Litigation Update: Boy Scouts of America Bankruptcy Proceedings Accelerate

A general bar date has been set for filing claims in the Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings involving the Boy Scouts of America.  In a telephonic hearing held on May 18, Judge Laurie Selber Silverstein of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware established a filing deadline of November 16, 2020 and provided a longer proof of claim form to be used by prospective sexual abuse claimants.  The judge stressed that the questions asking victims to detail their abuse would be optional, given the risks of causing further trauma under these circumstances, but she also noted that any additional information would be welcome from the claimants. The Boy Scouts of America, one of the nation’s largest youth organizations founded 110 years ago, filed for bankruptcy on February 18, 2020, in the wake of hundreds of lawsuits brought by men who alleged that they were abused as Scouts. The Chapter 11 filing will allow the BSA to keep operating and reorganize its finances so it can set up a victims’ compensation fund. It also suspends the current lawsuits pending across the country. The number of sexual abuse lawsuits has increased as a result of some states revising their statutes of limitation to allow more time for victims to sue their abusers; those states include New Jersey, New York and California.  Over the last several years, lawsuits and other investigations have brought to light internal documents describing abuse of Scouts going back generations. An investigator hired by the BSA had uncovered 12,254 victims and 7,819 abusers spanning years from 1946 through 2016. Historically, the BSA carried liability insurance designed to cover these sexual abuse claims but after the recent revelations regarding the scope, longstanding history and alleged awareness of the BSA of many of these claims, the carriers have withdrawn coverage, leaving the organization to face the prospect of having to fund any litigation and settlements itself. The BSA’s 2018 tax filing revealed that the organization at that time had in excess of $285 million. They also have significant real estate across the country bringing the group’s assets to $1.4 billion.  In its filing, the BSA was quick to point out that only the national organization had filed for bankruptcy but not the local councils which remained financially independent organizations.  In its bankruptcy petition, the organization reported assets of $1 billion to $10 billion. According to a Wall Street Journal article in January, 2018, local councils and other affiliated non-profits separately maintain about $3.3 billion in assets; given the independent status of the local groups, the 2018 filing might be viewed as an effort on the part of the BSA to shield from victims seeking compensation the assets of the 261 legally separate local affiliates, which by some estimates account for 70% of the BSA assets. The BSA is planning to use the Chapter 11 process to establish a fund to compensate the victims. However, concerns have been expressed over the appropriateness of this type of mechanism to ensure all claimants are heard; opponents point to the claim filing deadline that may well expire before a particular claimant feels ready to come forward.  The extended proof of claim form includes a narrative section that allows victims to provide specific information about their claims. The judge also provided for a notification process designed to reach over 100 million people in an effort to ensure all potential claimants are notified and offered the opportunity to come forward. This process, estimated to cost over $6 million, includes mail, electronic communications and media campaigns. Notwithstanding their independent status, nine lawsuits were filed on May 19 against three local councils in upstate New York – Leatherstocking Council, the Baden-Powell Council and the Seneca Waterways Council.  An injunction issued by Judge Selber Silverstein halts these lawsuits from proceeding until at least June 8 but plaintiffs’ counsel are seeking for the injunction to be lifted if they do not get access to financial information from the three councils. In order to assist victims achieve some measure of justice, firms will have to undertake both a time-sensitive and compassionate intake process. Verus LLC recognizes these concerns and can assist your firm with developing a robust intake initiative.  To contact us, fill out this form or email us at info@verusllc.com and we will reply immediately. |CONTACT US| |REQUEST PROPOSAL| The post Litigation Update: Boy Scouts of America Bankruptcy Proceedings Accelerate appeared first on Verus.

https://www.forlawfirmsonly.com/litigation-update-boy-scouts-of-america-bankruptcy-proceedings-accelerate/

Data Tells Many Stories Behind the COVID-19 Impact on Nursing Homes

Data Analysis by: Robert Koehl, Verus’ Analytics Manager and Jose Thomas, Verus’ Senior Statistician The news is filled every day with pandemic-related statistics: number of new cases, number of deaths, number of recoveries and so on. But what’s the real story behind the data? Data concerning nursing home cases can be used to bring serious issues to light with a goal of identifying possible systemic challenges that must be addressed immediately and improving future responses to infectious disease outbreaks. Looking closely at the total number of COVID-19 cases reported in nursing homes and comparing it to the number of deaths in those facilities starts to reveal an interesting pattern. In our home state of New Jersey, much public attention has focused on counties reporting the highest number of cases in nursing homes, but the ratio of deaths to those total case counts tells us focusing on one or the other count in isolation may miss the true picture. As focus turns to the legal liabilities associated with COVID-19 cases, lawyers who are representing nursing home residents and their relatives will need to carefully craft a compelling case that is rooted in a true interpretation of the data. Using data collected by the New Jersey Department of Health¹, we have observed that the death-to-case ratio in certain counties stands out:

• Bergen County in the northeast corner of the state reported the highest number of nursing home COVID-19 cases. Yet, Sussex County, in the northwest corner, reported a significantly higher death-to-case ratio.
• Burlington County, which reported more than quadruple the number of COVID cases as Sussex, as well as a higher death count, had a much lower death-to-case ratio—nearly a third of the Sussex County ratio.

What do these data points tell epidemiologists, state officials, and families of the deceased? Were different practices in place in long-term care facilities in Sussex County which yielded the higher ratio than other counties that reported more total cases? Were interventions, treatments, staffing or overall readiness key factors? Simply looking at numbers in siloed sets does not tell the same story as looking more deeply at the data—and does not necessarily reveal the important questions surrounding how the coronavirus has affected nursing home residents. Governments should be encouraged to continue collecting and publicly reporting this data and to motivate experts to mine it for insights that will improve public policy responses to future crises, as well as to assist our healthcare, financial, and legal systems in the monumental task of repairing the damage done by COVID-19. Nursing Home Confirmed COVID Cases in NJ   Nursing Home Deaths from COVID in NJ   Nursing Home Death to Case Ratio in NJ Mining data around nursing home availability tiers—which relate to the number of available beds per facility—also reveal the outliers whose incidence of COVID-19 cases and deaths are far above statistical means. The chart for New York² and New Jersey identify nursing home hot spots by size; the county chart also reveals the counties in which high numbers of nursing home deaths occurred, and where. While the stories behind the data are yet to be completely revealed, the numbers do raise questions and concerns about the care and protocols within nursing homes—and call into question if the states are collecting the right data in order to make informed decisions regarding pandemic-related guidelines for these medically fragile communities. ¹ Includes all deaths reported by Long Term Care facilities to the Communicable Disease Service at the New Jersey Department of Health. All deaths may not be laboratory confirmed. The cases reported are self-reported by facilities at a point in time and may not reflect real-time data. Case numbers are constantly changing and subject to updates. (As of 5/11/2020) ² The numbers displayed are a result of a comprehensive accounting of current and retrospective data, provided by facilities. This data captures COVID-19 confirmed and COVID-19 presumed deaths within nursing homes and adult care facilities. This data does not reflect COVID-19 confirmed or COVID-19 presumed positive deaths that occurred outside of the facility. Retrospective data reporting dates back to March 1, 2020. New York State Department of Health. (As of 5/11/2020) Click on this link for information on Covid-19 Nursing Homes Liability Services. To contact us, fill out this form or email us at info@verusllc.com and we will reply immediately. |CONTACT US| |REQUEST PROPOSAL| The post Data Tells Many Stories Behind the COVID-19 Impact on Nursing Homes appeared first on Verus.

https://www.forlawfirmsonly.com/data-tells-many-stories-behind-the-covid-19-impact-on-nursing-homes/

Three Steps to a Better-Performing About Page-Posted by AnnSmarty

Posted by AnnSmarty Somehow, many businesses I’ve come across online have one glaring problem in common: a very weak and unconvincing About Us page. This doesn’t make any sense in my mind, as the About page is one of the most important brand assets, and unlike link building and social media marketing, it doesn’t require any ongoing effort or investment. An About page is often part of a buying journey. It can drive people to your site and help convince them to deal with you. And, in these uncertain times, you can use it to help build trust in you and your business. Creating a solid About page is a one-time task, but it will boost both brand loyalty and conversions for many months to come.

Why is your About page so important?

