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Why agencies need to embrace the new Free Lances

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By Jon Williams

The Liberty Guild’s chief executive responds to Campaign’s analysis on the health of creative agencies.

I read Campaign‘s article about the fallout from WPP’s capital markets day. I’m not sure it’s entirely fair of WPP’s chief executive, Mark Read, to lay the “didn’t reinvent quickly enough” thing at the feet of the creative shops.

It’s clearly true, but as I remember it (as an EMEA chief creative officer of a WPP network), the barrier to reinvention was also the fact that WPP would never sign off any margin relief to do anything. That and the institutional immune system in agencies that tries to attack anything acting differently or entrepreneurially. Anyway. Financial performance has been in decline for years. On that, we agree.

Further down the piece, someone was talking about a supposed “shortage of talent” to capitalise on growth opportunities. We can argue the toss about whether or not there is a shortage in agencies. But in the market there is absolutely no shortage of talent. It’s just that agencies are looking in the wrong place. And if they should happen to find it, they are just not set up to work with the growing global pool of A-list “independent” creatives, strategists, technologists and entrepreneurs that are the key to growth.

There is an incredibly talented crew out there for whom the agency Kool-Aid has curdled. All ages, all genders, all over the world, don’t understand why they need to work all the hours god sends and have zero work/life balance when there is an alternative. There is an exodus to the portfolio career. Some have private clients, some work with a number of agencies, some work directly with brands, some are entrepreneurs, some have personal projects. They flourish.

On the whole, they haven’t been forced to work from the kitchen table by a global pandemic: they made the explicit choice to jump off the burning platform and find sanctuary.

You can find them in the north of Scotland, on the west coast of France, a beach in Indonesia, Crouch End, Goa, Wherever. Technology allows the creative diaspora to go wherever it damn well wants to, in a way that couldn’t happen just five years ago. Technology has changed the game for good. And the pandemic has only expedited this process.

But here’s the rub. As I was leaving my big old network job, I excitedly explained my start-up idea to a European chief creative officer. A mate. Someone I rated.

He raised his eyebrows and said: “Wow, so you’re going to do that with freelancers?” He sort of spat that last word and at the same time left it hanging in the air. That’s the issue there. What is it with the pejorative use of that word?

In a more chivalrous time, when knights wore shining armour and rode white horses, the Free Lances were the elite. A warrior class for hire. Tied to no one. Not your poor plodding foot soldier. Not pawns on the battlefield for a top-down feudal system (bit too obvious for a network analogy?) – but the best and most skilful crew money could buy.

By Jon Williams

Jon Williams is chief executive of The Liberty Guild and the former chief creative officer at Grey Group EMEA.

Sourced from Campaign

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Digital Digest with Gabrielle Robitaille, World Federation of Advertisers

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By The Association of Advertisers in Ireland.

The Association of Advertisers in Ireland are delighted to welcome Gabrielle Robitaille, Digital Policy Manager, World Federation of Advertisers, as a guest for our next Toolkit webinar on Tuesday March 30th.

In this session, Gabrielle will provide the Toolkit group with a summary of latest developments, expected next steps and WFA action on all relevant EU digital policy files likely to have far-reaching impacts on the digital advertising market. Gabrielle will look at:

  • Recent moves to regulate online platforms via the Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act and how these could result in increased transparency in the digital advertising market and support advertisers’ brand safety efforts;
  • The state of play on the ePrivacy Regulation, which will set new rules on the use of cookies within the EU;
  • Plans to introduce an EU-wide digital levy and how this could have unintended consequences on advertisers;
  • Proposals to introduce new rules on transparency in political advertising and how these could inadvertently impact commercial advertisers.

When: Tuesday 30th March
Time: 10am – 11am
Register here

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The 3 kinds of intuition you need to make tough decisions

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By Mark Crowley

Author and speaker Mark Crowley explains how great leaders use their data-driven business mindsets and tap into a kind of intuition that transcends the instinctive, gut-based one to be successful.

Thanks to Malcolm Gladwell and Nobel Prize-winning economist Daniel Kahneman, we’ve all been sternly warned about the risks of employing intuition when making important decisions. In his book Blink, Gladwell asserts that while our unconscious thinking is “a powerful force, it also can be thrown off, distracted or disabled.” And in his classic, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman stresses that gut instincts can fail us when we unwittingly apply familiar patterns of experience to unrelated circumstances or situations.

The truth is, most of us have spent a lifetime developing our rational minds and rely solely upon their counsel when making consequential life choices. And we know that in business today, innumerable companies such as Amazon have placed data at the centre of their corporate cultures—and routinely rely on metrics to find the best ways of growing their businesses.

