Home Tags Posts tagged with "should"
Tag:

should

News Update

10 Essential Tech Blogs Every CTO Should Follow

by Loknath Das
written by Loknath Das

10 Essential Tech Blogs Every CTO Should Follow

As a CTO, you need to stay up to date on the latest and greatest in the tech world. Following new trends and developments is a must if you don’t want to fall behind the competition.

But how do you sift through the noise? How do you choose your sources of information? After all, you can’t follow every valuable resource out there.

With so much content vying for your attention, it can get pretty hard to decide what’s worthy of your precious time. Not to mention keeping up with your other responsibilities, like, say, helping your CEO run a business.

That is why, having your best interests at heart, we’ve compiled a short and sweet list of the best tech blogs to follow as a CTO to make sure nothing relevant escapes your notice.

Top 10 tech blogs every CTO should follow

1. CTO Vision

You know The Lord of the Rings, right? “The one ring to rule them all”? Well, if there’s one resource for CTOs to rule them all, it’s CTO Vision.

CTO Vision offers you a broad selection of articles on a wide variety of topics, including cloud computing, AI, and cryptocurrencies.

2. The CTO Advisor

Keith Townsend is an experienced CTO advisor. He has been working in the tech industry for the past 20 years. This is his blog.

Townsend uses The CTO Advisor to share his precious insights through writing and podcasting. You can find both on the site, and both come highly recommended.

3. High Scalability

This one takes the cake as far as “content over form” is concerned. And “looks can be deceiving.” And “don’t judge a book by its cover.” Just click on the link and you’ll know what we mean.

However, if it’s reliable, educational, trustworthy information on supporting user growth you’re after, High Scalability is second to none.

To put our money where our mouth is: Netflix: What Happens When You Press Play?

4. CIO Journal

Backed up by the full might and prestige of The Wall Street Journal, CIO Journal should for all intents and purposes be your go-to choice, for a variety of reasons.

We especially recommend it if you like your articles to be neatly separated into categories. Some of these include “Security,” “Analytics,” and “CEO Reads.”

5. IT Professional

This is a digital version of the printed magazine, which is a renowned authority on all things tech.

IT Professional publishes high-quality, peer-reviewed articles for IT executives, project managers, researchers, and application developers.

6. Harvard Business Review

Harvard Business Review offers a variety of both digital and analog content, including books and magazines.

Some cool additional features are also available, such as highlights picked by the editor. “Management Tip of the Day” and “Best of the Issue” are but a couple of examples.

7. Searchmetrics

Searchmetrics is a respected blog about online marketing and SEO.

They provide a unique window into the world of search and how you can move up in it.

8. Crunchbase News

Apart from the usual tech suspects, Crunchbase News stands out from the crowd by embracing a wider scope of subject matter.

For instance, they provide articles on topics such as diversity, where you can find texts on women in tech.

9. CIO

Simply put, CIO is the place to be for all the business technology executives.

Whether you’re a CTO, CIO, or just interested in tech, you’ll find tons of content to your liking here.

Like this: Machine Learning and AI Are Ideally Suited for Cryptocurrency Investing.

10. The Hustle
Last but not least, we have a bit of wild card for you.

If you’re looking for something more on the entertainment side, yet still highly informative, you’re going to love The Hustle.

This blog is chock-full of fascinating articles wrapped in neat, hilarious packages. We can’t recommend it enough.

Just take a look at this: How to Make Extra Cash Selling Useful Guides on Pretty Much Anything (A Guide).

Bonus: Twitter feeds
You don’t always need long articles to provide valuable insights or start stimulating discussions. Sometimes, all you need is a short snippet of information. Like a tweet.

Which is why we thought you could also benefit from us including some Twitter feeds for you to follow in this article. Here they are:

If Twitter’s your thing, head over to the site or open the app and follow these accounts.

Any one of them will bring you closer to all the recent tech updates, 280 characters at a time.

Final thoughts
There you have it: a comprehensive list of the most valuable blogs for CTOs to follow.

If you’re pressed for time—and let’s face it, of course you are—but want fresh, regular, high-grade updates on every notable piece of news from the world of technology, look no further.

We hope this helps you manage your time more efficiently, get all the info you’re after, and become a better CTO in the process.

Additionally, if you’re on the lookout for even more resources to help you grow in your role as CTO, here’s a list of over 10 must-read books for CTOs.

Did we miss a blog or two that you really like? Let us know, and we’ll surely add it to the list for everyone’s benefit.

Want to get more updates from STX Next? Go ahead and subscribe to our newsletter to get them fresh.

And if you have any other questions or comments, drop us a line here. We’ll get back to you before you know it.

[“source=stxnext”]

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Gadgets News

10 Essential Tech Blogs Every CTO Should Follow

by Loknath Das
written by Loknath Das

10 Essential Tech Blogs Every CTO Should Follow

As a CTO, you need to stay up to date on the latest and greatest in the tech world. Following new trends and developments is a must if you don’t want to fall behind the competition.

But how do you sift through the noise? How do you choose your sources of information? After all, you can’t follow every valuable resource out there.

With so much content vying for your attention, it can get pretty hard to decide what’s worthy of your precious time. Not to mention keeping up with your other responsibilities, like, say, helping your CEO run a business.

That is why, having your best interests at heart, we’ve compiled a short and sweet list of the best tech blogs to follow as a CTO to make sure nothing relevant escapes your notice.

Top 10 tech blogs every CTO should follow

1. CTO Vision

You know The Lord of the Rings, right? “The one ring to rule them all”? Well, if there’s one resource for CTOs to rule them all, it’s CTO Vision.

CTO Vision offers you a broad selection of articles on a wide variety of topics, including cloud computing, AI, and cryptocurrencies.

Don’t just take our word for it, though: How Artificial Intelligence Is Making Big Data Better Than Ever.

2. The CTO Advisor

Keith Townsend is an experienced CTO advisor. He has been working in the tech industry for the past 20 years. This is his blog.

Townsend uses The CTO Advisor to share his precious insights through writing and podcasting. You can find both on the site, and both come highly recommended.

Here’s a sample article for you: Why I Chose to Go Work for VMware.

3. High Scalability

This one takes the cake as far as “content over form” is concerned. And “looks can be deceiving.” And “don’t judge a book by its cover.” Just click on the link and you’ll know what we mean.

However, if it’s reliable, educational, trustworthy information on supporting user growth you’re after, High Scalability is second to none.

To put our money where our mouth is: Netflix: What Happens When You Press Play?

4. CIO Journal

Backed up by the full might and prestige of The Wall Street Journal, CIO Journal should for all intents and purposes be your go-to choice, for a variety of reasons.

We especially recommend it if you like your articles to be neatly separated into categories. Some of these include “Security,” “Analytics,” and “CEO Reads.”

5. IT Professional

This is a digital version of the printed magazine, which is a renowned authority on all things tech.

IT Professional publishes high-quality, peer-reviewed articles for IT executives, project managers, researchers, and application developers.