It is often an entry page

Whether you’re a business owner or blogger, your About page tends to rank incredibly well for brand-driven search queries (those that contain your name or your brand name). If nothing else, it shows up in your sitelinks: Or your mini-sitelinks: This means your customers will often enter your site through your About page. Is it making a good first impression to convince them to browse your site further (or engage)? Let’s not forget that branded queries have high intent, because people typing your brand name in the search box already know you or have heard about your products. Failing to meet their needs equals a missed opportunity.

It is often a conversion trigger (and more)

How often have you checked a business’s About page before buying anything from them? I always do, especially if it's a new brand I haven’t heard of before. Or maybe it’s not even about buying. Anytime someone approaches me with a quote or an interview request, I always check their About page. I refuse to deal with bloggers who don’t take themselves seriously. Likewise, I often look to the About page when trying to find a press contact to feature a tool in my article. On a personal level, I always open an About page to find a brand’s social media profiles when I want to follow them. A lack of a detailed, well-structured About page often means leaked conversions as well as missed backlinks or follows.

It is an important entity optimization asset

We don’t know exactly how Google decides whether a site can be considered a brand, but we have well-educated theories so we can help Google in making this decision. The About page is a perfect entity optimization asset. First, what we know: An About page is mentioned in Google’s human rating guidelines as one of the ways to determine the “expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness”, or E-A-T, of any page. Human raters don’t have a direct impact on search results, but their assessments are used to teach Google’s algorithm to better rank pages. So if the About page comes up in their guidelines, it’s likely they use it as a ranking signal. Second, Google is using information you choose to put on your About page to put your business inside their knowledge base, so it’s important to include as much detail as you can. With all of this in mind, how should you put together a great About page?

1. Start strong

This step is not unique to this particular page, but that doesn’t make it any less important. Treat your About page as a business card: People should be willing to learn more as soon as they see it. Your page should be eye-catching and memorable, and grab attention at first sight without the need to scroll down. For example, Cisco starts with a powerful picture and message: Nextiva starts with their main tagline: Slack tells us exactly what they are doing and sums up its most impressive stats: Telling your brand’s story is a great way to make your About page more memorable and relatable. Terminus does a very good job at starting their page with some history about the company that leaves you wanting to know more: And Zoom starts with a video and a list of the company’s values: Starting your page with a quick, attention-grabbing video is probably the best idea because video has been proven to convince visitors to linger a little bit longer and start engaging with the page. You can create a short and professional video within minutes using web-based video editors like InVideo (in fact, InVideo is probably the most affordable solution I’m aware of). To create a video intro using InVideo:

• Pick a template
• Upload your images and videos (or use the ones inside the platform)
• Edit subtitles to tell your brand’s story
• Add music or a voiceover

It’ll take you just 30 minutes to create a captivating video to put on your landing page:

2. Link your brand to other entities

With all that Google-fueled nonsense going around about nofollowing external links, or even linking out in general, marketers and bloggers tend to forget about one important thing: A link is the only way for Google to crawl the web. More than that, Google needs links to:

• Understand how well-cited (and hence authoritative) any page is
• Create a map of sites, entities behind them, and concepts they represent

This is where linking out to other “entities” (e.g. brands, organizations, places, etc.) is so important: it helps Google identify your place within their own knowledge base. To give you some ideas, make sure to link to:

• Your company’s professional awards
• Your featured mentions
• Conferences you were/are speaking at

For personal blogs, feel free to include references to your education, past companies you worked for, etc. To give you a quick example of how useful this may turn out to be, here’s my own Google Knowledge Graph: How did I get it? To start, “Shorty Awards” is Google’s recognized entity. When I was nominated, I linked to that announcement from my blog, so Google connected me to the entity and generated a branded Knowledge Graph. This nomination is hardly my only — or even most notable — accomplishment, but that’s all Google needed to put me on the map. Google may know you exist, but without making a connection to a known entity, you can’t become one yourself. So start by making those associations using your About page. To help Google even more, use semantic analysis to create copy containing related concepts and entities:

• Register at Text Optimizer and type in your core keyword (something that describes your business model/niche in the best possible way)
• Choose Google and then “New Text”

Text Optimizer will run your query in Google, grab search snippets, and apply semantic analysis to generate the list of related concepts and entities you should try and include in your content. This will make it easier for Google to understand what your business is about and what kinds of associations it should be building: Using some structured markup is also a good idea to help Google connect all the dots. You can point Google to your organization’s details (date it was founded, founder’s name, type of company, etc.) as well as some more details including official social media channels, awards, associated books, and more. Here are a few useful Schema generators to create your code:

• Technicalseo.com
• Hallanalysis.com

For Wordpress users, here are a few plugins to help with Schema integration.

3. Include your CTA

Most About pages I’ve had to deal with so far have one issue in common: It’s unclear what users are supposed to do once they land there. Given the page role in the buying journey (customers may be entering your site through it or using it as a final research touchpoint), it is very important to help them proceed down your conversion channel. Depending on the nature of your business, include a CTA to:

• Request a personal demo
• Contact you
• Check out your catalogue
• Talk to your chatbot
• Opt-in to receive your downloadable brochure or newsletter

Apart from your CTAs, there are helpful ways to make your About page easier to navigate from. These include:

• Breadcrumb navigation
• “Skip” navigation links (which are essential for accessibility, too)

Whatever you do, start treating your About page as a commercial landing page, not just a resource for information about your business. Turn it into a conversion funnel, and this includes monitoring that funnel. On Wordpress, you can set up each link or button on your About page as an event to track using Finteza’s plugin. This way, you’ll be able to tell which of those CTAs bring in more customers and which are leaking conversions. Finteza allows you to keep a close eye on your conversion funnel and analyze its performance based on traffic source, user location, and more. For example, here’s us tracking all kinds of “Free Download” buttons. It’s obvious that the home page has many more entries, but the About page seems to do a better job at getting its visitors to convert: You can absolutely use Google Analytics to analyze your conversion funnel and user journeys once they land on your About page, but it will require some setup. For help, read about Google Analytics Attribution and Google Analytics Custom Dimensions — both resources are helpful in uncovering more insights with Google Analytics, beyond what you would normally monitor. Like any other top- and middle-of-the-funnel pages, you’re welcome to reinforce your CTA by using social proof (recent reviews, testimonials, featured case studies, etc.). Here are a few ideas for placing testimonials.

Takeaways

Creating and optimizing your About page is a fairly low-effort initiative, especially if you compare it with other marketing tasks. Yet it can bring about several positive changes, like more trust in your brand and better conversion rates. You should treat this page as a business card: It needs to create a very good impression in an instant. Put something attention-grabbing and engaging in the above-the-fold area — for example, a quick video intro, a tagline, or a photo. Consider using links, semantic analysis, and structured markups to help Google associate your brand with other niche entities, and put it into its knowledge base. Add CTAs (and experiment with different kinds of CTAs) to prompt your page visitors to follow your conversion funnel. An About page is often an underestimated, yet a very important part of your customers’ buying journeys, so make sure it’s clear where you want them to proceed. Thanks for reading, hope it was helpful, let me know your thoughts/questions in the comments. Let’s discuss! Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

https://www.businesscreatorplus.com/three-steps-to-a-better-performing-about-page/

Financial Technology Company Plaid Accused Of Banking Data Ripoff

Venmo, Stripe, Square’s Cash App, and Coinbase are just a few of the thousands of financial services apps that use banking authentication services provided by a company called Plaid. Founded in 2013, Plaid, a financial technology company, claims to connect to more than 11,000 banking institutions worldwide, allowing them to interact with day-to-day banking, investment, and cryptocurrency apps used by millions. This has given the company an extraordinary level of access to a truly massive amount of user banking information.   A class action lawsuit filed against Plaid in early May 2020 alleges that the company used that access to illegally collect detailed private user banking data. This information was then sold to other parties. Plaid allegedly collected data going back five years, with an average of 3,700 transactions per user accessed, according to the lawsuit.  Plaid provides account authentication services for non-bank financial services apps. These include payment apps like Square’s Cash App, investment apps like Robinhood, and cryptocurrency apps like Coinbase. These apps require that users link their on-app account to a bank account, and Plaid is the portal through which that link can be created and authenticated. Plaid’s services are used by more than 2,000 apps. As a result, Plaid has access to the bank accounts of nearly 1 in 4 Americans.  This extensive access allegedly allowed Plaid to improperly access and sell the private information contained in more than 200 million accounts. Aside from any direct financial benefit Plaid obtained from selling this information, their expertise in collecting and handling financial data greatly increased their value as a company in the financial technology industry. According to industry observers, Plaid’s valuation in 2018 at $2.65 billion and Visa’s acquisition of the company in 2020 for $5.3 billion can be at least partially attributed to the mountain of individual banking data it has acquired. 

