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5 Benefits of Branding for Businesses Big and Small

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By Dan Haverty
When it’s allergy season you ask for a “Kleenex” instead of tissue paper; you might enjoy a “Popsicle” on a hot summer day instead of an ice pop; and you “Google” something when you need to search the internet for information.

This is expert branding in action. Some companies have so successfully pushed their brands that the brand name itself has overtaken the generic term, as in the above cases.

Good branding is indispensable to the success of your business, and there are numerous benefits that come with it. Having an easily recognizable brand drives new business through word-of-mouth referrals while making it easier to roll out new products. It also helps build coherence within your company and attract the best talent to your open roles.

Keep reading to learn more about branding and the five biggest benefits for small and large businesses alike.

What Is the Purpose of Branding in Marketing?

It’s easy to conflate branding with other forms of marketing, but they aren’t exactly the same thing. Marketing is what you do to drive your products and services to potential customers, whereas branding is basically the way your company presents itself to the world.

Branding includes the obvious components of name, logo, colors and fonts, but it also includes your mission, values and motivations, creating an all-encompassing brand identity that, if done right, customers will readily associate with your company. This is key: You want your customers to feel something when they think of your company.

The main purpose of your brand strategy should be to differentiate you from your competitors and create brand equity, or commercial value derived strictly from the perception of the brand. Doing so builds trust and loyalty among your target market and puts you at the forefront of your potential customers’ minds when it’s time to buy.

Developing an easily identifiable tone and logo, aligning your values with those of your customers and evoking a strong emotional response at the sight and thought of your brand are all signs of a great branding strategy.

5 Benefits of Branding for Companies

1. Brand awareness: One of the strongest and most impactful benefits of high-quality branding is brand awareness. Customers who already trust your company and recognize your distinct color, logo or font style are far more likely to buy your product or service. In this way, brand awareness does much of the heavy lifting for you when it comes to selling your products or services.

2. Drives new business: Word-of-mouth referrals are still the tried-and-true way of driving new business. This is especially true for small businesses, 85% of whom report that word-of-mouth referrals were the best way to drive local business. When customers can quickly and easily recall a brand they use and trust, they’re much likelier to refer your company to their friends and family members.

3. Shared values build company coherence: Strong brand equity doesn’t just help strengthen your relationships with your customers and clients — it also helps build a clearer sense of mission and direction within your company that boosts coherence and ensures your employees are all working toward the same set of goals.

4. Easier to rollout new products: If you have a strong brand in place, much of the work of marketing and selling your products and services is already done. Once you’ve built up a level of trust among your customers, it’s far easier to convince them that your latest product is worth buying. Think about it: Apple doesn’t need to do a whole lot of convincing to generate interest in and sell the latest iPhone, right? That’s good branding at work.

5. Better job applicants: Customers want to buy from brands they know and trust, but the same is true for job seekers. Good branding can actually help you attract a larger and more talented pool of applicants to your open positions, ensuring that you’re hiring the best of the best.

The Main Types of Branding, With Examples

Visual Branding

The visual components of your brand are some of the most important — and ultimately attention-grabbing — features of your brand. A good visual brand strategy conveys your company’s personality and style to your audience through visual cues (i.e., are you easy going and laid back or serious and resourceful?). This helps them learn about you without having to dig too deeply.

Think Apple: Apple’s visual branding style is silvery, sleek, sharp and new, and this is evident in their stores, logos and, of course, their devices. You don’t need to know much about Apple to understand that it develops and sells some sort of cutting edge technology, based on its branding alone. And that’s exactly what good visual branding should do.

Social Media Branding

A huge proportion of social engagement and consumer activity today happens on social media, so it’s important that your company has a clean, consistent online presence across all social networks. Social media is one of the few places where attention is measured in mere seconds, so it’s important that users can identify your company in this short space of time.

Amazon’s Twitter presence should serve as a model for other companies. It operates dozens of different accounts for many of its products and services. While each account has its own distinct edge to it, there is a clear sense of continuity involving similar colors, tones, fonts and messaging threaded between each of them, all of which marks them as Amazon’s. The bottom line is users shouldn’t have to work hard to recognize that your social media account belongs to your company.

Corporate Branding

Corporate branding covers all elements of your company’s branding strategy, from marketing its products/services to ensuring that all digital touchpoints are in sync. At the end of the day, a customer should feel like they’re getting the same message from the same company no matter which part of your business they’re interacting with.

Nike stands at the top of the corporate branding world. Its mission to enhance physical performance through top-tier athletic attire permeates every section of its branding and marketing, from its motto “Just Do It” to its marketing materials, featuring athletes in the zone.

Don’t overlook the importance of branding. The right branding strategy can make or break a company, and it’s important to ensure you have a clearly defined brand that permeates across all of your products, services and touchpoints to ensure you’re front of mind when your customers are ready to buy. Doing this drives your company forward.

By Dan Haverty

Dan Haverty is a content writer at Brafton. Currently based in Boston, he also spent time living in Ireland and Washington, DC. When he isn’t writing, Dan enjoys reading, cooking and hiking, and he recently became an avid yoga practitioner.