In light of this, it may come as a surprise to learn that some of the world’s most successful leaders and innovators intentionally tap into their intuition before making critical decisions.

In his new best seller, How to Lead: Wisdom From the World’s Greatest CEOs, Founders, and Game Changers, Carlyle Group cochairman David Rubenstein says Amazon’s founder and CEO is actually a perfect example.

“Jeff Bezos is a brilliant guy who has built a great company—a data-driven company,” Rubenstein told me recently. “But most people who’ve become very successful, certainly in the business world, had an idea—an intuition—that pushed them forward. It wasn’t analysis. Like the best decision-makers, Warren Buffett makes investment decisions in minutes. And, in my opinion, if Steve Jobs had relied on analytical thinking, he never would have built Apple.”

If you’re wondering how great leaders managed to square their data-driven business mindsets with a routine reliance upon intuition, it’s because they most often tapped into a kind of intuition that transcends the instinctive, gut-based one about which Gladwell and Kahneman both had concerns. There really are three kinds of intuition. An understanding of each will profoundly enhance the success of all your future decision-making, not to mention prevent you from making choices you end up regretting.

“Expert knowledge” intuition

“Thinking fast” is where our most common understanding of intuition comes in. As Kahneman describes, it operates automatically, quickly, and sometimes impulsively. But while Kahneman asserts that gut instincts can be wrong, they can also be right when applied to familiar patterns and challenges.

For example, an experienced nurse walks into a hospital room and tells a new nurse that the patient is about to go into cardiac arrest. And within the next hour, it frequently happens. While the nurse may later be unable to explain how she “knew,” through her experience, she learned to identify subtle cues such as how a patient is breathing, their colour, or some other signs she locked away in her unconscious. And when she recognizes these patterns again, she takes quick action.

“Implicit knowledge” intuition

When any of us is faced with a new problem, with no experience in solving it, our common approach is to think about it, scratch our head a little, and inevitably stop working on it. But then, while in the shower or out on a run, we experience a sudden epiphany where, voilà, we’re guided to the solution. Allowing our minds to process the problem behind the scenes often provides the answers we need.

College student Nikola Tesla was mocked by one of his professors after he proposed creating the first alternating-current-driven motor. Stumped by how to make it, Tesla and a friend went out for a walk—to discuss poetry—and the insight came to him. “The idea came like a flash of lightning,” he wrote, “and in an instant, the truth was revealed.”

Albert Einstein often stressed the value of intuition and described his own theories as “free invention of imagination” rather than the result of rigorous analysis. “There are no logical paths to these [natural] laws,” he wrote.

Even modern-day real estate brokerage tycoon and Shark Tank investor Barbara Corcoran believes she owes much of her success to trusting her inner knowing. Here’s how she described it:

“You really have to listen to that inside intuition. And it’s kind of weird, I think, for me, because everything in our education system says listen to your left brain. Everything we’re taught is listen, analyse. A leads to B, leads to C. But in real life, it doesn’t work that way. A leads often to F, and then comes back to B. And so, the only piece of your mind that’s able to grasp that, and see the truth, is your intuition.”

“Nonlocal” intuition

According to researchers at the HeartMath Institute, numerous studies have validated the existence of a form of intuition that author and medical doctor Deepak Chopra says “allows us to eavesdrop on the mind of the universe.” While our rational minds operate on the basis of our five senses, nonlocal intuition seems to access not just information stored in our subconscious but also a deep storehouse of knowledge and wisdom, perhaps best described as universal intelligence.

Starbucks founder Howard Schultz, for example, always had access to financial analysis and predictive data, but he also proved to have an instinctive feel for what products, store design, and culture he wanted his customers to experience. By his own admission, he routinely acted on his intuition and, in effect, followed his heart.

The truth is all of us have intuitive feelings like these all the time, but we’ve been conditioned to ignore or discount them. That’s because they’re an aspect of human intelligence we often don’t believe is appropriate or reliable. Nevertheless, we can all recall times when we overrode an inner voice or feeling that urged us not to take a job, trust another person, or send an email. And we can relate to Oprah Winfrey when she said, “The only times I’ve made mistakes is when I didn’t listen.”

Researchers at the Australian Graduate School of Entrepreneurship studied serial entrepreneurs—people who had built multiple businesses with great success—and discovered that 80% of them intentionally relied on intuition and knowingly integrated it with their cognitive capacities when weighing options. In other words, they purposely acted on hunches tied to a feeling that it was the right choice and embraced the idea that what they sensed was no less valuable than empirical data and analytics.