Illusion Of Banking Security 

Plaid became part of the bedrock of day-to-day financial activity so quietly that many Americans might have never heard of it, despite the fact that it powers so many of the financial apps we use every day.  As outlined in the complaint, when users are prompted to link their bank account when they open an account with, for example, Venmo, they are taken to a Plaid authentication screen. But users might not realize, because instead of Plaid’s logo and branding, the screen is instead designed to look like it belongs to the bank itself. So if a user was trying to connect a Bank of America account, they would be taken to a screen featuring the Bank of America logo and branding.  This practice allowed Plaid to collect the banking information of millions of people, all while staying under the radar. 

Fighting For Accountability And Compensation 

“Among the most valuable and sensitive of all consumer data is the personal financial information maintained in consumers’ banking and other financial accounts.” Those who have had their private financial information misused and exploited for corporate gain deserve to see Plaid held accountable and forced to change its behavior. Furthermore, Plaid should pay compensation for the damages they have caused.  Morgan & Morgan data breach lawyers are fully invested in the fight for data privacy and security for all Americans. Led by John Yanchunis, a national leader in the field of data breach lawsuits, our lawyers have achieved meaningful results and made a real difference in the everyday lives of millions.  If you have had your data improperly accessed, handled, or exposed due to the negligence of a corporation like Plaid, we’re here to help. Give us a call to get your case reviewed for free, 24/7.  The post Financial Technology Company Plaid Accused Of Banking Data Ripoff  appeared first on ClassAction.com.

https://www.forlawfirmsonly.com/financial-technology-company-plaid-accused-of-banking-data-ripoff/

The MozCon Virtual 2020 Initial Agenda

Posted by cheryldraper It's the question that's been on plenty of people's minds: What's up with MozCon this year? We're happy to report that 2020's MozCon is on like Donkey Kong, and as you can tell from its brand-new name, the format this year is just a tad bit different. MozCon 2020 is now MozCon Virtual, an online conference experience delivering every ounce of digital marketing expertise you expect in-person with the safety and security of social distancing at home. Today, we're here to tell you all about it — changes, challenges, nitty-gritty details, who's speaking and what you'll learn, and more!

Here's the skinny on MozCon Virtual

MozCon Virtual will take place from the comfort of your at-home office space across July 14 & 15, 2020. Business on top, social distancing sweatpants on the bottom — you'll be cozier than ever while learning all the latest and greatest in the world of SEO. Twenty-two industry thought leaders will walk you through the hottest topics of 2020, covering everything from SEO automation to modern content promotion to strategies for handling keyword research in the midst of a crisis. You'll see fondly familiar faces and exciting new names to the MozCon stage, and you can rest assured that we're keeping the bar as high as it's ever been for content quality. Additionally, we know that budgets are tight right now. We want to do our part to help by making MozCon Virtual as accessible to everyone as we can. Tickets are now priced at $129. This also includes full access to the MozCon video bundle once it's released!

Save my spot at MozCon Virtual!

Changes, challenges, & nitty-gritty details

A note about transparency and making really hard decisions

We're not going to lie — organizing this year's MozCon was a challenge. As it became more and more clear that an in-person event was neither feasible nor responsible (not to mention illegal here in Washington state!), we had a relatively short window of time to pivot from a 1,600-attendee event that we ran year after year using a concrete, smooth-as-butter process, to the virtual unknown. (Pardon the pun.) There were many, many meetings. There was research and projections and debate, and more than one idea changed form three or four times before it took shape. In the end, it came down to what was best for our community. MozCon has never operated from a profit standpoint — most years we aim to break even — but even with the risk and cost associated with such a monumental change to the event, we knew the show must go on. SEO doesn't just stop. And right now, it's picking up speed: People are turning to the internet to solve their problems now more than ever before, and businesses of all stripes are depending on that online visibility to sustain them through hardship. SEOs and digital marketers still need access to cutting-edge thought leadership, techniques, and strategies, and MozCon can deliver — even if it means we only get to daydream about all the high fives, fist bumps, and Roger hugs.

Not your typical marketing couchference

It was important that we find ways to maintain that special MozCon magic that makes folks excited to wake up extra early on a Monday morning, don their conference badge, and skip happily to the Washington State Convention Center for a day full of educational goodness. We're gonna miss the snacks — that's just the truth. Doughnuts and coffee aside, we've energized our virtual conference with that snazzy MozCon spirit you look forward to every year:

• The highest caliber speakers and topics in town: Twenty-two of digital marketing's top experts will share their very best advice, strategies, tactics, and research over two jam-packed days of learning. You'll have all their decks available for download, and the new choice of attending the talks that most interest you.
• Friendly neighborhood Mozzers emceeing the event: MozCon stage superstars Cyrus Shepard and Britney Muller will keep the sparkle going between session.
• Interactive Q&A with the experts: You'll be able to participate in live Q&A sessions with speakers to answer your most burning digital marketing questions and quandaries.
• Virtual networking with Birds of a Feather breakout sessions: Birds of a Feather tables are a lunchtime hit every single year. And we've heard your feedback: networking is a huge part of the MozCon experience. That's why we're introducing Birds of a Feather virtual discussions — a special online experience where you'll be able to join expert-hosted events, connect with like-minded marketers, and forge professional relationships through the magic of the internet.
• Charitable donations: Our belief in giving back hasn't changed just because we're going online. For every ticket sold we'll be making a donation, with more details to come as we draw closer to showtime.
• Awesome partners: MozCon is fortunate to have the support of our fantastic sponsors who have stuck with us through all the changes this year. They'll be sharing their expertise in special hosted breakout groups. Curious about who our partners are? Check them out: 97th Floor, Base Search Marketing, CallRail, Crowd Content, Duda, GatherUp, and PAGES!

Two days chock full of conference goodness

We know it's tough to take a full three days away from your day job, so we're approaching MozCon Virtual with multi-track options to let attendees choose their own conference adventure — with full access to every talk via the MozCon video bundle once the conference is over.

A global experience at a more accessible price

We're streaming MozCon!

Every year we've heard our community ask: I can't make the trip. Will you be streaming MozCon? To our friends around the world, we're glad to be able to answer yes — this year, MozCon will be fully available to remote attendees. While those in particularly opposite timezones may be enjoying the show in your jammies, for the first time MozCon will serve you on your sofa. And you won't miss out on a single session — every ticket holder will have full access to the MozCon video bundle after the event, meaning you can re-watch your favorites and catch up on any you missed.

MozCon quality at a price more folks can afford: Tickets are now $129

We've lowered the price to attend this year's conference for a couple of reasons. One, while there are still some pretty significant costs to throwing a large virtual conference, those costs don't include some of our biggest-ticket items, such as a conference space and food & beverage. Delicious treats and comfy seats are a real investment! And two, times are really darn tough right now. We know agencies, brands, and freelancers are struggling in the midst of the economic downturn, and that it's more important than ever to hone skills and build new ones. We originally lowered ticket prices by about 40%. Then, based on community feedback and suggestions, we decided to forego the idea of shipping out swag and snacks and lowered them again — to the tune of $129. Every MozCon ticket purchased also includes full access to the MozCon video bundle, a $349 value. Our video bundles are professionally produced and fully shareable with your team, so you can keep the learning going throughout the rest of the year and revisit the talks that mattered most.

Register for MozCon Virtual

---

Initial agenda

Ready to explore what we've got planned for this year? Check out our current speakers and topics — and stay tuned for more information as the agenda evolves!

Alexis Sanders

Senior SEO Account Manager, Merkle The Science of Seeking Your Customer Users are at the core of everything we do in modern SEO. However, finding and understanding audiences can be daunting. Alexis will cover how to find your audience, share tools that are available for all price points, and show ways in which she’s found audience research to be useful as an SEO.