Sourced from Brafton

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At last, a way to build artificial intelligence with business results in mind: ModelOps

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Is there a way for IT leaders to be proactive about AI and machine learning without ruffling and rattling an organization of people who want the miracles of AI and ML delivered tomorrow morning? The answer is yes.

How should IT leaders and professionals go about selecting and delivering the technology required to deliver the storied marvels of artificial intelligence and machine learning? AI and ML require having many moving parts in their right places, moving in the right direction, to deliver on the promise these technologies bring — ecosystems, data, platforms, and last, but not least, people.

 

Is there a way for IT leaders to be proactive about AI and ML without ruffling and rattling an organization of people who want the miracles of AI and ML delivered tomorrow morning? The answer is yes.

The authors of a recent report from MIT Sloan Management Review  and SAS advocates a relatively new methodology to successfully accomplish the delivery AI and ML to enterprises called “ModelOps.” While there a lot of “xOps” now entering our lexicon, such as MLOps or AIOps, ModelOps is more “mindset than a specific set of tools or processes, focusing on effective operationalization of all types of AI and decision models.”

That’s because in AI and ML, models are the heart of the matter, the mechanisms that dictate the assembly of the algorithms, and assure continued business value. ModelOps, which is short for :model operationalization, “focuses on model life cycle and governance; intended to expedite the journey from development to deployment — in this case, moving AI models from the data science lab to the IT organization as quickly and effectively as possible.”

In terms of operationalizing AI and ML, “a lot falls back on IT,” according to Iain Brown, head of data science for SAS, U.K. and Ireland, who is quoted in the report. “You have data scientists who are building great innovative things. But unless they can be deployed in the ecosystem or the infrastructure that exists — and typically that involves IT – – there’s no point in doing it. The data science community and AI teams should be working very closely with IT and the business, being the conduit to join the two so there’s a clear idea and definition of the problem that’s being faced, a clear route to production. Without that, you’re going to have disjointed processes and issues with value generation.”

ModelOps is a way to help IT leaders bridge that gap between analytics and production teams, making AI and ML-driven lifecycle “repeatable and sustainable,” the MIT-SAS report states. It’s a step above MLOps or AIOps, which “have a more narrow focus on machine learning and AI operationalization, respectively,” ModelOps focuses on delivery and sustainability of predictive analytics models, which are the core of AI and ML’s value to the business. ModelOps can make a difference, the report’s authors continue, “because without it, your AI projects are much more likely to fail completely or take longer than you’d like to launch. Only about half of all models ever make it to production, and of those that do, about 90% take three months or longer to deploy.”

Getting to ModelOps to manage AI and ML involves IT leaders and professionals pulling together four key elements of the business value equation, as outlined by the report’s authors.

Ecosystems: These days, every successful technology endeavour requires connectivity and network power. “An AI-ready ecosystem should be as open as possible, the report states. “Such ecosystems don’t just evolve naturally. Any company hoping to use an ecosystem successfully must develop next-generation integration architecture to support it and enforce open standards that can be easily adopted by external parties.”

Data: Get to know what data is important to the effort. “Validate its availability for training and production. Tag and label data for future usage, even if you’re not sure yet what that usage might be. Over time, you’ll create an enterprise inventory that will help future projects run faster.”

Platforms: Flexibility and modularity — the ability to swap out pieces as circumstance change — is key.  The report’s authors advocate buying over building, as many providers have already worked out the details in building and deploying AI and ML models. “Determine your cloud strategy. Will you go all in with one cloud service provider? Or will you use different CSPs for different initiatives? Or will you take a hybrid approach, with some workloads running on-premises and some with a CSP? : Some major CSPs typically offer more than just scalability and storage space, such as providing tools and libraries to help build algorithms and assisting with deploying models into production.”

People: Collaboration is the key to successful AI and ML delivery, but it’s also important that people have a sense of ownership over their parts of the projects. “Who owns the AI software and hardware – the AI team or the IT team, or both? This is where you get organizational boundaries that need to be clearly defined, clearly understood, and coordinated.”  Along with data scientists, a group that is just as important to ModelOps is data engineers, who bring “significant expertise in using analytics and business intelligence tools, database software, and the SQL data language, as well as the ability to consistently produce clean, high-quality, ethical data.”

Feature Image Credit: IBM Media Relations

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4 Ways to Build a Seven-Figure Brand and Sellable Business

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By Blake Nubar,

As the world reopens, consumers are changing their mindset and adjusting back to everyday life. They are spending more on products, services, and various offers from entrepreneurs. While the growth opportunities are tremendous, a lack of clarity often derails that growth. You may have started your business around something you’re passionate about, but you need clarity on where you’re going.

One important step to scaling a business to six, seven or even eight figures is a vision and plan for what the business will evolve into. Will you always have a solopreneur type of operation? Do you want to build a business with virtual assistants? Would you consider bringing employees on?

If it’s your goal to build a seven-figure brand and business that you could sell someday, here are four ways to build in a way that leads to clarity and growth.

1. Create a larger entity while using personal brand-building strategies.

To build a sellable business, you need a structure that allows the business to be sold. If your business is wholly tied to you, it will be hard to sell.

