editor, Author at Mediastreet

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Will Google ever lose its throne as king of search? You.com is betting on it

December 21, 2021 No Comments

You know that a technology’s changed the world when it becomes a verb. It speaks to a level of popularity and ubiquity that goes beyond the wildest dreams of marketeers. “I’ll WhatsApp you.” “I spent the evening YouTubing.” Disrupting any of these aforementioned brand-name products is beyond difficult — it requires a change in the default way that we relate to some standard action.

“To Google” is a verb — and a powerful one. In Google’s own words, its reason for being is no less than to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

And Richard Socher wants to disrupt it.

Richard Socher standing in front of a whiteboard — Salesforce

Socher (pronounced soh-chur) is the former chief scientist of Salesforce, one of the world’s premier customer relationship management platforms and makers of enormously successful enterprise apps. During his career, he has started and sold the A.I. company MetaMind, and been published broadly in fields ranging from computer vision to machine translation to summarization within natural language processing. His new search engine — You.com — seeks to challenge the single gatekeeper of search that is Google. He’s not about to let a pesky thing like a near-$2 trillion giant stop him, either. Even if it is a gosh-darned verb.

“My first thought was, you know, it was a verb ‘to Skype,’” Socher told Digital Trends at the start of a video call to showcase You in action. “And you know what we’re [speaking] on right now? Not Skype.”

A different approach to search

The idea driving You is to be the “not Skype” to Google’s Skype. The contention of Socher and co-founder Bryan McCann is that the world is at an inflection point when it comes to search. The company’s publicity materials drive this claim home: “Today, a single gatekeeper controls nearly 90% of the search market, dictating everything you see. The advertising and SEO biases of current search engines result in a lack of control over what people read, watch, research, eat, and buy. All of this makes people an object of artificial intelligence algorithms designed to monetize them rather than utilizing technology to harness the world’s information in relevant ways that build trust and confidence with every search.”

The most noticeable difference between Google and You comes down to aesthetics and operation. Socher points out that, for years, search engines have all looked kind of the same. They assume that information can be — and, more importantly, should be — arranged in a text-based list, neatly sorted from the number one slot (most useful) downwards. But is this really the best way to arrange information? And, even if it once was, is it still? You, by contrast, leans more heavily into widgets, with a design that owes a bit to the tile layout of kanban boards or social media platforms.

The tiled search results on You include the likes of Amazon pages, news stories, Yelp discoveries, Wikipedia pages, Reddit posts, Medium articles, coding snippets, LinkedIn listings, eBay sales, tweets (which can be retweeted and liked inside the search window), and more. Rather than Google’s sequential list of search results, You offers something more akin to a topographical view of the internet that lets people view the different content islands at once before zooming in to explore the ones that seem relevant.

“Can You displace Google? Can anything displace Google? This remains to be seen.”

“It actually took us a lot of iterations and thinking about design constraints and thinking about mobile,” Socher said. “When you think about Instagram and TikTok, people are very used to swiping left, right, and up and down. If you’re on Instagram, you swipe left to see more pictures of that story. Then, if you swipe down, you see the next story. We don’t want to have this massive engagement track of social networks. We want to help you search less and do more. Get things done, save your time, and summarize the web for you. But these are still very convenient ways to interact with content and are very intuitive — especially to younger generations.”

screenshot of you.com — A screenshot of the You.com search results with “the metaverse” used as an example query

These individual tiles can be upvoted and downvoted in something akin to Reddit. Searches consist firstly of preferred sources, followed by neutral sources, and then downvoted sources. Personalized search is nothing new: Google has been doing it since 2004. But You’s degree of transparent manipulation, the same way you can juggle around the apps that appear on your mobile home screen page, is fresh. In an effort to escape the filter bubble effect — whereby users may be shown slanted search results without realizing the slant — You makes it easier to separate the personalized searches from the objective ones. “That is something that no one else does, really,” Socher said. “To give that kind of agency and control to their users on a search engine.”

You also emphasizes privacy in a big way. Again, this isn’t a wholly unique claim to fame. DuckDuckGo has been leaning into private search for years. But You’s combining of this (the company won’t sell private data and promises an impressive incognito mode) with its new reinvented approach to search could be enough to lure in some users.

Taking on the mighty Google

All of this, of course, brings about the trillion-dollar question: Can You displace Google? Can anything displace Google? This remains to be seen. Search engines have certainly fallen before, replaced by faster, sleeker, better offerings. Remember W3Catalog, World Wide Web Wanderer, WebCrawler, Lycos, Jump Station, Magellan, Excite, Infoseek, Inktomi, Northern Light, Dogpile, Ask Jeeves, and AltaVista? All of these launched, rose to semi-prominence and were then crushed underfoot to varying degrees in the decade before Google established itself. Others like Yahoo and, more recently, Bing, have been successful in their own way — but there’s no doubt which search engine trumps rules the roost.

Logic dictates that, at some point, Google will falter. Empires have a habit of doing that, in the corporate world as much as anywhere else. Just 10 percent of the Fortune 500 companies for the year 1955 have remained on the list in the years since — and more than 89 percent have gone bankrupt, merged with or been acquired by others, or fallen off the Fortune 500 companies list at one time or another. When it comes to search, however, Google is a tricky customer to dislodge.