Andy Crestodina

Co-founder and CMO, Orbit Media Thought Leadership and SEO: The 3 Key Elements and Search Ranking Strategies Everyone wants to do it, but no one really knows what it is. So what is thought leadership? What isn’t it? And how does it affect search rankings? This presentation is a data-rich perspective on the oh-so-popular topic of thought leadership, filled with practical takeaways for becoming an authority. And it’s all about the relationship between thought leadership and SEO. We’ll see how the research answers the questions and informs the tactics: Can brands be thought leaders? Can it be outsourced? Do you need to publish research? Or strong opinion? And how does it attract links and authority, rankings, and qualified visitors? Learn how a personal brand combines with content to drive big wins in SEO.

Britney Muller

Senior SEO Scientist, Moz TBD Last year, Britney wowed the crowd with a bevy of new research, data, and actionable tactics for understanding and winning featured snippets. We're still piecing together all the intricate details of this year's talk, so keep an ear to the ground as we continue to evolve our agenda!

Brian Dean

Founder, Backlinko How to Promote Your Content Like a Boss Creating content is easy. But getting people to see your content? That's a different story. Brian Dean shares over a dozen practical strategies that you can use to spread the word about your latest blog post, podcast episode, or YouTube video.

Casie Gillette

Senior Director of Digital, KoMarketing Counterintuitive Content: How New Trends Have Disrupted Years of Bad Advice Content marketers don't have it easy. We're constantly adapting to our ever-shifting landscape and juggling an overwhelming amount of information and advice: Do we produce as much content as possible? Should we focus on quality, while still maintaining consistent schedules? And now, what about YouTube, voice search, and even TikTok? The fact is, there's no one way to do content marketing. Casie will showcase content in an entirely new light, with ideas and tips on how you can start creating content on your own terms.

Dana DiTomaso

President and partner, Kick Point TBD MozCon veterans know the value and vibrancy Dana brings to the stage, and this year will be no exception. Be on the lookout for juicy details about her 2020 talk — we can't wait to share.

David Sottimano

VP, Keyphraseology Everyday Automation for Marketers As a general rule, we shouldn't be doing things that a computer can do better. However, a lot of automation is achieved through programming expertise — and that expertise isn't usually a marketer's forte. In this session, you'll learn how to gather data, use machine learning, and automate everyday tasks for marketers using low-code or no-code solutions.

Flavilla Fongang

Brand Strategist, 3 Colours Rule How to Go Beyond Marketing for Clients: The Value of a Thriving Brand Ecosystem Too many marketers serve their clients the bare minimum of what's expected from an agency. To stand out among the crowd, cultivate real loyalty, and maximize the lifetime value of your clients, you have to go beyond mere marketing — developing a thriving brand ecosystem that aligns with the brand's ultimate goals. Flavilla Fongang shares her tried-and-true framework for optimizing the customer journey, improving acquisition and retention, and going beyond what's expected to serve your clients well.

Francine Rodriguez

Manager of Customer Success, WordStream Let It Go: How to Embrace Automation and Get Way More Done Let the robot uprising begin! We've all heard horror stories about the dangers of automating your tasks, but now is not the time to deny yourself extra help. Robots never sleep. They don't get tired or overwhelmed by their to-do lists, and they're ready to work round-the-clock to accomplish whatever task we set before them. In this talk, you'll explore all the areas were automation is kicking butt in PPC — and how you can harness the power of robots to make more time for other efforts.

Heather Physioc

Group Connections Director, Discoverability, VMLY&R Competitive Advantage in a Commoditized Industry SEO isn't dead — it’s commoditized. In a world where search companies are a dime a dozen and brands tout bland "unique selling propositions" that aren't unique at all, how can you avoid drowning in the sea of sameness? What are you doing that's any different from every other SEO firm? In this talk, you'll learn how to find, activate, and articulate your competitive advantage. Learn how to identify unique strengths and innovative offerings that equate to competitive advantage through these real, working examples so you can bring them to life in search. You'll leave with actionable tips and homework to help your search business stand out — and that you can use with clients to help them find their competitive edge, too.

Izzi Smith

Technical SEO Analyst, Ryte How to Be Ahead of the (CTR) Curve Let’s face it: Carrying out SEO magic is all in vain when you’re forgetting about how your brand and products are being surfaced in the SERPs. By not properly analyzing or enhancing our organic CTR, we're greatly limiting our potential. Izzi will help you create the perfect SERP engagement strategy by covering practical ways to uplift your significant CTR, such as remedying your critical keyword rankings that could soon be lost, leveraging brand-empowering entity features (and assessing the risks of doing so), more intelligent testing of rich & featured snippet optimizations, and a whole lot more. CTR-you-ready?? You better be!

Joy Hawkins

Owner, Sterling Sky Inc. Google My Business: Battling Bad Info & Safeguarding Your Search Strategy What's the harm in a little misinformation here and there? In the realm of local SEO, Joy Hawkins is here to outline exactly that. When it comes to local search and Google My Business, it can be make or break for your campaigns. Follow real data from a recent case study that illustrates why strategic decisions should be based on accurate information — and what can happen when that info is bad, wrong, or just plain incomplete.

Mike King

Managing Director, iPullRank TBD Mike redefined technical SEO and its importance in our industry back in 2016. In 2018, he taught us everything we didn't know about SEO. This year, he's back to share the hottest technical tactics to uplevel your efforts, plus the case studies and data that should be guiding your decisions.

Dr. Peter J. Meyers

Marketing Scientist, Moz Moving Targets: Keywords in Crisis Too often, we take a once-and-done approach to keyword research, but Google changes at the pace of information, and that pace speeds up even more during a crisis. How do we do keyword research in fast-paced industries and during world-changing moments? Dr. Pete provides concrete tactics for adaptive keyword research and spotting trends as they happen.

Phil Nottingham

Brand and Video Marketing Strategist, Phil Nottingham Ltd. How to Build a Global Brand Without a Global Budget As funnel-based marketing becomes less effective and harder to measure, "building a brand" is frequently touted as the panacea for all marketer's woes. But it's unclear how this can be achieved scalably and with a limited budget. Large enterprises resort to huge creative advertising campaigns that get their names out there by force of spend alone — but this isn't realistic for the smaller companies and the number of impressions is not the number of people impressed. In this session, Phil explains how modern brands are built through advocacy more than awareness alone, offering a deliverable method of brand marketing to radically shake up your content strategy.

Rob Ousbey

VP Product, Moz TBD Rob is no stranger to the MozCon stage — he's graced it in the past as emcee, and in 2019 he covered the intimidating topic of running your own SEO tests (and how to do it right.) While we're still nailing down the details of his 2020 talk, we're confident that this year's topic will be every bit as impressively daunting.

Robin Lord

Consultant, Distilled Whatever You Do, Put Billboards in Seattle – Getting Brand Awareness Data from Google How can you harness the vast power of Google data to gain special insight into city- and product-level brand awareness? Robin will lead us on a journey through his Google Trends methodology to use Adwords search volume data for better brand intelligence.

Ross Simmonds

CEO, Foundation Designing a Content Engine: Going from Ideation to Creation to Distribution What does it take to develop a content engine that drives results? In this presentation, Ross will share data around the power of having a content engine, tools & strategies for content ideation, tools and tactics for content creation, and frameworks that brands can use to ensure that their content is distributed effectively after hitting publish. This presentation will help you not only uncover content-market fit, but also capitalize on it.

Russ Jones

Principal Search Scientist, Moz I Wanna Be Rich: Making Your Consultancy Profitable How will your company weather the next update? How will you avoid layoffs and salary cuts? Being a master of SEO doesn't guarantee that your consultancy will succeed. After a decade and a half of experience, Russ Jones will outline the techniques that will keep your clients happy and your bottom line healthy.

Sarah Bird

CEO, Moz Welcome to MozCon Virtual + the State of the Industry Sarah has a storied history of kicking MozCon off with a bright, sparkly bang. The fearless leader of Moz will be welcoming each and every one of us to this year's virtual event, laying out all the pertinent details of the conference, and setting the tone for two jam-packed days of learning with a look at the State of the Industry.

