times and difficulty finding relevant product details—you can implement targeted improvements that streamline the customer experience. Addressing pain points at each stage, from awareness to post-purchase, cultivates stronger relationships and boosts customer loyalty. Continuous monitoring of customer feedback and analytics enables you to adapt your strategies, effectively mitigating these issues and ensuring a smoother process for your customers, eventually leading to greater satisfaction and retention. The Impact of Emotional Engagement Emotional engagement plays a vital role in shaping your interactions with customers throughout the B2B process. By ensuring that touchpoints resonate emotionally, you can nurture relationships effectively even after the purchase, leading to greater customer loyalty. Furthermore, anticipating customer needs and providing customized solutions improves satisfaction, eventually driving retention and encouraging repeat business. Emotional Resonance in Touchpoints Comprehending the emotional resonance at various touchpoints throughout the B2B customer experience can greatly impact purchasing decisions, shaping how customers perceive their interactions with your brand. Emotional engagement plays a crucial role in customer loyalty and retention, as studies show: Positive emotional responses can lead to increased loyalty, making emotionally connected customers more than twice as valuable as satisfied ones. Personalized communication and supportive customer service can reduce churn rates by up to 30%, emphasizing the need for emotional touchpoints. Businesses prioritizing emotional resonance often see a 23% increase in sales, demonstrating the direct impact of emotional engagement on revenue growth. Nurturing Relationships Post-Purchase Nurturing relationships post-purchase is crucial for maintaining customer loyalty and maximizing the lifetime value of each client. Retaining an existing customer is five times cheaper than acquiring a new one, making continued engagement critical. Emotional connections markedly improve loyalty; 70% of customers are more likely to stay devoted to brands that understand and value them. Personalized post-purchase communication, such as customized follow-ups and support, can boost satisfaction by up to 30%. Implementing feedback mechanisms like surveys can improve emotional engagement, increasing retention rates by 14%. Furthermore, building a community around your product, such as user groups or forums, cultivates connections, leading to a 25% increase in advocacy and referrals among engaged customers. Anticipating Needs and Solutions Comprehending the needs of B2B customers at various stages of their process is vital for enhancing emotional engagement and making informed decisions. By effectively anticipating these needs, you can build stronger connections and improve overall satisfaction. Here are three key benefits of emotional engagement in B2B: Increased Loyalty: Emotionally engaged customers are more likely to stay with your brand, nurturing long-term relationships. Higher Conversion Rates: Customized solutions that address specific pain points resonate better with multiple stakeholders, leading to improved sales outcomes. Enhanced Customer Insights: Mapping the experience helps you gather valuable feedback, enabling you to refine your offerings and better meet customer expectations. Strategies for Optimizing the Customer Journey To optimize the B2B customer experience, it’s essential to focus on comprehending your customers’ needs and pain points throughout each stage of their process. Start by implementing a consistent omnichannel experience to guarantee seamless interactions, whether your customers engage via email, chat, or social media. Collecting and analyzing feedback at each stage allows you to adapt strategies effectively, enhancing satisfaction and retention rates. Tailor your approach for each phase; for example, provide personalized content during the awareness stage and targeted follow-ups during advocacy. Regularly monitor key metrics like customer lifetime value (CLV) and conversion rates to refine your strategies. These focused efforts can lead to sustained success and stronger customer loyalty in the competitive B2B environment. Leveraging Data and Analytics As businesses navigate the intricacies of the B2B customer experience, leveraging data and analytics becomes essential for comprehending customer behaviors and preferences. By analyzing this data, you can uncover valuable insights that improve your marketing strategies. Here are three key benefits of leveraging data and analytics: Identify High-Performing Touchpoints: Determine which interactions drive conversions, allowing you to focus your resources where they matter most. Gather Customer Feedback: Use tools like NPS and CSAT to assess satisfaction levels, pinpointing areas needing improvement. Monitor Trends: Continuously analyze experience data to identify shifts in customer expectations, ensuring your strategies remain relevant and effective. Utilizing these insights can lead to improved customer engagement and sustained growth, in the end strengthening your business relationships. Continuous Improvement and Evaluation Continuous improvement of the B2B customer experience map requires a systematic approach to collecting and analyzing customer feedback. Regularly gather insights using key metrics like Net Promoter Score (NPS), Customer Satisfaction (CSAT), and Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) to evaluate the path’s effectiveness. Monitoring these metrics helps you identify pain points and stages needing optimization. Tools such as Google Analytics and Hotjar can facilitate ongoing assessments of customer interactions across various touchpoints. By continuously updating your customer path map to reflect current data and trends, you’ll guarantee alignment with evolving customer expectations. This proactive evaluation leads to improved customer retention rates and satisfaction, eventually enhancing the overall effectiveness of your B2B customer path. Case Studies: Successful B2B Journey Maps Successful B2B customer experience maps have proven to be instrumental in driving significant improvements in conversion rates and customer retention across various industries. Here are a few notable case studies: A financial services company saw a 20% increase in conversion rates after identifying friction points in their application process. A technology firm improved demo request rates by 40% through targeted guides based on insights from their customer experience map. An ecommerce company reduced cart abandonment by 20% by enhancing the checkout experience with incentives, following their experience mapping analysis. These examples illustrate how a well-structured customer experience map can pinpoint areas for improvement, leading to measurable gains in performance and customer satisfaction. Future Trends in B2B Customer Journey Mapping The future of B2B customer experience mapping is set to evolve considerably as businesses increasingly leverage advanced technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning. You’ll see a rise in personalized and proactive customer experiences through the analysis of complex data sets. As remote work becomes commonplace, enhancing digital touchpoints and omnichannel strategies will be crucial to cater to diverse customer preferences. Real-time customer feedback mechanisms will enable you to adapt strategies quickly and address pain points effectively. Predictive analytics will help forecast customer behavior, tailoring experiences that boost conversion rates and customer satisfaction. Collaborative mapping techniques will involve multiple stakeholders, ensuring a thorough view of the customer experience and alignment in strategy execution across departments. Frequently Asked Questions What Is a B2B Customer Journey? A B2B customer pathway refers to the entire process a business buyer experiences, starting from awareness of a need through to post-purchase support and renewal. It typically includes stages like awareness, research, decision-making, and onboarding. You engage with various touchpoints, such as product demos and customer support, often involving multiple stakeholders. Comprehending this pathway helps you identify customer pain points and opportunities, eventually driving satisfaction and nurturing long-term relationships. What Is Customer Journey Mapping and Why Is It Important? Customer experience mapping visually represents the interactions between you and your customers throughout their purchasing process. It’s crucial as it helps you understand customer needs and expectations, identifying gaps in their experience. For example, if customers struggle during the decision phase, you can adjust your support accordingly. What Are the 5 A’s of Customer Journey Map? The 5 A’s of a customer experience map are Awareness, Appeal, Ask, Action, and Advocate. In the Awareness stage, customers recognize a need. Next, during Appeal, you engage their interest by showcasing solutions. The Ask phase involves customers seeking further information. Action is when they decide to purchase based on their findings. Finally, in the Advocate stage, satisfied customers share positive experiences, promoting your brand and influencing others. Each stage is essential for effective engagement. How to Create a B2B Customer Journey Map? To create a B2B customer experience path, start by defining your buyer personas, focusing on their demographics and pain points. Identify all customer touchpoints, including online interactions like social media and offline meetings. Structure your map by outlining the stages: awareness, consideration, conversion, service, and advocacy. Regularly analyze customer feedback and key metrics such as Net Promoter Score to identify improvement areas. Update the map continuously to guarantee it reflects current insights and improves customer experiences. Conclusion In conclusion, a B2B customer experience map is crucial for comprehending the complex interactions between your business and its clients. By identifying key stages and touchpoints, you can tailor strategies to meet the needs of multiple decision-makers effectively. Leveraging data allows for continuous improvement, enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty. As you implement and refine your experience mapping process, you position your organization for strategic growth, ensuring that you remain responsive to the evolving demands of the marketplace. Image via Google Gemini This article, "What Is a B2B Customer Journey Map and Its Importance?" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