More than 2,000 years ago, the Greek philosopher Aristotle said, “Wisdom is intuitive reason combined with scientific knowledge,” a conclusion that reminds us that our minds and hearts are intended to work together. And that’s the important insight successful leaders such as these clearly understand.

When faced with an important decision, they run the numbers and perform all the critical analysis. But right before they make the final call, they ask their inner wisdom to weigh in. Most importantly, they routinely trust that whatever feeling it yields will guide them to making the best possible choice there is to make.

In the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Trust instinct to the end even though you can give no reason.”

Feature Image Credit: [Photos: Mahmudul Hasan Shaon/Unsplash; Stacey Gabrielle Koenitz Rozells/Unsplash] 

By Mark Crowley

Mark Crowley is a best-selling author and a global speaker on employee engagement.

Sourced from FastCompany

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Is Your Offer Not Selling? Try These 3 Fixes to Make It Irresistible.

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There’s almost nothing worse than the feeling you get after days – weeks even – of sharing your offer on your various social media platforms, and getting nothing but a couple of sympathy likes from your sister on your posts in return. But that doesn’t mean that you should throw your offer in the trash.

If you’ve already checked the more obvious reasons this offer is a flop right now, like:

  • Do you have an engaged audience that knows who you are and what you do?
  • Are you showing up consistently enough for your posts to perform well in the algorithm?
  • Have you triple-checked your links and checkout system?

…then it’s time to consider that the problem isn’t necessarily with you, your offer, or anything technical – the issue is probably how you’re positioning the offer itself.

Is it a priority for your customer right now?

Can you make it one? We’re living in a tumultuous time; you have to consider the real-life circumstances in which your ideal client is living right now when you’re presenting them with a buying decision.

A stumbling block I see a lot of new entrepreneurs fall prey to is that they’re positioning their offers only to the highest tier of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: Self-Actualization. It usually sounds something like “helping people to step into authenticity and be their best self.”

Which sounds great, right? Except it’s really not most people’s top priorities at this moment.

According to his model that describes human motivation, Maslow says that people can only focus on climbing to the next tier if they feel secure in the one they’re already in.

So for someone to feel safe and confident in their buying decision to invest in a self-actualization offer, they must already feel like they’re on stable ground in their physiological needs (air, water, shelter, food); their safety needs (personal safety, employment, resources, health); their relational needs (friendship, intimacy, family); and their esteem needs (respect, self-esteem, freedom).

How can you position your work so that people will get the results you know you’re capable of giving them – but also shows them how your work will benefit an area of their life that they’re potentially more interested in upleveling right now?

Offer carrot cake, bring them carrots.

One of my mentors, Scott Oldford, shared this analogy with me at the beginning of our work together, and it forever altered the way I position my offers. For people who are struggling to figure out how to share their self-actualization offer in a way that creates more urgency, this one mindset shift will radically change your sales results.

Unless you’re me, you’re probably not ordering carrots when you sit down at a nice restaurant. There are so many more appetizing things than carrots on the menu – why would you do that to yourself?

Carrot cake, on the other hand, is delicious and moist and has cream cheese on top – I mean, who can say no to that? The thing is…it’s called carrot cake for a reason. There are still carrots in there!

What if the problem with your sales isn’t that your offer is bad? What if the problem is actually that you’re positioning it in a way that makes people want to hold their nose and ask for the check early?

My favorite way to find the carrot cake in my carrot-y offers is to flesh out the intended results:

  • What is life going to look like for my client when they’re on the other side of this offer/experience? (More money in their bank account? A nicer office? A more well-developed plan to execute with their team?)
  • What sounds will they hear when they’re on the other side of this offer/experience? (The pride in the voice of their significant other? The cha-ching of their PayPal app receiving money?)
  • What will things feel like for them when they’re on the other side of this offer/experience? (Will they be wearing nicer fabrics? Will they drive a nicer car with fine interiors?)

The clearer you can make this picture and the more effectively you can communicate those intended results to your clients, the easier it will be to make sales.

Be a product of your message.

One of the questions I hear a lot is, “how much sharing is too much?” And what they’re really asking is: How can I be transparent and honest with my audience without looking messy, so I can maintain my authority and position of leadership?

In this highly evolving world where people want to know who is running a company, what their values are, and if they’re walking the walk – it’s no longer a choice for entrepreneurs to “keep it strictly professional.”

The thing is, you don’t have to go full-influencer mode for you to give your audience the opportunity to know you, like you, and trust that you’re both knowledgeable and capable enough to help them with the thing your offer claims it will.