Shannon McGuirk

Head of PR & Content, Aira Great Expectations: The Truth About Digital PR Campaigns In her talk, Shannon will challenge the desire for virality over consistency when it comes to digital PR and link building campaigns, while exploring the impact on the industry, team morale, and client expectations. By honestly sharing her own shortcomings, she'll push you to learn from your own campaign failures using tried and tested frameworks that’ll mean you can face any creative campaign or outreach struggle head-on.

Wil Reynolds

Founder & Vice President of Innovation, Seer InteractiveThe CMO Role Has Been Disrupted – Are You Ready for Your New Boss? CMOs have the shortest tenure in the c-suite, and the CMO role has been eliminated at some of the largest brands. CEOs are now asking tougher and tougher questions about the value of marketing — and oftentimes marketers are not prepared. Connecting your data and building your data flywheel is one way to support the swift answers CEOs expect from their CMOs. We need to get stronger at bridging our day-to-day work to the value it drives. And more than ever, “brand lift” isn’t enough to satisfy CEOs. This presentation will start at the top. How businesses are run, how CEOs talk, and how we as search marketers can use the data we have access to everyday in new ways to answer the questions of the c-suite and raise our visibility and value in organizations.

---

We hope to see your smiling faces online in July!

Thanks to each and every one of you for your patience as we hammered out the details of this year's conference, for the questions you've asked and the honest feedback you've given us. We're super excited to try out something new this year! Join us this July for our first MozCon Virtual and let's explore the future of digital marketing together:

Yes, I'm going to MozCon!

  Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

https://www.businesscreatorplus.com/the-mozcon-virtual-2020-initial-agenda/

How Will J&J’s Move to Discontinue Baby Powder Sales Impact Its Ongoing Talc Litigation Now?

On May 19, 2020, Johnson & Johnson announced it is discontinuing North American sales of its talc-based baby powder, a product it has defended for decades in the face of lawsuits filed by consumers who say it caused cancer. This move likely would not have happened without the public attention drawn to individuals who have developed suspected talc-related cancers by the efforts of those victims’ persistent advocates – the plaintiff’s bar. Litigation is often the only route to petition for redress of grievances. Historically, litigation and specifically the plaintiff’s bar have been influential in getting Corporate America to take action that neither legislation nor regulation could. The recent J&J news brings to mind a similar story dating to the late 1970s: A $125M jury verdict against one company in February 1978 for disfiguring burns suffered by a 13-year-old boy brought significant public attention to design defects in one of its popular products. Publicity included extensive print coverage and a 60 Minutes segment that eventually resulted in the manufacturer’s decision to cease making and selling that product. That product was the Ford Pinto. So what IS the latest status in the J&J talc litigation? As recently as April 27, 2020, a ruling by a New Jersey federal court judge in the nation’s largest MDL — with more than 16,000 cases pending involving J&J’s baby powder – when she rejected most of J&J’s efforts to exclude testimony from a number of experts that maintained that its baby powder products contained asbestos and could cause ovarian cancer and ultimately paved the way for trials to be held in the MDL. Judge Wolfson found support for the plaintiffs’ claims that there was a statistical association between genital talc use and ovarian cancer. And further to the west, on April 24, 2020, J&J appeared before the Missouri Court of Appeals for the Eastern District, arguing to overturn the June 2018 $4.69 billion verdict that found the company liable for the ovarian cancers suffered by 22 plaintiffs. At the conclusion of that six-week trial, the jury awarded each plaintiff $25 million in compensatory damages and added $4.14 billion in punitive damages. The punitives were divided, assessing $3.15 billion against J&J and an additional $3.15 million against its subsidiary, J&J Consumer Inc. So how will J&J’s decision to discontinue sales of its baby powder ultimately impact the ongoing talc litigation? While we will likely see predictable posturing by both sides, juries, though, will probably view this move differently. The average jurist will be smart enough to see through the COVID-19 driven “portfolio reassessment” as a thinly veiled excuse to take a tainted product off the market and put a cap on future liabilities. We have seen similar storylines before: when Merck announced in 2004 that Vioxx was being withdrawn from the market, their public announcements focused on the results of a recent clinical trial as the reason for the withdrawal. But in the trials that followed over the next two years, juries heard evidence that Merck knew about the safety issues with Vioxx well beforehand and withheld that information from the FDA. The result was a number of major jury verdicts in favor of plaintiffs that eventually led to a nearly $5 billion settlement. Time will tell if J&J will express interest in similar settlement negotiations. Click on this link for information on Verus’ Mass Tort Services. To contact us, fill out this form or email us at info@verusllc.com and we will reply immediately. |CONTACT US| |REQUEST PROPOSAL| The post How Will J&J’s Move to Discontinue Baby Powder Sales Impact Its Ongoing Talc Litigation Now? appeared first on Verus.

https://www.forlawfirmsonly.com/how-will-jjs-move-to-discontinue-baby-powder-sales-impact-its-ongoing-talc-litigation-now/

Appeals court focused on damages question ahead of Johnson v. Monsanto hearing

A California appeals court looks poised to issue a ruling that would uphold the first U.S. trial victory involving allegations that Monsanto’s Roundup weed killer causes cancer. The United States Court of Appeal First Appellate District on Wednesday notified lawyers for plaintiff Dewayne “Lee” Johnson and legal counsel for Monsanto that they should be prepared to focus on the question of damages awarded in the case at a hearing scheduled for June 2. The fact that the court is showing it is interested in discussing what amount of damages are appropriate rather than issues pertaining to Monsanto’s request to overturn the trial loss entirely bodes well for the plaintiff’s side, said legal observers. Monsanto August 2018 loss to Johnson, a California school groundskeeper, marked the first of three Roundup trial losses for the company, which was acquired by Germany’s Bayer AG nearly two years ago. The jury in the Johnson case found that Monsanto was negligent in failing to warn Johnson of the cancer risk of its herbicides and awarded Johnson $289 million in damages, including $250 million in punitive damages. The trial judge later lowered the award to $78.5 million. But the loss sent Bayer’s shares spirally lower and stoked investor unrest that has persisted as the number of additional Roundup cancer claims filed against Monsanto have grown. In appealing the verdict, Monsanto asked the court to either reverse the trial decision and enter a judgment for Monsanto or reverse and remand the case for a new trial. Monsanto argued that the verdict was flawed because of exclusion of key evidence and the “distortion of reliable science.” If nothing else,  Monsanto asked the appeals court to reduce the portion of the jury award for “future noneconomic damages” from $33 million to $1.5 million and to wipe out the punitive damages altogether.  Monsanto’s argument on reducing future non-economic damages is based on the company’s position that Johnson is likely to die soon and thus will not suffer long-term future pain and suffering. Johnson cross-appealed seeking reinstatement of the full jury award of $289 million. Ahead of the hearing on the matter, the judicial panel said this: “The parties should be ready to address the following issue at oral argument, currently scheduled for June 2, 2020. Assume that this court agrees with Monsanto Company that the award of future noneconomic damages should be reduced. If the court directs such a reduction, should it also reduce the award of punitive damages to maintain the trial court’s 1:1 ratio of compensatory damages to punitive damages?” In a separate matter, the court last month said it was rejecting an application by the California Attorney General to file an amicus brief on Johnson’s side. The Johnson trial was covered by media outlets around the world and put a spotlight on questionable Monsanto conduct. Lawyers for Johnson presented jurors with internal company emails and other records showing Monsanto scientists discussing ghostwriting scientific papers to try to shore up support for the safety of the company’s products, along with communications detailing plans to discredit critics, and to quash a government evaluation of the toxicity of glyphosate, the key chemical in Monsanto’s products. In its appeal, Monsanto argued that jurors were acting on emotion rather than scientific fact and “that there is no evidence that Monsanto had actual knowledge that its glyphosate-based herbicides cause cancer. Nor could there be, when the scientific consensus, consistently accepted by EPA and other regulators around the world, contradicts that conclusion. It was not malicious for the regulators to reach this judgment, and it was not malicious for Monsanto to share their view of the science.” Tens of thousands of plaintiffs have filed suit against Monsanto making claims similar to Johnson’s, and two additional trials have taken place since the Johnson trial. Both those trials also resulted in large verdicts against Monsanto. Bayer and lawyers for more than 50,000 plaintiffs have been trying to negotiate a national settlement for the last year but Bayer recently backed away from some already negotiated settlement amounts. With courthouses closed around the country, the plaintiffs’ attorneys have lost the near-term leverage they had when multiple new trials were set to take place this summer and fall. The post Appeals court focused on damages question ahead of Johnson v. Monsanto hearing appeared first on U.S. Right to Know.