The search engine business today is bigger and more profitable than it’s ever been. Google generates piles of cash that would have been unfathomable for the companies that preceded it. Furthermore, through deals with the likes of Apple (Google pays Apple billions of dollars per year to remain the default search engine for iOS), many of us use Google even when we don’t explicitly think we’re using Google. This money means that Google can continue to innovate in search, hoovering up the best minds and, when needed, startups to fortify its castle walls.

You has raised a not-impressive $20 million to date. But that’s small potatoes next to the $183 billion that Google parent company Alphabet raked in in revenue in 2020, the overwhelming bulk of which came from advertising.

Socher is under no illusions about the challenge of taking on a Google. However, he also notes that Google’s focus on selling advertising could ultimately hurt its ability to nimbly experiment with new approaches and search layouts. (After all, if someone’s paying to be top of a list, they’re unlikely to be happy if they are suddenly one entry in a much larger grid.) At some point, the need to do pure search conflicts with the moneymaking model of selling ads. “It’s becoming harder and harder to find just naturally relevant content [on Google],” he said.

The start of a journey

It’s still the start of a long journey for You. The search engine has just entered a public beta, opening it up for critique and usage by the general public. There are also obvious ways that You could improve its offering — most notably in making it a touch-friendly interface for mobile.

“The interface is made to go on mobile, and we will very soon make more progress [in that area],” Socher said. “But the experience right now is much, much better on the desktop. We haven’t really put enough … we’re just a small startup. We just haven’t had the time and resources to make it work on different kinds of platforms. [But over] the next couple of weeks and months, we’ll continue to improve the mobile experience.”

One thing’s for certain, though: As tough a challenge as You has ahead of it, it’s got a whole lot of promise. Search is only going to become more important, and its requirements will continue to shift as the internet evolves. You has a smart team behind it, and some big-name investors, including Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff. Now it just remains to be seen if it can deliver.

Taking on the mighty Google is an incredibly tall order. But then so was challenging Yahoo when Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin set out to build a page-ranking search algorithm for their Ph.D. thesis. And that turned out pretty darn well for them.

By Luke Dormehl

Sourced from digitaltrends

In News

Five Free Ways To Generate Blog Topics That Get You Noticed

December 20, 2021 No Comments

By Kailynn Bowling

Content marketing is a must if you want to boost your brand on a budget. But only 33% of brands have a content marketing strategy — and the brands that have a plan still struggle to come up with innovative blog topics.

The good news is that content marketing is accessible to just about anyone: All you need is the time and expertise. Done right, blogs put your brand in front of more engaged shoppers thanks to the power of search engine optimization (SEO).

But what happens when you’ve run out of things to say? Or if your brand’s blog is feeling a little flat?

Whether you’ve just started blogging or you’ve been doing it for a while, you know how hard it is to think of something new to say to your audience. Nobody wants to read a short, rehashed piece that doesn’t teach them something new. With so much noise out there, your brand needs to say something with substance. Unique, intriguing topics are the best way to connect with more customers.

If you’re in a blogging rut, try these five tips to generate effective, interesting content that won’t put your readers to sleep.

1. Research what people are looking for.

What do your readers want to know? What information do they crave? Instead of guessing what your customers want to see, do a little research to find which topics are most important to them. This way, you only spend your energy on blogs that readers will actually engage with.

And no, you don’t need to spend a lot of money on fancy research tools to know what your customers want to see, either. You can find inspiration in so many places! When you’re in a rut, check out:

• Google Trends daily searches

• Google Analytics to see what people search for on your website

• Upvoted Quora posts

• Google autocomplete

• Social media posts by your customers

• Your customers’ emails to sales or customer service

• Twitter Trends

If these sources don’t yield anything interesting, you might have to dig deeper with your customers. Try conducting paid video call interviews with a handful of your more engaged customers. Treat this interview as a source of blog ideas and as information that can improve your business as a whole.

2. Choose topics for each customer persona.

You’ve created customer personas for your business, right? Put them to use! Instead of writing generic content that applies to all of your customers, create blog topics based on each persona’s pain points.

For example, one persona might be more worried about the cost of your products (and would want to see topics like DIYing) while another persona might want to know different applications for your product. Those are two very different needs, so make sure your topics cover the needs of every persona.

3. Do an expert roundup.

Does your brain need a break? Roundup-style posts are great for your readers, give other experts in your industry a little love and free up your time to focus on other areas of your business.

Sign up for a free Help A Reporter Out (HARO) account and ask experts to submit their opinions on a particular topic. Once you have at least 10 experts, put their quotes in a roundup post with a backlink to their site. More often than not, the quoted experts are happy to share your post with their network, putting your blog in front of more readers for little effort.

4. Attend a conference.

Conferences are the best place to hear about the latest news in your industry. If you’re lacking inspiration, sign up for a virtual or in-person conference.

Sometimes you’ll get a great idea for a unique blog when you’re listening to conference speakers. But this isn’t about transforming other people’s speeches into a blog. This is about forming your own take on upcoming trends or changes in the industry. The more unique your blog is, the better!

