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A recent Forbes article claims, " You see it everywhere, people staring at their smartphones without seemingly ever looking up. They’re glued to their screens, multitasking, while walking, driving, waiting in line, watching TV, studying, sitting on a train/plane, etc. While some of us may not agree with the amount of screen-time people endure, it is their time and it is creating a new genre of connected consumerism. This always-on, mobile customer isn’t just connected, they’re empowered. And, these empowered consumers are completely shattering the construct of the traditional funnel as we know it.

A lot of news came out yesterday evening around an old Google knowledge panel exploit that let's you manipulate almost any query to show any knowledge panel. Yes, this is embarrassing for Google but even more so because it is something that was reported back in 2016. Have a lot of pages you want removed from the Google index and don't want to use the page removal tool for each URL? Google's John Mueller said you can try to 404 and noindex all the pages you want removed and then submit a temporary sitemap to Google. It might speed things up he said. With social shares on content down 50 percent since 2015, it’s feeling like a lost cause to even consider social media in your content plan. And we’ve all heard the age-old “social sharing buttons are dead” statements. Just like we’ve heard for SEO, content marketing, PPC, and just about every other marketing tactic that still works. The biggest gripes that tag along with social sharing buttons are often from marketers who use them wrong.

A former reporter for the Charlotte Observer, Pam Kelley has won honors from the National Press Club and the Society for Features Journalism. She contributed to a subprime mortgage exposé that was a finalist for the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. She is the author of Money Rock: A Family’s Story of Cocaine, Race, and Ambition in the New South (The New Press). Meet Money Rock. He’s young. He’s charismatic. He’s generous, often to a fault. He’s one of Charlotte’s most successful cocaine dealers, and that’s what first prompted veteran reporter Pam Kelley to craft this riveting social history—by turns action-packed, uplifting, and tragic—of a striving African American family, swept up and transformed by the 1980s cocaine epidemic. This gripping tale, populated with characters both big-hearted and flawed, shows how social forces and public policies—racism, segregation, the War on Drugs, mass incarceration—help shape individual destinies. Money Rock is a deeply American story, one that will leave readers reflecting on the near impossibility of making lasting change, in our lives and as a society, until we reckon with the sins of our past.

Social casino games stand out as one of the most popular and profitable app categories, able to combine appealing and addictive gameplay with engaging and effective advertising. Winning in this competitive market requires in-depth knowledge of the audience and deep insights into the ad creatives and campaign calls-to-action that will keep players coming back. Our host Peggy Anne Salz from MobileGroove catches up with Margarita Vasilevskaya, Director of UA at Scopely, an interactive entertainment company and a leading mobile games publisher. Formerly Head of User Acquisition at DoubleDown Interactive, the leading provider of virtual “fun to play” casino games, Margarita talks about how she has made the move from casino to mid-core games and the lessons around audience acquisition and segmentation that apply to each. Margarita, a Mobile Hero recognized for her app marketing expertise, also speaks candidly about mobile ad fraud, what app marketers need to know about attribution solutions and why it’s critical to work with transparent networks.

The hosts discuss the admirable job Mike Blumenthal did of pointing out some ludicrous Google My Business SPAM that Google refused to act upon. Ross and John wax eloquent about their new Google smart displays, and they cover a variety of helpful Mueller files discussing everything from trailing slashes, to removing images from Google’s index.

Google can now link to some content it is showing in their search results in a new way. Instead of just linking to the page, Google can anchor you to the exact spot of the answer you are looking for and highlight the block of text that is most relevant to your query. This only works for some searches on Google mobile, that feature AMP content in the featured snippet block. Google is testing a bigger push for the messaging option within the local panel. Google launched messaging within Google My Business in July 2017. Google is now testing a way to promote messaging more to searchers in the local panel by using a larger message button. A few months ago, Google stopped showing Google Posts in the top location, somewhat above the fold, in the local panel for a business. That seemed to have led to Google Posts performance drastically dropping off. Now, Google may be testing moving the Google Posts back up.

Every entrepreneur dreams of selling the company and cashing out. It is almost a trope that founders need to have their exit in mind from the earliest days of their startup. While many are on a mission to solve a problem and make better ways to live and work together, the business of business is business, i.e. making money for the owners. If you have investors, they expect a return on the money they put in your company. Sure, they have gambled on a highly risky asset class, but they do so anticipating gains on their money. Gillian and Anne outline the basics every founder needs to know: when and how to prepare for sale, whom you need to engage for support, and how to find a buyer and pitch your startup.

Mobile is as personal as it gets, and smart products power fiercely personal interactions between brands and consumers. Together they put the pressure on companies to balance data sharing and tracking—the foundation of superior and seamless customer experience—with the requirement to respect personal privacy. It’s just one of the mobile mega-trends John Koetsier—journalist, analyst, futurist and VP of Insights at marketing intelligence platform Singular—discusses with our host Peggy Anne Salz as they kick off the first show of the New Year. John also shares recent research around the ad partners you need to know and watch in 2019 and highlights the key takeaways of new (yet unpublished) research into the top challenges facing mobile marketers. We won’t give it away (you’ll have to read his post over at Inc. for that), but we can say marketers are overwhelmed with data and warming to approaches that will unify it.

Original Air Date: January 23, 2018

Join us for this episode of PressThis as we interview crazy-smart Karim Marucchi of Crowd Favorite on the future of WordPress and open source for the Enterprise. Will Enterprise brands continue to adopt WordPress and open source? How will views on the scale, security, and reliability of open source change in the future? Karim is uniquely positioned to answer these questions as his agency serves enterprise brands like X, Y, and Z. If breaking into the enterprise is part of your plan for your agency or WP product business, don’t miss this episode of PressThis. Listen now!

 Original Air Date: March 6, 2018WordPress is growing at a mind bending pace and so are the businesses that support and rely on the ecosystem. If you’re wondering how you’ll grow your WP-focused team while defending your quality, lifestyle, and culture, check out this episode of Press This. In this episode we’ll be interviewing the super-popular and insightful Shane Pearlman to hear about the challenges and successes he’s had growing his business Modern Tribe. Tribe is a force in the WordPress community and Shane will share his thoughts on scaling a WordPress focused business while honoring the open source roots and culture that has made WordPress such a phenomenon and helped fueled the growth of his business. Don’t miss this episode.

Miriam Pawel is the author of In The Browns of California, journalist, and scholar. Miriam weaves a narrative history that spans four generations, from August Schuckman, the Prussian immigrant who crossed the Plains in 1852 and settled on a northern California ranch, to his great-grandson Jerry Brown, who reclaimed the family homestead one hundred forty years later. Through the prism of their lives, we gain an essential understanding of California and an appreciation of its importance. The magisterial story is enhanced by dozens of striking photos, many published for the first time.