After you figure out what the delicious carrot cake positioning is for your offer, it’s up to you to show your audience that you are a living, breathing example of what it looks like to experience the results that your offer is promising.

Use your social media platforms to share your own experience, your stories, and your client experiences (with permission of course!) – alongside your sales posts. Your audience will begin to see that it’s a no-brainer to work with you because you’re clearly so good at what you do.

So in case you were thinking that you just need to invest in a better logo, or get another set of professional photos done, or hire someone to do intensive market research – consider that the solution may be a whole lot easier than that.

Confidence in yourself, your offer, and your ability to carry buyers from Point A to Point B is going to be the thing that seals the deal for your potential buyers.

Feature Image Credit: skynesher | Getty Images

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Sourced from Entrepreneur Europe

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7 Ways To Make a Profit on TikTok: Here’s How

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By Jamie Johnson

TikTok is currently one of the fastest-growing social media networks in the world. And recent reports estimate that the company will surpass 1.2 billion active monthly users in 2021.

This kind of rapid growth means that there are plenty of opportunities to build a following on the platform. And once you’ve made a name for yourself, you can start to monetize that following.

7 Ways To Make Money on TikTok

Best of all, you can use TikTok to start creating multiple revenue streams. Let’s look at seven ways you can start making money on TikTok.

1. Donations

If you have at least 1,000 followers on TikTok, then one of the easiest ways to start making money is by accepting donations from your followers. TikTok has its own currency, and users can buy coins and donate them to their favourite influencers.

Relying on donations is not a reliable way to make money on TikTok because you’re at the mercy of your followers and whether or not they feel like donating. But it is an option, and it’s an excellent way to make a little bit of money in the beginning.

2. TikTok Creator Fund

The TikTok Creator Fund is a program where TikTok pays you directly for the content you create. Essentially, the program is a revenue-sharing model where TikTok pays you a portion of the money they earn on advertising. The amount you make is based on your total audience and engagement.

The Creator Fund is the only way you’ll get paid directly by TikTok, but the program has received mixed reactions. For one thing, you need to have at least 10,000 followers to even be eligible. And it’s not entirely clear what factors payment is based on.

And some users have complained that their engagement dropped after signing up for the program. But it may be worth your while to sign up and see if utilizing the TikTok Creator Fund is right for you.

3. Advertising

What if you’re not interested in creating content for TikTok but still want to find a way to make money using the platform? Well, if you have your own products and services you want to promote, you might consider paying for TikTok advertising.

TikTok ads last 9 to 15 seconds and are a great way to promote your brand. It will help you reach a younger audience that is often less receptive to other forms of advertising.

4. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is one of the most popular ways to earn money through TikTok. As an affiliate, you promote the products and services of other companies. When a subscriber follows one of your links and makes a purchase, you’ll earn a percentage of the money they spent.

Many people like affiliate marketing because it doesn’t require that you create your own products and services. And regardless of the type of niche you’re in, there are endless products and services you can promote.

And if you get a large enough following, you can build up a hefty income through affiliate marketing. However, affiliate marketing is most effective when you’re promoting companies you love and fully support.

5. Brand Sponsorships

If you’ve built up a significant following on TikTok, brands will be willing to pay you good money to feature them in one of your videos. You’ll create a video for your audience endorsing that company’s product or service to your followers.

Unlike affiliate marketing, you’ll be paid for the content you create, whether anyone buys the products or not. And brand sponsorships can be very lucrative depending on how many followers you have. If you have a large following, you could earn thousands of dollars for a single video.

If you’re interested in pursuing brand sponsorships, just make sure you’re selective about the companies you work with. Just like with affiliate marketing, it’s the most effective when you promote companies you’re passionate about.

6. Offer Consulting

If you’ve cracked the code on how to build a following on TikTok, many people will be willing to pay you good money to learn that information. So you may be able to utilize your insights and offer TikTok consulting services.

Before you move forward with any type of consulting arrangement, make sure you outline the terms and deliverables in a contract. And it may be worth your while to negotiate a revenue-sharing agreement. That way, if any of your clients see massive success on the platform, you’ll receive a piece of their earnings.

7. Sell Your Own Products

And finally, one of the best ways to make money on TikTok is by selling your own products. It may take time for you to get to this point, but selling your own products will give you more control over your brand and income.

When you sign up for the Creator Program or use affiliate marketing, you’ll only get to keep a portion of the money earned through your content. And that company could change the terms of your agreement at any time.

But when you sell your own products, you get to keep 100% of the earnings. And this will allow you to build your own brand and set yourself up for success in the long run.