6. Harvard Business Review

Harvard Business Review offers a variety of both digital and analog content, including books and magazines.

Some cool additional features are also available, such as highlights picked by the editor. “Management Tip of the Day” and “Best of the Issue” are but a couple of examples.

7. Searchmetrics

Searchmetrics is a respected blog about online marketing and SEO.

They provide a unique window into the world of search and how you can move up in it.

8. Crunchbase News

Apart from the usual tech suspects, Crunchbase News stands out from the crowd by embracing a wider scope of subject matter.

For instance, they provide articles on topics such as diversity, where you can find texts on women in tech.

9. CIO

Simply put, CIO is the place to be for all the business technology executives.

Whether you’re a CTO, CIO, or just interested in tech, you’ll find tons of content to your liking here.

10. The Hustle

Last but not least, we have a bit of wild card for you.

If you’re looking for something more on the entertainment side, yet still highly informative, you’re going to love The Hustle.

This blog is chock-full of fascinating articles wrapped in neat, hilarious packages. We can’t recommend it enough.

Bonus: Twitter feeds

You don’t always need long articles to provide valuable insights or start stimulating discussions. Sometimes, all you need is a short snippet of information. Like a tweet.

Which is why we thought you could also benefit from us including some Twitter feeds for you to follow in this article. Here they are:

If Twitter’s your thing, head over to the site or open the app and follow these accounts.

Any one of them will bring you closer to all the recent tech updates, 280 characters at a time.

Final thoughts

There you have it: a comprehensive list of the most valuable blogs for CTOs to follow.

If you’re pressed for time—and let’s face it, of course you are—but want fresh, regular, high-grade updates on every notable piece of news from the world of technology, look no further.

We hope this helps you manage your time more efficiently, get all the info you’re after, and become a better CTO in the process.

Additionally, if you’re on the lookout for even more resources to help you grow in your role as CTO, here’s a list of over 10 must-read books for CTOs.

Did we miss a blog or two that you really like? Let us know, and we’ll surely add it to the list for everyone’s benefit.

Want to get more updates from STX Next? Go ahead and subscribe to our newsletter to get them fresh.

And if you have any other questions or comments, drop us a line here. We’ll get back to you before you know it.

[“source=stxnext”]

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Online Marketing

The 10 Best Digital Marketing Blogs You Should Be Reading

by Loknath Das
written by Loknath Das

The 10 Best Digital Marketing Blogs You Should Be Reading

As we kick off a brand new year and everyone heads back to work, we have tried to find a way to fill up those commuting hours once again. So we put together our list of the best digital marketing blogs that we think are informative, entertaining, and essential to the marketing community. Some light reading to help the time pass on the train. So take a look at one (or all) of them, and see if any of your favorites made the list.

1. The Moz Blog:

The Moz blog is undoubtedly one of the best to read if you’re looking to stay on top of industry news related to SEO or inbound marketing initiatives. Any good digital marketer understands the importance of SEO, and how ever-changing the guidelines, rules, and regulations associated with search results can be. The Moz blog covers everything you need to know with the right amount of detail to make it comprehendible without being overwhelming. Even if you’re a beginner with SEO, their content is quite digestible. Each of their posts provides real value, offering actionable insights or even “how-to” articles related to SEO. Every Friday, they post a “Whiteboard Friday” video as part of a recurring series, diving into different topics under the giant SEO umbrella. Whether it’s an analysis of an announcement from Google about a recent algorithm update, or a guide for keyword planning, the MOZ blog should be a go-to for any marketers or business owners looking to deepen their knowledge of SEO and learn how they can better integrate it into their overall marketing plan (if they aren’t already).

digital marketing blog - moz

2. Content Marketing Institute:

Content is an essential aspect of any digital marketing campaign. The Content Marketing Institute offers some of the best advice around in terms of how content can help your brand. From industry trends to best practices, their posts offer helpful advice on how to create the best strategies for your business and how your content marketing should play a role in the “bigger picture.” One of their main objectives is to provide education to marketers, so there are plenty of events and research documents, as well as access to a lot of resources including eBooks and whitepapers. Any successful content marketing plan has undoubtedly utilized some of the expertise shared through the Content Marketing Institute-whether they realize it or not!

3. Marketing Land:

Marketing Land provides a lot of quality content on different topics and industry news. From updates in content management systems, to new features on social media platforms, their posts are informative and relevant. Recently some of their posts covered the CES Tech event in Las Vegas by posting panel discussions and blogging about different topics that were covered throughout the event. This live blog allowed people, who may not have been able to make it to the actual event, stay informed and become a part of the discussion even though they were not in attendance. Their blog lets you interact with various industry leaders, while providing their audience with content that is engaging and educational.

4. Econsultancy:

The insights on the Econsultancy blog range from the entire digital marketing spectrum, and even dive into more specific niche industries. The resources they offer provide practical advice for brands to market themselves online in a way that follows best practices but also integrates innovative trends. When it comes to innovation and the latest and greatest in digital marketing, Econsultancy always has it covered. Whether you’re B2B or B2C, or work in fashion or healthcare, Econsultancy offers advice for marketing that nearly any business can apply to their tactics to help reach their own objectives.

5. Kissmetrics:

The Kissmetrics blog offers analytics and testing insights on everything you’d ever need when it comes to marketing. Data-driven marketing is truly their expertise. The team at Kissmetrics regularly examines statistical trends to create reports that can better inform brand’s online performance. These posts help create solutions for companies looking to improve their online marketing, and a lot of their findings can help to shape the decisions made for a lot of companies as they try to achieve their marketing goals. Arguably the best part about their insights, and their real differentiator in comparison to blogs that are seemingly similar, is that nearly all of their thoughts are backed by corresponding metrics that support and provide reasoning for the advice they’re giving.

6. Convince & Convert:

Convince & Convert offers a variety of resources including a website, blog, podcast, books, and ebooks. They are digital marketing advisors led by Jay Baer, and it is the perfect stop to learn more about digital advertising. Each of the articles are short and simple that get to the point of what they are discussing, while still remaining insightful and informative. Their articles help you look at your own content in a new way, and think outside of the box in regards to what opportunities you could be incorporating into your own digital marketing strategies. Their content, can help your own content.

7. Socialfresh:

What is great about Socialfresh’s posts is that many of them include alternative media embedded in them. Most of them are podcasts covering the topic of the blog post that it is within, but others include videos and speeches or presentations at various events. This is a great blog for someone who may not have the time to sit and read multiple articles at a time. This offers you more than one way to consume the content that the blog is providing. It’s an obvious choice to include some digital media in a blog that highlights digital marketing, and a welcomed alternative way to consume the information being presented. The diverse topics that are covered focus a lot on the power of social media and how the industry is evolving.

8. PR Daily News:

PR Daily News combines industry-related news with other top stories going on throughout the world that day. It keeps all the information you need to stay on top of things in one easy newsfeed as opposed to switching to a bunch of different outlets to learn about news topics from different industries. It hones in on communication and PR conversations and topics by highlighting tools, trends, and techniques to make you sharper, while making your job easier. It offers a nice blend of readings on content marketing, as well as tech information. This balance makes for a blog that is easy and enjoyable to consume a variety of topics at once, without anything getting too repetitive.