5. Tag-team with other businesses.

Nobody says you have to blog alone. If you have existing relationships with complementary businesses, ask them if they’d like to co-author a few blogs together. Two heads are better than one, after all.

The Bottom Line

Your goal is to create content that’s so good, it helps your readers sleep better at night. Successful content marketing requires consistency, but it gets harder and harder to generate good topics over time. It just won’t work if you rehash and recycle what everyone else is saying, so when in doubt, try these five tips to create better content for your blog.

Feature Image Credit: Getty

By Kailynn Bowling

Co-founder of ChicExecs PR & Retail Strategy Firm.

Sourced from Forbes

In News

Avoid These 4 Social Listening Pitfalls at All Costs

December 20, 2021 No Comments

By Scott Clark

Social listening enables brands to understand what their customers truly think about the brand’s products and services. By “listening” for mentions of the brand’s name, products, and services on social media, brands can remove pain points in the customer journey, resolve customer complaints, learn what customers like and what they don’t, and even learn what customers think about the brand’s competitors. That said, there are several things that brands should avoid doing when using social listening. This article will discuss the pitfalls of social listening and how to avoid them.

What Is Social Listening?

Social listening is a marketing practice in which brands “listen” for keywords, typically the brand name, the brand’s products and services, and its competitor’s brand names, products and services, on social media outlets. By actively listening for those terms, brands are able to rapidly respond to customer complaints, determine where the pain points are in the customer journey, understand what they are doing right, and where they are going wrong. Additionally, brands can learn the things that customers like or dislike about the brand’s competitor’s products and services.

Research by SmartInsights revealed that as of October 2021, 57.6% of the world’s population (4.55 billion people) use social media. The leading social media outlets are, in order, Facebook (2.8 billion users), YouTube (2.2 billion users), WhatsApp (2 billion users), Instagram (1.3 billion users), and farther down the list, TikTok (732 million users), Pinterest (478 million users), and Twitter (397 million users).

A report from GlobalWebIndex showed that up to 50% of social media users use social networks to do research on products and services. Additionally, a report from Statista indicated that 33% of those polled from the United States said that they have used social media to complain about a brand or its customer service. Given these statistics, brands have a huge opportunity to learn more about their customers through social listening.

Don’t Fail to Listen to How People Feel

Dean Browell, PhD, Professor of Digital Ethnography and Social Listening at the VCU School of Business, shared his thoughts on the true benefit of social listening: gaining a much clearer picture of the personalities, behaviours, and feelings of customers. “Social listening provides deep behavioural insights into the decision making of the online public while also providing the landscape through which peers find when they are information gathering,” explained professor Browell. “It helps to illustrate the personalities and behaviours of audiences and can be used to follow trends and patterns in both the audiences and their feelings toward brands, services, products, facilities, and more. Social listening seeks to provide the voice of the consumer and understand the volume and timber of that voice and how it influences others.”

Brands often get caught up on metrics, rather than paying attention to the feelings that their customers are expressing on social media. These customers are representative of all the other customers that feel the same way but haven’t taken the time to post on social media. “Listen to them — they’re telling you what products they want, how they want to be treated, and who they trust. And if you think those are just the loudest voices, then understand the power of those loud voices for all the lurkers looking for answers. Social listening can help you understand the customer experience and their perception of it — and how it influences others. That’s very different than simply how they navigate your website or find products in store (although they might talk about that too),” said professor Browell.

Don’t Focus on the Brand’s Official Social Channels

When brands focus on social media, they often turn to their own official channels, focusing on what customers post there, or how they respond to what the brand has posted. Often, however, the most revealing aspects of social listening will show up on customer’s own profile pages, or within other groups or communities.

“It’s understandable that brands would be focused on the channels they own first, but there’s a real issue with thinking that by mostly paying attention to who shows up at your official channels represents how people actually feel about you,” said professor Browell. “Yes, there’s things to be revealed in those interactions, but the context of those interactions is incredibly important — and showing how people speak to peers when you’re not around is crucial to understanding why some segment shows up at all on your digital doorstep. It’s too small of a focus group.”

According to Davitha Ghiassi, executive vice president of Social and Integration at Red Havas, a merged media public relations and communication agency, going beyond the comments that come to brands is vital to gain a fuller understanding of their customers. “Whilst much of your customer feedback may come to you directly via branded channels — research shows that 96% of the people that discuss brands online do not follow those brands’ owned profiles,” said Ghiassi. “Therefore, looking beyond the comments that come to you is crucial in order to see the complete picture; and social listening enables you to do just that by tracking conversations including relevant keywords, brand mentions and even visual mentions of your brand (i.e. logo, product through visual intelligence tools like Talkwalker).”

Don’t Just Listen, Participate

The 2020 Sprout Social Index report revealed that 79% of customers expect a response within the first 24 hours after they have reached out to a brand through social media, and 40% expect brands to respond within an hour. Although social listening is about just that — listening — it also provides opportunities for brands to interact and respond to customers.

