The best tactics for your homepage in 2014

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The homepage is a critically important page for many reasons. Oftentimes it is one of (if not the most) trafficked web page that we have on our websites.

Homepages were once the authoritative one-stop-shop for online brands, but over the years, search engines become more adept at understanding what users are looking for and their purpose has become more targeted. Just as the homepage’s purpose has progressed, so too have the wants and expectations of the people viewing them; and as marketers, it’s our job to deliver on those expectations.

To understand how the purpose of the homepage has evolved, we’ll take a look at some of the original ways of developing a homepage and compare them to the practices of 2014.

Give your homepage a singular focus

It used to be that we would promote all of the major sections of our site on the homepage — here’s our product, check out our blog, here’s this new launch point, look at this new thing we’re doing!  All of this is great, but they end up competing with each other for attention. And while these methods may have worked for websites of yesteryear, it’s not working in 2014.

Nowadays, we can make each of these different sections easy to find and navigate. This way we can focus our homepages uniquely on the most important information, the most important customers and visitors. Whatever you want to say, communicate it quickly and in a visual-centric way — perhaps a video or some graphics that reinforce your primary message.

From here you can A/B test different variations of your homepage to find out what viewers respond to the best.

Cut back on the keywords

It used to be standard practice to try to cram as many keywords as possible into the homepage. And in the past, this made sense because it would have been your highest PageRank page as well as the page that earned the most links.

These days, Google and other search engines are much more sophisticated and understanding. They know your website is about a lot of different things, not just the one page, and are considerate about a site’s authority in different areas and around keyword terms and phrases. This allows your internal pages to inherit strength and authority from your overall site, which lets you focus on a smaller, more refined subset of keywords on your homepage. Focus on brand-centric keywords and leave the unbranded ones for more specific pages deeper in your site.

Communicate quickly

Back when we were cramming as many keywords into the homepage as humanly possible, we needed walls and walls of text to harbour them.

Since we no longer need to accommodate a generous helping of keywords, you can ditch the lengthy prose and quickly communicate the primary objective of your homepage — your value proposition. Many good homepages use simple text and take a visual-centric approach to help the viewer absorb the information in a swift and interesting way — this could be a video, illustration or graphic, just to name a few.

Don’t stress about the fold

In the past, there was a lot of pressure to keep your important information “above the fold.”  But thanks to tablets, smartphones and wider screens, we as website viewers do a lot more scrolling, so really, the concept of keeping everything above the fold is becoming more and more antiquated. Keep some page content at the traditional scroll line, it will keep the experience compelling and draw the eye downwards, encouraging the viewer to keep scrolling and giving visibility to the rest of the information on your homepage.

There is a lot that can be said about homepage development, but these four points cover some very important issues. When writing a homepage, above all focus on clarity and simplicity. Help people understand quickly what the site is about and enable them to find what they are looking for without having to work hard to find it. A well designed and organised homepage will allow your visitors to feel comfortable and confident that they have come to the right place.

 

If you think your homepage needs some refurbishing, but are unsure where to start, contact our Digital Manager, Veronica Nobbs. She’ll be happy suggest some tips and tricks to get your website running on all cylinders. p: 950 2143

6 ways to earn higher rankings (and no, it’s not content marketing)

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There’s a lot of buzz about content marketing at present, and how essential it is to earn higher rankings. And while there is truth in the hype, it’s easy to forget about all the other tools that good SEOs and marketers have at their disposal.

There’s an idea that the only thing SEOs do anymore is content creation — this is truly minimising the job requirements, which are vast. So we’ve listed 6 ways (out of many) that you can earn higher rankings without investing in content marketing.

1. Better snipets

When I say snippets, I’m talking about what shows up on a search results page: your titles, URL, meta description, maybe even an author profile or a video. All of these things lead to your page, and if you change or tweak then to be a little bit more compelling, you will be able to drive more traffic to your site. But you can’t stop at simply making your teasers more interesting, you’ve got to make whatever is on that page match what is on the snippet, or vice versa.