9. PSFK:

This amazing blog is one step ahead of the game. From gadget and tech coverage to marketing campaign insight and analysis, they offer a lot of quality information. Aside from being visually appealing, they pose questions and topics that are interesting and engaging to the curious reader. They provide interesting technology focused articles, and some predictions for the industry, while constantly remaining ahead of their field. They have a section of their blog that includes a number of downloadable trend reports that discuss ” the future of…” a number of different industry-related topics. And forget about discussing marketing trends for 2016, these guys already have forecast for 2017.

digital marketing blog - psfk

10. Blue Fountain Media – The ROI Factor Blog:

Of course we have to include our very own ROI Factor Blog. We take pride in our work, and we enjoy discussing a number of different topics that shape the industry in which we operate. Our digital marketing blog prompts a number of different conversations from digital trends, to marketing innovation and best practices. We balance the scale between the importance of technical and results-driven marketing, and creative campaigns, and work to highlight everything in between through our bi-weekly posts. From strategy, design, and marketing, to website and mobile app development, you can find it all here at BFM.

[“source=bluefountainmedia”]

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Online Marketing

What is Conversational Advertising and Why Should You Care?

by Loknath Das
written by Loknath Das

Conversational commerce 101: What you need to know | Sprout Social

Conversational advertising is a powerful tool in modern marketing that enhances the user experience and helps brands get more sales conversions online.

Learn how to incorporate conversational marketing online by using the tools and techniques of the most advanced technological enterprises. And how to plan into a better conversational marketing approach.

Below, we’re covering things conversational marketing does so you can take advantage of this advanced strategy and increase your profits.

Conversational advertising refers to the use of chatbots to advertise and share information about a product. It means utilizing all the communications leading up to sales to have meaningful conversations advertising a product or service.

What is Conversational Advertising?

Conversational advertising describes the way buyers navigate a brand’s marketing and sales funnels along their customer journey using real-time interactions and consumer engagement.

More commonly conversational marketing refers to both live and automated chat tools embedded into a website that website visitors can use to ask questions and learn more about the brand and their products or services to enhance the customer experience.

Quality, helpful conversations within the sales process tick all of the following boxes:

  • They provide real value to the consumer
  • They are not disruptive of the consumer’s daily life or routines
  • They are respectful of both the consumer’s attention and their time

This is the basic framework by which conversational advertising functions. It provides value within a short amount of time in an engaging way that doesn’t disrupt the equilibrium of the consumer’s life.

Over time, both live sales reps and automated chatbots build relationships to create genuine experiences with consumers and buyers, making the buying process a whole lot easier.

Chatbots use targeted messaging and meaningful conversation to encourage qualified leads to connect with you when they arrive at your site. Kissing goodbye to endless waiting days and capturing forms customers used to fill.

Making it easier for your customers to engage with your business will improve your customer relationship and cause more leads quickly.

Typically, a conversational marketing strategy in a business setting has two methods to choose from. The most common types of conversational marketing examples you’ll see employed by brands today include:

  • Live sales agents – A sales team may spend time on the website having unique conversations with website visitors using conversation marketing over messaging apps to enhance customer engagement as well as boost conversions with targeted messages.
  • Automated conversations – Automated chatbots can send conversational display ads to website visitors through a messaging tool like Facebook messenger, a chat plugin on the website, or a mobile app using natural language processing and artificial intelligence to create personalized customer interactions.

Together, or separate, these marketing tools enable customers to make decisions based on personalized sales conversations that most users won’t even realize are ads.

How Conversational Advertising Can Support Your Brand – And How It’s Changing Consumer Behavior

Before you implement it in your own strategy, it’s critical to fully understand the impact of conversational marketing.

Brands measure advertising in several ways: impact on brand awareness, click-through rate, cost-per-click, and an endless chain of other KPIs and benchmarks. However, those measures don’t tie directly to the interactions consumers have with their brands.

Conversational marketing helps develop a solid, firm foundation for more accurate metrics that show what impression a brand is truly capable of leaving.

The process takes the guesswork out of measuring the individual performance of different campaigns and sets the stage for brands to continue these significant conversations throughout the company’s entire customer experience.

The entire concept of conversational marketing has its roots in the idea of giving a unique customer experience to each site visitor from the first step of your sales. Whether through a sales team or automated chatbots, each person is getting a one-of-a-kind conversation.

Traditional mass media messaging is typically one-way. Even inbound requires the setting up of the forms and the hassle of tracking down leads.

Digital advertising allows for more personalization, but neither offers the relevance to the user that conversational advertising can provide. They still feel forced, unnatural, and “salesy,” if you will. On the other hand, conversational marketing examples are hard to notice when you’re one of the qualified leads the marketing intends to reach.

With a little help from AI and automation, brands can achieve this natural, conversational marketing tactic at scale allowing meaningful, one-to-one connections with customers and exceeding traditional outcome measures to stand out by creating new metrics of greater value and relevance.

How Conversational Marketing is Changing Consumer Behavior

Both new and existing customers alike have quickly gotten hooked on automated chat platforms. They are more flexible and faster than call queues, offer more direct answers than browsing the website alone, and can help customers help themselves through self-service.

Some people also love messaging because it helps to maintain their pace, whether at work or in life, and helps them feel like they’re having a conversation, not answering an email, or performing research.

In a survey from Twilio, 66% of respondents said they prefer using instead of the brands reaching out through messaging apps.

Having your sales team use a chat platform to talk with web visitors online, utilizing Facebook messenger to answer questions from potential customers, or integrating mobile apps are all easy ways to implement a conversational strategy into your marketing plan.

Its Benefits to B2B

Right now, the buying process for B2B businesses is especially cold and impersonal, making it harder for buyers to get the ball rolling. Conversational marketing is helping build relationships and create authentic experiences with customers and buyers, even B2B ones.

Benefits of Conversational Advertising

A sophisticated and thoughtful conversational marketing approach can help your business create personalized customer experiences through real-time responses, engaging conversations, and ethical data collection.

As you develop a conversational marketing strategy for your brand, try to design it with these benefits in mind:

Build Trust

When you use conversational marketing, you create memorable personalized experiences that can help to build trust between the consumer and brand more quickly. Without as much lead-up time in the sales cycle, you’ll shorten the total length and ultimately improve sales.

Yet, even with these company-facing benefits, conversational marketing also shifts the focus to fulfilling customer needs and makes them feel more considered.

Reduce Friction

Conversational marketing can also help consumers engage directly with the brand to reduce friction during the buying process. Instant responses to questions when they arise keeps frustration at a minimum. No forms to fill out or waiting for an answer.

Digital solutions like AI chatbots keep customers off of call queues, helping them find the answers and the information they need almost instantaneously, a benefit that’s worth a lot in a world of increasing self-service tools.