When customers create a post extolling the virtues of a brand’s products, that brand should step in and reply, thanking them for their feedback. When customers leave negative comments about a product or service, it’s the perfect time for the brand to resolve a problem and gain a loyal customer. Social listening is not just about listening to what customers are saying — it’s about participating, and having conversations with customers, showing them that the brand cares about them, and is grateful to be able to learn how they feel about the brand.

Brands must avoid being confrontational or defensive when they reply to what may appear to be negative comments left by customers on social media. They should leave a well thought out reply explaining that they are sorry that the customer had an issue, along with a way for the customer to contact them directly to resolve the issue. If the issue cannot be resolved, they should offer to immediately reimburse the customer for the entirety of what they paid. Once the offer has been resolved, there is always the opportunity to provide the customer with a special discount, buy one get one free, or something extra that shows that the brand cares about the customer’s feelings.

“Social listening not only offers a powerful means of identifying and directly addressing comments, questions or concerns surrounding your brand or product — it also allows you to look to them for insights that can help improve the overall customer service strategy,” explained Ghiassi. “For example, by creating pro-active content that can live across channels and addresses frequently asked questions sourced via social.”

Don’t Fail to Set Goals for Social Listening Initiatives

Many brands begin social listening initiatives without setting any specific goals or KPIs. Not only do specific goals require different practices, but without goals or KPIs it becomes impossible to gauge the effectiveness of social listening initiatives.

Depending on the goals that have been set for social listening initiatives, brands can gain a much deeper understanding of their customers’ needs and desires, how they feel about the brand in general, or how they feel about specific products and services, than they can through other channels. “Goals of social listening can be incredibly varied,” said professor Browell. “Social listening could help inform a brand of their actual brand health, it could provide insight into how their target audiences (B2C or B2B) make decisions and therefore inform decision paths, it can help validate and enhance personas, it can help with recruitment and retention, it can illuminate crucial geographic differences, it can enrich other research including making big data more valuable with rich insights, it can help in product development and adoption…honestly, the applications are as endless as a market research tool, the only difference is social listening also informs you on what the public will find when they look for peer input — something that a survey or focus group can’t fundamentally confirm.”

Final Thoughts

Social listening can be a very effective tool that enables brands to get to know their customers on a more personal, emotional level — when it is done correctly. Brands must set goals for their social listening initiatives in order to reap the most benefits, listen to how their customers feel, and learn to empathize with what they are hearing. They must not make the mistake of only listening to what is posted on the brand’s own official social media channels, and they must participate, rather than just listen, responding to customers when appropriate. Finally, brands must take action based on the insights that social listening has revealed, and ultimately, improve the customer journey.

Feature Image Credit: Adobe

By Scott Clark

Sourced from CMS Wire

In News

Inexpensive Marketing Ideas for Small Business

December 20, 2021 No Comments

By Elvira Barucija

In today’s times, inexpensive online marketing for small businesses has become the best way to market your services and products. The traditional way of marketing is still important; however, online marketing ideas for small businesses supersedes most of the traditional forms of marketing and advertising. Except for TV and radio advertising, other forms of traditional advertising are not as noticeable to the average consumer.

Inexpensive Marketing Ideas for Small Business

Yet even with the different types of online marketing, it’s still important to use it wisely. One reason is because it’s important to reach your appropriate audience. This can be done, for instance, when advertising is sent to consumers who have searched for similar products and services like yours. There are inexpensive marketing ideas for small business, like social media, email marketing, and popups. They normally display advertisements when consumers have searched for similar products/services online. Otherwise, it will be a waste of time and money advertising to consumers who are not interested in your product or services.

Secondly, with all the competitors online, it’s important that your website, content marketing, blog, etc, display words that will promote better search engine optimization. If not, your business can run the risk of having lesser visitors due to your business being displayed several pages down on the Google search.

Marketing on a Budget

When working out your marketing budget, you should keep different things in mind. First of all, maintaining great SEO and SMO is always extremely important. In doing this, you will have a much higher probability of visitors to your website, which means having a higher probability to have more customers.

Another thing to keep in mind is to use mobile marketing and email marketing to consumers who have shown similar interests in your products/services. Mailing lists are normally a great way for finding these consumers.

Also, utilizing analytics for social media, the website, and Google will help you get appropriate feedback, and adjust accordingly. And finally, banner advertising could also be a great way to hire someone else to strategically advertise across different social media outlets, while you’ll have more time to focus on other aspects of your business.

Digital Marketing at Your Fingertips

Marketing Tips Online

There is no doubt that online marketing is crucial when it comes to the success of your business no matter the industry. Online marketing is the best practice if you want to reach and connect to a larger crowd.

Here are some tips for marketing online that will help you reach your customers.

Offer Valuable Content

As consumers, we are aware of how much we are bombarded with content that we don’t even need. However, if the content is valuable, informative, and entertaining we will keep reading. Valuable and interesting content that relates to your industry will encourage subscriptions, comments, and sharing on social media which will all contribute to your ROI.

Keep in mind that your valuable content should be related to your product, and it should be original.

Do you have Your Social Media Accounts set up?

All businesses have moved to the digital world, and you must be there too. You need to have your online presence there and your social media up and running. There are so many social media platforms that you can utilize, but you need to focus on platforms where your targeting audience is spending most of their time.