https://www.forlawfirmsonly.com/appeals-court-focused-on-damages-question-ahead-of-johnson-v-monsanto-hearing/

Litigation Update: J&J to Discontinue Sales of Baby Powder in North America

Even as the company continues to defend the safety of its flagship product, pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson announced on Tuesday that it would discontinue selling its talc-based baby powder product in the U.S.   Facing tens of thousands of lawsuits from women alleging their ovarian cancer was caused by asbestos contamination of J&J baby powder, the company stated that the discontinuation of the product was the result of a reassessment of its consumer product portfolio spurred by the pandemic.  According to J&J, demand for the product had been reduced in part because of a decline in consumer demand and the dissemination of misinformation about its safety. As a result, in March, the company had stopped shipping hundreds of items in both the US and Canada.  This discontinuation follows the recall in October, 2019 of 33,000 bottles of baby powder that had tested positive for asbestos particles.  At that time the company maintained that the recall had been done in “an abundance of caution” and continues to argue that the product is safe, noting that all adverse verdicts against the company have been reversed on appeal. J&J is not removing the product from the shelves; retailers will be selling the talc products until the inventory run out and the product will continue to be sold in other countries. In addition, cornstarch-based baby powder manufactured by J&J will be available. Internal documents produced during the course of recent litigation had revealed that J&J had been concerned about possible asbestos contamination in its talc products for decades even as they claimed that scientific studies had established the safety of its baby powder.  Recent verdicts against the company include a 2018 finding by a St. Louis jury that J&J’s baby powder contributed to 22 women developing ovarian cancer; that verdict totaled $4.7 billion. It should be noted that there have also been a number of verdicts in the company’s favor. In April, the U.S. District Judge Freda L. Wolfson presiding over the federal MDL ruled that most of the experts offered by the plaintiffs met the Daubert standard requiring testimony to have sufficient scientific support; this ruling paves the way for future trials. At least half of J&J’s revenue comes not from household medicine products but from the development and marketing of pharmaceuticals; this has not come without its own issues, most notably J&J’s role in the marketing of prescription pain killers and contributing to the nation’s opioid epidemic. Click on this link for information on Verus’ Mass Tort Services. To contact us, fill out this form or email us at info@verusllc.com and we will reply immediately. |CONTACT US| |REQUEST PROPOSAL| The post Litigation Update: J&J to Discontinue Sales of Baby Powder in North America appeared first on Verus.

https://www.forlawfirmsonly.com/litigation-update-jj-to-discontinue-sales-of-baby-powder-in-north-america/

Artificial Intelligence and Client Acquistion

We are now using Artificial Intelligence (AI) as the first step in our lead verification process. We are constantly upgrading our technology platform to improve the quality of verified leads and signed cases we provide to our clients. This new technology allows us to verify the leads name, address, phone number, date of birth, email address and last 4 digits of their social security number. Our platform runs the technology in real time while our agents go through our intake questionnaire with the prospect. The platform runs like a live search engine. Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence as well as Data Science help us find a prospects digital footprint, identifying their current and past addresses, phone numbers, emails, and any insight that can be located on the web.  This information helps our agents verify and supplement the information we provide to our attorney client. Because we're passionate about helping lawyers like you grow your firm, we are offering special pricing on our current mass tort campaigns and personal injury and motor vehicle accident (including truck, commercial and motorcycle) leads and signed cases. Contact me for the list of our latest mass tort campaigns. Exclusive Leads and Cases Verified Using YOUR Criteria Mass Tort Cases-current campaigns:

• Human Trafficking
• Round Up
• Zantac
• Truvada
• Essure
• Hernia Mesh
• JUUL
• Talc
• 3M earplug
• Allergan breast implants
• Uloric
• Valsartan
• Paraguard
• Elmiron
• IVC Filter
• Surgical Staplers
• Boy Scout Sexual Abuse
• Clergy Sexual Abuse

Personal Injury Cases and Verified Leads:

• Commercial Vehicle Accident Cases (Truck, Uber, Lyft, etc.)
• Slip and Fall, Dog Bites, Construction Accidents
• Medical Malpractice
• Cerebral Palsy
• Birth Defect Cases
• Nursing Home Neglect/Elder Abuse Cases
• Workers Comp Cases

Other Types of Verified Leads:

• Bankruptcy
• Short sale
• Home mortgage modifications
• Debt settlement
• IRS settlement

Pre- and Post-litigation funding Low-Cost Funding Solutions For Plaintiffs If you would like to discuss our verified leads or signed cases programs, book a call with me here. Thanks for reading and stay safe! Edward Lott, Ph.D., M.B.A. President and Managing Partner ForLawFirmsOnly Marketing, Inc. Ed can be reached at (or visit his website) edl@forlawfirmsonly.com 855-943-8736 ext. 101 www.ForLawFirmsOnly.com

https://www.forlawfirmsonly.com/artificial-intelligence-and-client-acquistion/

Interdisciplinarity: How to Integrate Organic Search, Paid Search, and Content Teams Posted by HeatherPhysioc

Posted by HeatherPhysioc As an industry, we talk a good game about collaboration, but the truth is it’s not really happening the way we tell our clients and bosses it happens. We stroll into new business pitches and make big claims about how “integrated” we are. We preach that our recommendations are better because we have a more “holistic” offering. But whether it’s across agencies working on the same client, different teams working within the same agency, or different teams in-house on the client side, collaboration is much harder to achieve in reality than we make it look on the outside. More often than not, experts get sucked into their respective silos, buried by the day-to-day task lists of their jobs, focusing on their own areas of expertise. Agencies write SEO scopes and PPC scopes separately, often without accounting for content resource needs to make the channels successful. Teams bring recommendations forward to their bosses that don’t have buy-in from their peers. We don’t bring each other in, but we complain about not being brought in.

Learnings from multiple mergers

My company has gone through many mergers and acquisitions over the years, and just in the last three, we’ve merged with three other agencies in our network. We doubled in size and tripled our global footprint overnight. With those mergers came tons of complementary skill sets and client lists we could do great work for. Through the mergers, we had a unique opportunity presented to us to solve persistent collaboration and content problems by bringing the organic search, paid search, and performance content teams together under one unified group. Now our “Discoverability” group is nearly 35 people in four offices across North America. With all this change and merging of teams, we had some hard choices to make and hard work to do to make this integration of different capabilities and cultures successful.

Introducing interdisciplinarity

I want to introduce you to the concept of interdisciplinarity. It’s an academic term describing when two or more areas of expertise join forces to solve new kinds of problems together. It’s when they combine and bust traditional silos to solve shared challenges, benefiting from integrating and updating their individual approaches into a new, holistic approach. Interdisciplinarity helps with the negative effects of siloing and over-specialization. In the rapidly evolving and increasingly commoditized field of search, we need to be talking about this. Interdisciplinarity is common in well-known technical and scientific fields like neuroscience, biochemistry, and cybernetics. There is new ground to be forged in our industry. There is a key difference between complementarity and interdisciplinarity. Just about anyone can go online and learn SEO or PPC. Plenty of companies do “complementary” search work — sitting next to one another and at least not harming each other’s work. But few do truly interdisciplinary work — offering new, evolved capabilities in search. In the next five years, interdisciplinarity will be the difference between search teams with a competitive edge, and search teams that stagnate. True interdisciplinarity is when the sum of the whole is greater than its parts. It’s the Gestalt benefit of bringing distinct specialties together to create a completely custom solution for a problem. People with relevant expertise bring unique knowledge and experiences for a more cohesive, end-to-end offering that is bespoke for each need. But the work is repeatable and refinable as similar problems arise. This concept has been a driving force guiding our way through merging teams to create something new. And now we consult with clients in complex organizations to help them achieve interdisciplinarity, too. This is more than enhancing our implementation of tactical SEO and PPC. This is about helping companies evolve how they think about and deliver on the promise of search.

Why bother with integration?

As a search professional, you have probably been perfectly smart and successful independently, so why go to the trouble of moving away from separate swim lanes to one cohesive, unified practice? And equally important, how?