Improve Customer Satisfaction

Personalized conversations improve user satisfaction by delivering a thoughtful and consistent experience at every point of interaction within the buying process. Empowering them to interact directly with your AI chatbot also increases their brand confidence and loyalty.

First-Party Data Collection Opportunity

In a world where data and privacy have become ever so important, being able to extract valuable insights without the use of third-party data gives any business a major advantage.

Personalized conversation through conversational AI allows a business to ask customers questions directly, extracting valuable data and storing it for later use to develop future marketing strategies.

Conversational marketing is one of the easiest ways to gather this data, as it allows the customers to come to you, rather than having to chase them down through forms or emails.

Save Time

Marketing activities require a lot of time and energy put forth by the sales team, but conversational marketing can both reduce time requirements while increasing capabilities.

Conversational marketing can shorten the sales cycle by helping consumers make more educated, empowered, and informed decisions. This shortens the time it takes for them to make that decision, thus reducing the average time to make a profit.

It also saves time for the business, allowing them to focus on more pressing matters like social media, email strategy, and large campaigns.

Effortless Business Scaling

One of the biggest benefits of conversational marketing is the fact that all of these incredible, personalized conversational experiences can happen in the background 24/7 without the need for an actual sales agent present.

Many businesses have used this benefit to scale their brands with minimal effort, in a way that wasn’t possible previously. Conversational marketing exists beyond office hours, beyond human labor, and yet adds a personal touch to any marketing strategy.

Creating Your Conversational Marketing Strategy

Rather than create an entirely new conversational marketing strategy full of new digital initiatives, it’s pretty easy to find ways to incorporate conversational marketing within your existing framework.

Like many brands, you can use conversational marketing by adding an automated chatbox option on your website. This is usually the first thing companies think of. however, a conversational marketing strategy exists to support and amplify the systems and strategies you already have in place.

For example, you could start utilizing Facebook chat more to help customers with questions. You can provide canned answers that the chat will provide based on the questions asked.

You could also use a tool like Drift, a popular automated chat tool, to connect real, human sales agents with customers online to provide an enhanced experience when possible.

Even still, conversational marketing is a broad term that refers to much more than just chat boxes, machine learning, and bots.

You can incorporate more conversational marketing by creating CTAs on your blog posts that encourage readers to reach out, or by opening your social media DMs to customer service inquiries.

Questions to Ask To Get Started

Need help kicking things off with your conversational marketing strategy? Start by asking yourself these questions about your business and your existing customers:

  • Who is showing interest in our product or service?
  • How are these people engaging with our company? Online? Social media? Email?
  • Where did these potential buyers come from?
  • What are they looking to get out of your conversation?
  • How can we better engage people, meet their needs, build trust, and improve the customer experience?

Understanding your target buyer’s full-picture situation will help you target the best way to meet their needs.

Incorporating Conversational Advertising Into Marketing and Sales Funnels

Conversational marketing effortlessly fits into any marketing and sales funnel, because it moves them through these stages step by step, one question at a time. It works just the same as a real conversation would.

At first, a customer may be wary, with many objections. After qualifying the customer and addressing their unique objections, eventually, the customer will come to trust the person they’re speaking with and may move closer to saying “yes” and buying.

Chatbots do this flawlessly by storing information acquired from every question asked and answered and using this data to inform future responses and replies, creating a perfectly tailored conversation that can understand leads faster and more deeply.

Measuring Your Conversational Marketing Initiative

Conversational marketing success is best measured with a specific set of metrics. While other metrics may have worked well in other scenarios with different digital tools, you’ll want to incorporate the following metrics to best understand the impact of conversational marketing.

Length of Sales Cycle

The duration of the sales process is usually shorter when live chat or chatbots are on it. To measure this difference, calculate the average time spent using the conversational platform and how many of those conversations ended in a sale. If you’re getting more hourly sales through the bot than through other marketing tactics, you can realize sales efficiency.

NPS

NPS stands for net promoter score, which measures customer feelings and loyalty. The data for this metric usually comes from a follow-up question posed after conversations, like “How likely are you to recommend this product/service/company to a friend?”

Businesses with high scores are promoters for their own brands, while passives don’t add much and detractors actively take away from their sales success.

GCR

Goal completion rate measures the percentage of visitors that reached a certain goal, or conversion, during a live chat or while speaking with a chatbot. The conversion, goal, or action may be answering a question, booking a demo, or making a sale.

Final Thoughts

Conversational marketing has gone from a new kid on the marketing block to an integral part of any modern marketing strategy.

In a general sense, it brings the focus of advertising and marketing back to the consumer, directly engaging with them and extracting information about what they need and what they expect from brands used to better serve them.

When implementing your own conversational approach, try to find gaps in your strategy that you can substitute through genuine conversation. Take advantage of advanced tools such as AI and automation to take the responsibility off your sales agents, allowing them to focus on more pressing matters while bots work 24/7 through conversations.

But remember – the core here is the connection and trust created in every communication touchpoint.

Source:- ronsela

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Internet

The Internet Is A Public Permissioned Network. Should Blockchains Be The Same?

by Loknath Das
written by Loknath Das

Imagine you typed www.google.com into the browser on your Mac and it took you to Microsoft Bing. You’d probably be a bit confused, and maybe angry. But this doesn’t ever happen. Why is that?

The answer is because, at the heart of the design of the public Internet, is a hidden system of governance and ‘permissioning’ that makes it all work. The Internet is a public network with permissioning of some key resources. And the lessons we can learn from this have profound implications for the future of blockchain systems, especially in the enterprise.

Here’s a summary of the argument I make in this piece:

  • Open, shared, general purpose, broad access networks – public networks – tend to dominate over time. But public does not imply anarchic or permissionlessness. For example, on the Internet, Certificate Authorities require the permission of operating system vendors to be trusted by their browsers, and use of specific names and numbers requires permission that derives from IANA. The Internet is a public, permissioned network.
  • The analogous critical infrastructure in blockchain networks is transaction confirmation. So should it be subject to permissioning? If your goal is censorship resistance then the right to be a proof-of-work miner must be permissionless, but the tradeoff is transactions are only ever probabilistically final. If censorship resistance is not a goal then transaction finality can be achieved but the consensus providers must be known, and hence permissioned. So both public-permissionless and public-permissioned models work for blockchains, but with different tradeoffs.
  • Given that censorship resistance is not a goal for most businesses, and transaction finality is, this means the optimal architecture for large-scale general-purpose business blockchains is public, permissioned.
  • Corda Network, Sovrin and Alastria are examples of public, permissioned blockchain networks.

The Internet is a public, permissioned network and this is why it matters for blockchains…

A worked example: how to hack Google (kinda…)

Let’s work through the example above a little. Why don’t you ever see Bing when you type www.google.com?

There are two main reasons you don’t get Bing when you want Google: the Internet’s Domain Name System (DNS) and because of Digital Certificates.

To understand why, imagine I am a bad guy trying to send all of Google’s traffic to Microsoft. How would I do it?