A B2B customer journey map outlines the stages and interactions a business customer experiences when engaging with a brand, from initial awareness to renewal. It highlights key touchpoints and the roles of various decision-makers involved in the purchasing process. Comprehending this journey is essential for identifying customer needs and pain points, which can guide organizations in crafting customized strategies. As you explore this topic further, consider how effectively mapping these journeys can drive customer satisfaction and loyalty. Key Takeaways A B2B customer journey map visualizes the stages and touchpoints in a customer’s interaction with a brand, enhancing understanding of their experience. It identifies pivotal moments that influence customer satisfaction and retention throughout the awareness, research, and decision-making stages. By recognizing touchpoints and pain points, businesses can streamline processes and foster stronger relationships with multiple decision-makers involved. Emotional engagement and personalized communication during the journey can significantly boost customer loyalty and retention rates. Continuous evaluation of the customer journey using data and feedback helps optimize strategies, improving overall customer experience and satisfaction. Understanding the B2B Customer Journey Grasping the B2B customer path is essential for any business aiming to succeed in today’s competitive market. The B2B customer experience consists of various stages, including awareness, research, decision-making, onboarding, usage, support, and renewal. Each of these stages involves specific touchpoints where customers interact with your brand. Recognizing these B2B customer experience stages helps you identify the pivotal moments that notably impact satisfaction and retention. Furthermore, effective B2B buyer experience mapping allows you to tailor your messaging and strategies to the needs of different stakeholders involved in the decision-making process. By analyzing touchpoints, you can address customer pain points, ensuring a cohesive experience that meets their nuanced needs, eventually driving long-term success. Key Stages of the B2B Customer Journey In the B2B customer progression, the awareness stage is vital as it marks the point where potential customers recognize their problems and start looking for solutions. You’ll often rely on content marketing and thought leadership to attract attention during this phase, guiding prospects toward your offerings. Once they move into the conversion stage, comprehending the dynamics of their decision-making process becomes fundamental, as it involves evaluating options and making commitments based on various factors, including product features and vendor reputation. Awareness Stage Insights What does it take to effectively engage potential customers during the awareness stage of the B2B customer experience? In this initial phase of the B2B customer progression, buyers identify their problems and start searching for solutions. Since research indicates that buyers spend merely 17% of their time interacting with vendors, it’s essential to provide quality content that helps them understand their needs and available options. You need to guarantee your presence across multiple channels to capture their attention, whether through blogs, social media, or informative webinars. This approach not only addresses their pain points but additionally builds brand recognition, setting a strong foundation for the next steps in the b2b marketing customer progression and b2b digital customer progression. Conversion Process Dynamics As potential customers move from the awareness stage to the conversion process, they enter a critical phase where the decision-making becomes paramount. During this stage of the B2B customer experience map, buyers assess options, negotiate terms, and require clear communication. They often spend a limited amount of time interacting directly with companies, therefore necessitating efficient engagement strategies. In the context of a B2B ecommerce customer experience or a B2B SaaS customer experience, it’s essential to provide customized solutions that address specific pain points. As you guide prospects through this process, focus on delivering thorough information and quality content that resonates with their needs. Continuous optimization of this stage will improve customer satisfaction and drive repeat business, eventually leading to loyalty and advocacy. The Role of Multiple Decision-Makers Maneuvering the B2B customer pathway can be particularly challenging due to the involvement of multiple decision-makers, typically ranging from six to ten individuals, each bringing unique perspectives and requirements to the purchasing process. You need to tailor your communication strategies to address the distinct motivations and pain points of each stakeholder. Research shows that buyers spend only 17% of their time interacting directly with vendors, making it vital to create effective engagement strategies that resonate with various decision-makers. Decision-Maker Role Key Focus Area Budget Holder Cost-effectiveness Technical Buyer Product specifications End User Usability and support Executive Sponsor Strategic alignment Understanding these dynamics is important for optimizing your B2B SaaS customer experience map. Importance of Customer Journey Mapping Mapping the customer experience is essential for enhancing your engagement strategies and identifying pain points that might hinder the buying process. By visualizing each stage and touchpoint, you can pinpoint where customers face challenges, allowing you to address these issues proactively. This approach not just streamlines the customer experience but additionally nurtures stronger relationships and improves overall satisfaction. Enhancing Engagement Strategies Comprehending the significance of customer pathway mapping is vital for improving engagement strategies in B2B environments. A well-structured B2B customer pathway map visualizes touchpoints, allowing you to identify gaps in engagement. By grasping the nonlinear nature of these pathways, you can tailor communication to meet the needs of various stakeholders involved in decision-making. Mapping additionally highlights friction points that hinder customer interaction, enabling targeted solutions to improve overall satisfaction. Implementing feedback mechanisms within your pathway map allows for continuous adaptation based on real-time customer insights. In the end, these improved engagement strategies lead to increased customer loyalty and retention, driving long-term success for your business. Prioritizing effective pathway mapping is important for optimizing customer experiences and nurturing lasting relationships. Identifying Pain Points Identifying pain points within the B2B customer progression is essential for enhancing overall customer satisfaction and driving business success. Customer experience mapping visualizes the entire process, helping you pinpoint specific areas where customers face obstacles or dissatisfaction. By analyzing interactions at various touchpoints, you can uncover friction points that hinder conversions and reduce overall satisfaction. Research shows that addressing these pain points can boost retention rates by up to 5%, greatly impacting your revenue. Continuous feedback collection allows for real-time adjustments, enabling you to proactively resolve issues before they escalate. Implementing a structured approach to mapping improves communication among teams, ensuring all departments are aligned in addressing pain points and enhancing the customer experience effectively. Identifying Touchpoints in the B2B Journey In the B2B customer experience, touchpoints represent vital interactions that occur throughout various stages, including awareness, consideration, conversion, service, and advocacy. Identifying these touchpoints is important for addressing the diverse needs of multiple decision-makers involved in the purchasing process. Each touchpoint, whether digital or analog, greatly influences customer perceptions and decisions. Consider focusing on these key touchpoints: Website Visits: Engaging content can attract potential buyers during the awareness stage. Social Media Interactions: Posts and responses can improve brand visibility and trust. Support Inquiries: Prompt and helpful responses can boost customer satisfaction and loyalty. Analyzing Customer Pain Points As you navigate the B2B customer path, recognizing and analyzing customer pain points becomes crucial for enhancing the overall experience. Research shows that 70% of B2B buyers encounter obstacles during their purchasing process, often because of unclear information or complex website navigation. By identifying these pain points—like long sales response times and difficulty finding relevant product details—you can implement targeted improvements that streamline the customer experience. Addressing pain points at each stage, from awareness to post-purchase, cultivates stronger relationships and boosts customer loyalty. Continuous monitoring of customer feedback and analytics enables you to adapt your strategies, effectively mitigating these issues and ensuring a smoother process for your customers, eventually leading to greater satisfaction and retention. The Impact of Emotional Engagement Emotional engagement plays a vital role in shaping your interactions with customers throughout the B2B process. By ensuring that touchpoints resonate emotionally, you can nurture relationships effectively even after the purchase, leading to greater customer loyalty. Furthermore, anticipating customer needs and providing customized solutions improves satisfaction, eventually driving retention and encouraging repeat business. Emotional Resonance in Touchpoints Comprehending the emotional resonance at various touchpoints throughout the B2B customer experience can greatly impact purchasing decisions, shaping how customers perceive their interactions with your brand. Emotional engagement plays a crucial role in customer loyalty and retention, as studies show: Positive emotional responses can lead to increased loyalty, making emotionally connected customers more than twice as valuable as satisfied ones. Personalized communication and supportive customer service can reduce churn rates by up to 30%, emphasizing the need for emotional touchpoints. Businesses prioritizing emotional resonance often see a 23% increase in sales, demonstrating the direct impact of emotional engagement on revenue growth. Nurturing Relationships Post-Purchase Nurturing relationships post-purchase is crucial for maintaining customer loyalty and maximizing the lifetime value of each client. Retaining an existing customer is five times cheaper than acquiring a new one, making continued engagement critical. Emotional connections markedly improve loyalty; 70% of customers are more likely to stay devoted to brands that understand and value them. Personalized post-purchase communication, such as customized follow-ups and support, can boost satisfaction by up to 30%. Implementing feedback mechanisms like surveys can improve emotional engagement, increasing retention rates by 14%. Furthermore, building a community around your product, such as user groups or forums, cultivates connections, leading to a 25% increase in advocacy and referrals among engaged customers. Anticipating Needs and Solutions Comprehending the needs of B2B customers at various stages of their process is vital for enhancing emotional engagement and making informed decisions. By effectively anticipating these needs, you can build stronger connections and improve overall satisfaction. Here are three key benefits of emotional engagement in B2B: Increased Loyalty: Emotionally engaged customers are more likely to stay with your brand, nurturing long-term relationships. Higher Conversion Rates: Customized solutions that address specific pain points resonate better with multiple stakeholders, leading to improved sales outcomes. Enhanced Customer Insights: Mapping the experience helps you gather valuable feedback, enabling you to refine your offerings and better meet customer expectations. Strategies for Optimizing the Customer Journey To optimize the B2B customer experience, it’s essential to focus on comprehending your customers’ needs and pain points throughout each stage of their process. Start by implementing a consistent omnichannel experience to guarantee seamless interactions, whether your customers engage via email, chat, or social media. Collecting and analyzing feedback at each stage allows you to adapt strategies effectively, enhancing satisfaction and retention rates. Tailor your approach for each phase; for example, provide personalized content during the awareness stage and targeted follow-ups during advocacy. Regularly monitor key metrics like customer lifetime value (CLV) and conversion rates to refine your strategies. These focused efforts can lead to sustained success and stronger customer loyalty in the competitive B2B environment. Leveraging Data and Analytics As businesses navigate the intricacies of the B2B customer experience, leveraging data and analytics becomes essential for comprehending customer behaviors and preferences. By analyzing this data, you can uncover valuable insights that improve your marketing strategies. Here are three key benefits of leveraging data and analytics: Identify High-Performing Touchpoints: Determine which interactions drive conversions, allowing you to focus your resources where they matter most. Gather Customer Feedback: Use tools like NPS and CSAT to assess satisfaction levels, pinpointing areas needing improvement. Monitor Trends: Continuously analyze experience data to identify shifts in customer expectations, ensuring your strategies remain relevant and effective. Utilizing these insights can lead to improved customer engagement and sustained growth, in the end strengthening your business relationships. Continuous Improvement and Evaluation Continuous improvement of the B2B customer experience map requires a systematic approach to