While creating an entity (LLC, corporation, agency, etc.) helps build a sellable business, personal brand growth strategies are still essential. A great example of this is how Gary Vaynerchuk has built VaynerMedia using the reach of the personal brand he’s created.

To build a legacy brand, first, come up with the structure and name or convert an existing business. You can then use the internet and social media to leverage exposure, content and marketing on your personal brand alongside the entity brand. You end up building two assets.

The idea of entrepreneurship is freedom and financial independence. The goal should be to build a business that can function without your constant direct involvement. Building a larger entity helps you accomplish those goals.

2. Use a value-first approach to marketing.

It won’t take you long to scroll through the internet and experience a full-on hard rush of sales ads and messages. Too much content being published indicates you’re goes right for the sale without adding value to the consumer first.

To build a seven-figure business that scales, don’t follow the typical approach. One way to convert more cold consumers is through value-first content. People are tired of the ads; they want real value through the content they consume every day. When you are the entrepreneur or business adding value first, you easily stand above the screams for sales.

Consumers want to know how and why your business was started and the path you’re using to grow. They want high-performance strategies, digital marketing tactics, wellness optimization tips and other how-to-based content they can use without having to first spend money with you.

Take a longer-term approach to marketing and converting consumers. It turns casual visitors into followers and eventually customers when you take a value-first first approach to digital marketing through solid content.

3. Make offers that have practical consumer value.

Your business offers should be clear and based on practical value if you’re building a sellable business. That value could be through software, services, physical and digital products.

Have product offerings for every segment of your target audience, ranging from low-tier to premium. Focus on tangible results and clear takeaways for consumers. They’ll see the value with less marketing required on your part.

4. Consistently show up and keep adding building blocks.

A lot of the reason why industry leaders build large audiences is that they’re consistent about showing up and adding value. Look at any prominent YouTuber, influencer or big-name entrepreneur, and you’ll see a history of consistency.

Growth starts with you being clear on your overall goals. If you’re content keeping a smaller business model, that’s okay. If it’s your goal to build a scalable and sellable business, consider how you’re doing with these four points.

You can build a business that grows beyond you having to invest all of your time and energy always working. Strategically create freedom.

By Blake Nubar,

Digital Marketing Strategist

Sourced from Entrepreneur Europe

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The 5 Best Sites and Methods to Get Content Ideas

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By Natalie Stewart,

If you struggle to come up with new content ideas to create and publish, here are some sites and methods that can help!

Content creators need a constant flow of fresh, clickable ideas. Finding these ideas can be difficult, especially when you’re just starting out. While staying on top of trends, you still want to offer an original perspective.

It is also important to ensure that non-trending topics get views! Check out these websites and methods to get inspired!

Knowing the trending topics is key to getting high-performance ideas. Having a lot of detail about these trends will help you identify unexplored angles.

You can also use it to understand why people are interested, so you can address their needs. Here are some resources to find keyword trends.

Treendly

Treendly landing page

Treendly shows you the top trending keywords across the internet. You can also enter a specific keyword to see trends related to that topic. If you click a result, you get even more detail.

It sorts the results by website, showing how popular the term is on Google, YouTube, and Amazon. It also pulls up recent forum discussions that mentioned your keyword. These conversations can show lots of detail about what people want to know.

You can also see how the keywords performed over time, and whether they’ll be slowing down soon.

Ubersuggest

a Content Ideas results page on Ubersuggest

Neil Patel’s Ubersuggest is another great way to get inspired by high-performance keywords. This site identifies keyword trends, but the real lifesaver is its Content Ideas feature.

With this feature, you can enter a keyword and view top-performing content that uses it. Ubersuggest will analyse how well the content is performing on Facebook and Pinterest, based on the total visits and backlinks. Lastly, it provides a link so you can take a closer look at the content.

Getting to see the specifics of how the content is performing, rather than only how popular the keyword is, can give you useful guidance. It shows you which trends are worth jumping on, and which you should let pass.

Keywords Everywhere

Keywords Everywhere shown analysing a Google search

Okay, this one is technically a browser extension, but it’s too useful to leave out! Keywords Everywhere is available for Google Chrome and Firefox. It analyses the content in your browser for trending keywords. It also links up with Trending Topics so you can get even richer data.

Related: How to See What’s Trending on Google: A Quick Guide to Google Trends

You can zoom in on specific pieces of content and analyse how well they perform. Since it’s an extension, it travels with you as you browse the internet and lets you know if you’re looking at an explosive content idea!

2. Try a Prompt From a Random Generator

Responding to a random prompt can be a great way to brainstorm. When you are randomly confronted with experiences, it can push your mind in directions you would not otherwise go!

This can lead to really unique concepts that break the mould and help you stand out. Additionally, it can inspire your creative side after a period of stagnation.

These websites take your keywords and use them to generate titles, concepts, and even first lines to get you thinking!

Hubspot Blog Topic Generator

Hubspot results for a search relating to yoga, beginner, dance, and wellness.

Enter up to five nouns related to your topic, and Hubspot will give you a week of blog topics. Try entering some of the top-performing keywords from Treendly!

At the free level, it provides you inspiring titles. The titles are randomly generated, but not so random that they don’t make sense. The more specific you are with your starting words, the better your results will be!