Focus your Energy on 20% that will Bring you the Results

There are so many things you can do online, and you will get lost trying to do everything. In the beginning, you must focus your energy on 20% of things that work instead of trying to do everything. Let’s say you have a yoga studio. You should have your website, do SEO optimization, have your Facebook, Instagram account, Twitter account, and YouTube account. Maybe you should focus at the beginning on YouTube and build from there. Or if you have an ice-cream shop, maybe the best way to present yourself to the world would be through nice pics on Instagram.

Social Media for Business

If your small business doesn’t have its own social media accounts, then you might be missing out a lot. You are losing insight into your brand, engagement from the customers and more information on your competitors. On top of this social media can be cost-effective in reaching customers in more personalized ways.

Facebook Marketing

Facebook is probably still the most popular with an audience of over 2.7 billion users. Every business should have a Facebook page. You can use Facebook to share photos, important updates and you have access to powerful advertising tools and analytics of your customer base.

Instagram Marketing

On the other side, Instagram is gaining a lot of customers with the current number being 1 billion active users. There is no shortage of business tools on Instagram that can help you promote your services. Instagram is a visual platform so it’s the best platform for those who have strong visual content.

On Instagram, you can use the services of influencers who are ready to promote your products. Here, we are not talking about Kardashians but influencers who are in the same niche as your business. For example, there are so many moms on Instagram with 50 000 or more followers that would be ready to promote your baby products for a fee. The fee can be arranged on the percentage of sales they make. Here, you only need to be mindful to work with influencers who have less than 100 000 followers since those who have hundreds of thousands of followers will probably not work for a fee but for the payment in advance (which doesn’t guarantee any results).

Twitter Marketing

Twitter is the third most popular platform and it’s great for sharing short updates, videos, and blog posts. Twitter is super easy for interaction with your followers by simply mentioning users in your posts, liking and retweeting tweets. However, if your brand is visual you might want to skip this network at least at the beginning.

Online marketing can be overwhelming when you are starting and it’s important to know where your energy should go first meaning what will bring you the results that you want to see.

By Elvira Barucija

Elvira has a Master Degree in Psychology. She is passionate about writing, is always on trend, and thoroughly researches her topics to offer readers high quality content. She also enjoys working with children and practicing yoga.

Sourced from GILDSHIRE Magazine

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Email: How to use it (and how not to use it) in 2022

December 17, 2021 No Comments

By Stephanie Vozza

Expert advice about email for today’s hybrid work world.

Most of us have a love/hate relationship with our inboxes, but they’re not going away anytime soon. Get a grip on email in 2022 by knowing its strengths and weaknesses:

What to do:

Note time zones
If your working hours aren’t the same as a coworker’s, schedule your messages to be sent later, says Lynne Oldham, chief people officer at Zoom. You’ll demonstrate respect for your teammate’s work-life balance.

What to avoid:

Don’t inadvertently create silos
Unless you’re sharing sensitive information, skip the email and put conversations in public threads that are searchable, says Job van der Voort, cofounder and CEO of HR software provider Remote.com. This is essential for companies with remote workers.

Don’t expect an immediate response
Use email for nonurgent announcements only. Collaboration should be done on shared platforms like Slack or by picking up the phone, says A World Without Email author Cal Newport.

By Stephanie Vozza

Sourced from Fast Company

In News

Tips to Adapt to the Latest Local SEO Changes Made by Google

December 17, 2021 No Comments

By Peter Roesler

Local search is changing. Here’s what marketers need to know

Google is constantly changing, evolving, adapting, and updating. This is a fact I have seen first-hand after several decades in the marketing realm.

Unfortunately, all these changes and updates have caught many businesses unaware, leaving them facing the consequences of being uninformed.

One of the biggest changes that have occurred in the last few years is local search and SEO in Google. Keep reading to learn about some of the biggest changes and updates that have occurred so you will know what to do to ensure your website is still being found.

Improving Local Review Quality

Today, reviews are grouped together by topic. This update was mentioned on a timeline, and you can see there is a badge in place for the reviews.

Google is also starting to reorganize the way third-party reviews are presented.

Third-party reviews are still as important as the ones displayed in the knowledge panel. They are showing up in organic searches, which means you need to figure out where you stand.

Google is also starting to reorganize the way third-party reviews are presented.

Third-party reviews are still as important as the ones displayed in the knowledge panel. They are showing up in organic searches, which means you need to figure out where you stand.

It’s estimated that 45% of the updates were related to local SERPs. The changes show how important it is to have recent reviews, third-party reviews, and reviews featuring relevant comments.

The reviews’ relevancy, recency, sources, and topics all play a role in how the local SEO algorithm ranks them. As a marketer, you must understand where your clients stand for each of these factors and ensure quality reviews are created.

Edit Knowledge Panels Using Off- and On-Site Sources

Google has been working on revamping the local knowledge panel in big ways. It is starting to develop into a unique entity, including third-party data. This means that it shows more of the client’s information and may be filled with information sources you can’t access.

Even if these things seem uncontrollable, you may be able to influence what Google uses. Some areas to check in your panel to ensure no incorrect content is included are:

Google Business profile completion

Schema
Robot directives
Site content
Industry sites
Google reviews
Third-party reviews

Be sure to correct your data sources and test your knowledge panel appearances when you can. Even if the corrections you are making seem insignificant, Google will find the new info and change things based on them.