If the snippets and the page don’t make sense together, you run the risk of people clicking, then jumping off the page, often called “pogo-sticking.”  Pogo-sticking can hurt you in two big ways; first, the engines look directly at this behaviour and think, “Oh, people don’t like this page. I don’t want to rank it.”  Second, you lose the opportunity to convert these viewers into buyers or someone who would share or link to your content.

2. Improve crawl-friendliness

Search engines frequently crawl website pages in order to determine which ones are indexed in their search listings. Search engine crawlers, also known as robots or spiders, collect, store and download pages they find important, such as a sites’ homepage. The search engines may not download pages they find irrelevant.

Go through your website; you may click around and find pages that don’t help anyone. Get rid of them or remake them; you’ll significantly improve your crawl bandwidth and the contentment that Google sees in your site.

Improving your good v. bad page ratio, making sure your models of navigation are clean and your site more index-able will greatly improve your site’s traffic.

3. Make pages faster

This one is pretty self-explanatory. If you make your pages faster, the internet will reward you. Some of the benefit will be reaped through Google directly (small factor in the ranking algorithm), but mostly it will be indirectly — lower bounce rates, reduced pogo-sticking and more opportunity to convert viewers.

4. Leverage your network to attract links

Leverage your networks to help attract links, shares, traffic, endorsements etc. Ask your followers — if you think you’ve gotten something great out of working with us, by buying a product, by using our service, interacting with us, please share it.

5. Identify pages that make your viewers happy, but aren’t getting organic search traffic

These are the pages that have a high engagement, low bounce rate, good number of visits, high browse rate, but for whatever reason, they aren’t getting organic search traffic. Often times the problem is keyword optimisation and keyword targeting isn’t quite there. Find the keywords that these pages should be ranking for and update the page, title and content to suit. In most cases you won’t even have to tweak much of the content to get the targeting right.

If you do happen to do a more significant update, relaunch and re-share it — especially if people or search engines have started to forget about it. Just a quick little update and reminder can help you just that little bit more when it comes to rankings.

6. Link building

For search engines that crawl the web, links are the streets between pages. Links aren’t everything in SEO, but search professionals attribute a large portion of the engine’s algorithms to link-based factors (see Search Engine Ranking Factors). Through links, engines can not only determine the popularity of a website and page, but metrics like trust, spam and authority. Trusted sites tend to link to other trusted sites, while spammy sites receive very few links from trusted sources.

Using link building tools, such as Link Intersect from Moz, you will be able to participate in competitive link building by finding pages that two or more of your competitors are linked to, but you are not. From here, you can create a prioritised list for outreach and start getting in touch. For example, if a journalist has written about your competition and not you, ask what you can do to be featured next time — it’s probably something really simple!

 

These tactics and hundreds more like it are all in the realm of what modern SEOs still need to do in addition to the newer obligations that we have around content creation and content marketing. If you want some advice about how to establish some SEO best practices within your organisation, come to us. Our Digital Manager, Veronica Nobbs is ready and able to take your strategy to the next level.

B2B Buyer Behavior: When Web Leads Convert

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Ever wondered when your B2B buyers are most active on your website?

According to a recent examination of their own customer-base, Software Advice was able to determine what time of the day, what day of the week and what months of the year experienced peak click-through rates. Ayaz Nanji covers the findings in his article for MarketingProfs.

*Keep in mind when reviewing the data that this study is limited to unique viewers in the United States, so some statistics may need to be reconsidered to better suit countries in the Southern Hemisphere.

 

B2B Buyer Behavior: When Web Leads Convert

Conversion rates for B2B online leads are highest at the beginning of the year, in part because companies are renewing budgets and new funds are available,according toa recent analysis bySoftware Advice.

On the other hand, conversion activity drops significantly during the prime vacation summer months. Conversion rates also tend to drop below average in December as companies prepare for the new year and hold off on spending.