If you buy a premium membership, you can unlock hundreds of more ideas, plus tips on SEO-optimizing your content.

Use Topic Idea Generator

Use Topic Idea Generator showing a suggestion that highlights a specific product

Use Topic offers an Idea Generator that will take your topic and get a blog post started for it. That’s right, it not only comes up with a title but also drafts the first paragraph of your post! The takes range from product endorsements to listicles and op-eds, so it truly works for all blog styles.

Best of all, Use Topic’s results encourage you to focus on creating good content. After all, trending keywords won’t help in the long run, if your content isn’t useful.

3. Use Your Own Experience

Person stopping to think as they write
Karolina Grabowska/Pixabay

The longer you’ve been working on your topic, the more your own experience can serve as inspiration. Problems you’ve overcome, and skills you’ve gained can both be sources for content.

If you’ve recently solved a problem, you could share that solution with your followers. You can also explain how to avoid the problem in the first place. This works even for new creators. You can share what you learned from your getting-started process.

Similarly, you could teach yourself something new and share what you learned. What is something within your topic that you always wanted to know? Or maybe a skill that you want to get better at. Once you have found your answer or mastered your skill, make some content to share what you learned!

Reflecting on past experiences can also inspire content. For instance, what do you wish you knew when you first started in your field? There are likely some newcomers among your readers who could use that wisdom now! The words of experience are always valuable.

4. Get Inspired by the Competition

Make sure you are consuming content from other creators in your category. Follow their social media accounts, too! You need to know what the competition is doing so that you can differentiate. It also helps you stay on top of trends.

You can address a detail that others glossed over, or provide an alternative point of view. In other words, try to notice what others aren’t saying—it might be a content gap that you can fill!

Read critically, take notes, and use SEO and Keyword research to analyse which bandwagons are worth jumping on.

It’s also a good idea to follow topic-specific news blogs, trade journals, and magazines. These can give you specific insights on topics and techniques. A simple way to do this is to follow relevant categories and hashtags on your favourite news-reading app.

Of course, there are also web resources that can help you stay up-to-date.

Buzzsumo

Buzzsumo is a great way to see all the content trending in your category. When you select a topic, Buzzsumo will show you all the related content. It prioritizes content that’s been performing well in searches and engagement.

By focusing on high-performance articles, you avoid over-focusing on specific publications. It’s also easier to notice gaps in content that you could fill and repetitive takes that you should differentiate from. With Buzzsumo, you’ll also be able to note what type of content is doing well: video, text blog, etc.

5. Ask Your Audience

An audience voting with raised hands
THINK Global School/Flickr

As content creators, we must focus on producing high-quality content. This means providing content that our audience would find useful. And no one knows those needs better than the audience itself. Find out what your followers want to see by polling them. You might be surprised!

Related: The Best Sites to Make Your Own Online Polls

Creating a poll on your social media or sending out an email survey are good ways of measuring interests. You should also pay attention to social media mentions.

You can also get hints from your own content. Do you have a high-performance piece that you could expand on or update? Looking at previous successes is a good way to get ideas.

Maintain a Fresh Content Strategy

All you need is the right resources to help you maintain a stream of fresh ideas. Inspiration can come from keyword trends, competitive content, experience, or even your own audience!

However, it’s not enough to paste in a few trending keywords. Creativity is the key to keeping your ideas fresh. Keep your mind open to new ideas with creative exercises and prompts.

By Natalie Stewart

Sourced from MUO

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Google is Releasing The Page Experience Update and it’s Happening Now

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Sourced from sritutorials

This week: the page experience update is here, a new privacy-first search engine is here, and a new Search Console feature is here.

Here’s what happened this week in digital marketing.

Google Page Experience Now Rolling Out

Here we go!

We’ve been waiting for this day for a long time. Some of us have been dreading this day.

And now it’s here.

Google started rolling out the page experience update this week.

But it’s happening slowly. You might not notice how it impacts your site until August.

It’s not likely that the change will impact your site much, if at all, though. Google previously claimed that the new signals have a minor effect on where sites land in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

Here’s how it’s all going down:

  • Google started using page experience metrics to determine eligibility for top stories.
  • Soon, you’ll see the AMP badge go away.
  • Google continues to test the page experience badge but offers no report on when it will formally roll out.

Also: keep in mind that a core update recently rolled out. So if your keywords are already doing the Google Dance, that could be the reason. It might have nothing to do with the page experience update.

Meet Brave: A New Privacy-First Search Engine

Looking for a search engine that respects your privacy? Check out Brave.

Brave isn’t just the name of the search engine. It’s also the name of the company that makes that search engine.

And it’s the name of the browser, too.

As it stands now, Brave doesn’t show ads. The company says it might run ads one day in the future, but not in a way that violates users’ privacy.

“Brave Search does not track you, your searches, or your clicks; it’s impossible for Brave to disclose any information about you to anyone,” the company said in a statement. “Any future ads we may support will be anonymized (like all other Brave ads), and will not influence ranking. In the future, we will also offer paid ad-free search.”

Another Brave feature that publishers will love: the founders promise not to use content from the web without sending traffic to the website hosting the content.

