Product Habits - How to make Twitter more useful

How to Make Twitter More Useful

Julian Shapiro recently shared a two-minute video on how he organizes his TweetDeck to make Twitter more useful given his interests and business needs. I organize my TweetDeck in a similar way, and it's made Twitter more useful to me than any other social media platform. How do you consume Twitter these days?

We Analyzed 180K Business Proposals. Here's What We Found.

If you're responsible for putting together business proposals to close sales, this is a must-read. It's a distillation of the dozen key findings after analyzing more than 180,000 successful business proposals. A few of the findings surprised me—like clients' willingness to pay directly from the proposal or a single offer being better than a package. I bet at least one of these key findings will surprise you, too. 

Humans Are Bad at URLs and Fonts Don't Matter

I think phishing attacks and cyber security are bound to become even bigger conversation topics over the next several years. In this article, Troy Hunt explains why we need to focus on getting people to use up-to-date browsers that flag phishing sites instead of complaining about URLs and fonts. By the way, have you updated your browser recently? 

The No-Code Generation Is Arriving

This TechCrunch article articulates a shift I've observed in the tech world over the past few years. That shift is about the emergence and growing popularity of no-code tools—and how it's changing what the average worker can (and is expected) to do without formal technical training. Do you think this will lead to another generational divide in the workplace? 

9 Tried and Tested Ways a Sales Analysis Can Help You Generate More Revenue

It's not surprising that for an overwhelming majority of companies, the top sales priority is closing more deals. But how exactly should you go about it? How do you know whether you're capturing the right leads or focusing on the right conversion rates? Guesswork and gut feelings can only get you so far—at some point, you'll need to use data and sales analysis to boost sales and revenue. Here are four sales analysis methods that might work for you. 

The Two Ways You Can Make Progress on Any Given Goal

Facebook's former Design VP Julie Zhuo recently tweeted, "To accelerate your progress on any given goal, you either need to spend less time thinking/preparing and focus more on DOING, or slow down on executing and spend more time PLANNING to make sure you're working on the right thing." While I think both are critical, I admittedly prefer to focus more on doing than planning. Which do you bias toward? 

Hockey Stick Growth and Github Stars

Matthew Rocklin started a company around pre-existing community OSS project Dask. Using two prototypical conversations about hockey stick growth and GitHub stars, he makes the case that common OSS and VC metrics are flawed. What metrics do you think would better capture community-supportive behaviors? 

Four Steps to Improve Your Writing

Learning how to write well is a critical skill—regardless of your specific career track. I can't tell you how many articles (and even tweets) I've read that contained great ideas, but were terribly written. Here are the four elements of good writing, along with examples for each one. If you want to become a better writer this month, choose one to focus on each week in November.