collecting and analyzing customer feedback. Regularly gather insights using key metrics like Net Promoter Score (NPS), Customer Satisfaction (CSAT), and Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) to evaluate the path’s effectiveness. Monitoring these metrics helps you identify pain points and stages needing optimization. Tools such as Google Analytics and Hotjar can facilitate ongoing assessments of customer interactions across various touchpoints. By continuously updating your customer path map to reflect current data and trends, you’ll guarantee alignment with evolving customer expectations. This proactive evaluation leads to improved customer retention rates and satisfaction, eventually enhancing the overall effectiveness of your B2B customer path. Case Studies: Successful B2B Journey Maps Successful B2B customer experience maps have proven to be instrumental in driving significant improvements in conversion rates and customer retention across various industries. Here are a few notable case studies: A financial services company saw a 20% increase in conversion rates after identifying friction points in their application process. A technology firm improved demo request rates by 40% through targeted guides based on insights from their customer experience map. An ecommerce company reduced cart abandonment by 20% by enhancing the checkout experience with incentives, following their experience mapping analysis. These examples illustrate how a well-structured customer experience map can pinpoint areas for improvement, leading to measurable gains in performance and customer satisfaction. Future Trends in B2B Customer Journey Mapping The future of B2B customer experience mapping is set to evolve considerably as businesses increasingly leverage advanced technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning. You’ll see a rise in personalized and proactive customer experiences through the analysis of complex data sets. As remote work becomes commonplace, enhancing digital touchpoints and omnichannel strategies will be crucial to cater to diverse customer preferences. Real-time customer feedback mechanisms will enable you to adapt strategies quickly and address pain points effectively. Predictive analytics will help forecast customer behavior, tailoring experiences that boost conversion rates and customer satisfaction. Collaborative mapping techniques will involve multiple stakeholders, ensuring a thorough view of the customer experience and alignment in strategy execution across departments. Frequently Asked Questions What Is a B2B Customer Journey? A B2B customer pathway refers to the entire process a business buyer experiences, starting from awareness of a need through to post-purchase support and renewal. It typically includes stages like awareness, research, decision-making, and onboarding. You engage with various touchpoints, such as product demos and customer support, often involving multiple stakeholders. Comprehending this pathway helps you identify customer pain points and opportunities, eventually driving satisfaction and nurturing long-term relationships. What Is Customer Journey Mapping and Why Is It Important? Customer experience mapping visually represents the interactions between you and your customers throughout their purchasing process. It’s crucial as it helps you understand customer needs and expectations, identifying gaps in their experience. For example, if customers struggle during the decision phase, you can adjust your support accordingly. What Are the 5 A’s of Customer Journey Map? The 5 A’s of a customer experience map are Awareness, Appeal, Ask, Action, and Advocate. In the Awareness stage, customers recognize a need. Next, during Appeal, you engage their interest by showcasing solutions. The Ask phase involves customers seeking further information. Action is when they decide to purchase based on their findings. Finally, in the Advocate stage, satisfied customers share positive experiences, promoting your brand and influencing others. Each stage is essential for effective engagement. How to Create a B2B Customer Journey Map? To create a B2B customer experience path, start by defining your buyer personas, focusing on their demographics and pain points. Identify all customer touchpoints, including online interactions like social media and offline meetings. Structure your map by outlining the stages: awareness, consideration, conversion, service, and advocacy. Regularly analyze customer feedback and key metrics such as Net Promoter Score to identify improvement areas. Update the map continuously to guarantee it reflects current insights and improves customer experiences. Conclusion In conclusion, a B2B customer experience map is crucial for comprehending the complex interactions between your business and its clients. By identifying key stages and touchpoints, you can tailor strategies to meet the needs of multiple decision-makers effectively. Leveraging data allows for continuous improvement, enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty. As you implement and refine your experience mapping process, you position your organization for strategic growth, ensuring that you remain responsive to the evolving demands of the marketplace. Image via Google Gemini This article, "What Is a B2B Customer Journey Map and Its Importance?" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

For many who grew up visiting older relatives during the holidays, memories of childhood Christmas are swathed in a warm glow that feels like the calling card of the season: a combination of colorful bulbs, lit candles, and soft lamplight. In recent years, though, it feels like the holiday season has traded its cozy tones for a much cooler, even sterile color palette. As it turns out, that’s not just a quirk of our rosy collective memory. David Andora, a multidisciplinary creative who’s worked in branding, production design, specialized lighting, and parade events, set out to understand why Christmas looks so different today. He discovered that, with the advent of LED technology, classic holiday lighting has become something of a lost art. “When LED lights started becoming the norm for Christmas lights, which happened quite a while ago, one of the things that was completely missing was that warm, peachy glow that came off of those incandescent painted big bulbs,” Andora says. “Each year I would go to the big box resellers, look at the new Christmas lights, and wonder, ‘Why is no one making these?’” So, he decided to do it himself. Andora’s company, Tru-Tone, caters to a growing audience of customers who want the look of retro Christmas without any of the accompanying fire hazards. The company declined to share exact sales numbers with Fast Company, but it’s seen major demand since its founding in 2020, experiencing growth of about 50% over the past several consecutive years. A 25-light set of Tru-Tone bulbs costs about $65, making them significantly pricier than similar options at big box stores (a 100-count strand at Home Depot that retails for about $50). Tru-Tone’s secret, Andora says, comes down to a fairly simple design trick that pairs modern LED technology with a vintage lighting technique. Why are today’s Christmas lights so bad? During his research process, Andora found that the Christmas light manufacturing process has changed drastically since the mid-20th century. In that era, almost all holiday lights were incandescents, or bulbs that emit light via heat. The actual light source was all one color—a warm white hue—and, to make it colorful, American manufacturers like GE (one of the largest holiday light makers at the time) would add translucent bulbs with color washes on top. This combination created the peachy glow that defines Christmas nostalgia. There was just one major drawback to incandescent Christmas lights: they were hot. Like, really hot. “Your parents were constantly warning you to never leave the tree lit unattended,” Andora says. “If you left the room, the tree had to be turned off because there were all these horror stories of trees burning people’s houses down with these blazingly hot light bulbs.” LED lights began to replace incandescents in the late ‘90s, and manufacturing largely moved overseas to China. Unlike incandescents, almost all LED holiday lights on the market rely on colored LED diodes, rather than color-washed bulbs, to produce their final look. Colors from an LED diode are deeply saturated, “pure” colors emitted from a very narrow spectrum of colored light, whereas white incandescent light filtered through a colorful bulb produces a wider spectrum of light. This difference in the breadth of light spectrum is what makes many LED bulbs appear harsher and more electronic (even if they’re trying to recreate a “warmer” appearance), whereas vintage incandescents have a blurry, glowing look. For Chinese manufacturers, this process makes sense, Andora says. Producing lights that draw their color from the LED itself is much simpler and more cost-effective than the incandescent technique, on top of LEDs being significantly more environmentally friendly. In addition, he says, Chinese manufacturers typically don’t have the same nostalgic associations with peachy tones that American consumers do, meaning that modern LED bulbs are also considered more aesthetically appealing. “The nostalgia for warm-colored Christmas lights is very Western, not part of the region where these lights come from. The factories view the colored-diode lights as easier, less costly, and more beautiful,” Andora says. “Very little development of these products is coming from the U.S. Most of this happens from the factories, and provides a catalog to resellers, also shaping what we see for sale here.” To recreate the vintage Christmas look, he would need to both rethink today’s design process and convince manufacturers to adopt a new process. How Tru-Tone recreated the vintage incandescent look Tru-Tone started as a passion project from a basement in Michigan. Andora spent a year experimenting with his prototype before landing on a final product that he felt looked almost identical to the real thing. To recreate vintage incandescents, Tru-Tone’s products use the same basic process as the original lights. Every light is a warm white LED that’s fitted with a tinted bulb on top to produce the actual color. Inside the bulb, the light itself is created by warm white LED “filaments”—an array of very tiny LED’s used to mimic a tungsten wire filament—which create their warm white color with a color-tuned phosphor coating. Andora says this technique already exists in modern household lighting to produce a warmer effect, but Tru-Tone is the first to bring it to holiday lighting, likely because it adda an extra layer of inefficiency to the manufacturing process. To capture the nostalgic magic of vintage Christmas lights, Andora experimented with theater gels to perfect each bulb’s color wash. He used archival incandescent light samples from a range of periods, dating from the ’50s all the way to the ’90s. Once Andora had an actual product, the real challenge was convincing an overseas manufacturer to sign on. Hiring a manufacturer was made even more complicated by the fact that Andora hand-designs all of Tru-Tone’s packaging (and its delightfully retro website) to resemble vintage advertisements, which, he says, often included font alignment inaccuracies and printing errors that lend them a certain charm. Today, he provides manufactures with a full packet of information—translated to Chinese—explaining Tru-Tone’s premise and assuring bulb manufacturers and packaging printers that the brand’s quirks are intentional. “You see a lot of vintage-style design these days that I joke is ‘Old Navy-style retro,’” Andora says. “It’s really just retro font, and that’s the end of it—the design isn’t as authentic. I think that what makes us special is that I try to really make things feel like you pulled it out of your grandmother’s attic.” The return of a nostalgic Christmas When Tru-Tone launched its first small batch of lights via social media in 2020, they sold out within two weeks. Since then, the brand has been steadily expanding and adding new product lines while navigating the typical growing pains of a new small business. One of the main problems it’s faced, Andora says, is not having enough stock to keep up with demand. While that struggle has diminished as he’s developed some “good relationships” with overseas manufacturing partners over the years, Tru-Tone is still actively sold out of several popular items. In the future, Andora says, he’d love to begin manufacturing in the U.S.—though that’s currently more of a pipe dream than an actionable reality, given the lack of infrastructure for such an undertaking in the states. Andora believes that interest in vintage Christmas aesthetics is currently on the rise—and big box retailers seem to agree. According to a Home Depot spokesperson, demand for nostalgic holiday aesthetics is one of the major trends they’re noticing this year. That’s evident on TikTok, where a search for “vintage Christmas” yields hundreds of aspirational videos, DIY concepts, and nostalgia-core clips. And Pinterest data shows that searches for “nostalgic christmas aesthetic” are up 1,130% this November compared to last November, while “colorful vintage Christmas” and “vintage retro Christmas” are up 1,500% and 100%, respectively. Customers are turning away from the bright white, blue, and millennial grey aesthetics in favor of a classic Christmas, and Tru-Tone is on the leading edge of that shift. “I think that mid-century design, especially related to Christmas, is definitely reaching a peak,” Andora says. “After with the grey and beige interior trend, people are looking for more color in their lives, and the Christmas holiday is the perfect time for people to really want cozy, colorful, comfy vibes.” View the full article

When Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak built Apple in a garage, the incumbents they were up against were slow-moving hardware companies. When Jeff Bezos started Amazon, Barnes & Noble wasn’t pouring billions into machine learning or cloud infrastructure. This doesn’t mean that it was easy for these entrepreneurs to change the face of whole industries. It was not. But it was at least possible. Back then, giants could be out-innovated because they were bureaucratic, cautious, and often blind to the potential of what the upstart start-ups were building. The situation is very different today. The startup landscape has changed radically. Where once it was populated by bootstrapping innovators who hoped to build giants from tiny seeds, today many of the most promising opportunities are gobbled up by firms that can deploy billions of dollars in resources long before they start making revenue. Often, these companies are funded by giants themselves, whether that’s the enormous PE and VC firms that dominate the Silicon Valley landscape or existing tech hyperscalers, who work hard to ensure that their dominance won’t be threatened by some offbeat newcomer. Microsoft, for example, now owns approximately 27% of OpenAI’s newly restructured for-profit entity—a share valued at roughly US$135 billion—after investing some US$13.8 billion across the early life of the AI firm. Amazon, meanwhile, has invested $8 billion into the AI startup Anthropic and supported it with extensive infrastructure-building. Not to be left behind, Alphabet has channeled around $3 billion into Anthropic as well. The established giants are also pouring almost unimaginable resources directly into their own innovation efforts. A 2025 report found that five of the biggest US tech companies—Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft—invested $227 billion in R&D in 2024, which is more than the US government’s total non-defense R&D budget; indeed, it is more than the annual R&D investments of most countries. These investments have predictable effects. Over the last decade, the research output of the big tech companies has dramatically outpaced that of other researchers (typically academics at universities). Crucially, from a commercial perspective, this kind of fundamental research leads to patents that can then be monetized. A recent report from the World Intellectual Property Organization found that large corporations dominate patent applications for AI-related applications and techniques. In contrast to previous times, the giant corporations are now also the disruptors—either directly or through their substantial investments in other companies. These giants are doing deep research, filing patents, and pouring resources into new ventures. An entrepreneur today is not competing with a handful of people with big ideas and small resources. In most major markets, tiny startups now have no choice but to get into the ring to duke it out toe-to-toe with an 800-pound gorilla. The game has changed on a fundamental level. Entrepreneurship today The old assumption was that entrepreneurs could out-innovate big companies, using their small size and agility to pivot twice before the traditional lumbering beasts could even begin to turn. But the statistics show that this assumption no longer holds. Entrepreneurs are not able to out-spend, out-compute, or out-research the giants. Yes, a privileged few entrepreneurs—typically those with deep connections in Silicon Valley—can still raise enormous sums and aim to reshape entire industries. But for most founders, that path simply isn’t available. And here’s what often goes unsaid: it doesn’t need to be. You don’t need billions in seed funding or a Rolodex of prominent venture capitalists to build something valuable. What you need is expertise so deep that no one can challenge you. This article is about a different path—one that any entrepreneur can take, whether in tech or far beyond it. The principles here apply to healthcare, construction, professional services, manufacturing, and countless other fields where deep expertise creates real value. The new entrepreneurial opportunity lies not in disrupting entire industries, but in becoming the undisputed authority in a problem space in which your specialized knowledge defines your competitive advantage. This isn’t about slipping under the radar or being too small to notice. It’s about being so specialized—so clearly the expert—that you effectively build a moat around your niche. Here are three things that can help entrepreneurs do just that. Become the domain expert The most reliable path to taking ownership of a market niche is simple: become the domain expert. As an expert, you know the vocabulary, you know which problems are just annoying and which are also important. You know the workarounds people use when traditional systems fail and you know the ways in which those systems normally do fail. As a domain expert, you aren’t selling a vision of the future. You are selling the fact that you have spent years in the trenches and you know things that cannot be learned from market research or Google searches or AI queries. You are selling something that differentiates you from the big corporations that cater to mass audiences—expertise that is both narrow and deep. The kind of expertise that can’t be replicated by a team of generalist engineers, no matter how many resources they throw at the problem. Start Here: Pick one domain you know well and spend a week documenting three problems that matter intensely and that cannot be solved by a generalist solution. Define your specialization ruthlessly Your job isn’t to find the biggest market. It’s to find a market where your expertise gives you an unassailable advantage—one in which even well-funded competitors couldn’t match your depth of understanding. So, instead of “I have a vision for transforming healthcare,” it’s “I spent 10 years as a hospital administrator and I know exactly why the equipment maintenance scheduling system creates safety risks that nobody’s addressing.” Or, instead of “I’m going to disrupt construction,” it’s “I worked on 50 residential job sites and I understand why tool checkout tracking breaks down and costs contractors thousands per project.” A trillion-dollar company is not going to deploy a team of 40 engineers to solve a scheduling quirk faced by 10 mid-sized hospitals. Meta is not spinning up a new product line to solve equipment-tracking failures on residential construction sites. Alphabet isn’t obsessing over the peculiarities of compliance reporting in boutique insurance firms. And even if they did, they couldn’t match the hard-won expertise of someone who has lived these problems for a decade. So you can. Start Here: Write down your idea. Then ask: “Could a well-funded generalist team outcompete me here?” If yes, go deeper into your specialization until the answer is no. Solve the specific problem from end to end Giants build platforms. They build tools. They build solutions designed to work reasonably well for millions of different users with millions of different needs. By necessity, that means they solve problems partially—they will get their many different customers 70% of the way to a solution and then leave them to figure out the final stretch. As the true expert, you can do something they never will: solve the customer’s specific problem from end to end. When you’ve spent years living inside a specific domain, you understand not just the obvious pain points but the second-order complications, the upstream causes, the downstream consequences, the workarounds people have layered on top of broken systems. You see the complete picture. That means you can deliver a complete solution—one that doesn’t require your clients to bridge the gap between what the tool does and what they actually need. That depth commands a premium. Clients aren’t paying for a product that they can use to solve a problem; they are paying you for the solution itself, built by someone who understands their reality. Start Here: Think about the problem you solve. What’s the gap between existing solutions and what your clients actually need? That gap is where your expertise lives—and where your value lies. You can still win You don’t need venture capital connections. You don’t need billions in seed funding. You don’t need to be in tech. What you need is expertise so deep and specialized that you can own the specialized problems the industry giants can’t even see. Instead of trying to disrupt whole industries, the winning move today is to leverage domain expertise so you become the irreplaceable authority in a space so specialized that competition becomes irrelevant. The giants will keep chasing the billion-dollar markets. Let them. Your expertise is your moat and, if you use it correctly, they will never be able to cross it. View the full article

The all-stock acquisition of Mountain Commerce Bancorp in Knoxville marks the Arkansas-based company's first M&A foray since 2022. View the full article

Salesforce and Amazon Web Services (AWS) are collaborating to introduce a groundbreaking offering for small businesses looking to leverage artificial intelligence (AI). The newly announced Agentforce 360 for AWS promises to make AI more accessible, while addressing critical concerns around trust, governance, and efficiency—issues that have often hindered smaller enterprises from effectively adopting AI technologies. Small business owners are increasingly aware that AI can drive efficiency, improve customer experience, and unlock new revenue streams. Yet, the complexities of procurement and the fear of data misuse often dampen enthusiasm for such technologies. With this partnership, Salesforce and AWS aim to alleviate these concerns by providing a robust, secure platform tailored for AI deployment. Agentforce 360 is built on the AWS infrastructure, allowing users to tap into the proven capabilities of Amazon Bedrock—AWS’s foundational models for AI. This solution will be available exclusively through the AWS Marketplace starting early 2026, with features designed to minimize costs and streamline the purchasing process. One of the standout components of Agentforce 360 is its Atlas Reasoning Engine, which offers transparency in how AI agents think, plan, and act. For businesses in highly regulated fields, this transparency is crucial, as it automatically generates an immutable audit trail for every action, helping companies remain compliant with stringent regulations. Quotes from industry leaders provide further context on the significance of this offering. Daniel Bernard, Chief Business Officer at CrowdStrike, commented on the collaboration, stating, “Agentforce on AWS gives us the power to deploy AI agents that actually work – fast, secure, and built on the infrastructure we trust.” This endorsement from a current user illustrates the potential for Agentforce 360 to