As you may know, Google screen-scrapes content from websites and posts it on google.com. That gives people the ability to get their questions answered without even visiting the site with the answers.

Brave says it won’t do that.

The new software is still in preview mode.

Now All Google Merchants Can Accept Payment With Shopify

Good news if you’re a Google Merchant user: you can now accept payments via Shopify.

Even if you’re not a Shopify user.

More good news: you can use Shopify for checkout if you’re a Facebook or Instagram merchant as well.

The new solution is called Shop Pay. It’s a one-click checkout process offered by Shopify.

Here’s the announcement from the company: ”Each day, more than 1.8 billion people log on to Facebook and a billion shopping sessions take place across Google. By bringing Shop Pay to all merchants regardless of the commerce platform they use, we’re making an industry-leading checkout more accessible to independent brands at a time when finding and converting customers has never been more important.”

According to reports, check out with Shop Pay is 70% faster than an average online checkout. It’s also got a 1.72x higher conversion rate.

The new tool also offers order tracking for consumers.

Shop Pay has already facilitated more than $20 billion in online payments.

Google Rolls out Search Console Insights

Want to know more about what kind of content resonates with your core audience? If so, then check out Google Search Console Insights.

As the name implies, it’s part of Google Search Console. If you head over to Search Console right now, you’ll likely see a banner at the top advertising the new Insights feature.

Click on the link in that banner and Search Console will take you to a new screen where you’ll see site activity for the past 28 days.

For starters, the tool will show you how many clicks you got from Google Search. It will also show you how much that number increased or decreased from the previous month.

Below that, you’ll see your most searched queries that brought people to your site. You’ll also see where those keywords land in the search engine results pages (SERPs) and how many clicks landed visitors to that page during the time period.

You also have the option to view most trending queries. That will show you queries “on the rise” on your website.

Google Updating Top Stories Carousel

It seems like the Top Stories carousel is in the news a lot lately. And here it is again.

This time, it’s because Google announced that it’s changing the carousel.

Here are the changes you can expect to see:

  • AMP no longer required for inclusion in Top Stories
  • AMP icon will go away
  • Google will eliminate swiping on the carousel

It’s not much of a carousel without swiping, but Google says it needs to eliminate that ability.

Why? Because Google can’t guarantee instant loading of pages since AMP is no longer required.

You can expect to see the changes roll out around the same time as the page experience update rolls out.

That is: now.

Google Explains the Difference Between Audience Expansion and Optimized Targeting

Google recently sent out an email to Google Ads users stating that some campaigns using audience expansion would get migrated to optimized targeting.

It left many strategists scratching their heads and wondering: “What’s the difference?”

Google is here to answer that question.

According to a spokesperson, audience expansion “limited campaigns from benefiting from Google’s auto-targeting systems by expanding only on the user-selected audiences.”

On the other hand: “Optimized targeting is a new paradigm for auto-targeting that can move beyond any selected criteria to optimize into the best performing audiences for a given ad group while meeting the campaign’s objective.”

Bottom line: you’re in better hands with optimized targeting.

Facebook Gets Into Podcast Integration

This past week, Facebook announced that you can connect your podcast’s RSS feed to a Facebook Page. Then, users can enjoy your podcasts without ever leaving the Facebook platform.

Further, all your new podcasts going forward will automagically get integrated into the Facebook feed.

Facebook says that users can listen to podcasts even when the app is running in the background. So they can do other things at the same time.

Additionally, Facebook will enable users to create and share short clips from podcasts on its platform. That’s a great way to give your podcasts more publicity.

Facebook is contacting some Page owners about the new feature right now. No word yet on when it fully rolls out.

Twitter Getting Closer to Emoji Reactions to Tweets

It looks like you’ll soon be able to respond to a tweet with an emoji.

All we know right now about the feature is brought to us by reverse-engineer extraordinaire Jane Manchun Wong.

And from what we can see, it looks like Twitter is implementing something similar to what’s on Facebook. Users will have a limited set of emojis they can use to give their reactions to tweets.

Current emoji reactions include: “Like,” “Cheer,” “Hmm,” “Sad,” and “Haha.”

Homework

Before you enjoy the start of summer, consider handling these to-do’s:

  • Windows 10
  • Support
  • Apply
  • Backgrounds
  • Android
  • Samsung Flight
  • Owner
  • News Articles
  • Accept Payments
  • If you’re a podcaster, think about how you can use the upcoming Facebook integration to promote your podcast.
  • Take a look at Search Console Insights. See what you can learn about the type of content that best works with your audience. Then, double-down on those subjects and keywords.
  • If you’re in the e-commerce space, think about how you can use Shop Pay to streamline the checkout process for your customers.
  • Take a look at Brave, the new search engine. It might one day become yet another option for online advertising.
  • Keep an eye on your keywords over the next couple of months. See where you’re losing ground and where you’re improving. Look for the common traits that seem to help your keywords move up in the SERPs and apply those principles to all your content.

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Google is totally changing how ads track people around the Internet. Here’s what you need to know.

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It’s a common sight: Ads from that time you Googled flights to Cancún, or visited Nike to look for new running shoes, following you around the Internet.

