During my time as a product manager, I quickly learned about how important it was to plan out the sprints and meetings for my team to effectively and efficiently complete their tasks. In the process of working through sprints, there were three big meeting concepts that my team went through with every sprint: planning, review, and retro.
I began by laying out each of the deliverables that my team needed to complete. For example, our first sprint consisted of drafting a creative strategy and media mix to begin ideating our content. Meanwhile, the rest of our sprints centered around media production with a pre-production package, product release, promotional content, and an analysis workbook as deliverables. After laying out these bigger deliverables, my team and I then began to break them down into small tasks in our team kanban that would be “easy” to complete in a reasonable time frame. By doing this, my team was more motivated and would take a greater initiative to do their work little by little rather than procrastinating just because the task was daunting. After completing our work-breakdown structure in our team kanban, we laid out expectations and deadlines for the following meeting. We inserted our content proposals in an editorial calendar to further motivate the team to complete the sprint. I then allotted some time for my team to ask any clarifying questions they had regarding our project. We then scheduled our next meeting, and finally, our sprint planning meeting was complete.
Once my team has completely finished developing their products, it was time to do a sprint review. What is a sprint review? Well, it is an evaluation of the product and content. This product evaluation was conducted under a lean meeting where each of the team members would silently jot down their thoughts and opinions on sticky notes and will then put them up all on a whiteboard. With a lean meeting, the team is unable to be biased by each other and are able to equally voice their opinions. We took a close look at our product to make sure that it followed the six C’s.
The big question asked during this product evaluation was “Does this add value?” While writing our thoughts on sticky notes, the three categories followed under: Start, Stop, and Do More. Once the team is done thoroughly going through our product, each sticky note is placed under one of the three categories. The team will then read through them all together and add them into our team kanban to later apply in our next sprints.
A sprint retro may sound similar to a sprint review however the key difference is that a sprint retro evaluates the process while a sprint review evaluates the product. This concept was done in a similar manner to a sprint review with a lean meeting. However, the three categories instead consisted of: What Went Well, What Didn’t Go Well, and What Could be Improved.
By using using sprint planning, review, and retro, my team and I were able to optimize our meeting productivity and collaboration. With sprint planning, the team quickly identified and prioritized tasks that needed to be completed for our product to be released in a timely manner. Reviewing our product within each sprint allowed us to
As I began to build my brand portfolio, I wanted to better my website’s search engine optimization also known as SEO. SEO is the process of bringing traffic to your website through natural search engines. To improve my website’s SEO, I began to write blog posts. This leads to my next blog post of “How to Write a Blog.”
The general components of a blog post:
Title
Cover
Subheadings
Body
Graphics
Conclusion
Call to Action
Hyperlinks
Though it may be obvious that a title and cover page are required blog elements, a good blog title is particularly important to increase SEO as the keywords from your blog title will be the keywords from a user’s search, while an aesthetic blog cover picture will increase a reader’s liking and desirability to choose your post against others. Designing a branded blog cover picture with brand fonts, colors, and elements also helps increase your brand recognition and with having an overall cohesive look.
The body of your blog will be the bulk of what you wish to communicate. However, a good strategy to practice is using subheadings to break up your body into smaller sections. This is because people tend to not want to read for a long time, or their eyes will avoid big sections of words. Subheadings are also a great way for your readers to quickly navigate through your blog to sections they particularly want to read.
Along with subheadings, a great way to spice up your blog is with graphics. As the saying goes “A picture is worth a thousand words,” visuals are a great tool in communicating a message with minimal words. Check out the example above for the elements of a blog! A conclusion can often be overlooked, however, having a conclusion is important to a blog because it allows users to be reminded of the overall blog’s purpose and answers the question of “Why was this blog important?”
Now, how to spice up your blog even more? As previously mentioned, having a good blog structure with subheadings and graphics is an awesome way to organize your information. Another way to develop your blog further is with hyperlinks. By integrating hyperlinks throughout your blog post, will build your blog’s credibility. Hyperlinks also provide an additional source for your readers to access on topics they are interested in. Lastly, consider adding a call-to-action. After you reader is done reading your blog, now what? Adding a call-to-action for your reader to somehow share your blog on another platform is another way to boost your own SEO.
Before you publish your blog, always read it twice or more to double-check for spelling or grammar errors. Misspellings on a blog post will lower your credibility as an author and as a blog post itself. It is also important to make sure that you have communicated everything clearly and effectively for you audience. Once your blog is clear and ready to be published, go ahead and publish and promote it!
Happy blog writing!