Final Thoughts

TikTok can be a great way to build a following and start making money as an influencer on the platform. But just like any other business, you’ll have to put in the work first. Take the time to develop a relationship with your followers, and be thoughtful about your monetization strategies.

And only promote products and services that you really believe in. This will give you the best chance of success in the long run.

By Jamie Johnson

Jamie Johnson is a freelance writer who covers a variety of personal finance topics, including investing, loans, and building credit. In addition to writing for GOBankingWrites, she currently writes for clients like Quicken Loans, Credit Karma, and the US Chamber of Commerce.

Sourced from GOBankingRates

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5 Ways to Monetize a Website

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COVID-19 has made 2020 a tough year. Millions of people have lost their businesses, jobs or had to accept a reduced income. Due to the pandemic, it is now common to find people searching the internet for ways they can make money online during these challenging times.

You may be among those looking for a way to earn online not only now but hope to find a money-making venture that makes you more prepared should a new pandemic happen in the future.

This is why website monetization has once again become a widely searched topic.

Although it has been tried, tested, and proven to be a great way to earn money online, many people have feared trying it out. This is mainly because creating a website that will generate an income for you requires patience, which many people lack.

Many individuals have started websites but given up along the way because of the challenges in sustaining and consistently creating content.

But if you want to start a website or want to revive your site, now is a perfect time. With lockdowns happening all over the world due to COVID-19, more people are spending their time online.

So if you’re able to create a good website, offer an excellent product or service, and successfully market your site, you should have loads of web traffic. It is this website traffic you can use to earn from your website. Here are the top ways you can monetize your site.

1. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate means to connect. When you do affiliate marketing, you connect with other businesses and earn a commission from selling their products or service to your website visitors.

Amazon has one of the most popular affiliate programs you can join. When you sign-up for their program, you will be given a link to include in the content you write to recommend various Amazon products on your website.

When people click on the link and purchase the product, you earn a percentage from the sale.

There are many affiliate programs out there. So do your research and look for the ones that suit your website’s niche.

Be sure to disclose to your audience that you’re using affiliate links for transparency.

2. Sell a Product or Service

Here you may need to rack your brain a little. With so many products and services available nowadays, it can be a bit difficult to stand out. But it is possible.

Look at what you’re passionate about and then find a problem within it. The simpler the problem, the better.

Once you found it, create a solution by way of a product or a service.

The good thing about selling your product or service is that you get 100% of the sale amount, unlike affiliate marketing, where you only get a commission.

3. Resell Your Website Traffic

Once you get thousands of visitors on your website, you can join platforms like Google Ads, Ezoic, or Mediavine to place advertisements on your website. When your website traffic sees or clicks on these ads, you get paid for it.

Alternatively, you can reach out to advertisers yourself and charge them to advertise on your website.

If your website numbers are still low, you can pay for a traffic service like ultimatewebtraffic. This web traffic seller can provide your website with 100% human and highly targeted website traffic.

4. Charge for Membership

This is a sure way to get paid with your website. For example, you could create exclusive content, then ask your website traffic to pay you a fee to access this content.

The content you provide has to be of the highest quality and not readily available to make your visitors see the need to pay for it.

Content on a membership website can include research, webinars, or podcasts.

5. Sponsored Posts

With a big website audience, you can reach out to companies within your niches that would be interested in your website traffic.

When you reach out, you can offer to publish an authoritative blog or video about their product or service and link to them. Include them in your regular newsletter, or place their ads on your site.

This can be done regularly. Only, be cautious of some brands because if you seem to be a bit biased toward their competitor, you may be seen as a threat to them.

Just make sure you know what you are doing and let them know your goal with your review or sponsorship deal.

Conclusion

While staying at home due to Covid-19 is not exciting, you could make the best of it and start a website that could earn you a regular income long after being done with this pandemic.

Monetizing a website is not a walk in the park, though, so here’s a quick checklist to see if you have what it takes to take on the task.

  • Attitude

As the age-old saying goes: your attitude determines your altitude. There is much truth behind that kernel of wisdom.

Monetizing a website is a long-term investment and may need time before you see dividends. You should have the right amount of patience, perseverance, and motivation to push through.

  • Goals

Your goals should be S.M.A.R.T., which stands for Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, and Timely.

  • Skills

Creating a good website will need some set of skills. You will need to plan, write, design, and even code a little.

Don’t worry if this seems like plenty of tasks to do. If you have good team management skills, you can hire people to reduce your workload.