Much of that tracking is made possible by cookies — little bits of code that jump off websites and lodge themselves in your browser, allowing new sites you visit to see where you’ve been before. Facebook and Google, the two most profitable advertising companies in history, use cookies to show ads across the Web based on info gathered on their own sites and social media networks.

But that’s all changing. Google has vowed to block cookies completely on its Chrome browser, which is used by around 70 percent of the world’s desktop computer owners, by the beginning of 2022. The decision, announced last year, sent shock waves through the advertising world, which has maintained revenue from tracking is necessary to fund a largely free Web.

Google says it has solutions to allow advertisers to keep showing relevant ads, but in privacy-protecting ways. Taken together, the company’s proposals are meant to let Web publishers, e-commerce companies and advertising agencies continue using targeted ads to make money, while assuring regular Internet users their data isn’t being stockpiled by an ever-growing list of companies and websites.

But privacy activists have already started poking holes in Google’s ideas.

And it may not matter. Advertising technology companies such as the Trade Desk have already taken the matter into their own hands, banding together to create new tracking tools that use email addresses. Other major companies have shown signs of pushing back against Google’s proposals, such as Amazon, which is currently blocking Chrome from collecting data on which users go to its websites. (Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

Meanwhile, politicians and antitrust investigators in multiple countries have raised alarms that Google’s move could hurt competitors and further cement its power. And for regular Internet users, this largely behind-the-scenes change could have major implications for how private companies hoover up our data and make decisions about what we see online.

Here’s what you need to know.

How did we get here?

Cookies were written into early browsers to cut down on some of the inconveniences of surfing the Web. They allowed passwords to auto-fill, or websites to remember payment information so users didn’t have to type theirs in every time they came back. They also created a trail of breadcrumbs that the burgeoning online ad industry eagerly ate up, helping free websites make money.

But as the technology advanced, social media took off and consumers’ lives were lived increasingly online, it got creepy. Privacy advocates have always criticized the model, and more and more regular people have become aware of the issue, some expressing their displeasure by downloading ad blockers.

Google isn’t the first to make this change. Apple in 2017 started limiting and eventually blocking third-party cookies completely from its Safari browser. Mozilla’s Firefox followed soon after. But those two browsers make up less than 20 percent of the market, according to research firm eMarketer.

Despite Google’s own reliance on advertising and tracking for roughly $180 billion a year in revenue, chief executive Sundar Pichai admitted during a 2019 congressional hearing that people don’t like to feel they’re being tracked around the Internet. And in January 2020, Google said it too would block third-party cookies on Chrome within the next two years.

The changes come as politicians in the United States and elsewhere step up their attempts to regulate privacy. The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation has forced companies to ask permission before tracking people online since 2018. In 2020, America’s most populous state instituted the California Consumer Privacy Act, which gives California residents the right to ask companies to delete whatever data has been gathered on them. As is the case with other consumer-focused regulation, the California law has essentially become the default nationwide.

Feature Image Credit: (Washington Post illustration; iStock)

By Gerrit De Vynck

Sourced from The Washington Post

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How to “Go Viral” on Social Media

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By Jean Ginzburg

Make your copy more authentic, relevant, and “shareable” to reach a bigger audience.

Entrepreneurs and content creators wait for that single moment when their videos go viral. But going viral isn’t just a stroke of luck. It requires persistence and a few other key points that will give you that extra boost to get the virality you want. To boost your chances of going viral, keep these tips in mind.

Post across platforms

Try your luck on every social media platform you can think of. Post your video on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube. Different content goes viral on different platforms, so you never know when and how it will take off. Make sure your content is easily shareable.

Make your content relatable and relevant

Your video should be relatable. Speak like you mean it, but don’t sound scripted. You’ll get views if people find your content relatable, and what makes it relatable is your authenticity. Most people don’t believe overproduced content.

Don’t overthink content choices. Discover your audience’s pain points. Share your experiences and tell your story.

Be more authentic

We always hear people should strive to be themselves, whether they are in social media or not. Show the world what you’re doing and experiencing. Don’t try to be someone you’re not. Try to:

  • Elicit emotions. Videos go viral when they elicit emotions. Your story, facial expressions, body language, and gestures build the mood and stir up a wide range of emotions. Make sure you stay connected to the story as you tell it to your audience and engage your whole self in the storytelling.
  • Challenge yourself as a storyteller. To tell better stories, try telling them in a way you haven’t before. Push yourself in a way that you haven’t.
  • Talk to people. Discuss ideas so you can gather more relatable experiences.
  • Tell stories. Share stories about your brand, your products. Captivate your audience. To do that, you need to set your target audience.

 

Find the right audience

Think about the audience you’re targeting as you create your content. Who are your potential customers? To whom will you address your stories? Finding the right audience is crucial if you like your stories to be authentic and relatable to them.

Assess yourself 

Evaluate yourself. What are your strengths and weaknesses? What are the skills you need to develop? Will you learn more if you do everything yourself? Or will you benefit from learning from someone who can help you achieve growth?

Take a step back to chill for a while. Think about what you want to do with your work life, and consider your life decisions. Do you want to be in a corporate world? Do you want a new environment?

Think about what you like to do. There’s nothing wrong with that! Rinse and repeat.