deliver real value. Another focal point is the Agentforce 360 Prompt Builder. This tool leverages generative AI to create accurate, relevant prompts based on the user’s own data. The flexibility to choose from various AI models, including those from reputable sources like Anthropic and Amazon, gives small businesses the power to tailor the solution to their unique needs. Importantly, the integration of Agentforce 360 allows businesses to consolidate their AI spend across various cloud services, which could result in financial savings. The use of private pricing and consolidated billing further simplifies the procurement process, allowing companies to make the most of their existing budgets while managing IT expenditures with greater clarity and efficiency. However, small business owners should be aware of the challenges that may come with adopting such advanced technology. The initial learning curve associated with implementing AI solutions can be steep, especially for businesses without prior experience in tech adoption. Ensuring that employees are trained and that data governance practices are robust will be critical in successfully integrating these tools. Additionally, while reassurance has been given regarding data security—with claims that customer data will not be used for external training or stored elsewhere—business owners must still conduct due diligence to ensure that their specific compliance requirements are met. Salesforce’s existing framework of trust offers businesses a controlled environment where they can confidently adopt AI without compromising security. The Salesforce Trust Boundary and the Agentforce Trust Layer create a secure perimeter that keeps data management in check, giving small businesses an opportunity to innovate while protecting user data. As small business owners consider whether to invest in Agentforce 360, actively examining how AI can streamline operations and drive customer engagement could lead to substantial benefits. With a solution that emphasizes both security and simplicity in procurement, Agentforce 360 for AWS could represent a pivotal step for small businesses on their AI journey. This service will hit the AWS Marketplace in early 2026, promising a future where AI integration is less daunting, more feasible, and tailored specifically to the needs of smaller enterprises. For more information on the offering, prospective users can visit the official announcement here. Image via Google Gemini This article, "Salesforce and AWS Unite to Launch Secure AI Solution for Enterprises" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

Salesforce and Amazon Web Services (AWS) are collaborating to introduce a groundbreaking offering for small businesses looking to leverage artificial intelligence (AI). The newly announced Agentforce 360 for AWS promises to make AI more accessible, while addressing critical concerns around trust, governance, and efficiency—issues that have often hindered smaller enterprises from effectively adopting AI technologies. Small business owners are increasingly aware that AI can drive efficiency, improve customer experience, and unlock new revenue streams. Yet, the complexities of procurement and the fear of data misuse often dampen enthusiasm for such technologies. With this partnership, Salesforce and AWS aim to alleviate these concerns by providing a robust, secure platform tailored for AI deployment. Agentforce 360 is built on the AWS infrastructure, allowing users to tap into the proven capabilities of Amazon Bedrock—AWS’s foundational models for AI. This solution will be available exclusively through the AWS Marketplace starting early 2026, with features designed to minimize costs and streamline the purchasing process. One of the standout components of Agentforce 360 is its Atlas Reasoning Engine, which offers transparency in how AI agents think, plan, and act. For businesses in highly regulated fields, this transparency is crucial, as it automatically generates an immutable audit trail for every action, helping companies remain compliant with stringent regulations. Quotes from industry leaders provide further context on the significance of this offering. Daniel Bernard, Chief Business Officer at CrowdStrike, commented on the collaboration, stating, “Agentforce on AWS gives us the power to deploy AI agents that actually work – fast, secure, and built on the infrastructure we trust.” This endorsement from a current user illustrates the potential for Agentforce 360 to deliver real value. Another focal point is the Agentforce 360 Prompt Builder. This tool leverages generative AI to create accurate, relevant prompts based on the user’s own data. The flexibility to choose from various AI models, including those from reputable sources like Anthropic and Amazon, gives small businesses the power to tailor the solution to their unique needs. Importantly, the integration of Agentforce 360 allows businesses to consolidate their AI spend across various cloud services, which could result in financial savings. The use of private pricing and consolidated billing further simplifies the procurement process, allowing companies to make the most of their existing budgets while managing IT expenditures with greater clarity and efficiency. However, small business owners should be aware of the challenges that may come with adopting such advanced technology. The initial learning curve associated with implementing AI solutions can be steep, especially for businesses without prior experience in tech adoption. Ensuring that employees are trained and that data governance practices are robust will be critical in successfully integrating these tools. Additionally, while reassurance has been given regarding data security—with claims that customer data will not be used for external training or stored elsewhere—business owners must still conduct due diligence to ensure that their specific compliance requirements are met. Salesforce’s existing framework of trust offers businesses a controlled environment where they can confidently adopt AI without compromising security. The Salesforce Trust Boundary and the Agentforce Trust Layer create a secure perimeter that keeps data management in check, giving small businesses an opportunity to innovate while protecting user data. As small business owners consider whether to invest in Agentforce 360, actively examining how AI can streamline operations and drive customer engagement could lead to substantial benefits. With a solution that emphasizes both security and simplicity in procurement, Agentforce 360 for AWS could represent a pivotal step for small businesses on their AI journey. This service will hit the AWS Marketplace in early 2026, promising a future where AI integration is less daunting, more feasible, and tailored specifically to the needs of smaller enterprises. For more information on the offering, prospective users can visit the official announcement here. Image via Google Gemini This article, "Salesforce and AWS Unite to Launch Secure AI Solution for Enterprises" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

China’s exports rebounded in November after an unexpected contraction the previous month, pushing its trade surplus past $1 trillion for the first time, according to data released Monday. Exports climbed 5.9% from a year earlier in November while imports rose just under 2%. The customs data released on Monday also showed that shipments to the U.S. dropped nearly 29% year-on-year. But as trade with the U.S. weakens, China is diversifying its export markets throughout Southeast Asia, Africa, Europe, and Latin America. China’s exports had contracted just over 1% in October. November’s worldwide exports of $330.3 billion exceeded economists’ estimates. Imports totaled $218.6 billion for the month. The nearly $1.08 trillion trade surplus for the first 11 months of this year is a record high, surpassing the $992 billion surplus for all of 2024, based on official data compiled by FactSet. A year-long trade truce between China and the U.S. was reached at a meeting between U.S. President Donald The President and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in late October in South Korea. The U.S. has lowered its tariffs on China, and China has promised to halt its export controls related to rare earths. “It’s likely that November exports have yet to fully reflect the tariff cut, which should feed through in the coming months,” ING Bank chief economist for Greater China Lynn Song wrote in a report. China’s factory activity contracted for an eighth straight month in November, according to an official survey, and economists said it was still early to determine whether there was a real rebound in external demand following the U.S.-China trade truce. With exports still going strong, economists generally expect China to meet its target of around 5% annual growth for this year. Chinese leaders outlined a focus on advanced manufacturing for the next five years following a high-level meeting in October. It also highlighted the need to boost domestic consumption, which could help address trade imbalances. A meeting of the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s decision-making Politburo was held on Monday, led by Xi, to discuss economic plans for 2026, according to the Xinhua state news agency. It said Chinese leaders reiterated a focus on “pursuing progress while ensuring stability.” A readout from Xinhua said China needs to better coordinate its domestic economic work in the face of global “trade struggles.” Businesses and investors are paying close attention to China’s annual Central Economic Work Conference, which is expected to take place later this month and could map out economic priorities for the next year in more detail. “Trade diversification will remain a long-term strategy for China to fight the trade war and manage external exigencies,” said Chi Lo, Global Market Strategist at BNP Paribas Asset Management. A stable global trade environment is unlikely to last long, as China-U.S. relations “remain in a stalemate” despite their temporary trade truce, he said. Still, some economists believe that China will continue to gain export market share in the coming years. Morgan Stanley predicts by 2030, China’s market share in global exports will reach 16.5%, up from about 15% currently, fueled by its edge in advanced manufacturing and high-growth sectors such as electric vehicles, robotics and batteries. “Despite persistent trade tensions, continued protectionism, and G20 economies taking up active industrial policies, we believe China will gain more share in the global goods export market,” Morgan Stanley Chief Asia Economist Chetan Ahya said in a recent note. —Chan Ho-Him, AP business writer View the full article