First, I’d need to set up a Domain Name server that gave the wrong answer whenever it was asked for Google’s address. So when somebody typed google.com into their browser, I could control where their browser went.

But if I just sent them to bing.com, that wouldn’t be enough. The padlock wouldn’t show on the browser. You would spot the error. (You do check for the padlock, right?)

To make it work, I’d have to solve the padlock problem. The technical details aren’t too important but the key thing I’d need to do is issue myself a “certificate” for google.com. And that would make the padlock show on your browser. And the reality is that anybody with a bit of technical knowledge and a few spare hours spare could do this pretty quickly.

Easy!

Well, not quite…

It actually wouldn’t work. (Sorry, wannabe hackers…)

But the reason why it would fail is of fundamental importance to the future of enterprise blockchains. And that is because it shows the critical importance of the concept of permissioning.

Why wouldn’t it work, exactly? The answer is that the Internet is a permissioned system. Potential providers of critical Internet infrastructure like DNS and Certificates need permission to have their services utilised and trusted.

We don’t often think about it this way but that’s what’s going on.  The reason the trick above fails is because I can’t force you to trust my DNS server and I can’t force you to trust my ‘certificate’. In the former case I would need you or your ISP to choose to trust my DNS server. In the latter case, I would need Apple to include my Certificate Authority (CA) on the list of CAs that Macs and iPhones trust out of the box. Providers of critical services have to be invited in. They don’t get to just “rock up” and join the party without permission.

Sure… you can bring a bottle and knock on the door. But if your name’s not on the list, you’re not coming in.

If you haven’t permitted your computer to rely on my DNS server, it doesn’t matter how many lies I publish. And if I haven’t gained permission from Apple to include my Certificate Authority in its list of approved Certificate Issuers for Macs and iPhones then nobody using an Apple product will pay the slightest bit of attention to the certificates I issue.  The same applies for Google with Android, and Microsoft with Windows.

In short, the Internet works because some of the fundamental building blocks of its operation – directory services, addressing, identity management – are under the control of organisations such as IANA, browser vendors and others, or are matters for individual users, who almost invariably delegate them straight back to their ISP or operating system vendor in any case. An aspiring provider of critical Internet infrastructure needs to obtain explicit permission from one or more of these groups if their service is going to be adopted or trusted. You don’t get to just fire up your service and impose your will on others.

So the Internet is a fascinating beast. It is a truly public network: open, shared, general purpose, accessible to pretty much anybody willing to pay for a connection and who can find somebody who will sell them one. And it is also permissioned: providers of critical services such as DNS or Certificates don’t get to force others to consume their service or trust them. Control – permissioning – is in the hands of the users and trusted central parties.

Censorship Resistance or Transaction Finality? Today’s reality: you can choose one.

So now turn our attention to blockchains.  It should be beyond debate that, outside some special use-cases, often in finance, blockchain networks should be public. Large, open, connected, shared networks that can form organically and with minimal barriers to entry and with pricing that tracks cost. Bitcoin and Ethereum pass this test, of course. As does Corda Network, which is open to all legal entities on a cost recovery basis. And James Carlyle wrote earlier this year about how much Corda Network’s philosophy is aligned with the Alastria network vision.

But many in the Ethereum community argue that businesses shouldn’t just use public networks, they should use permissionless ones. By which they usually mean the main Ethereum network.

This sounds superficially appealing. Yet the lesson of the internet is that there can be some very tricky “gotchas” if you don’t also have some control over critical infrastructure services.  If the internet was truly permissionless, I would indeed have been able to trick your computer into going to Bing when you wanted to go to Google. Or something far worse.

So the idea that businesses should bet on permissionless networks deserves scrutiny. In particular, if some of the most fundamental services requiring permissioning on the internet are routing and identity verification, are there any equivalent questions for blockchains?

The answer, it turns out, is yes. There is one very important infrastructure service: transaction confirmation.

When you submit your transaction to the network, you want it to be confirmed. But by whom? Who provides the confirmation services? What guarantee are you receiving?

On networks like Ethereum and Bitcoin, the underlying philosophy is one of censorship resistance. The networks exist to make it impossible for anybody – not even an elected government – to prevent transactions being confirmed.

And so on Bitcoin and Ethereum there is nobody, not even you, with the power to decide who confirms your transactions. Anybody with enough computing power can turn up and compete to “mine” a block containing your transaction. They have the power to confirm, but also the ability to reverse a confirmation if they amass enough computing power. A confirmed transaction can subsequently become unconfirmed.

Be in no doubt: censorship resistance is an amazing historical advance for those who need it. But there is a wicked sting in the tail: transaction confirmation on Proof-of-Work networks is inherently probabilistic. Transactions are only ever probably confirmed. If censorship resistance is your goal then this is probably a good trade-off.

But what if censorship-resistance is not your goal? What if you want to know who the parties providing confirmation services in the confirmation clusters are? What if you want to be sure that once a transaction is confirmed it stays confirmed? (Or who to sue if it doesn’t?)

And this is where the Internet gives us the answer. This is exactly the same problem as the one I opened this article with. Just like the Internet, we want blockchain networks to be public – open, shared, general purpose – whenever possible. But there are some capabilities within those public networks where there needs to be some control over who can provide them.

Permissioning – within the context of a public network – is the answer

The specific capabilities may differ between the Internet and blockchains but the solution is the same: permissioning.

Not permissioning of who can join the network. We all agree public networks are massively powerful where they can be used. But we do need permissioning of who can provide some critical common services.

This is why I think the public blockchains taking a similar approach to the internet are the ones to watch. Corda Network, Alastria and Sovrin are all examples of public networks that work in this public, permissioned way. Just as no rogue Certificate Authority on the internet can force you to accept its fake certificates, no rogue consensus provider on Corda Network, say, can force you to accept its confirmation decisions; they have to have been permissioned into that role on the otherwise public network.

You wouldn’t accept an internet connection that only probably connected you to the real Google – or to your real online banking portal. And you probably don’t want a blockchain network that only probably confirms your transactions.

Yes, public is the future. Public, permissioned. Just like the Internet.

source: forbes

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Education

The Education Issue Democratic Candidates Should Be Talking About

by Loknath Das
written by Loknath Das

Democratic Presidential Candidates are overlooking a basic problem in education.

Education is a hot issue in the contest among Democratic presidential hopefuls. But none of what’s been said so far gets to the root of the problem.

Most of the many current candidates have issued comprehensive policy proposals or at least staked out positions on key education issues. Their prescriptions for reform cluster around the same basic proposals, listed below. Reasonable arguments can be made for all these ideas, and compelling ones for some. But none gets at a pervasive and long overlooked problem that has hobbled efforts to improve education for decades—and, if left unaddressed, will undermine the current proposals, should they ever come to fruition.

Like most education reformers and policymakers—of either party—the Democratic candidates have failed to focus on what is actually going on in classrooms, particularly in elementary school. They might be surprised to learn that in all but a relative handful, teachers aren’t even trying to provide kids with substantive knowledge. Instead, they’re spending hours every day teaching them so-called reading comprehension skills—or trying to. The theory is that if kids master supposed skills like “finding the main idea” or “making inferences,” eventually they’ll be able to use them to glean knowledge from any text put in front of them.