Follow influencers

Follow influencers of the specific niche you like. If you like startups, follow influencers who are big in those fields.

Follow entrepreneurs and look at what they’re doing. If you like fashion, look for people who are known in that industry. Read their stories. That’s how you learn what works in your niche.

Be an authentic storyteller

Dip your toe in the water. Just start telling your story, but don’t try to come across as someone you’re not.

Don’t aim to be the top creator. Learn from others first. Look for someone you like to get ideas or moves from. That could be someone who influences you in your field or industry. Imitate what they’re doing. Use their success stories and pain points as your inspiration.

But don’t steal their ideas-don’t copy everything they do. Understand why they do what they do. And that will make you successful in the long run.

Approach social like an extension of yourself

It’s fascinating to see where social media is going. Just think about LinkedIn these days. Everyone’s talking about it. TikTok also has taken the world by the storm. Gaming is ubiquitous. Esports is at its height, as well as Fortnite.

How you approach social media now should be an extension of yourself–an extension of who you are. Again: don’t try to be something or someone you’re not. Don’t try to hack the algorithm. Just show up as your true authentic self and watch what happens.

Feature Image Credit: Getty Images

By Jean Ginzburg

Sourced from Inc.

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My motivation in my business is decreasing: How do I gain it back?

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By Nate Torres,

Sometimes you might feel in a funk. It happens to the best of us.

We may love what we do for work and motivation is high, but sometimes we just lose that drive and we may start to question what we do for work. Not only is motivation important in life in general, but it’s important for business.

In this article, I’ll dive into some reasons why your motivation may be decreasing and some tips to reverse it.

Working full-time for a consulting company as well as a photographer, I’ve experienced dips in motivation and I want to share my experiences.

Let’s dive in.

Photo by Xan Griffin on Unsplash

What decreases motivation?

Let’s first touch on some things that can lead to a decrease in motivation to your business.

1. No goal

The first thing that can lead to a decrease in motivation is not having or knowing what you want your goal to be.

Oftentimes, it’s hard to know where we are going if we don’t even know where we want to end up. We might just be aimlessly taking gigs and working on our business without knowing our goals for the month, for the quarter, for the year or even five years down the road!

Now, I can’t tell you what your goal should be, because everyone has different goals. Some have personal goals, financial goals, social goals, etc. That’s up to you to reflect internally on what you want to do with your business.

The important part is that you know what that thing is so you can wake up everyday knowing where it is you want to end up.

2. Aiming low

On the note of not having a goal, the second thing that can lead to a decrease in motivation is not aiming high enough with your goals.

If you set a goal that is too low, you may not be excited for it. In the consulting world, we often tell our clients to set stretch goals and you will be surprised how many times this “stretch” goal often ends up being hit.

Once we set something in our head, we will take the necessary steps and actions to try and reach that goal. So why not set a high goal in the beginning?

3. Not trying new things for the business

The third thing that I have seen lead to a decrease in motivation for my business, is not trying new things.

When running your own business, you can have a lot of plates spinning because you are the sales person, the marketer, the finance person, the CEO, etc. You are all the departments and all the departments are you.

Photo by Daria Nepriakhina on Unsplash

It’s important that when running your business, you try a lot of new things and stick with the things that work and discard the ones that don’t.

For example, you may have heard of SEO for photography or running Google ads but haven’t gotten around to it.

Well, by learning these new things and seeing if they work for your business, it brings an excitement to the table and will help keep things fresh.

For me personally, I’m exploring explainer videos for my business as a new video marketing tool channel, and I’m starting to use Pinterest for pinning photos that I’ve removed the background on.

4. Not being consistent

Motivation comes and goes. It’s a part of life.

Don’t wait for motivation because you might go weeks without motivation. What’s important to have is consistency. Because on the days you are really unmotivated, you will still want to be consistent.

What’s helped me is to plan out my weekly schedule on Sundays. This way when Monday hits, I hit the ground running.

Learn to be consistent and you can conquer anything.

Motivation comes and goes

In conclusion, these are the four biggest tips I have for you if you find yourself losing motivation in your business. Especially if you just find your self stuck at home like I still am for the most part.

Just remember, that motivation can come and go and that it’s a natural part of life. When you are feeling unmotivated, just know that you aren’t alone.

Stay consistent, stay grateful, and you will see great success. Good luck!

Feature Image Credit:  Tegan Mierle on Unsplash

By Nate Torres

Nate Joaquin Torres is a portrait photographer based in Los Angeles, California. Outside of photography, Nate specializes in SEO, content marketing, and social media marketing. He has a passion for minimalist photography with a film feel. Nate is also the founder of Imaginated.com, DEEP IN THE MIX, and Blue Hour Candle. Feel free to connect with him on Instagram or subscribe to his email newsletter. www.imaginated.com/

Sourced from photofocus

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Microsoft is bringing Android apps to Windows 11 with Amazon’s Appstore

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By Tom Warren,

A surprise addition to Windows 11

Microsoft is bringing Android apps to Windows 11. The software giant revealed its surprise Windows 11 addition during its special Windows event today. Android apps will run natively on Windows 11 and will be downloadable from Amazon’s Appstore, via the new Windows store that’s included in the operating system.