We may earn a commission from links on this page. I like Coros running because they do nearly everything Garmins do, at a lower cost. But there have always been a few areas where they fall short, which I’ve noted in my reviews. Now, that seems to be changing—the most recent beta firmware update adds a critical new feature while fixing some of my pet peeves. I tried out the new features through a public beta from Coros. You can sign up for beta access with these instructions Coros posted on Reddit. (On iOS, you'll install a Testflight version of the Coros app, which can then give you access to the firmware update. On Android, you'll need to download the beta app, then go here to access the new beta firmware.) I tested these features out on a Pace 4, and I'm mostly happy with them. Coros watches can now control music playing on your phone I have not loaded any media onto this watch, but here it's playing a podcast from my phone. Credit: Beth Skwarecki In my reviews of Coros watches, I’ve always docked a few points for how they handle music. Until recently, the watch could only play music files that you downloaded directly to it. That’s fine if you want to run without your phone, but for me (and many others) it’s an unnecessary annoyance—a smartwatch really should be able to display and control what’s playing on your phone. Garmin and Suunto have long had this capability, and Coros was the only major brand missing it. But now it’s here. When you long-press the lap button to view your toolbox, you'll see two different apps. The familiar “music” plays downloaded music, and the new “media control” option does exactly what you’d expect: It shows the track information for whatever is playing on your phone, and it gives you buttons to play, pause, skip, or adjust volume. Was that so hard? Workouts no longer end themselves while you’re cooling downWhen I swapped my Garmin for a Coros this summer, one of my biggest complaints was that Coros watches pause your workout once you’ve completed all the steps. So if you have a 4.5-mile run programmed, but want to total five miles for the day, you have to remember to hit "resume workout" after the 4.5-mile run ends. I tend jog through that beep, thinking nothing of it, and then swear at my watch when I realize at the end that the last half-mile never got recorded. I prefer the way Garmin does it: After you complete a Garmin workout, the activity continues until you decide to manually stop it. Coros has apparently adopted that philosophy, as workouts now roll over into an open segment automatically. You can now undo a lap button press Hit the button in the lower right to undo this lap segment. Credit: Beth Skwarecki During an activity, pressing the lap button starts a new segment of the workout (or advances you to the next segment if you’re following a pre-written workout). I know I’m not the only one who sometimes presses this button by accident, so an “undo” option is nice. Garmin watches added this feature about a year ago. Coros adds it with this update. Unfortunately the undo isn’t available for every lap button press. I do see it if I’m doing an unstructured workout and mark a lap—hitting the lap button again takes me back to the original lap in progress. But I don’t see an undo function if I’m following a workout that already has lap segments built in, or if I’m doing a strength workout (where the lap button switches between work and rest). You can time your rests in strength workouts without choosing exercises ahead of timeMy most common way of using the strength feature is to start an unstructured workout, then use the lap button to mark the end of each set and the start of my rest time. This way, I can keep track of rests during the workout and I know how many sets I’m doing. I might follow a pre-planned workout, but I never enter exercises from the watch during a workout. This is simple enough on Garmin, but on Coros, the watch used to ask me to enter at least a body part for each exercise. So if I’m doing five sets of bench press, I have to select “chest” each time I begin a set. This drove me up the wall, and I stopped using the rest timer at all—which makes the strength feature nearly useless. After the update, I can select a body part at the beginning of the workout, and that remains the active body part while I stop and start my sets. (“Full body” is an option, so I usually choose that one.) During the workout, hitting the start/stop button brings up a menu where I can switch body parts should I care to do so. Suddenly,. using the watch during my strength workouts seems like a viable option, instead of annoying. View the full article

It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and all December I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past. There will be more posts than usual this week, so keep checking back throughout the day. Remember the letter-writer whose company said it was “best practice” to do layoffs over email? The first update was here, and here’s the latest. Two years later and I have a doozy of an update about this company. So, after the last letter, I was working at a new company that happened to employ a lot of people who had left the Email Layoffers. We kept in touch with a lot of people at that company and it was pretty quiet for a year or so, though they kept eliminating positions and letting people go every few months. They did begin to do layoffs over Zoom meetings after my letter got published. First a small, petty update: I went to an industry conference over the summer. While talking to some colleagues from a leading organization in our field (one you would not want to burn bridges with) when I mentioned I used to work for the Email Layoffers. They told me that a year prior, their org signed with EL as a client, and this was such a big deal that the co-CEOs who stepped in to “save the company” decided to personally manage the project. After onboarding them and planning out the project, the co-CEOs ghosted. They missed meetings, dodged emails, and didn’t update the communication documents. Then, halfway through the project, the co-CEOs finally responded to an email … and informed my colleague that they were changing the contract to instead produce a much cheaper, lower-effort product that was completely at odds with the results the org actually wanted. Think: they ordered bespoke teapots, and they were told they’d be receiving dropshipped flasks instead. Apparently, even the dropshipped flasks had quality issues, and were delivered late. Unsurprisingly, they did not renew their contract. Around this same time, the co-CEOs were asking the manager of one of the production teams to teach them how to use chatGPT. Normal enough, if a little late for our tech-adjacent industry. Except they wanted him to show them how to make chatGPT do his job. At one point, the CEO’s called this employee to one of their houses so he could talk them through a chatGPT process. They were being weirdly dodgy about why they wanted to learn chatGPT so suddenly. Then, a few months later, our old coworkers told us The Big News. The team responsible for the majority of the company’s output was concerned about the way our industry was changing in the face of AI. They were interested in taking on different work and had made a plan to upskill team members in a different, more AI-proof skillset, their managers supported it, and so they scheduled a time to meet with the CEOs and propose their plan. They also partnered with the manager who was teaching the CEOs how to use AI. Alison, they laid off every single member of their production team and that team’s managers, and I am not exaggerating. In a zoom meeting where they were all planning to propose changes to the department. This included people who had worked for the company for 10-15 years, and people who were on or had just returned from maternity leave. The company right now is two CEOs, a single marketing person, an HR worker, sales, and project managers. They sold work they literally had nobody to complete. Then, over the next few weeks, they reached out to almost every single person they had laid off, asking if they could do some contract work so they could actually deliver the work they had sold. They misspelled people’s names in half of these emails. As far as I know, no one accepted the offer. Eventually they listed a few positions … for $10k-20k less than the old team was paid. After that, of course, the Glassdoor reviews came in. And the CEOs started responding to them. One employee left a review, detailing that they had just fired half of their employees and planned to replace them with contractors and AI. The CEOs responded with a typo-laden multi-paragraph rebuttal that was weird and aggressive. It came off as very petty and uncomfortable. They also responded to a review that said “[CEOs] will lay you off right before Christmas without warning” saying, they “wish this employee had come to them with their concerns before leaving this review.” Um, how could they? You laid them off! They also called Glassdoor “a safe haven for slanderous claims and anonymous opinions,” which of course has become a meme among us ex-employees. Then a smattering of vague 5-star reviews came in, clearly from current employees told to help with the DIY damage control efforts. An industry publication wrote about the layoffs from the lens of companies going all-in on AI without thinking about the consequences, interviewing one of the people who were laid off. The surviving sales team posts on LinkedIn about hustle culture, with weird passive-aggressive tones about people who “can’t make it in the industry.” (We work in a pretty chill industry. You don’t have to hustle that hard). Since then, the CEOs have been unusually quiet online. More 1-star reviews came in on Glassdoor and they stopped responding. They’ve trashed their reputation in our industry and we’re all wondering whether they’ll try to sell or just shut down. We will see! The post update: my company says it’s “best practice” to do layoffs over email appeared first on Ask a Manager. View the full article

The long battle over control of Warner Bros. Discovery took another turn Monday when Paramount Skydance announced a hostile bid for the entertainment giant, following Warner’s acceptance of a competing offer from Netflix last week. Paramount, which many once deemed the frontrunner in the original bidding war, announced a tender offer that tops the Netflix bid by $2.25 per share, appealing directly to shareholders. That adds another layer of complexity to the deal, which will see a significant consolidation of Hollywood’s power players, no matter who ends up on top. With all the back and forth, it’s easy to have lost track of who’s proposing what. Here’s a rundown of what you need to know. What is Paramount Skydance offering for Warner Bros. Discovery? Monday’s bid, the sixth by Paramount Skydance for Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), is the same one the company made in the close bidding process, it says. Paramount is offering $30 cash per share to acquire the totality of WBD, including the broadcast and cable networks, the HBO Max streaming service and the company’s extensive catalog. That works out to $18 billion more in cash than the Netflix offer. “We believe our offer will create a stronger Hollywood,” said David Ellison, chairman and CEO of Paramount Skydance in a statement. “It is in the best interests of the creative community, consumers and the movie theater industry. We believe they will benefit from the enhanced competition, higher content spend and theatrical release output, and a greater number of movies in theaters as a result of our proposed transaction.” Who is funding Paramount’s bid for Warner Bros. Discovery? While not mentioned in its press release, Paramount’s SEC filing about its tender offer noted that beyond the money that’s being supplied by the Ellison family, the deal will be partially financed by sovereign wealth funds from Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and Qatar. In addition, Affinity Partners, the private equity firm led by Jared Kushner, is part of the bid. Paramount said each of those parties “have agreed to forgo any governance rights — including board representation — associated with their non-voting equity investments.” However, having The President’s son-in-law as part of an offer in a deal where The President has already said “I’ll be involved in that decision” raises several potential conflicts of interest. What was Netflix’s offer for Warner Bros. Discovery? In the Netflix deal, which was announced last Friday, the streamer agreed to pay $27.75 per share for the film studio and streaming divisions of WBD, putting the deal price at $82.7 billion. Netflix’s bid was mostly cash, with some Netflix stock included. Shareholders, under those terms, would receive $23.25 in cash and about $4.50 in Netflix stock per share. WBD, under that deal, would still spin off its TV networks, including CNN and TNT, into a separate company. How long do Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders have to decide which offer to take? Paramount says its offer will expire at 5:00 p.m. ET on Jan. 8, 2026. That could be extended, however, Why did Warner Bros. Discovery choose Netflix’s offer instead of Paramount’s? The announcement of the Netflix deal on Friday talked about complementary strengths and assets, more value for shareholders, and more opportunities for the creative community. You might expect that sort of language in a merger agreement, especially one that faces a tough regulatory fight. With Paramount’s tender offer, though, Paramount will be required to make a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, explaining in further detail why it chose Netflix and rejected Paramount. Prior to the Friday announcement, Ellison, in a leaked letter, discussed what he called “a tilted and unfair process” in the bidding, suggesting WBD management viewed Netflix more favorably than it did Paramount. Which proposed deal has a better chance of passing review by the Federal Trade Commission? Netflix’s proposed takeover of HBO Max and the WBD catalog had been flagged by several experts as facing an uphill battle in Washington – and possibly other parts of the world. On Friday, The President himselfsaid Netflix also owning HBO Max “could be a problem.” That doesn’t mean the deal would necessarily be stopped, though. There is plenty of time for both sides to make concessions with regulators (a close date hasn’t even been announced). There will be a lot of work, however. Paramount, though, says it would be able to clear regulatory scrutiny quickly. (Larry Ellison, father of CEO David Ellison, is very close with The President.) “Paramount is highly confident in achieving expeditious regulatory clearance for its proposed offer, as it enhances competition and is pro-consumer, while creating a strong champion for creative talent and consumer choice,” it wrote. “In contrast, the Netflix transaction is predicated on the unrealistic assumption that its anticompetitive combination with WBD, which would entrench its monopoly with a 43% share of global Subscription Video on Demand (SVOD) subscribers, could withstand multiple protracted regulatory challenges across the world.” Will Warner Bros. Discovery films still be released to theaters? The impact of a Netflix-WBD deal on theatrical releases is one of the big unknowns. Netflix would honor commitments previously made by Warner Bros. Discovery, but things are murkier from there as to whether it would release films in theaters before putting them on the streaming service. Paramount Skydance, via David Ellison on CNBC, said it would put 30 movies exclusively in theaters each year. View the full article