Improving Local SEO Efforts

You can only make sure that your website is adhering to the new local search requirements by knowing how things are changing. The information here provides you with a general overview of what to expect. Be sure to keep this in mind, and if needed, work with the professionals to help ensure you have someone ensuring that the local SEO efforts are meeting the latest upgrades and requirements that are in place. Being informed will help you with these marketing efforts.

Feature Image Credit: Getty Images

By Peter Roesler

Sourced from Inc.

In News

The 6 Best Productivity Tools for Bloggers

December 17, 2021 No Comments

By Shan Abdul

Looking for the best productivity tools for blogging? Here are the tools you need.

In the world of blogging, being productive all the time is essential. Things can get hectic when you manage everything manually, from assigning topics to your writers to monitoring your SEO. If you are struggling to keep up with your responsibilities, many online tools can help.

We have compiled an extensive list of tools to help you manage your team’s work hours, set financial goals for your business, better manage your passwords, stay on top of news relevant to your niche, and more.

1. Toggl Track

If you’re a full-time blogger, you may have a team of SEO experts, writers, graphic designers, and web designers. When a team grows, it becomes harder to hold everyone accountable by asking what each one of them did during the day, week, or month. Toggl Track is an excellent tool for tracking the time of your team.

Your team members can keep a note of all the activities they completed during their workday, along with the time each activity took. They can quickly convert that report into an invoice and send it to you at the end of the week or before their next payday.

Then you can look at how they have spent their time in the office. If you look at each activity with its allocated time, you can quickly determine how productive each one is. By doing so, you can distinguish between workaholics and slothful. With it, you can easily assign specific types of work to team members who take less time to complete them.

It also helps your team stay organized and keep track of how efficiently they are doing their work. The fear of being held accountable will surely make your team more productive. Give Toggl Track a try if you don’t use any time tracking tool.

2. LastPass

For a blogger, one of the most challenging tasks is to remember the login information for all the various tools they use every day, including keyword research tools, hosting accounts, analytics tools, social platforms, backlinking panels, and so on.

That’s where LastPass comes in. One of the best password managers, it saves all your passwords and protects your login credentials from hacker infiltration. Using the Dark web monitoring feature, you’ll be alerted in advance when your personal information is at risk.

You only need to save the password once; LastPass will store it for centuries. Additionally, you can use its strong password generator while signing up for a new blogging service. Also, it makes it easy for you to share data securely and effortlessly with your newly hired manager when you need to share the login credentials.

The free plan of LastPass can only save data on one device, but you can access it across multiple devices when you subscribe to its premium plan at $3 per month.

3. Asana

Asana is a web-based management system that helps teams across the globe stay organized and improve their workflow. It allows bloggers to keep an eye on how their team is performing and to manage their entire workflow in the same place.

It allows you to set up a simple board interface where your writers can suggest topics for your blog that your editors can quickly approve. Then, you can track how long it took them to finish that topic and when it went live.

Through a simple board interface, you can track how efficiently your SEO team creates new topics, how quickly your editors are approving and editing pitches, and which of your writers are becoming lazy or taking longer than expected to complete tasks.

With Asana, you’ll be amazed at how smooth your workflow can be with so little effort.

4. Lifetick

A new blogging project starts with some goals and plans. You might set a target for uploading a certain number of articles, earning a certain number of backlinks, or hitting a particular financial goal on your blog. A tool like Lifetick can help you keep everything in check.

Using Lifetick’s intuitive interface, you can define a specific goal and stay organized. As you accomplish subtasks while achieving your main goal, you can document your journey, track which areas need improvement, and at the end of the given period, get a detailed report that shows how well you and your team did.

In addition to allowing you to set your own goals, the software makes it possible to share goals with your entire team. It is possible to make the whole plan in advance and assign different roles to the team members.

In Asana, you can do the same, but Lifetick makes it so much easier to set and achieve goals. Check it out!

5. Google Alerts

Google alerts can be a helpful tool for filtering new content ideas for your audience. This is a simple tool from Google that lets you set up an alert for something. The alert can be about a new gadget coming to the market, a new version of any operating system, or a well-known footballer who is always making headlines.

Simply enter a keyword and add an email address where you want to be notified when news is released concerning that topic. It’s a convenient filter for bloggers who run news-based websites where every second counts.

6. Slack

There are many internal communication tools, and everyone has their preferences, but Slack is one of the best workplace messaging options for small businesses.

You can use it to create channels for each website’s categories, and let your editors make separate chat groups for your writers to share feedback. Your colleagues are all within a single Slack search. Also, just one joining request can help your new hires get settled.

Slack’s new integrations with tools like Asana, Outlook, Twitter, etc., make it easier than ever to manage everything without leaving Slack’s workplace. It eliminates the need to switch from one app to another to stay productive.

Boost Your Blogging Productivity With These Tools

With the tools on the list, you should be able to keep your blog in check and improve your communication with your team. The more efficient your workflow, the faster you can expand your business, which is why the tools listed above can assist you.

