Another day, another article, you might think, from some “random” on the internet preaching about marketing and artificial intelligence. But I’m not here to give you fluff and generic knowledge about what you could easily Google online.
Hi, I’m Joshua B. Lee, and you might know me as the “Dopamine Dealer on LinkedIn”. In the past 2 decades, I’ve built 16 businesses, authored a book called Balance is Bullsh*t, and I’ve had clients like MySpace and Google managing nearly a billion dollars in advertising spends.
While working with companies that are larger than life, I realized one thing: The digital landscape became quite “noisy”. AKA, there were too many automated things, robotic language, and SELL SELL SELL energies online, and the human touch got lost in the mix.
TL;DR: Human connection was obliterated, and too many people focused a lot on monetization for profit’s sake. I’m a consumer myself, so I saw a gap that could be fixed and asked, “How can I bring back the heart in this digital universe? How can I help people see beyond the screen and build genuine connections?”
Enter → Standout Authority, my baby since 2014. We’re all about helping folks (like you, who’s reading this) bring the human back to your brand.
And we’ve chosen to zero in on LinkedIn—the Avengers’ HQ of business platforms—to build authentic relationships and clients.
Why LinkedIn?
Perhaps this number will sum it up for you: as of April 2023, LinkedIn has 922.3 million active members on the platform.
So if you’re looking for the perfect place for marketing, networking, and reaching your audience as a thought leader in your field, this would be THE platform for you.
And as LinkedIn turns 20 this year, it’s making a huge push towards AI—quite the HOT topic everywhere, regardless of the niche/industry.
Here’s what’s coming to a LinkedIn profile you want to get going:
LinkedIn’s Drive to Embrace AI and Transform Content Creation
LinkedIn continues to push the boundaries of AI-powered transformation, making your content creation more engaging, entertaining, and downright amazing.
Here are some of the bold moves LinkedIn has been making towards AI:
Ever since LinkedIn joined forces with the latest AI technology, ChatGPT, the platform has been on a roll (If you didn’t know yet, Microsoft invested $10 billion into OpenAI).
Since then, they’ve released a series of helpful tools such as “Smart Replies” and “Resume Assistant”— just a couple of examples of how LinkedIn has harnessed the power of AI to streamline your messaging and job-hunting experience.
LinkedIn has created Collaborative Articles, a feature that allows multiple creators to work together on a single AI-generated article, offering diverse viewpoints on a given topic.
AI isn’t just great for writing; it’s also an amazing helper when it comes to insights and analytics. LinkedIn is launching Content Insights, an AI-driven tool that provides data on article performance. You can’t…
The best personality traits for happiness differ for work and play.
The personality trait most strongly linked to happiness right across the lifespan is emotional stability, research finds.
People who are high in emotional stability, which is the opposite of being neurotic, tend to be positive, have high self-control along with the ability to manage psychological stress effectively.
Looking specifically at work and social satisfaction, though, other personality traits were also important along with emotional stability.
For work satisfaction, the best personality trait was conscientiousness, a trait linked to being self-disciplined and aiming for achievement.
For social satisfaction, though, extraversion and agreeableness were most strongly linked to happiness.
Happiness across the lifespan
The conclusions come from a study exploring how the link between personality and happiness might change with age.
Dr Gabriel Olaru, the study’s first author, said:
“Many studies have shown that people with certain personality profiles are more satisfied with their life than others.
Yet, it had not been extensively studied whether this holds true across the lifespan.
For example, extraverted—that is sociable, talkative—people might be particularly happy in young adulthood, when they typically are forming new social relationships.
We thus wanted to examine if some personality traits are more or less relevant to life, social and work satisfaction in specific life phases.”
The study included over 9,000 Dutch adults of all ages who were tracked over more than a decade.
The results showed that the connections between life satisfaction and personality remained much the same over the lifespan.
Dr Manon van Scheppingen, study co-author, said:
“Our findings show that—despite differences in life challenges and social roles—personality traits are relevant for our satisfaction with life, work and social contacts across young, middle and older adulthood.