But scientists who study the learning process have long understood that reading comprehension doesn’t work that way. The most important factor isn’t some generally applicable skill. It’s how much background knowledge and vocabulary you have relating to the topic. So if we want to boost kids’ reading comprehension—and their general academic performance—we need to start building their knowledge as early as possible through social studies, science, literature and the arts. That’s especially important for children from less educated families, who are the least likely to pick up that kind of knowledge at home.

Instead, though, we’ve narrowed the elementary curriculum to reading and math, especially in high-poverty schools where test scores are low. That focus often continues through middle school, with the result that many students arrive in high school with such crippling gaps in knowledge that it’s nearly impossible for them to understand high school-level material. The longer we wait to start addressing those gaps, the harder they are to fill.

This problem isn’t new, but in the past twenty years well-intentioned reform efforts have only made things worse. No Child Left Behind, enacted in 2001—and some of the measures taken by the Obama administration in its wake—intensified the focus on test scores. Because reading tests appear to assess comprehension skills, teachers have doubled down on that kind of instruction. But if students don’t have the background knowledge to understand the passages on the tests, they can’t demonstrate their skills. That has become even more of an issue since 2010, when the Common Core literacy standards or something like them were adopted in most states. The passages on tests aligned to those standards include more nonfiction, which generally assumes more background knowledge than fiction. And yet most teachers have continued focusing on comprehension “skills” rather than knowledge.

The solution, briefly, is to get more districts or schools to adopt recently developed elementary literacy curricula that build students’ knowledge of the world instead of fruitlessly trying to develop comprehension “skills.” Unless that happens, the candidates’ favorite proposals will founder in different but related ways:

·        Expanded access to preschool: Yes, we need to start building children’s knowledge and vocabulary early, and preschools using good curricula can help. But if kids go from preschool to a black hole of knowledge in elementary school, whatever gains they’ve made evaporate quickly—a phenomenon known as “preschool fadeout.”

·        Making college free or less expensive: This is a great idea—for students who graduate from high school prepared to do college-level work. But many high school graduates are required to take remedial courses when they enroll in college, and they often never graduate. Making college free without also improving K-12 education could just encourage even more ill-prepared students to enroll, resulting in an even greater waste of time and effort—and money, even if students themselves don’t bear the costs.

·        Limits on charter schools: These proposals have drawn the most attention, but they wouldn’t address this basic problem. Charters could theoretically serve as models of innovation by focusing on content at the elementary level. For the most part, though, they’ve drilled kids on comprehension “skills” just as much as traditional public schools have—if not more.

·        More funding for high-poverty schools: Money could help, but only if schools understand what to do with it. If they just use it to fund more of the same meaningless comprehension instruction, as they generally do, the money won’t make much difference. And high-quality curriculum doesn’t cost any more than low-quality curriculum, so schools could do a lot more with the resources they have now.

·        Increasing teacher salaries: Teachers in many places need and deserve more money, and teacher turnover has a negative impact on student achievement. But teachers also leave because they’re dissatisfied with their working conditions, including pressure to raise test scores; nearly half of teachers surveyed in one study said they’d considered quitting because of testing. If the current approach to elementary education continues, test scores will continue to languish—and the pressure will continue, along with teacher turnover.

It would be great if at least one of the 20 candidates who have qualified for the first Democratic debates later this week mentioned that we’re not actually teaching kids much in elementary school—and that we’re unlikely to make progress in addressing the problems plaguing our education system unless we start. But explaining that would take more than the few minutes they’ll be allotted.

Still, there’s time to get this message out before the primaries begin. There may not be a powerful constituency clamoring for this kind of reform right now. But if a candidate explains the issue well, several groups could get on board:

·        Teachers: In the few schools that have switched to a knowledge-focused curriculum, many teachers have embraced the change wholeheartedly. They say it’s the way they’ve always wanted to teach.

·        Parents: Kids don’t come home from school chattering excitedly about “making inferences” or “identifying nonfiction text structures.” But when they’re learning about the human digestive system or Greek mythology, parents are delighted by the rich conversations they can have—and how much their kids are enjoying school. With a solid foundation of knowledge, students will also be poised to succeed in later grades.

·        Employers: If schools adopt a knowledge-building approach, high school graduates will be far better equipped for the 21st-century workplace. Having a fund of knowledge and vocabulary can enable workers to understand on-the-job manuals, write coherent reports, and adapt to changing work requirements.

·        Those concerned by growing inequity: Reformers are starting to give up on education as an engine of social mobility. But it’s still our best hope for reducing inequality. The problem is that we haven’t tried to address the gap in knowledge between haves and have-nots, beginning in the early grades.

Elizabeth Warren, who famously has a plan for everything, doesn’t yet have one for K-12 education. She or some other Democratic candidate could stand out from the crowd by focusing on a vital issue everyone else has ignored for decades: our wrong-headed, self-defeating obsession with reading comprehension “skills.” And ultimately, millions of children—not to mention society as a whole—could reap enormous benefits.

[“source=forbes”]

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Blogging

5 Irrefutable Reasons Why All European Startups Should Invest in Blogging

by Loknath Das
written by Loknath Das

5 Irrefutable Reasons Why All European Startups Should Invest in Blogging

Content sits upon the throne as the undisputed monarch of modern marketing. There are few more trustworthy avenues for generating exposure and building a customer base than through the process of setting up a digital space for a dedicated blog or quality content.

The potential benefits of investing in blogging and content are no more pronounced than with European startups, where the prospect of placing engaging material under the noses of audiences across the EU can drive interest from areas of the continent and beyond that would’ve otherwise remained oblivious to your endeavor.

But how necessary is the act of investing in a blog? And how can it help in growing a startup into a company with a multinational following? Here are five irrefutable reasons why all European startups should consider creating quality content.

1. Strategic expansion

The best way to build traffic and leads for your website hinges on its ability to feature highly enough in the results pages of Google. However, given that there’s little room for yourself and all like-minded endeavors to attain a position of prominence at the top of search engine results pages, it’s down to you to make your website visible for your prospective audience.

A direct search for your company name should be an easy way of appearing on the first page of Google. But unfortunately, people don’t generally look for company names on search engines — they look for answers to problems.

The names of startups won’t be near the first page for queries based on their products, so it’s vital that you work on gaining exposure.

Here, content is key. If you’re creating quality content that’s filled with the right blend of keywords that are likely to be included as search engine queries, you’ll be placing yourself in a strategically advantageous position in offering an answer to your audience’s questions — and in doing so, attracting them to your pages.

The key here is research. Keyword research to be more specific. As a startup, your website may not have the weight to rank for high-volume, high competition phrases. Hence, it’s vital to tap into low-hanging fruits.

To do that, tools such as Ahrefs or Moz can help.

Start by identifying high-volume yet low competition keywords.