The analysis was based on information collected from more than six million visitors to the Software Advicewebsitesince 2008. The data is specific to a single business with a particular audience (B2B software buyers), but the learnings may be applicable to other B2B sales teams, especially those that respond to leads generated on the Web.

Below key findings fromthe report.

Activity by Day of the Week

  • Software Advice found B2B buyer activity on their website is highest Tuesday through Thursday.
  • Web traffic peaks on Tuesdays, but conversion rates are highest on Wednesdays.

Activity by Time of Day

  • The analysis categorized time of day into three buckets: before work hours (12:00 AM to 7:59 AM CST), during work hours (8:00 AM to 5:59 PM CST), and after work hours (6:00 PM to 11:59 PM CST).
  • There are 53% more unique visitors during work hours compared with Software Advice’s average number of unique visitors.
  • Traffic is highest in the first half of the day, with the peak time occurring just before and during lunch.

Holidays

  • B2B buyer traffic drops more than 50% below average on New Year’s Day (-57%), Memorial Day (-57%), Independence Day (-58%), Labor Day (-54%), Thanksgiving (-71%), the day after Thanksgiving (-55%), Christmas Eve (-64%), and Christmas (-69%).
  • However, some holidays show only minor dips in traffic, including Martin Luther King Jr. Day (-8%) and Columbus Day (-6%).

About the research:The reportwas based on Software Advice website traffic and conversion data collected between January 1, 2008 and August 31, 2013. Data was limited to unique visitors from the United States, and to traffic to commercial landing pages.

Read more:http://www.marketingprofs.com/charts/2014/24150/b2b-buyer-behavior-when-web-leads-convert#ixzz2uCUSfp7n

Ally SEO and PPC for some seriously stunning CTR

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The key to any successful SEO and SEM campaign is utilising data to make the right decisions. The focus here isn’t to pit SEO against PPC, but rather to establish when and where the two can (and should) be used in partnership with each other.

By using data from both of these traffic sources, you will be able to fill information gaps, creating a broader picture of the factors that affect your website’s visibility in the search engine results page (SERP). And now that Google is limiting data more and more, providing it to only paying advertisers, using both these disciplines has become critical to our digital strategies.

How can SEO and SEM work together on a click-through-rate basis?

In a recent AdWords ‘paid and organic’ dimension report, the data suggests that CTR substantially increases when both paid and organic ads are shown together. SEER Interactive recently implemented this report for six of their clients and found that when paid ads were shown alone, they achieved a CTR of 5.66% and similarly, organic results shown alone got 6.15%. Now here’s the kicker — when paid and organic listing were shown together the CTR for paid results increased to 18.06% and organic results to a whopping 38.26%! This impressive data strongly indicates that SEO and PPC support each other, and having both on the SERPs is going to generate synergy and make a bigger impression on the searcher.

Run AdWords first

First, properly set up an optimised AdWords account with clearly defined campaigns, ad groups that are tightly knit to keywords and relevant ads that direct to relevant landing pages. A well thought out and implemented AdWords campaign will be strongly beneficial in the beginning because:

Budget: Small to medium sized businesses probably don’t have the budget to smash out on something like SEO. In today’s world, optimising your site properly can be very costly, not to mention results can take up to three months to start realising — that’s a whole three months with potentially no gain on your company’s targets! By running a PPC campaign, you’ll bring visitors to your site and you only pay when someone clicks through. This way, you will be getting some kind of return and, if it produces any mount of profit, it can be put towards your future SEO campaign.

Awareness & CRO: Don’t stress if your AdWords campaign isn’t producing the profits you were hoping for in the beginning, the value is still there. You continue to bring visitors to your site, which not only increases awareness to your searchers, but provides you with extremely important data. You’ll learn how visitors interact with your site, which pages convert better and the keywords that perform best on each individual page.

SEO Learnings: Google AdWords provides a wealth of knowledge when it comes to how search engines appraise your website. Not only will you be able to see how Google judges your page, but how your visitors do too (i.e. bounce rates, exit rates, time on page). You’ll also be able to see which pages and keywords have better quality scores.