Increase advocacy

The majority of our growth typically comes from better serving and expanding existing relationships, not winning big chunks of new business. You go from a select few team members on different teams advocating for their own work, to a combined force of all the team members advocating for all of each other’s work.

Cross-sell and up-sell more

An integrated search team finds it easier to cross-sell and up-sell when clients get stuck on related services. Merging our teams helps us shift budget seamlessly between practices based on demand, pilot other services to our clients, and show our chops and prove outcomes we can earn. We can also talk to our clients about capturing every opportunity possible on whole search engine results pages, instead of thinking of SERPs in chunks.

Increased speed and scale

Having an integrated team with areas of overlap allows leaders to better distribute labor across the team. For example, our performance content team now writes SEO metas and PPC ad copy. Our paid and organic search teams are conducting keyword research and competitive analysis together, reducing duplication of effort. We’re dividing and conquering to cover more research ground more quickly, share learnings from our own areas of expertise, delivering a stronger product, and speeding it up by weeks.

Create a culture of knowledge-sharing

Data-sharing becomes second-nature to an integrated search and content team. It helps you to find opportunities you wouldn’t have spotted before. A deeper and wider pool of knowledge builds a deeper and smarter search talent bench. This creates a culture of crowd-sourcing and sharing where no one feels the pressure to know everything. We solve digital marketing problems faster by pooling our knowledge.

Reduce cannibalism and competition

When individual teams have individual objectives, it runs the risk of being “every team for themselves.” But ultimately, everyone in the company or at the agency is held to a set of central, core objectives. A unified team can help search and content practitioners stop worrying about whose budgets and whose targets, and instead focus on what’s best for the business. It allows you to steer resources to where the greatest impact will be felt. It doesn’t matter so much which channels deliver — as long as we deliver.

Increase trust in recommendations

Recommendations have more weight and credibility together when they’re vetted from multiple experts. Experts should talk about joint opportunities, discuss how channels perform together and separately, and balance paid and organic recommendations. A more thoughtful, utilitarian approach is more easily defensible to a client. Demonstrating more bang for their marketing bucks makes it easier for them to say yes and invest.

Identify new capabilities

When you integrate different specialties, you are likely to develop new capabilities at the intersections between those practices. This enables you to build and launch new, unified services that increase the value we can add for clients. In our case, this led to an end-to-end digital shelf optimization offering and enhanced landing page development.

Create competitive advantage

True interdisciplinarity is difficult to accomplish, so it’s hard for competitors to replicate. Competitive advantage happens when you put in the legwork that competitors can’t, don’t, or won’t. Mastering integrated services can give you unique points of distinction that competitors don’t have, and you become increasingly indispensable to your clients and your company.

Risks and roadblocks to integration

There will be no shortage of risks, roadblocks, and obstacles to integrating teams. Following are some of the growing pains you can anticipate as a driver of change.

Moving from theory to reality

We deceive ourselves into thinking we collaborate well for so long that it’s easy to become complacent and fail to see how things could be better. We have to make the case for the benefits of working together to our colleagues and counterparts. As a group, we have to agree on the importance of collaborating on projects and proving joint outcomes with meaningful case studies. It’s a massive cultural shift to change from individual athletes on three different teams to a single, all-star, world champion team. It doesn’t happen overnight.

Risk of becoming less agile

Counterintuitively, the larger the team, the harder it is to collaborate. This is especially true when the team does several different things. Integration runs the risk of making your group too big to move quickly. It’s easy to fall into the trap of trying to force adoption of one team or the other’s way of doing things, or to collaborate constantly on everything. But we quickly learned that design-by-committee doesn’t work and we can’t force it. Group identity doesn’t negate the need for autonomy. In fact, interdisciplinary teams fail without being able to maintain their identity and autonomy, and being empowered to make decisions that are right for their team and clients. Now we keep the connective tissue that bonds us as a group, but allow for “slicing and dicing” into smaller teams to serve any need and combat the problem of getting too big to stay nimble.

Negotiating roles and defending turf

When integrating teams, conflicts are inevitable, whether it’s perceived competition for diminishing budgets, or vying for the final say on a course of action. With teams of very smart people in different areas there is bound to be some negotiating of roles, maybe even turf-defending. But through integration, we’re all sharing the same turf. It takes extra effort to give the benefit of the doubt, assume good intent, and get on the same page. It’s an exercise in humility to give everyone’s expertise equal weight, and actively seek perspective instead of it being an accidental afterthought. You have to create a culture where everyone wins when one of us wins.

Merging processes creates complexity in the short-term

Merging processes that worked reasonably well before is a common challenge. Each team had its own comfortable way of doing things, so they might be resistant and slow to change. You may encounter conflicting expertise and opinions. It’s important to understand each team’s processes thoroughly before ripping them apart and sewing them back together — take the time to learn why things are the way they are.

Change fatigue

A constant barrage of non-stop change makes it hard for evolution to stick. It’s too much for people to absorb and adopt. It causes them to burn out and lose interest because it feels like there’s no light at the end of the tunnel. Companies that have a culture of ongoing testing, learning and optimization and where change is always expected for growth tend to fare well in the face of change, but everyone has their limits.

12 tips for integration success

Now that you are going into the process of integrating other teams informed on the risks and rewards, here are tactical tips to get it right.

1. Announce change quickly

Search team leaders should move quickly to announce the change and inform their teams. Make it clear what you’re doing and why, make the case for the benefits, and be honest about the challenges to get buy-in. Get the teams involved in the mission as soon as possible. Set the expectation that we sink or swim together. The most successful people in the face of change are those who don’t waste time obstructing the inevitable, but instead roll up their sleeves and look for ways to help.

2. Introduce and immerse immediately

Once announced, quickly take action to bring the teams together and activate. Get search and content practitioners in the room face-to-face as early and often as possible, and start a dialogue about a common mission and vision. Work together to brainstorm ideas on how to move forward. Our integration sessions included introductions and ice-breakers, overarching sessions about the department and teams, capability and case study sharing, and team-building exercises. Once you have established the new team or process, reintroduce the team to the organization to put faces with names, and educate others on what the new group is capable of and responsible for. Get a sample agenda for an integration workshop here.

3. Implement change jointly and steadily

Announce and immerse quickly, but slow down to speed up when beginning to implement the changes. Don’t try to boil the ocean — focus on one-percent changes, one change at a time at natural points of intersection. Give ownership of different initiatives to people from each side to make sure you’re considering all the angles, which helps with buy-in across the group. Charge everyone with making it successful. Also, try to make early changes iteratively and at natural points of friction at first, so change actually feels like a relief. For example, every SEO can relate to being left out of the content process, where keyword research is an afterthought (if it happens at all). One simple change is adding keywords and questions to a new content brief prior to creating content. This will make both writers’ and SEOs’ jobs easier. As a bonus, small wins can build momentum and endurance for more change.

4. No process is precious

Process is supposed to be a flexible framework, not a rigid set of rules that stifles innovation. Commit to establishing clear processes that incorporate key search and content stakeholders, and bring those voices to the table to collaborate in creating and refining workflows. Create a living wiki to document recurring processes, which reinforces the message of steady evolution. Update and reorganize them regularly — everyone on the team should have access and trust to refine them. Finally, check in periodically on what isn’t working and discard what doesn’t serve you.

5. Cross-train to build advocacy

Conduct cross-trainings both in immersion and continuously over time. The intent is not to be able to do each other’s jobs, but rather to be able to speak about them, advocate for them and cross-sell them. We’ve done workshops, hands-on training, and even short-term job swaps like having SEOs write e-commerce product detail pages. It creates empathy and builds trust, and makes it easier to advocate for each other’s work. It helps create mental checks, too, for search experts to ask, “Am I including the right people?” or content writers to ask, “Can someone else add value here?” Make it a habit for your group by course-correcting people when they forget, and validating and rewarding when they get it right.

6. Productize service offerings

As your search and content (or other integrated) team develops all-new joint services and processes, appoint small, cross-team committees to productize those offerings. They should clearly articulate the service, define the value, identify inputs and outputs, and ballpark costs and timing. These should be simple packages that can be “pulled off the shelf” when a relevant opportunity arises. For our team, these included things like search-driven content insights to support big burst campaigns, an end-to-end e-commerce discoverability process, and a meticulous approach to website rebuilds and redesigns.