But big media tie-ups have a poor record at creating valueView the full article

The President’s security strategy is a wake-up call for Europe on defence and growthView the full article

When managing social media, choosing the right scheduling tool can greatly impact your efficiency and effectiveness. Tools like SocialBee, Pallyy, and Sendible offer various features, including content queues, visual planning grids, and integration options. These functionalities help maintain consistency, engage your audience, and streamline your workflow. As you explore these options, consider how each platform aligns with your specific needs and goals, as the right choice could improve your overall strategy. Key Takeaways SocialBee offers a Content Categories system and AI Copilot for efficient post organization and automated scheduling, starting at $29/month. Pallyy features a visual planning grid and a free plan for managing one social set, with premium plans from $25/month. Sendible is ideal for agencies, providing multiple client dashboards and content integration with Canva, with plans starting at $29/month. Viraly is budget-friendly, starting at $19/month, and supports multiple platforms with a 14-day free trial. Metricool is user-friendly and affordable, offering a free plan for up to 50 posts, with paid plans beginning at $22/month. SocialBee SocialBee stands out as a leading social media scheduling tool, starting at just $29 per month and offering a 14-day free trial for users to explore its robust features. It’s recognized as one of the best social media schedulers for your needs, supporting platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn. You can efficiently manage multiple accounts during utilizing the innovative Content Categories system, which organizes your posts by themes or campaigns. Moreover, SocialBee provides social media content services through its AI Copilot, helping you generate strategies and automate scheduling. The platform also integrates with popular resources like Canva, Unsplash, and GIPHY, enhancing your visual content creation experience, making it a top contender among the best social media scheduling tools. Pallyy If you’re looking for a user-friendly social media scheduling tool, Pallyy might be the solution you need. This application social network thrives with its visual planning grid, particularly beneficial for content creators focusing on Instagram and TikTok. The generous free plan allows you to manage one social set with up to 15 scheduled posts monthly. Premium plans, starting at $25 per month, reveal additional features like drag-and-drop scheduling, media storage, and analytics tools. Plus, Pallyy offers a unified social inbox for seamless interactions across platforms. Feature Description Free Plan Manage one social set, 15 posts/month Premium Price Starts at $25/month per social set Scheduling Style Drag-and-drop functionality Media Uploads Templates and tools for easy uploads Analytics Tools Tools for tracking engagement and performance Sendible Sendible stands out as a versatile social media scheduling tool customized for both agencies and individuals seeking to streamline their social media management. This platform offers a range of features, making it user-friendly and efficient. Here’s what you can expect: Multiple client dashboards for easy management Seamless integration with Canva and Pexels for content creation Visual campaign overview to track your progress Customizable content queue to manage posts effectively With pricing starting at $29/month and a 14-day free trial, you can explore its capabilities without commitment. Although it may not have all the advanced features of its competitors, Sendible shines in providing crucial tools and a straightforward interface, making it an excellent choice for effective social media management. Viraly Viraly is a robust multi-platform social media scheduler that caters to brands eager to expand their reach across newer platforms like Bluesky and Mastodon. It features automated post queues and collaboration tools, making it easier for agencies to manage multiple clients with shared scheduling dashboards and various calendar views. With built-in editing tools and an AI generator for captions, you can create engaging content quickly. Pricing starts at $19 per month, with annual billing discounts and a 14-day free trial to explore all its capabilities. Furthermore, Viraly maximizes user engagement through analytics, allowing you to filter posts by channel and status, which simplifies tracking performance across different social networks. Metricool Metricool serves as an affordable social media scheduling tool that supports major platforms, allowing you to efficiently manage your online presence. With its user-friendly interface, you can easily navigate and utilize potent features to improve your social media strategy. Key functionalities include: A drag-and-drop planner for effortless scheduling Batch scheduling to save time on posting Integration with Canva for creating engaging visuals A free plan for up to 50 scheduled posts, perfect for small businesses Paid plans start at $22/month, offering additional features like competitor research and inbox management. This allows you to gain valuable insights into your social media performance, helping you stay ahead of the competition and effectively grow your online presence. Hootsuite When you’re looking for a robust social media management solution, Hootsuite stands out as a thorough platform that streamlines the way you schedule, engage, monitor, and analyze your social media posts. With Hootsuite, you can manage multiple networks from a single dashboard, saving you time and effort. The platform utilizes social-first AI to offer personalized strategy advice and insights based on real-time trends and performance metrics. Hootsuite integrates with over 100 tools, making it incredibly versatile. You can track hundreds of social media metrics through custom reports, allowing you to refine your strategies and improve engagement. With over 25 million users and a solid reputation built over 17 years, Hootsuite is known for its strong customer service and security features. Buffer Buffer stands out with its user-friendly interface, making it easy for you to schedule posts across various social media platforms. It not only permits multi-platform scheduling but furthermore provides valuable analytics and insights to help you track engagement and refine your strategy. With features like automated workflows through Zapier and an AI Assistant for content creation, Buffer improves your social media management experience efficiently. User-Friendly Interface A user-friendly interface is vital for anyone looking to streamline their social media scheduling, and that’s exactly what Buffer offers. With its simple and intuitive design, you can easily manage multiple social media accounts with minimal effort. Here are some features that improve your scheduling experience: Drag-and-drop calendar view: Visualize your publishing schedule effortlessly. Browser extension: Share content quickly and directly from the web. Accessible dashboard: Analyze post engagement and refine your strategy. Free plan: Ideal for individuals and small businesses with 1 user, 3 social accounts, and 10 queued posts per profile. Buffer’s user-friendly approach guarantees you can focus on creating great content as you efficiently manage your social media presence. Multi-Platform Scheduling Managing social media across different platforms can be challenging, but with Buffer’s multi-platform scheduling capabilities, you can simplify the process greatly. Buffer allows you to schedule posts on various platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and TikTok, making it a versatile tool for handling different accounts. You’ll appreciate the auto-publishing feature and notifications for manual posts, ensuring timely engagement with your audience. Its user-friendly interface lets you view and manage scheduled posts in a calendar or queue format, streamlining your scheduling efforts. You can likewise customize and repurpose content for each platform, optimizing your posts for audience preferences. Plus, the free plan offers access for individuals and small businesses, making Buffer an accessible option for efficient social media management. Analytics and Insights Analytics play a crucial role in shaping your social media strategy and comprehending audience behaviors. With Buffer’s detailed analytics, you can track important metrics that inform your content decisions. Here’s what you can discover: Post performance and engagement rates to identify what resonates. Audience demographics, helping tailor your messaging effectively. Best times to post based on historical data, maximizing engagement. Customizable reports for sharing insights with team members or stakeholders. Frequently Asked Questions What Is the Best Scheduling Tool for Social Media? Choosing the best scheduling tool for social media depends on your needs. If you want strong content curation, consider SocialBee. For ease of use and analytics, Buffer is great. If you need extensive management, Hootsuite offers robust features. For visual content, Later’s drag-and-drop interface is ideal, especially for Instagram. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0keUj6EoDM If affordability is key, Metricool is user-friendly and allows scheduling without credit card requirements. Evaluate your priorities to find the right fit for you. What Is the 5 5 5 Rule on Social Media? The 5 5 5 rule on social media suggests you share a balanced mix of content. For every five posts, five should be relevant to your audience’s interests, whereas five promote your brand or services. This approach improves engagement by providing valuable information and entertainment without overwhelming followers with sales pitches. Is Hootsuite Still Free? Hootsuite isn’t entirely free, but it does offer a 30-day free trial, allowing you to explore its full range of features, including scheduling and analytics. After the trial, Hootsuite’s pricing starts at $99 per month for the Professional plan. Whereas there’s a limited free version available, it offers fewer features and is mainly for basic scheduling. This setup helps you evaluate whether Hootsuite meets your social media management needs before committing financially. Which of the Following Tools Is Commonly Used for Social Media Scheduling? You’ll find several tools commonly used for social media scheduling. Hootsuite is a popular choice, offering extensive features like post scheduling and analytics. Buffer stands out for its user-friendly interface and free plans. Later shines in visual content planning, especially for platforms like Instagram. SocialBee provides robust content curation tools, whereas Agorapulse is ideal for agencies managing multiple clients. Each tool has unique strengths, catering to different needs and budgets in social media management. Conclusion In conclusion, choosing the right social media scheduling tool can greatly improve your content management and engagement strategies. Platforms like SocialBee, Pallyy, and Sendible offer unique features that cater to various needs, from visual planning to robust reporting. By utilizing these tools, you can streamline your posting schedule, maintain consistency, and collaborate effectively with your team. In the end, investing in a reliable scheduling tool is crucial for optimizing your social media presence and achieving your marketing goals. Image via Google Gemini This article, "Best Social Media Scheduling Tools" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