Let’s assume you’re running an email marketing startup. Although it might be challenging to tackle keywords such as “email marketing” right off the bat, by digging deeper into research, you’ll be sure to identify some decent keywords as shown below.

Ahrefs Keyword Research

As a European startup, gaining search engine prominence through effective contenthas the potential to transform your business from a local entity into one that has a continental reach. At a time when you’re wholly dependent on raising awareness of your company and encouraging a healthy level of sales, this extra exposure could pay dividends in ensuring your expansion into a comfortable business.

2. Foreseeable futureproofing

You may or may not be aware of the term evergreen content, but it refers to the creation of content that’s structured to stand the test of time and encourage traffic to your site from search engines.

By creating a blog that engages with an audience while answering frequently asked questions  they may have regarding your industry, you’re able to guarantee a long-term flow of traffic to your pages as well as establishing yourself as a leading knowledge base on the topics that interest your customers.

To create effective evergreen content, be sure to avoid including time-specific references or focal points in your articles. To base a blog post on a news story is a great way of getting short-term traffic, but to find a recurring theme within a news piece and draw on that instead could make a big difference when it comes to winning customers a few months down the line.

Another useful way of sounding out the potential for an evergreen post is to monitor websites such as Quora and forum-based question-and-answer platforms. If you can identify relevant trending topics that are yet to be touched on by your competitors, there’s nothing stopping you from creating an engaging post that appeals directly to the users that are asking such questions online.

This tactic is arguably the most effective way of futureproofing your website and ensuring that you’ll always have a healthy stream of traffic entering your pages.

3. Opportunities for feedback

By investing in blogging and quality content, you’re creating a fresh and engaging avenue of communication between your brand and your audience. This is vital in developing a trustworthy reputation for your prospective customers.

The comments section of your company blog makes for an excellent space for you to communicate directly to customers and visitors alike. This engagement opportunity is highly valuable because everybody you’re interacting with has already displayed enough interest in your brand by visiting your pages — whereas interactions on social media may be valuable, but will likely not result in as many sales.

The level of engagement you can bring through the medium of a dedicated blog and quality content is scalable, too. Some websites offer a free giveaway of a product or service within their blog posts as a way of encouraging more comments and user interaction. Cloudways points out that this method has the potential to produce lots of valuable user-created content that you could ultimately leverage to build a stronger customer base.

4. Reputation building

Blogs have the power to become the perfect representative of your brand. Today, it’s never been easier for customers to make purchases from anywhere in Europe, so startups have a huge market in which to craft their reputation.

Although traffic may be initially slow, through the right use of keyword research and regularly published content you’ll be able to build a recurring audience for your posts who will likely trust your brand ahead of your competitors.

In fact, according to HubSpot, companies that publish more than 16 blog posts per months get 3.5 times more traffic than those businesses that publish up to four blog posts.

Given the interconnectivity that Europe enjoys today, developing a positive reputation is vital — a collection of poor reviews that are visible to people searching for your startup could severely hinder its progress. By building a blog that showcases quality content, you can ensure that prospective customers have as positive and engaging experience as possible.

5. The pied piper of subscriptions and value

There are few things more alluring to prospective customers than content. Sure, newsletters are great for building a customer base, but the problem with this approach alone is that you can never be confident that you’ve gathered the right audience. Blogging, however, ensures that your output is popular with the right people.

It’s no stretch to say that high-quality content is a draw for audiences, and the best blogs will motivate visitors toward subscriptions. By utilizing your blog to encourage users to subscribe to a mailing list, you can leverage your pages to include call-to-actions and detail-free gifts and offers to award visitors in return for their email addresses.

[“source=entrepreneur”]
0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Internet

Tech Firms Should Be Made Liable for ‘Fake News’ on Sites: UK Lawmakers

by Loknath Das
written by Loknath Das

Tech Firms Should Be Made Liable for 'Fake News' on Sites: UK Lawmakers

Tech firms like Facebook should be made liable for “harmful and misleading” material on their websites and pay a levy so they can be regulated, British lawmakers said, warning of a crisis in democracy due to misuse of personal data.

Facebook has increasingly become a focus of the media committee’s inquiry into “fake news” after the data of 87 million users was improperly accessed by British-headquartered consultancy Cambridge Analytica.

The cost of higher privacy standards will hit Facebook’s profit margins for several years, the firm said on Wednesday, wiping over $120 billion (roughly Rs. 8.35 lakh crores) off its share price, and the company is coming under concerted regulatory scrutiny in Britain, the United States and the European Union.

“Companies like Facebook made it easy for developers to scrape user data and to deploy it in other campaigns without their knowledge or consent,” Damian Collins, chair of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, said in a statement.

“They must be made responsible, and liable, for the way in which harmful and misleading content is shared on their sites.”

The committee’s interim report and Collins’s comments were embargoed until July 29. Other news organisations broke the embargo after a copy of the report was published online by Dominic Cummings, who ran the officially designated Vote Leave campaign in the EU referendum.

The standards of accuracy and impartiality which tech companies are held to could be based on regulator Ofcom’s rules for television and radio, the lawmakers said.

The committee’s report also suggested a levy on tech firms which could contribute to an increased budget for Britain’s data regulator, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), in the way in which the banking sector pays for the upkeep of its watchdog, the Financial Conduct Authority.

The ICO earlier this month fined Facebook for the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Cambridge Analytica, which was hired by Donald Trump’s campaign in 2016, has denied its work on the US president’s election made use of the data in question.

It has also said that while it pitched for work with campaign group Leave.EU before the Brexit referendum in Britain in 2016, it did not end up doing any work on the campaign.

The committee however said that adverts used online in the campaign were not clearly labelled, and expressed concern about a breach of spending rules by rival campaign group Vote Leave.

“We are facing nothing less than a crisis in our democracy – based on the systematic manipulation of data to support the relentless targeting of citizens … by campaigns of disinformation and messages of hate,” Collins said.

The findings were made in an interim report, with the full report due in the autumn.

[“Source-gadgets.ndtv”]

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Online Marketing

The Internal Processes Marketing Teams Should Automate Now

by Loknath Das
written by Loknath Das

Automation can still only go so far
EtiAmmos/iStock

There are a number of misconceptions surrounding marketing automation. For instance, many marketers think that using automation technology involves a lengthy implementation process along every step of their workflow. However, this couldn’t be further from the truth.

According to this definition of marketing automation from Neil Patel, “Marketing automation is the process of using software and technology to optimize, automate and measure repetitive online marketing tasks.”

The reality is that it’s now possible for marketers to automate repetitive day-to-day tasks. But this doesn’t have to mean automating everything to the point of losing the human touch. Automation is simply a good way for marketers to free up more time to spend on more important tasks, such as the creative aspects of a campaign or managing client relationships.

There are many aspects of a marketing campaign that can be automated, but automation can still only go so far. For now, marketers shouldn’t worry too much about automation taking over their jobs any time soon, especially because a majority of marketing teams have yet to automate the most basic marketing tasks.