Once you’ve gathered enough data through AdWords, you can start focusing on your SEO. Two metrics that are especially useful are quality score (QS) and cost-per-click (CPC). By looking at the QS and CPC for inbound keywords on specific pages, we can gather important information that Google themselves use when decision making. Based on this data we can build a fairly decent idea of:

  1. How relevant Google deems a keyword to a landing page (QS)
  2. How competitive a specific keyword is to target (CPC)

Once you have this keyword information you can actively decide which keywords to target.

So in the end, SEO and SEM are two traffic sources cut from the same cloth. They complement each other in SERP and cooperate to provide you a better overall CTR, and by employing AdWords in the beginning, you’ll be able to retrieve data that, when later applied will give you a winning SEO strategy.

Shorten the B2B sales cycle by leveraging your content

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If there is one thing that aggravates the modern B2B organisation, it’s the ever-lengthening sales cycle. As the future of your company may very well depend on getting revenue through the door, a sluggish sales course is a growing concern for everyone from CEOs to sales reps.

So first, let’s look at the factors contributing to longer sales cycles:

– Tighter budgets: Overtime, we’ve seen more prudence when buying with inceased emphasis on ROI

– Decision apprehension:Corporate expenses are being analysed more closely, making buyers leery of making a hasty decision

– Increased options: Buyers have almost unlimited opportunity for options, and too much choice can confuse buyers, leading to procrastination

– Poor marketing and selling: If the message isn’t crystal clear and/or the selling process alignment is off, the sale will take longer, if it happens at all

These days, content marketing is the trending topic on every marketer, sales rep and business owner’s mind. We know that propagating fresh, relevant content is essential to a successful digital strategy, but perhaps the most important content marketing benefit is the impact on the sales cycle. A relevant piece of content available to the prospect at the right time in the sales cycle can help accelerate the purchase decision.

Now let’s explore what types of digital content can shorten the B2B sales cycle?

Product brochures and data sheets: Prospects will want to review your product or service literature before making a purchasing decision. It’s possible they’ve already made the emotional decision to buy and are now looking for some confirmation by matching features and functions against their needs. Prospects can also use brochures and data sheets to compare your benefits and features against competitor’s offerings. Whatever the reason, well-organised and complete product and services information can only benefit you.

Company and product reviews: Testimonials and independent reviews will only magnify the impact of your self-written information. These independent commentators provide credibility to your product and brand while alleviating the buyer’s fear of making a bad decision.

Case studies: Case studies are an excellent way to validate your offering and are a great tool to show how a product or service works. This specialised content can have a much greater impact on prospects than a generic product pitch.

“How to” guides: Potential buyers are interested in how they will install your product and use it on an ongoing basis. Assuming your product is not over complicated, providing this information will ease buyer reservation and motivate them to act quickly.

Order forms: The ultimate way to shorten the sales cycle, order forms compel the prospect to take action now. Even if you offer an expensive or complex product, order forms can be used to generate a minor close — perhaps a free trial offer, where you ask for a small commitment upfront, followed by a larger commitment later.

Website information: Think of your website as the Nerve Centre. All of the categories mentioned above should be accessible via your website. Your website is where you are going to be able to educate, motivate and convert prospects into customers.

Price List: B2B companies commonly make the mistake of not listing their prices online. They hesitate, thinking their prices will drive away prospects and give competitors access to their offers. But if you apply all of the above, the price will be weighed against all of the other benefits of the product or service. Don’t lose out on sales because a prospect doesn’t feel you are being upfront.

 

When it comes to shortening the B2B sales cycle, there is no right or wrong formula when it comes to content length. Different products, services and brands may need more explanation and information than others. But if you feel that your website is getting a little text-heavy, try presenting some of the aforementioned digital content in non-text formats, such as infographics, audio and/or video. Get the information to your reader in a quick, easily digestible manner with clear links and CTAs.