When managing social media, choosing the right scheduling tool can greatly impact your efficiency and effectiveness. Tools like SocialBee, Pallyy, and Sendible offer various features, including content queues, visual planning grids, and integration options. These functionalities help maintain consistency, engage your audience, and streamline your workflow. As you explore these options, consider how each platform aligns with your specific needs and goals, as the right choice could improve your overall strategy. Key Takeaways SocialBee offers a Content Categories system and AI Copilot for efficient post organization and automated scheduling, starting at $29/month. Pallyy features a visual planning grid and a free plan for managing one social set, with premium plans from $25/month. Sendible is ideal for agencies, providing multiple client dashboards and content integration with Canva, with plans starting at $29/month. Viraly is budget-friendly, starting at $19/month, and supports multiple platforms with a 14-day free trial. Metricool is user-friendly and affordable, offering a free plan for up to 50 posts, with paid plans beginning at $22/month. SocialBee SocialBee stands out as a leading social media scheduling tool, starting at just $29 per month and offering a 14-day free trial for users to explore its robust features. It’s recognized as one of the best social media schedulers for your needs, supporting platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn. You can efficiently manage multiple accounts during utilizing the innovative Content Categories system, which organizes your posts by themes or campaigns. Moreover, SocialBee provides social media content services through its AI Copilot, helping you generate strategies and automate scheduling. The platform also integrates with popular resources like Canva, Unsplash, and GIPHY, enhancing your visual content creation experience, making it a top contender among the best social media scheduling tools. Pallyy If you’re looking for a user-friendly social media scheduling tool, Pallyy might be the solution you need. This application social network thrives with its visual planning grid, particularly beneficial for content creators focusing on Instagram and TikTok. The generous free plan allows you to manage one social set with up to 15 scheduled posts monthly. Premium plans, starting at $25 per month, reveal additional features like drag-and-drop scheduling, media storage, and analytics tools. Plus, Pallyy offers a unified social inbox for seamless interactions across platforms. Feature Description Free Plan Manage one social set, 15 posts/month Premium Price Starts at $25/month per social set Scheduling Style Drag-and-drop functionality Media Uploads Templates and tools for easy uploads Analytics Tools Tools for tracking engagement and performance Sendible Sendible stands out as a versatile social media scheduling tool customized for both agencies and individuals seeking to streamline their social media management. This platform offers a range of features, making it user-friendly and efficient. Here’s what you can expect: Multiple client dashboards for easy management Seamless integration with Canva and Pexels for content creation Visual campaign overview to track your progress Customizable content queue to manage posts effectively With pricing starting at $29/month and a 14-day free trial, you can explore its capabilities without commitment. Although it may not have all the advanced features of its competitors, Sendible shines in providing crucial tools and a straightforward interface, making it an excellent choice for effective social media management. Viraly Viraly is a robust multi-platform social media scheduler that caters to brands eager to expand their reach across newer platforms like Bluesky and Mastodon. It features automated post queues and collaboration tools, making it easier for agencies to manage multiple clients with shared scheduling dashboards and various calendar views. With built-in editing tools and an AI generator for captions, you can create engaging content quickly. Pricing starts at $19 per month, with annual billing discounts and a 14-day free trial to explore all its capabilities. Furthermore, Viraly maximizes user engagement through analytics, allowing you to filter posts by channel and status, which simplifies tracking performance across different social networks. Metricool Metricool serves as an affordable social media scheduling tool that supports major platforms, allowing you to efficiently manage your online presence. With its user-friendly interface, you can easily navigate and utilize potent features to improve your social media strategy. Key functionalities include: A drag-and-drop planner for effortless scheduling Batch scheduling to save time on posting Integration with Canva for creating engaging visuals A free plan for up to 50 scheduled posts, perfect for small businesses Paid plans start at $22/month, offering additional features like competitor research and inbox management. This allows you to gain valuable insights into your social media performance, helping you stay ahead of the competition and effectively grow your online presence. Hootsuite When you’re looking for a robust social media management solution, Hootsuite stands out as a thorough platform that streamlines the way you schedule, engage, monitor, and analyze your social media posts. With Hootsuite, you can manage multiple networks from a single dashboard, saving you time and effort. The platform utilizes social-first AI to offer personalized strategy advice and insights based on real-time trends and performance metrics. Hootsuite integrates with over 100 tools, making it incredibly versatile. You can track hundreds of social media metrics through custom reports, allowing you to refine your strategies and improve engagement. With over 25 million users and a solid reputation built over 17 years, Hootsuite is known for its strong customer service and security features. Buffer Buffer stands out with its user-friendly interface, making it easy for you to schedule posts across various social media platforms. It not only permits multi-platform scheduling but furthermore provides valuable analytics and insights to help you track engagement and refine your strategy. With features like automated workflows through Zapier and an AI Assistant for content creation, Buffer improves your social media management experience efficiently. User-Friendly Interface A user-friendly interface is vital for anyone looking to streamline their social media scheduling, and that’s exactly what Buffer offers. With its simple and intuitive design, you can easily manage multiple social media accounts with minimal effort. Here are some features that improve your scheduling experience: Drag-and-drop calendar view: Visualize your publishing schedule effortlessly. Browser extension: Share content quickly and directly from the web. Accessible dashboard: Analyze post engagement and refine your strategy. Free plan: Ideal for individuals and small businesses with 1 user, 3 social accounts, and 10 queued posts per profile. Buffer’s user-friendly approach guarantees you can focus on creating great content as you efficiently manage your social media presence. Multi-Platform Scheduling Managing social media across different platforms can be challenging, but with Buffer’s multi-platform scheduling capabilities, you can simplify the process greatly. Buffer allows you to schedule posts on various platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and TikTok, making it a versatile tool for handling different accounts. You’ll appreciate the auto-publishing feature and notifications for manual posts, ensuring timely engagement with your audience. Its user-friendly interface lets you view and manage scheduled posts in a calendar or queue format, streamlining your scheduling efforts. You can likewise customize and repurpose content for each platform, optimizing your posts for audience preferences. Plus, the free plan offers access for individuals and small businesses, making Buffer an accessible option for efficient social media management. Analytics and Insights Analytics play a crucial role in shaping your social media strategy and comprehending audience behaviors. With Buffer’s detailed analytics, you can track important metrics that inform your content decisions. Here’s what you can discover: Post performance and engagement rates to identify what resonates. Audience demographics, helping tailor your messaging effectively. Best times to post based on historical data, maximizing engagement. Customizable reports for sharing insights with team members or stakeholders. Frequently Asked Questions What Is the Best Scheduling Tool for Social Media? Choosing the best scheduling tool for social media depends on your needs. If you want strong content curation, consider SocialBee. For ease of use and analytics, Buffer is great. If you need extensive management, Hootsuite offers robust features. For visual content, Later’s drag-and-drop interface is ideal, especially for Instagram. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0keUj6EoDM If affordability is key, Metricool is user-friendly and allows scheduling without credit card requirements. Evaluate your priorities to find the right fit for you. What Is the 5 5 5 Rule on Social Media? The 5 5 5 rule on social media suggests you share a balanced mix of content. For every five posts, five should be relevant to your audience’s interests, whereas five promote your brand or services. This approach improves engagement by providing valuable information and entertainment without overwhelming followers with sales pitches. Is Hootsuite Still Free? Hootsuite isn’t entirely free, but it does offer a 30-day free trial, allowing you to explore its full range of features, including scheduling and analytics. After the trial, Hootsuite’s pricing starts at $99 per month for the Professional plan. Whereas there’s a limited free version available, it offers fewer features and is mainly for basic scheduling. This setup helps you evaluate whether Hootsuite meets your social media management needs before committing financially. Which of the Following Tools Is Commonly Used for Social Media Scheduling? You’ll find several tools commonly used for social media scheduling. Hootsuite is a popular choice, offering extensive features like post scheduling and analytics. Buffer stands out for its user-friendly interface and free plans. Later shines in visual content planning, especially for platforms like Instagram. SocialBee provides robust content curation tools, whereas Agorapulse is ideal for agencies managing multiple clients. Each tool has unique strengths, catering to different needs and budgets in social media management. Conclusion In conclusion, choosing the right social media scheduling tool can greatly improve your content management and engagement strategies. Platforms like SocialBee, Pallyy, and Sendible offer unique features that cater to various needs, from visual planning to robust reporting. By utilizing these tools, you can streamline your posting schedule, maintain consistency, and collaborate effectively with your team. In the end, investing in a reliable scheduling tool is crucial for optimizing your social media presence and achieving your marketing goals. Image via Google Gemini This article, "Best Social Media Scheduling Tools" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article