Have you ever had a hard time coming up with content ideas? Check out the following article that can streamline your topic research.

Feature Image Credit: Pexels

By Shan Abdul

Sourced from MUO

In News

Warning Issued For Millions Of Microsoft Windows 10, Windows 11 Users

December 16, 2021 No Comments

By Gordon Kelly

Microsoft’s billions of Windows users have been placed on high alert after the company confirmed two serious new problems with its operating systems and fixes are not yet available.

All Windows Versions – Broken Installer

First, Microsoft has confirmed that a recent update released across all supported Windows versions (Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Windows 10, Windows 11 and Windows Server 2008-2022) breaks the company’s ubiquitous Microsoft Installer (MSI).

“After installing KB5007215 or later updates, Microsoft Installer (MSI) might have issues repairing or updating apps,” Microsoft explained. “Affected apps might fail to open after an update or repair has been attempted.”

This is a big deal and Microsoft states it is working on a resolution and “will provide an update in an upcoming release.” In the meantime, watch out for KB5007215. It can be removed using the following steps:

In Windows Desktop Search type ‘update history’ then click ‘View your Update history’
Select ‘Uninstall Updates’
On the Installed Updates dialog window, find and select KB5007215, click the Uninstall button
Restart

11/22 Update: Microsoft has confirmed that it has released a new version of Windows 11 to combat the installer problem. This was an urgent fix and Microsoft has acted quickly. Windows 11 Build 22000.348 has been sent to beta and release preview channels. The company added the patch as an “additional fix” late into the new build.

“We fixed a known issue that might prevent apps, such as Kaspersky apps, from opening after you attempt to repair or update the apps using the Microsoft Installer (MSI),” states the Windows Insider Program Team.

Microsoft has also released a full list of the improvements in Windows 11 22000.348. There is currently no timeline on the fix being rolled out to the stable channel but, given the acceleration of the bug fix here, I would expect a relatively short wait. MSI installers are widely used on Windows and some of the affected apps include security programs (such as Kaspersky), so it will be a priority for Microsoft. As for Windows Insider program members, if you check for updates you should see the new build now.

Windows 11 – Intel SST Causing Blue Screen Of Death

Publishing the data on its Windows 11 Known Issues blog (via Windows Latest), Microsoft also explains that major incompatibility issues with Intel’s ubiquitous Smart Sound Technology (SST) are causing full blown Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) errors for Windows 11 users.

“We recommend that you do not attempt to manually upgrade using the Update now button or the Media Creation Tool until this issue has been resolved,” Microsoft explained.

Breaking the issue down, Microsoft said that the flaw is particularly problematic with recent Intel SST drivers 10.29.0.5152 and 10.30.0.5152. To find if you are using the affected driver, open Device Manager > System Devices > ‘Intel® Smart Sound Technology (Intel® SST) Audio Controller’ and open the ‘Driver’ tab.

Intel SST is used by virtually all modern Intel-based PCs, so the problem has the potential to affect millions of computers around the world. Microsoft is working with Intel on a new driver to resolve the BSOD crashes but warned: “[if] an updated driver is not yet available, you will need to contact your device manufacturer (OEM) for more information.”

To Microsoft’s credit, Windows 11 has had a relatively smooth release and the company recently confirmed it plans to increase the rollout pace to Windows 10 computers. But you might just want to hold fire for now

Feature Image Credit: SOPA IMAGES/LIGHTROCKET VIA GETTY IMAGES

By Gordon Kelly

Sourced from Forbes

In News

Instagram to Pay $600 to $35K for Creators on Reels to Compete With TikTok

December 16, 2021 No Comments

By Urian B

Instagram is willing to pay from around $600 all the way up to $35,000 for creators to make content on Reels. Reels is Instagram’s app designed to compete with the trendy social media platform TikTok.

Instagram Reels vs. TikTok

TechCrunch and Business Insider reported that Instagram is putting aside a massive amount of money to give to creators to post videos on its own TikTok competitor Reels.

Instagram has just announced its own bonus program for Reels in July. This was the time when Mark Zuckerberg. The CEO of Meta noted that the company would be paying a whopping $1 billion to creators throughout 2022.

Reels Pays Up to $35,000 to Creators

The reports reportedly shed new light on just how much individual creators are now being offered for their own Reels. The report also details how many views are needed to get the maximum bonus pay out.

TechCrunch also points out one Reddit post where a person was offered all the way up to $35,000 if their own Reels reaches 58.31 million views in just a month. This is reportedly in line with what Business Insider reports regarding Sam and Cori Werrell offering to make Reels content for their already significant 283,000 Instagram followers.

Creators Offered Smaller Sums

On the other hand, smaller creators have been offered smaller sums. A creator with about 52,000 Instagram followers, Maddy Corbin, was offered up to $1,000. She noted that she knew people that were offered about $600 to $800.

According to the story by The Verge, TechCrunch now reports that the bonuses look to be increasing over time. Another creator with 24,000 Instagram followers was just offered a higher $8,500 to get 9.28 million views.

Payments are Still Testing

It was also noted that a Verge staff member that had 15,000 followers was also offered the same pay out. It was noted that there doesn’t seem to be any particularly firm rules regarding how payment amounts would correspond to follower counts.