If you’re not sure you’re worried you’re not quite hitting the proverbial nail on the head when it comes to your content, let us take a look. We can help get your on the right path to more money in your pocket! Email erin@b2bpartners.nz

Why B2B companies need to use conversion rate optimisation

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According to a new report from Econsultancy and RedEye, three out of five businesses (59%) believe conversion rate optimisation is crucial to their overall digital strategy. A further 40% of respondents consider it to have varying degrees of importance while, in contrast, a mere 1% of businesses believe CRO to be an unimportant factor in their overall digital approach.

While these numbers make it seem pretty clear that businesses are aware of the importance of CRO, many still have yet to implement it into their digital strategy, especially in the B2B world.

Many B2B digital marketers don’t consider themselves to have anything to convert and CRO is better left for the boys in e-commerce. It’s true that the B2B sales cycle is a long one: it has several stages of procurement and the final decision is made by committee, not an individual click of a mouse; but that doesn’t mean B2B sites lack conversion points, they simply have a more subtle, nuanced set than their B2C counterparts. Generating sales leads, qualifying and filtering these leads, supporting research queries and generating positive feelings towards your brand are all vital touch points for potential customers. And all of them can be improved using CRO.

The following are a few tips to help B2B companies effectively use conversion rate optimisation.

1. It’s not an option

Optimising your website for user interaction is not an optional add-on to your strategy. It is your digital strategy. Marketing disciplines of organic search, search engine marketing (SEM), advertising, content, PR and social media are interdependent — and best practices in one discipline will engender best practices in another. Be sure your content is succinct, meaningful and reflects the real-world language prospects use to find you. Good content encourages shares and likes, which in turn creates links and rankings. The main point is this: good content propagates engagement, leading to form fill-outs and sales inquiries.

2. Action and goals

No different from an e-commerce site, the webpage presented to a user should have a distinct hierarchy of your business objectives. If you are looking to drive users to complete a form, make sure this is given prominence (i.e. a high-contrast, attractive looking button or a clear text link), ensuring nothing else is competing for attention with this call-to-action.  If your priority is to drive phone traffic, a prominent phone number along with the times of day the lines are manned is key. If you have live chat, make this a standout feature of the page. If a white paper or case study download is a main action of yours, pages with these a central action point should prioritise downloads over form inquiries.

3. Analyse and measure

In the business-to-business world, it is difficult to quantify the contribution the web makes on company revenues, and therefore is rarely recorded or measured. A culture of analysis and the ability to benchmark is essential for successful CRO, which means it’s imperative to allow your web analytics team more influence. Have your analytics team regularly meet with your main business intelligence team. This will help you to understand how to assign value to leads acquired online.

4. Digital is different

The way users consume your digital property is different than a physical interaction. For instance, if you have a large inventory of products, how should you group these products together under category headings? The categories laid out by your corporate communications team may not contain words or phrases used by consumers in the real world. Put your users in control and feature a prominent site search feature. It’s also important to consider how tablet and mobile impacts a text-laden site; here again, internal site search is vital to the user.

5. Design

You site should have a clear brand proposition and a clear logo within the masthead; photographic assets should support the message you want to convey to you prospects and customers. Ensure each page leads to an evident user action, whether that is a form inquiry, download or progression to another step.

6. Content

Corporate copywriting is enjoying a renaissance as we’ve experienced a strong resurgence in content marketing over the last five years. The number one rule when writing copy is always quality over quantity as research suggests that only 20% of text is actually actually read, not just skimmed. So make sure your important product features in the opening sentence(s), or better yet, use bullet points for emphasis. Steer clear of overuse of product codes and excessive amounts of technical product detail — it’s a sure-fire way to lose your audience. Infographics and video draw the eye and encourages sharing, so long as it is succinct with a strong message outlining business benefits.