Microsoft says it’s using Amazon’s Appstore to bring Android apps to Windows 11. Apps will be listed in the new Windows store, and can be pinned to the taskbar or snapped alongside traditional Windows apps. Microsoft is also partnering with Intel to use its Intel Bridge technology to make this a reality, although the Android apps will still work with both AMD and Arm-based systems.

Android apps in the Windows store.

Android apps on Windows 11 are an obvious answer to Apple’s progress with its M1 chips and running iOS apps on macOS. While there are many web equivalents to mobile apps, they’re often lacklustre, and certain apps like Snapchat, Ring, Venmo, Roomba, and the majority of home automation apps aren’t available on the web.

Microsoft demonstrated apps like TikTok running on Windows 11 today. The Windows store that Microsoft showed lists Ring, Yahoo, Uber, and others, so we’ll likely see full access to Amazon’s Appstore. It’s not immediately clear how well many existing devices will support Android apps with Windows 11, as Microsoft is pushing its support of Intel Bridge technology as the favoured way to run these apps.

Android apps on PC.

This surprise announcement follows Microsoft’s original plans to let Windows developers rework their existing Android apps for Windows in 2015. Project Astoria, as Microsoft labeled it, was a method to try to convince developers to port apps and make it easier to do so. The plan eventually fell apart less than a year later, with Microsoft admitting that having “two bridge technologies to bring code from mobile operating systems to Windows was unnecessary.”

Microsoft has been toying with the idea of running Android apps on Windows natively for years, and the company had been experimenting with the idea of listing Android apps in the Windows store just ahead of the Windows 10 launch. Instead, Microsoft pushed ahead trying to convince developers to adopt its failed Universal Windows Platform.

Android app integration directly into Windows is a significant shift, especially as the company has been favoring Your Phone as the method to bridge the gap between Android and Windows. Microsoft has been embracing Android as the mobile version of Windows for years, and now those same mobile apps will run directly in Windows 11.

Update, 5:40pm: Added additional information on AMD and Arm support for Windows 11’s Android apps.

Feature Image Credit: TikTok running on Windows 11.Image: Microsoft

By Tom Warren

Sourced from THE VERGE

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How to use Instagram as a marketing tool for your business

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Sourced from The Taiwan Times

On the 6th October 2010, the world was introduced to Instagram and since then it has grown in popularity and it is not hard to understand why. The app allows you to share your life with friends and family, appreciate good quality content, be exposed to new cultures through hashtags and you can even shop on the popular platform. Besides all of that, social media can also be used as a marketing tool and this post will explore 5 ways that brands can use Instagram for their marketing campaigns. Brands can create contests asking users to submit photographs of themselves wearing specific clothing items or using certain products from a brand and even run promotional contests with prizes. The possibilities are endless. If you are a brand that is new to Instagram, here are a few ways to market on the app.

Use a business profile

It is important for any business or brand using Instagram to have a business profile. A business profile allows you to use your account for marketing by giving you the option to promote your content at a reasonable fee. It also provides insight data in the form of analytics. With a business account, you will be able to know how many interactions you receive, your reach, and your engagement. You will also have access to information about your followers such as their gender, age group, and location. Normal accounts don’t give you all of this extra information. Switching to a business profile is fairly easy, all you need to do is follow these simple steps:

  1. Make sure your account is public.
  2. On the Instagram app, go to your profile.
  3. Tap on the right-hand corner.
  4. Tap settings > account
  5. Tap switch to a business account.
  6. It will then give you the option between creator and business, click business, and next.
  7. Review your business contact information and then click done.

The benefits of a business account on Instagram include having access to insights, being able to add links to your stories, having access to advertising options, setting up an Instagram shop, and many more.

Use influencers and services

Instagram has really given rise to the influencer and they are definitely something that should be a part of your strategy.  There are approximately 500 000 influencers on Instagram so you are sure to find one in your niche. They have a large and loyal following so collaborating with them will expose your brand to their audience which will result in more brand awareness and potentially more followers for you. To choose one simply research the influencers in your niche and select one that aligns with the values of your brand or business. You can also use growth services, and many people have had a lot of success using Growthoid, which is a leading company that helps you grow your Instagram organically and they guarantee real followers and not bots.

Collect user-generated content

Another good idea is to take advantage of user-generated content. User-generated content is any form of content that has been posted by users onto their online platforms. There are so many benefits of user-generated content including:

  • You don’t have to create content yourself.
  • You can gain audience insight into what content does well and what doesn’t.
  • You get to find unique content.
  • Boosts social media reach and growth.

User-generated content is the perfect example of social proof which is a great psychological and social phenomenon and it ultimately means less work for you so don’t sleep on User-generated content.

Use hashtags

Lastly, we are going to discuss hashtags and their importance. Hashtags make your posts discoverable and expose your content to a wider audience. They bring in new followers so you should definitely be using them, as they are a quick way to grow followers. When using them the secret is to use relevant hashtags, never use a random hashtag on your post that does not make sense. The best thing you can do is create a branded hashtag which is a hashtag that is unique to your business. Using these will make it easier for people to search your brand on Instagram which is ideal.

Sourced from The Taiwan Times

 

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