Instagram reportedly told TechCrunch that the whole program was still in its early age and still experimenting with the given format. The company noted that they continue to test out payments towards more creators. The company expects them to fluctuate while they are still getting started reportedly.

Snapchat, YouTube, Reels vs. TikTok

Both Snapchat and YouTube were also offering their very own creator incentives. In August, YouTube actually announced that they would pay up to $10,000 a month for certain popular videos. In September, Snapchat also announced its very own Spotlight Challenges.

Snapchat reportedly offers a prize pool that would range from $1,000 to $25,000. There are now two different possible interpretations of these particular platforms’ bonus schemes. The Meta-owned Instagram currently wants to give more to creators to incentivize them to post more content.

Feature Image Credit: Image from Alexander Shatov on Unsplash Website

By Urian B

Sourced from Tech Times

In News

B2B Marketing News: Global Social Trends Study, What B2B Marketers Are Investing In, LinkedIn Product Pages, & New Google Search CTR Study

December 16, 2021 No Comments

By Lane Ellis

Here’s What B2B Content Marketers Will be Investing in Next Year
69 percent of B2B content marketers have said that videos will be their top area of content marketing investment in 2022, with 61 percent saying that events will lead their investment areas next year, while 57 said that owned-media assets will top their content marketing spending in 2022 — two of several statistics of interest to digital marketing contained in recently-released survey data. MarketingCharts

New LinkedIn data shows how gen Z is recalibrating the norms of work
Gen Z comprises the fastest growing audience demographic on the LinkedIn (client) platform, with 63 percent visiting the Microsoft-owner professional network at least once a week, and 74 percent saying they use LinkedIn to learn new skills, according to newly-released report data. . The Drum

YouTube gives dislikes the thumbs-down, hides public counts
Google’s YouTube video platform has done away with the default display of thumbs-down count data, moving instead to make that information available only as private feedback to video content publishers, in an effort to foster more respectful interactions between creators and video viewers, YouTube recently announced. The Verge

B2B Buyers Say They’re Engaging Salespeople Late in the Process, But Are Open to Doing So Earlier
The solution identification stage is the most frequent point of first engagement B2B buyers use with sellers, followed by the identification and clarification stage, with the evaluation of solutions phase rounding out the top three first engagement points, according to newly-released survey data of interest to online marketers. MarketingCharts

Making the Business Case for Your Marketing Budget
Building a collaborative relationship with corporate suite peers is a leading way to make the case for marketing budgets, and the Harvard Business Review looks at how CMOs can show the effectiveness of marketing in driving business, using data, trust, and more. Harvard Business Review

Massive CTR Study Reveals Actionable Insights
Differences in Google search desktop and mobile click-through-rate (CTR) insights garnered from 750 billion impressions are featured in newly-released third-party study data, which reveal that in the business and industrial sectors more searches for business-related content are conducted on mobile devices than on traditional desktops. Search Engine Journal

LinkedIn Quietly Experiments With Product Pages To Boost Conversations
Microsoft-owned LinkedIn has undergone testing of specialized business product pages on the platform, as part of ongoing efforts to increase engagement between members, brands, and brand product development teams, the social network recently announced. MediaPost

25% of marketers cite sustainability as ‘general goal’ rather than employ specific metrics
Gauging the success of sustainability efforts is a top challenge among marketers, with some 42 percent having said that they need to make new technology investments in the area, according to recently-released survey data of interest to digital marketers. The Drum

ON24 teams up with HubSpot in app marketplace
B2B users will be able to better integrate the features of the HubSpot platform and cloud-based hybrid engagement service ON24, with new event data-sharing options available in a forthcoming upgrade to the platforms, ON24 recently announced. MarTech

Budgets Show Spending Across All Social Networks: Trends For 2022
Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn are the three top social media platforms when it comes to effectively reaching business goals, according to Hootsuite’s newly-released annual social trends report, which has also shown that younger people are increasingly using social networks to research brands instead of traditional search engines. MediaPost

ON THE LIGHTER SIDE:

A light-hearted look at the “inflation, shrinkflation, and skimpflation” by Marketoonist Tom Fishburne — Marketoonist

Instagram is Paying Up to $35,000 to Lure Creators Away From TikTok — PetaPixel

Atari Unveils New Logo, Games, And More For 50th Anniversary — Forbes

TOPRANK MARKETING & CLIENTS IN THE NEWS:

Lee Odden — 5 Questions 4 With Lee Odden — Demandbase
Lane R. Ellis — What’s Trending: Embrace Your Inner Tinker — LinkedIn
Lee Odden — Membership Update Fall 2021 [Digital Marketing Institute] — Digital Marketing Institute

Have you found your own top B2B marketing news from the past week? Please drop us a line in the comments below.

Thanks for taking the time to join us for the week’s TopRank Marketing B2B marketing news, and we hope you’ll return next Friday for more of the week’s most relevant B2B and digital marketing industry news. In the meantime, you can follow us on our LinkedIn page, or at @toprank on Twitter for even more timely daily news.

By Lane Ellis

Sourced from TopRank Marketing