7. Culture

If you have an international customer base, keep in mind that users in different areas of the world respond to design that is conducive to their respective culture. For instance, where the colour red may sometimes be an indication of danger in the West, in China it’s a symbol of good luck. To prevent your cultural wires from getting crossed, think about a local approach to design that appeals to your international clientele.

It’s a new year and a perfect time to kick your new digital plan of action into high gear. If you thought conversion rate optimisation isn’t for your B2B company, think again. These seven tips will get you off to a great start and give you better insight into where you are finding success and failure within your digital strategy.

Right brain vs left brain of B2B marketers

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Psychologists and personality theorists have long believed there to be differences between the right and the left side of the brain. The right side of your brain is responsible for creativity, while the left side handles the details and implementation. The left side is analytical while the right side is artistic.

InB2B marketing, the type of thinker you are guides the campaigns you design. So what type of marketer are you?

Another fabulous infographic from our friends at Marketo blog can help you figure out which side of your brain is fueling your designs.

After reading the Right Brain vs. Left Brain infographic, what conclusions did you draw? Is is accurate?

Ignite sales by rekindling the meta description flame

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In simplistic terms, meta descriptions are HTML attributes that provide concise explanations of the contents of web pages. Meta description tags, while not important to search engine rankings, are extremely vital in gaining user click-through from search engine result pages (SERPs). We’ve all seen them before, they look like this:

 

 

 

 

As SEO best practices constantly evolve and change, it is easy to take our focus off our meta descriptions, after all they don’t immediately affect our rankings, so why exhaust our energies here?

Well, it’s high time we rekindled the relationship with our forgotten friend. As mentioned before, meta descriptions directly effects traffic volume. It serves as your ad copy, and therefore needs to be compelling, relevant and include a call to action.So while the lowly meta description may not get your page ranking at the number one spot, it will drive sales.

Getting back on good terms with your meta description

1. Solve a problem

Web users are generally searching for an answer to a problem. This is applicable to online retail as well. Say a user is looking to put in an above-ground swimming pool for the summer. They’re looking for one that is the best quality, price, warranty, installation service, etc. and the meta description needs to address this.

2. Stand Out

Google Adwords does not allow you to use capitalisation for emphasis in paid advertisements, however nothing is stopping you in the meta description. Used sparingly it can really capture the attention and draw the eye of the reader. Similarly, numbers can attract attention where words may fail (e.g 50% off or Fortune 500 Company).

3. Key Facts

Include the most important facts that are relevant to your audience. Whether it is size, model or same day delivery, list it clearly and concisely in your description. Keep this up-to-date. Nothing will scare off a sale faster than archaic, obsolete products.

4. Talk Up Yourself/ Use Superlatives

You’ve only got a few sentences to draw a user in — so show off. If you can name drop or boast any accolade you’ve received, do it now. Furthermore, superlatives will help sell yourself and your page content, e.g. “Check out our stunning, top-of-the line [product and/or service]!”

5. CTAs

Calls to action are used in every other form of advertisements so why would you leave them out of your meta description? Encourage the user to take the next step of clicking-through to your site.

A few last words on the subject: meta descriptions should employ your keywords intelligently, but also sell your company and product offer. Make sure your description is compelling with direct relevance to the page. Each page’s meta description should be unique and ideally be between 150-160 characters.

It’s high time to welcome the meta description back into our SEO friendship circle. The more we put into our descriptions, they more we get back. Putting the love back into the metadescriptionrelationship canonly benefit us — the better the description is, the higher the click-through rate will be, ultimately bringing more traffic to your site.

If you want help producing dynamite meta descriptions and amp your click-through rates, or if you are looking to revamp your entire SEO campaign, talk to us.Our Digital Manager Veronica Nobbs will get you on the road to optimisation in no time!

e: veronica@b2bpartners.nz

 

 

How colour can effect your brand strategy

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The most prominent brands in the world are defined by their colours. McDonald’s golden arches, Coca-Cola red, BP green.  Entire slogans have been made around colour — like UPS, “What can Brown do for you?”  These companies have succeeded in creating a visual identity for their brand by strategically using colour in their logos, websites and products.