The personality traits remained equally relevant across the adult lifespan, or became even more interconnected in some cases for work satisfaction.”
Personality and environment interact
People’s personality also interacts with the environment, explained Dr van Scheppingen:
“A good example of how personality interacts with the environment can be found in the work context.
One of our findings was that the link between emotional stability and work satisfaction increases across age.
This might be explained by the fact that emotionally stable people are less scared to quit unsatisfactory jobs and more likely to apply for jobs that are more challenging and perhaps more fulfilling and enjoyable in the long run.”
Despite what many believe, personality is capable of change, said Dr van Scheppingen:
“While we did not examine what caused these changes, [the research] shows that our personalities and our happiness are not set in stone.
Perhaps we may even be able to influence how we change: If we try to become more organized, outgoing, friendly, this might increase life, social or work satisfaction as well.”
Let’s dive into the pool of reports that have been surfacing recently – those revolving around AI, the economy, and how this roller coaster of a world may impact your marketing agency, then we’ll shift gears and put your agency under a microscope.
My goal is simple, to spark a lightbulb moment, where you say, “Ah, these are crucial, foundational aspects of my business that I’ve been overlooking.”
Your customer avatar, your customer journey, your niche… all those buzzwords you’ve heard until you’re blue in the face (but might not have really acted on quite yet).
The “development” of your small business was optional until recently. You could ignore trends, delay updating your services, and maybe even “step away” from operations before… but NOT ANYMORE.
Things are changing FAST, and if you don’t get your business on track, you’re going to miss out. Not only could your services (and therefore your business) become irrelevant if you fail to consider how new technologies, marketing practices, and methods are changing, you’re going to do something even worse… YOU WILL MISS A MASSIVE OPPORTUNITY.
The rapid progression of AI and societal change means one thing: all businesses are facing the same lack of experience and also have access to new technology. The next Google, Facebook, TikTok, etc. are going to launch over the next
It’s time to crush that resistance to change, and the action starts here, right now.
What’s the Matter With the Way Things Have Been?
Let’s take a moment to gauge your feelings about the internet so far.
Is the internet a dreamy utopia where you can find everything you need, with all of the fun and answers just a click away?
Or is it more like stumbling into an IKEA store, utterly lost, drifting aimlessly from bedrooms to kitchens, only to end up shelling out an unexpected $5k for a living room set you didn’t intend to buy?
That sums up the internet so far – a wild, chaotic IKEA… a poorly structured labyrinth of information.
The tool we’ve been given to navigate this labyrinth is a search engine, biased and inefficient, a Frankenstein monster of our own creation. My theory is that this mess of a situation paved the way for social media to rise and shine.
As search has gotten increasingly unhelpful, we resorted to building individual networks to connect with others (Facebook, TikTok, Youtube, etc.), but due to the nature of these networks, it doesn’t satisfy what we really want… easy access to easy answers.
The internet has, until now, been a digital wild west. Full of freedom and opportunity, but so chaotic that it’s tough to make progress.
In the midst of this chaos, AI seems like the answer to our original dream of the internet. Imagine logging on, typing a question, receiving a concise…
Develop a Leader’s Perspective: Master the Ripple Effect
One of the biggest challenges of leadership is lack of imagination.
A leader’s perspective includes imagination. All the important things you do begin with imagination.
Everything in the world began with imagination. The wheel began in imagination. So did the pencil and the cell phone.
I ask troubled leaders, “Imagine if things were going perfectly. What would people be doing?” Imagination comes before action. You can’t do it if you can’t imagine it.
Mastering the ripple effect is an exercise of imagination.
Develop a leader’s perspective: master the ripple effect.
Leaders know their emotions spread through teams. Your happiness increases everyone’s happiness. Your worry is multiplied in others.
Understanding the ripple effect requires imagination.
Imagination is thinking bigger than yourself – bigger than what if. Leaders use imagination to think, “What could be?” – thinking about what could be for people.