For the marketing teams that are interested in exploring automation, here’s a brief overview of the opportunities and how to get started.

Automating workflows internally and with clients

The pressure on marketing teams to produce content, engage audiences and monitor their results has never been greater. However, legacy team communication and collaboration tools, such as email and spreadsheets, have failed to keep up with today’s demands. As a result, 2017 State of Marketing Work Report revealed that marketers spend just 38 percent of their time on their primary job duties. The rest of their time (a whopping 62 percent) is devoted to email, meetings, administrative tasks and interruptions.

Using automation technology is one way that marketers can free up some of the time spent on more mundane tasks. Teams should look for software or tools that allow them to customize their workflows or projects and automate where needed. Then, it should be easy for them to replicate their automated processes for future projects. Other team members or clients can also be brought in as needed automatically and without the need to send reminders.

In sum, automation technology can help marketing teams streamline their workflows from the brainstorming and draft stage of a campaign to the review and final publishing stage with as little manual effort and emailing back-and-forth as possible.

Automating data and document management

Marketers often need to pull past projects, reports or data for a variety of reasons. Harboring inaccurate or out-of-date information in a complicated system can hinder productivity for the entire team.

With automated data-management platforms, teams can have every piece of content they are creating added to one place automatically and make it visible to anyone with the appropriate permissions. With real-time updates and 24/7 access, marketers can easily find materials they’ve created in the past to review, repurpose or send to clients.

In order to ensure that teams get the most benefit out of automating their data management, establishing a document-retention policy is a practical first step. How long should team members be required to hold onto their files? How long after materials are sent to clients should they remain in your system? These are all points to consider before the data-management process can be automated.

After establishing timelines, automation can also be used to alert project owners at specific times throughout the year to review, update or remove any files.

Automating the outcomes of team meetings or brainstorming sessions

Typically, during a team meeting, one team member is assigned the task of taking notes and relaying all information that was discussed with all parties involved. However, as this step is usually done manually, ideas and discussion points can easily slip through the cracks.

Automated collaboration tools can help everyone involved view and contribute materials during a session in real-time and keep a permanent record of them. These tools can also automatically save information that was worked on during a brainstorming session and send collaborators a link to access that information right after a session. Teams can then automatically set due dates or divide up and tag project responsibilities within the automation platforms, eliminating further follow-ups or emailing.

Automating all internal workings of a marketing team isn’t possible yet, but there are plenty of automation tactics that can be implemented quickly and painlessly. There’s plenty of proof that automation helps marketing teams work faster, as well as be more organized and efficient.

With the right preparation and consideration of the above points, marketers should have no problem automating some of their most time-consuming tasks and seeing positive results.

Albizu Garcia is co-founder and CEO of Gain, which automates the collaboration process around creative and social content for major agencies and brands. Follow him on Twitter: @albizu.

[“Source-adweek”]

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Blogging

BLOGGING IN COLLEGE AND WHY EVERY ENGLISH MAJOR SHOULD TRY IT

by Loknath Das
written by Loknath Das

blogging in college

Blogging in college can be a challenge for any student, especially English majors who are already required to do more than their fair share of reading and writing. I’ll admit it, sometimes the process of maintaining a blog can be overwhelming and tedious, yet blogging is a hobby that I return to for many reasons, especially because of how rewarding and enjoyable it can be.

1. Blogging allows a space to write imperfectly.

Many college students avoid starting a blog because they think that they won’t ever be able to make it exactly the way that they want it, whether it be the design or content itself. However, blogging in college allows students a space to polish these skills by practicing them in an organic situation. The theme or design of the blog doesn’t have to be perfect, and neither does the content.

English majors can especially benefit from the practice of writing in a low-pressure environment that still demands some effort. I personally like to think of blogging as being in between journal/diary writing and professional or published writing.

It doesn’t have to be flawless, but it needs to be something you feel comfortable sharing with the world. No pressure, though! You can always go back and edit something or even delete it altogether.

2. Blogging provides an authentic audience.

Blogging allows you to have a sense of ownership over your writing because it is something that you and you alone publish. The beauty of a blog is that it provides some freedom, allowing writers to create and post whatever they want, whenever they want.

College can provide authentic audiences for your work, depending on how successful your marketing strategies are and how searchable your content is. This really allows one to feel like the writing that they are doing matters since real people are looking for it and reading it.

Many times, blog posts won’t receive a lot of views or shares, but don’t worry, there are people out there reading and enjoying your content, whether or not it seems like it.

3. Blogging allows you to find community.

Blogging can allow you to find like-minded people that you may not have met otherwise. It can allow you to follow people who blog about topics you are deeply interested in or simply curious about.

Your feed will show you the latest blog posts of other people. Scrolling through and liking and commenting thoughtfully on other people’s content may lead to them being interested in your content as well.

Beware of being ingenuine in these actions, though, since it is not hard to tell when someone is interacting with you simply in the hopes of getting further engagement on their site. When you are authentic and interested in others and their content, usually they will do the same for you.

4. Blogging allows you to document your journey.

Blogging in college can allow you to document your journey from orientation to graduation through photos, videos, graphics and most commonly, words. You may feel as though you are already doing this through other social media platforms, but a blog is different because it forces you to take some extra time to truly reflect on an experience, event or topic that is important to you.

The blog can reflect not only how your writing has improved over time, but also you as a person. This is really important because sometimes a person just needs to step back from the hustle and bustle of life and take time to really pay attention to where they are, where they are going, who they are and who they are becoming. Blogging provides a cost-efficient and easy way of doing this.

5. Blogging can help you find career opportunities.

Many internships and career opportunities seek candidates who are skilled in writing, as well as digital media. Some applications will even ask candidates to provide a link to their blog site if they happen to feel comfortable doing so.

Creating a blog can help you further professionalize yourself as well as provide a method of displaying relevant skills, such as writing, editing, designing and marketing, skills that employers are actively seeking when considering applicants.

However, if you wouldn’t feel comfortable having your future boss or coworkers reading the content on your blog, whether it be too personal or inappropriate, then I wouldn’t recommend linking your blog to your application or resume.

While blogging can be something that can help find or obtain an internship or a job, a blog is not something that has to be created solely for that purpose. It is more than okay to write for yourself and yourself only.

When creating a blog, don’t stress too much about the details. You can always go back and readjust the design and content on your site if you realize that you are not as happy with it as you originally were. Remember that it’s okay to focus on one topic or several at once.

Remember that it’s okay to write either formally or informally, since you are the creator of the blog and you have the right to decide what that blog can and should look like. Remember that it’s okay to start over, and remember that it’s okay to choose a different style or brand whenever you feel like.

The most important thing about blogging is making it your own and staying true to your own voice. The miscellaneous details that you may or may not initially have anxiety about will work themselves out as you become more familiar with blogging in general and as your blog becomes more established.

Don’t be afraid to begin, don’t be afraid to continue creating and don’t be afraid to take a break when you need to — your blog will still be there where you left it.

[“Source-studybreaks”]

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
error: Content is protected !!