7. Recommend and report together

Integrated search and content teams should be recommending and reporting together. It sounds obvious, but it’s rarely done well. Too often, experts regurgitate data in a silo and then smash some slideware together. Instead, compile and discuss your data together to identify the story the information tells, and how clients and marketers can make decisions across channels to best optimize. Search and content practitioners should be working together to roadmap and prioritize where to focus for the biggest opportunities, rather than one channel dictating to the other or operating on independent tracks.

8. Monthly account strategy sessions

It’s easy to retire to our individual corners and get stuck in the status quo, where search and content teams don’t talk to each other. These account strategy sessions are bigger than a task list — they are a time to collaborate, share what’s happening, and talk about the future. Discuss how the brand is performing in each channel, problems the search and content experts are solving, opportunities we see, big risks or threats, and potential joint efforts, tests, or case studies. This simple meet-up model can benefit any group you’re trying to collaborate with. Establish recurring round tables between search and other departments or global regions. Get a sample account strategy discussion guide here.

9. Build a networked team

As your teams grow in size, geography, and complexity, a “networked team” model might make sense. A networked team has central sources of truth and process (we document ours on Confluence in living wikis), but the operations and execution are decentralized. In this model you have common standards and best practices that all practitioners can draw from, but a networked team can shapeshift and adjust to deliver the work however necessary. It’s a balance of centralized control and local team empowerment.

10. Create a culture of feedback

When merging search and content teams, coaching and direct, immediate feedback greatly speeds integration. Make transparency and accountability a part of your group’s culture. This means providing feedback to each other and feedback to you. It means peer reviewing each other’s search and content work. It means scrutinizing your shared processes and ways of working. It makes the discoverability work stronger and reduces the margin for error. Creating a culture of feedback depersonalizes the feedback and makes it about the quality of the work.

11. Market collaborative successes

Marketing success can be a major driver of integration across discoverability teams. You should always look for wins (or warnings) to create case studies that demonstrate how your team is most effective together. Find meaningful wins that cross teams, and make sure your team, clients, bosses, and colleagues hear these stories. It increases buy-in, understanding, and engagement with your newly integrated group.

12. Stay close to collaborate

Who you “sit with” matters — even in a world where a majority of us are now working from home. Connect your search and content experts as much as possible. Make it easy to strike up a conversation about things they’re working on, and turn around their chairs (or turn on their video chat) and ask questions of each other. While rearranging the floorplan at the office isn’t in the cards for everyone, or if people in different cities or companies are collaborating, look for every possible opportunity for human connection. That means video chat, traveling for in-person meetings, desk drive-bys, spending part of your day parked with colleagues in their part of the office, real-time instant messaging, or phone calls. Do whatever it takes to be present and engaged with people in other disciplines as much as possible.

Integration is the future of search and content

To quote my colleague, Britt Hankins, “As individual teams, we’re experts. As an integrated practice, we’re a powerhouse.” Creating whole, end-to-end services that have greater impact together than separately makes us more indispensable to clients who can’t imagine going back to the disjointed world of silos. Combining and evolving our search and content capabilities into one discoverability group helps us stand out from the competition. The cultural shift can be huge, but worth it. It’s an iterative process with plenty of growing pains along the way. Even if it doesn’t make sense to reorganize or merge teams, it does make sense to break down barriers between other disciplines. These steps can help integrate search with any other department. It could be as simple as creating a competency circle around a certain type of work or client that transcends your org chart. As time goes on, new things are created, the group and its processes mature, and the lines between them start to blur. When your new culture is established, hire and promote for the traits to sustain it, like communication, collaboration, accountability, transparency, and empathy. There will always be bumps along the way as you integrate search with other practices like content, technology, analytics, or user experience. It can be frustrating and time-consuming up front. People won’t always agree and conflicts will happen. But as a leader of discoverability in your organization, you can create a culture of openness, vulnerability, and feedback. You can create the expectation of iteration, evolution, and change. You can push through obstacles together and forge something entirely new. Remember that competitive advantage comes from doing the work your competitors can’t, don’t, or won’t. Because if it were easy, everyone would do it. Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

https://www.businesscreatorplus.com/interdisciplinarity-how-to-integrate-organic-search-paid-search-and-content-teams-posted-by-heatherphysioc/

Litigation Update: Zantac Leadership Is Selected

On Friday, May 8th, District Judge Robin Rosenberg, of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, appointed 26 lawyers to a range of leadership positions to the Zantac MDL that was transferred to Florida last February. Initially, the Judge had created an interim team to handle some special tasks given the Covid-19 outbreak. Zantac was removed from the shelves earlier this year after the FDA announced that its active ingredient, ranitidine, was shown to allegedly cause cancer. The appointments include four Co-Lead Counsel: Tracy Finken Magnotta (Anapol Weiss), Robert Gilbert (Kopelowitz Ostrow Ferguson Weiselberg Gilbert), Michael McGlamry (Pope McGlamry) and Adam Pulaski (Pulaski Kherkher PLLC). Additionally, 15 members were appointed to the Steering Committee: Rosemarie Riddell Bogdan (Martin, Harding & Mazzotti), Mark J. Dearman (Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP), Elizabeth A. Fegan (Fegan Scott LLC), Marlene J. Goldenberg (Goldenberglaw, PLLC), Roopal P. Luhana (Chaffin Luhana LLP), Ricardo M. Martinez-Cid (Podhurst Orseck, P.A.), Lauren S. Miller (Cory Watson, P.C.), Melanie H. Muhlstock (Parker Waichman LLP), Daniel A. Nigh (Levin, Papantonio, Thomas, Mitchell, Rafferty & Proctor, P.A.), Carmen S. Scott (Motley Rice, LLC), Mikal C. Watts (Watts Guerra LLP), Sarah N. Westcot (Bursor & Fisher, P.A.), Conlee S. Whiteley (Kanner & Whiteley, L.L.C.), R. Brent Wisner (Baum Hedlund Aristei & Goldman, P.C.), and Frank Woodson (Beasley, Allen, Crow, Methvin, Portis & Miles, P.C.). In an innovative effort to give access to new lawyers to acquire experience in the MDL leadership field, Judge Rosenberg created a “Leadership Development Committee” with the following appointments: Paige Boldt (Watts Guerra LLP), Je Yon Jung (May Lightfoot, PLLC), Adam William Krause (Krause and Kinsman, LLC), Nicola Larmond-Harvey (Saunders & Walker, P.A.), and Bradford B. Lear (Lear Werts LLP). These five lawyers will have the opportunity to immerse themselves in the logistics of a major MDL and learn from experienced mentors such as co-chairs Melanie Muhlstock (Parker Waichman) and Carmen Scott (Motley Rice).  Judge Rosenberg made a point to emphasize the diversity of the applicant pool and her intentions to help increase the opportunities and demographics in MDL leaderships. She also commented that only 31 percent of the applicants were women, a very small number of applicants identified themselves as non-Caucasian, and none identified as LGBTQ or disabled. Other appointments included: Ashley Keller (Keller Lenkner) as chairman, and Fred Longer (Levin, Sedran & Berman) as co-chairman, of the Law & Briefing Committee, and Daniel Nigh (Levin, Papantonio, Thomas, Mitchell, Rafferty & Proctor) as chairman of the Science & Experts Committee. Additionally Mikal Watts (Watts Guerra) and Brent Wisner (Baum, Hedlund, Aristei & Goldman), were appointed as co-chairs of the Bellwether & Trial Team. Lastly, according to the Order, “In PTO #15, the Court ordered that the deadline for the first tranche of Census Plus Forms would be 60 days from the date of this Order (Order filed 5/8/2020). The Court hereby extends the deadline for submission of the Census Plus Forms for both filed and unfiled cases by 14 days. This extension shall only apply to those forms for cases filed in the MDL on or before May 22, 2020, or cases for which retention agreements are signed on or before May 22, 2020. Deadlines for cases filed or retained after May 22, 2020 are not extended by this Order.” Click on this link for information on Zantac’s Litigation Support Services. To contact us, fill out this form or email us at info@verusllc.com and we will reply immediately. |CONTACT US| |REQUEST PROPOSAL| The post Litigation Update: Zantac Leadership Is Selected appeared first on Verus.

https://www.forlawfirmsonly.com/litigation-update-zantac-leadership-is-selected/