You should also have a thorough understanding of how to buy website traffic. If you don’t, the best way to get immediate traffic is to work with a traffic service like web traffic experts. This web traffic provider can drive thousands of visitors to your websites within hours of paying for their service.

I wish you all the best in your website monetization efforts!

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Sourced from INFLUENCIVE

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Are You Doing the SWOT Analysis Backwards?

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By Laurence Minsky and David Aron

There are few tools more ubiquitous in management, marketing, and other key business functions than the SWOT analysis: It involves listing the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats facing your firm, division, functional area, or other aspects of your organization, products, or services. The results of a SWOT analysis can be (and almost always are) presented simply as a 2 x 2 grid, with one dimension representing the internal versus external factors, and the other depicting positive versus negative valence.

The problem is, as typically conducted, the SWOT is not really an analysis or diagnosis at all. It is simply list and categorization of the internal and external situational factors related to the subject that you’re evaluating, usually produced during a group brainstorming session. The resulting document is typically less than insightful and does not offer a clear path to action. It is simply an elegant organizational tool. That might be part of its attractiveness — besides its catchy acronym — and a key reason for its popularity.

There are a few reasons that SWOT, in its current form, falls short of desired outcomes. First, the traditional 2 x 2 grid layout for the analysis, which encourages users to present all of the information on a single PowerPoint slide or piece of paper, often leads to exceedingly short, often one- or two-word descriptions. This desire for brevity also often leads to shortcuts in thinking. In our experience as both consultants and teachers, for instance, we’ve found that an important attribute like “price” might be listed as a strength, weakness, opportunity, and threat without any further explanation. The SWOT offers no analysis or insight as to whether the price is too comparatively high, if competitors can undercut it, if a firm can run a promotion, or any other factor related to pricing.

Second, the SWOT analysis is surprisingly difficult to interpret, primarily because of the lack of a hierarchy. All four quadrants of the grid are emphasized equally. It is merely a snapshot of the current situation — or, worse, a snapshot of what’s currently on the minds of brainstorming session attendees.

Third, our natural instinct is to jump to solutions, particularly when it comes to listing opportunities. In too many cases that we’ve seen, SWOT users misinterpret what “opportunities” are, presuming that they are recommendations of “what could be done.” For instance, we once saw a bicycle tour service provider list “create a mobile application with a live map” as an opportunity. But this isn’t an opportunity in the SWOT sense of the word; rather, it is merely a recommendation that has not been fully processed. Rather, an opportunity might be the growth in the adoption of voice technology. Another: That phone apps are becoming easier to develop, yet the competition isn’t using them.

Despite these issues, SWOT can still be helpful tool for insight or planning if you change the way you use it. How do we mean? By turning the SWOT process on its head.

Drawing from our experience coaching leading brands and thousands of students, as well as building on the research of others, we have found that the traditional approach of identifying internal factors first (strengths and weaknesses) and then moving to external factors (opportunities and threats) just isn’t effective. To improve the inventory collection, you should start with the external factors, then turn your attention to the firm’s internal ones.

There are several reasons we recommend taking this approach. First, these environmental conditions exist not only for your firm but for all competitors. In effect, the external factors create the arena in which the competition takes place. Managers must adjust their strategies to reflect it, even as this environment changes. Since no business operates in a vacuum, it is the context around it that helps determine to what extent any particular internal attribute is relevant. Meanwhile, focusing on the external factors first can get you thinking more broadly about the internal factors, reducing the risk of myopia. In other words, taking this approach can lead you to uncover internal factors that you might not have otherwise considered.

Then, once you complete your inventory, you can actually use the factors to conduct a true analysis that can result in strategic recommendations for planning. Specifically, here’s how we recommend proceeding.

First, gather an inventory of relevant environmental conditions — the threats and opportunities. At this stage, don’t worry about whether these are positive or negative. Remember, we don’t want to take shortcuts. There are existing tools designed for organizing an environmental scan, such as the PEST, PESTEL, and STEEP, but don’t feel limited to these tools. If you have other preferred tools to help you organize the external factors, you can use them.

Next, explore internal strengths and weaknesses. Here, too, ignore whether they are potentially positive or negative. Your first job is to inventory the attributes. The relative positivity or negativity of a factor included in the inventory may again be a function of the external environment. At this early stage of the analysis, it is more important that the factors are included than how they’re categorized beyond simply being external or internal. Don’t settle for one- or two-word descriptors like “price” or “technology.” Explicitly spell out the situation with a detailed phrase or a sentence.