Leaders think beyond themselves. It’s normal to focus on yourself; it’s leadership to imagine your impact on others. Go beyond what people are doing to you. Imagine how you impact others.
Leaders think about the quality-of-life others experience. How are work pressures impacting the team? What can be done to make hard work enjoyable?
Imagination leads to action when you lead. Imagination is a beginning, not an end. How will you bring imagination into reality today?
Action item:
Show up with the passion for positive impact. Reflect on the impact of words, tone, body language, and actions.
Imagine the team you aspire to have. What will you do today to create it?
Imagine the impact on others you aspire to have. What will you do today to enhance it?
Imagine the leader you would follow. Work to become it.
Reflection:
What role does imagination play in a leader’s perspective?
What perspectives on people have shaped your actions? On leadership?
The results showed that the more intelligent people were, the quicker they picked up the direction of the drifting lines.
Dr Duje Tadin, co-author of the paper, said:
“Because intelligence is such a broad construct, you can’t really track it back to one part of the brain.
But since this task is so simple and so closely linked to IQ, it may give us clues about what makes a brain more efficient, and, consequently, more intelligent.”
However, sometimes people were shown small images, sometimes large.
What this shows is that people with high IQs are better at suppressing background information.
Mr Michael Melnick, study co-author, said:
“Being ‘quick witted’ and ‘quick on the draw’ generally go hand in hand.
From previous research, we expected that all participants would be worse at detecting the movement of large images, but high IQ individuals were much, much worse.”
The study may help researchers identify the neural correlates of intelligence, said Dr Tadin:
“We know from prior research which parts of the brain are involved in visual suppression of background motion.
This new link to intelligence provides a good target for looking at what is different about the neural processing, what’s different about the neurochemistry, what’s different about the neurotransmitters of people with different IQs.”
One trait that can signal a higher risk of depression.
Declining IQ scores can help to predict depression with age, research finds.
As people’s scores on abstract reasoning tests decline, so their risk of being depressed increases.
Typical abstract reasoning tests involve analysing shapes and symbols for things like patterns and commonalities.
Abstract reasoning is a component of fluid intelligence.
Fluid intelligence refers, roughly speaking, to the raw speed at which the brain works.
This naturally declines with age as the brain slows.
Fluid intelligence is normally contrasted with crystallised intelligence.
People with higher crystallised intelligence tend to have better general knowledge, as it refers to acquired information and skills.
The study included 1,091 adults, who were followed from age 70 through to 79.
They were given tests of abstract reasoning and asked about symptoms of depression.
The results showed both people’s reasoning and their depressive symptoms worsened over time.
However, worse depressive symptoms tended to follow poorer cognitive performance, but the reverse was not true.
This suggests that declines in abstract reasoning could be causing depressive symptoms.
Dr Stephen Aichele, the study’s first author, said:
“Mental health in later life is a topic of increasing importance given aging populations worldwide.
Our findings suggest that monitoring for cognitive decrements in later adulthood may expedite efforts to reduce associated increases in depression risk.”
Symptoms of depression include moodiness, lack of motivation and tiredness.
Depression is also strongly linked to physical symptoms like headaches, stomach aches, dizziness, muscle and leg pain.
Dr Aichele said:
“We hope this research will be of broad interest, both for individuals directly affected by age-related cognitive decline and also for family members and care providers who wish to help older persons adversely affected by changes in mental health.”
The study was published in the journal Psychological Science (Aichele et al., 2018).
Arguing about this damaging subject predicts divorce, research finds.
Arguments about money are the top predictor of divorce, research finds.
While arguing about money, couples use the harshest language and the arguments are also more intense and last longer.
Money arguments also take longer than any other to recover from.
Naturally, then, the more arguments about money couples have, the lower their satisfaction with the relationship.
Dr Sonya Britt-Lutter, study co-author, said:
“Arguments about money is by far the top predictor of divorce.
It’s not children, in-laws or anything else.
It’s money — for both men and women.”
The conclusions come from a nationally representative survey of over 4,500 couples.