The colour you choose to represent your company is an essential character in telling your brand’s story. Our brains are designed to respond to colour. Once we identify pigment, a chemical reaction in our brain produces an emotional response, and these emotional responses trigger a multitude of thoughts, memories and associations with people, places and events.

Because of the emotional identification to colour, integrating it into your brand will help achieve the highest level of impact. But conveying a simple idea of meaning and differentiation compels us to select a colour that properly fits your brand positioning. Your colour scheme must represent your target audiences’ emotional associations and desires, plus how the value proposition or promise of your brand meets these desires.

Marketing blog, Marketo, put the rainbow under a microscope and created this helpful infographic to identify how different colours can help you connect with your consumers.

Colour is an essential component of any brand strategy. Properly chosen, it can define your value, strengthen and support your brand positioning, enable greater awareness and customer recall and distinguish yourself among competitors.

If you feel your company image could use some revamping, or are simply interested in a consultation to see how we can take your brand to the next level in the new year, contact us at+64 9 950 2140 or erin@b2bpartners.nz

Stubborn business myths we just can’t quit

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Growing up, we’ve all been told the same universal myths by our parents. From, “If you keep making that face it will freeze that way,” to “If you swallow your gum it will take seven years to digest,” or my personal favourite, “If you eat a watermelon seed it will grow inside your stomach.”  There is no shortage of outrageous untruths we were told as children and the trend hasn’t waned, only graduated now that we’ve reached adulthood.

We love to make broad, sweeping generalisations from a single data point.  Coincidence and luck are commonly mistaken for cause and effect — like the time your co-worker ran the pool table after four shots of tequila and a beer then claimed he’s a shark after a few [too many] drinks. Whether it’s a by-product of rationalisation or unadulterated blind faith, we choose to believe what we want to believe and that has created room for some steadfast business myths we not only tell ourselves, but pass on as gospel to our disciples, forever stoking the folklore fire.

Myth #1: It’s not what you know but who you know.

This isn’t bad advice, but what should be seen as a testament to the importance of networking has become a misinterpreted suggestion that only the privileged few with connections get ahead in the business world.

For every success story, like Snapchat founder and CEO Evan Spiegel, who had connections, there are a dozen like Starbuck’s founder Howard Schultz who bad to build from the ground up. While knowing the right person could get you an in, if you can’t hack it you won’t last long. No matter what you want to believe, the truth is knowledge, skill and experience is just as important as networking.

Myth #2: The boss is always right.

Now this one is a bit tricky; each employer/manager is different and some may not be as open to suggestion as others. However, competent executives and effective leaders know how critical it is to hire the sharpest, most talented people they can and encourage them to speak their mind and suggest ideas.

The idea of a “yes-man” has become antiquated and quite frankly, detrimental in today’s business world. Sugar-coating the truth or telling your superior what he wants to hear will only get you ahead in dysfunctional, bureaucratic organisations that are quickly going nowhere.

Myth #3: Nice guys finish last.

You don’t need to forego your backbone, but you’ll gain more company admiration by being a genuine and pleasant person than the office tyrant; show respect to those who deserve it and be tough on those who don’t. You don’t need to give up being nice to others to be professional and competitive.

Myth #4: Don’t work hard, work smart.

To be truly successful in this world, you have to work smart andhard. With very rare exception, there is simply no substitute for strong work ethic and good old fashioned hard work. It will not go unnoticed by your colleagues and superiors.

Myth #5: Work is work, it’s not supposed to be fun.

It’s true that business is about business and it can’t all be fun and games. But your absolute best chance at being successful (no matter how you choose to define success) is finding your passion and turning it into a living.

If you dread getting up in the morning because you pursued a career path you thought you should be doing rather than having any real interest in it, there’s no doubt you will end up a little bitter and cynical.

Stop looking for shortcuts to the top. Hard work and perseverance never led anyone astray. And most importantly, find something you love to do — it’s the only way to do great work.