Generate recommendations with a simple sentence. With your external and internal inventories in hand, generating recommendations is now much easier. Simply consider each external factor’s relationship to each internal factor. To help, you might want to complete this sentence:

Given the condition of [external factor], our ability to [internal factor] leads to our recommendation that we [recommendation].

You may find that some external factors will not readily apply to certain internal factors, which means they might not lead to a recommendation. Yet, given enough time or with a creative group working on this analysis, you might develop options that you would not expect to reach, based on combinations of external factors and internal factors.

Let’s take an example, using the external factor of an economic recession as a starting point.

In a traditionally conducted SWOT analysis, one might include the objectively internal attribute of “price” in all four of the cells because it’s a strength (the firm’s product costs less to purchase than the competition’s), a weakness (people have less money to spend on the product), an opportunity (the firm can afford to run a price promotion), and a threat (the competition can easily undercut what the firm charges). This is not an analysis; it is merely a set of poorly supported suggestions.

In our model, the template listed above could lead to one or more thoughtfully developed recommendations such as:

Given the condition of our current recession, our ability to realize cost savings over our competitors leads to our recommendation that we reduce our price.

The model doesn’t stop there. Several other recommendations might flow from the use of this template, under the stated conditions. For instance, following the prescribed process for the analysis, the external factor would then be combined with another factor from the internal inventory, and then another, with each possibly (but not necessarily) leading to a unique recommendation:

Given the condition of our current recession, our ability to maintain strong relationships throughout our distribution channel leads to our recommendation that we offer discounts to our channel partners to help them weather the storm.

Or, for a perceived weakness:

Given the condition of our current recession, our low brand recognition leads to our recommendation that we target this brand for reduced marketing support, in favor of our stronger brands.

By looking at the external conditions, in conjunction with internal attributes, a set of clear-cut and supported recommendations can be generated. And this should be your goal: Using an analytical tool to help you identify a wide range of possible actionable outcomes. The process is straightforward and demands attention to a range of internal and external factors, and the results are recommendations that are more thoroughly developed and grounded. Try this approach the next time you’re asked to generate a SWOT and see the power of it for yourself.

By Laurence Minsky and David Aron

David Aron is Professor of Marketing and Director of Graduate Programs at Dominican University. A frequent conference presenter, his research on consumer satisfaction and marketing pedagogy has been widely published in academic journals.

Laurence Minsky is an Associate Professor at Columbia College Chicago. His most recent books include Global Brand Management, The Activation Imperative, and Audio Branding.

Sourced from Harvard Business Review

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What Steve Wiideman Has Learned Doing SEO Since 1999: SEO Consulting, eCommerce SEO, and Affiliate Marketing

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By Spencer Haws

Today, I’m excited to share with you an interview I did with Steve Wiideman from Wiideman.com.

Steve has been in the SEO industry since 1999…a dinosaur in internet years!  His first job out of college was doing SEO and search engine marketing.

So, Steve brings all of his SEO knowledge and experience to the podcast today.

In particular, we discuss how his SEO consulting group is working with clients doing local SEO, eCommerce SEO, and much more.

During the interview we discuss specifically how the Wiideman group helped Bob’s Watches:

  • eCommerce SEO
  • Bobs Watches has grown to over $40 million a year in revenue
  • and much more

We also discussed his view on affiliate sites and how it relates SEO.

  • Are affiliate sites really providing value or are they just doorway pages?
  • What sort of link building and keyword research should be done?
  • Ranking affiliate sites in Google

Steve is also a professor at Fullerton college and UCSD where he teaches SEO and online marketing.

He’s put together lots of video materials that he is giving away for free.

If you want to get free access to Steve Wiideman’s SEO videos you can go to AcademyOfSearch.com.  Use coupon code SEOSteve to get free access.

Get Academy of Search for Free

Free Access with Coupon code “SEOSteve”

If you’d like to follow along with Steve, be sure to head over to:

Watch Entire Interview with Steve Wiideman

 

 

Read Transcript

Hey Steve, welcome to the niche pursuits podcast.

Steve Wiideman: What’s up, Spencer, how are you doing? I’m doing really good.

Spencer Haws: It is great to connect and connect with an SEO veteran. You’ve been in the industry

Steve Wiideman: for a long time.

Spencer Haws: I do what I can and to know, but some of our listeners, maybe aren’t aware who you are. Right. So why don’t you give us just a quick background, who you are, what you’ve been involved with professionally.

Steve Wiideman: Of course. Yeah. So I started in digital, around the late nineties. I was freelancing doing some web design work for friends and family members. And. Really discovered a passion for it. One of my jobs, my I, my day job at IBM global services was to migrate data from what was going to printers and mail rooms to be online.