Dr Britt-Lutter explained the results:
“In the study, we controlled for income, debt and net worth.
Results revealed it didn’t matter how much you made or how much you were worth.
Arguments about money are the top predictor for divorce because it happens at all levels.”
The researchers found that arguments from the very start of the relationship about money were a particularly bad sign.
Dr Britt-Lutter said:
“You can measure people’s money arguments when they are very first married.
It doesn’t matter how long ago it was, but when they were first together and already arguing about money, there is a good chance they are going to have poor relationship satisfaction.”
People who are stressed about money tend to avoid the issue, which makes matters worse.
Dr Britt-Lutter said:
“…people who are stressed are very short-term focused.
They don’t plan for the future.
If you can reduce stress, you can increase planning.”
If the money is not being treated fairly in the household, then the relationship satisfaction is going to be lower.”
The study was published in the journal Family Relations (Dew et al., 2012).
Creating niche content is something all brands should do in order to catch their audience at various stages of their buying cycles.
Content diversifies your rankings, builds your brand’s recognizability, and helps create more conversion funnels throughout the site.
But there’s one huge problem with publishing new content on your site: Time.
Few brands can afford writing teams, and relying on freelancers brings in new risks like inconsistency in voice and lower quality.
How to teach your in-house writers to create more content faster and more productively?
Here are a few tips:
Stop Agonizing About Word Count
Somehow “long-form” content became the best content creation tactic at some point. Just about any content strategy started evolving around “the more words the better”, and writers became stressed with producing 4000-word articles.
This slows down the process a lot.
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Don’t get me wrong, some content topics do require lots of words to cover. But these are very few topics.
When you need to address a popular question on your site, get to the point quickly. If you think about it, people looking for answers online, don’t need your long intros and definitions. They need an answer.
Stop demanding long-form articles from your team. All you need is to ensure your content serves the user right. Encourage your team to search for every search query they are tasked to target, and read a few high-ranking articles. Chances are, those articles will be very well-focused to provide value right away.
I don’t recommend using ChatGPT (or similar AI-driven tools) to write content for you. While the AI-generated content may sound fine and even be useful, it lacks voice and expertise. It is also detectable.
And yet, AI tools can greatly improve the productivity of your writing team if they:
Prompt a tool to create an outline for your future article
Ask it to create takeaways for your written articles
Prompt it to suggest popular questions to cover
Ask it to write an introduction or a summary to your article
“Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.” Nietzsche
Our bluebirds lost hope this year and it’s good they did.
Lost hope:
Spring was mild in Pennsylvania this year. Our bluebird family had five eggs long before Mother’s Day. Momma bluebird brooded quietly through cold nights.
One day there were four eggs. A few days later the nest was empty. Her eggs lay in the grass. It wasn’t a predator. The eggs were intact.
Momma bluebird lost hope and emptied her own nest. She knows dead eggs don’t produce life, regardless of how long she warms them. It’s good she abandoned her eggs. Unfounded hope is deadly.
Freedom:
Optimism is bondage when you believe dead eggs come to life.
Some hope prolongs torment. You aspire for people who don’t care and encourage people who prefer complaining. You offer solutions to people who respond with more problems.
Lost hope sets you free.
5 practical ways to evaluate optimism:
Remember the sunk cost fallacy. Don’t invest in more training when previous training had no effect – unless you’re convinced the training was completely ineffective.
What are you actually doing? Hope is motivation to take action Don’t sit around mumbling things will work out. Positive expectation is dangerous when it prolongs inaction.
What are you doing differently? When hope prevents change, its destructive.
How are you learning from experiences? Dangerous hope closes your mind.
Evaluate your environment. When things change, maybe it’s time to adjust goals or abandon a nest.
Power of hope:
Hope enables you to flourish. Belief you will prevail keeps you going when nights get cold.
Confidence about the future enables organizations and movements to retain talent.
Hope energizes effort. Optimism doesn’t transform lousy leaders. Hope is useful when it motivates action.