And I had this epiphany. I’m like, you know what? I’ll bet every business is going to have a website at some point, you know, and we’re talking late nineties, there were some sites didn’t even exist yet. Google didn’t even exist yet. And so, you know, I had that epiphany, I went back to school. I got a degree in e-business management.

You got to learn everything from database networking, graphic design, and pulling it all together through project management. And my first job out the Gates, my first professional job out the gate was as a search engine optimizer for a local. it’s more at the time it was more of a national, but I had a, brick and mortar location for monitors and that sort of thing.

And what year was your first job? Oh, geez. That was professionally. It was probably 2004, 2005. Okay. So before that I was just freelancing and going to school and, yeah, so 2000. Late 2005, I get a phone call saying, Hey, this this little company ran by a mouse, wants to hire you to manage paid advertising with this Google ad words and, and MSN ad center thing.

You know, could you, could you see if that’s something that’s a good fit for you? And I’m like work for Disney? That’d be amazing. So, I ended up actually being the STM account manager for disneyland.com, marketing and commerce marketing, you know, new Nemo ride grad night, commerce tickets, packages, reservations, and a new brand that they created called to adventures by Disney.

And that was an all flash website that couldn’t even be crawled or, you know, with no pages to index, there’s just a Swift file. So, you know, my, my role there, was mainly paid and I convinced my manager to give me a shot at this SEO thing. he, wasn’t very impressed that I ranked number one for.

Orange County SEO expert. And he said, tell you what show me that you can rank for SEO expert and we’ll talk. And so three months later after creating my SEO expert page and doing some promotion for it, adding video, getting some links to it. I’m on the first page. I’m like, like, Hey Terry, check it out.

I’m on the first page of Google for SEO expert. Let me do some SEO on these websites. And, and it comes back and goes, well, you’re not number one, few months later, I got the number one spot. I held it for 12 years, until I realized that my peer group and you know, that the community thought that it was bragging.

And I got blacklisted from a lot of speaking opportunities. the moment I dropped that some three years ago now. now I, I get the most amazing adventures with some of these peers that, that, before I thought I was just this guy that bragged about being number one for SEO expert. And now I get to go camping with these amazing friends and it was so worth it.

So that’s interesting.

Spencer Haws: So you think people didn’t like you because you ranked number one for SEO

Steve Wiideman: expert. And in fact, I, I saw lots of hate and blog posts and things back in the day that. It’s like, you don’t even know me. I, a few times I actually found the contact information of the people who wrote things about me and I’m like, Hey, let’s, let’s talk for a few minutes.

So you get to know who I am, you know? And then afterwards they post this guy actually had the audacity to call me. And, but it turns out he is actually a pretty cool guy, you know?

Spencer Haws: So I think that would be a good thing if you’re ranking for SEO expert.

Steve Wiideman: Well, I would just

Spencer Haws: ignore the haters.

They

Steve Wiideman: didn’t know what they were talking about anyways.

Yeah. Well, those, those haters now are my best friends and they’re so supportive of me. And when I get stuck on a really difficult technical or, or contextual SEO issue there they’re right there for me. So. we have some pretty exciting, amazing, you know, brands we get to work with now, a few restaurant chains, and I didn’t have that peer group around me, folks that were.

Just as experienced or veteran is as you call an earlier, you know, I don’t know that I’d be as successful. So I think it was worth it to, to move on from that what we’re going to hold list of new keywords. We’re going to try to tackle, but, I don’t think SEO expert is going to be one of them. Okay.

Spencer Haws: Well, so how did you actually end up making your first dollar online?

So you’re ranking for SEO expert. Was that kind of the first way you were getting clients or. Just curious. Yeah. How did you make your first

Steve Wiideman: dollar online? I think I started some of our own websites around 99 in 1999. I started to create some web directories. I had some web directories for, DJs and limousine drivers.

And at first it was just to help my, my friends and, and, you know, freelance clients that had those businesses. And then it evolved to something where I had people subscribing to my online directories. They pay an annual fee or monthly fee and. that was probably where I made the first dog was really just kind of creating my own line online directories.

All right.

Spencer Haws: that’s very cool. so what are all the businesses that you’re involved with now to kind of catch people up? You know, you’ve kind of given some of the history now, but, but what are you involved with now? is it just the one business? Wait a minute.com or. Is there

a

Steve Wiideman: portfolio there? I think, I think all of us, as we get started, you know, we, we get to a place after a couple of years, we own 500 domain names and we want to do something with all of them.

And we’ve got all these great ideas of what we want to do. that list has gone down, you know, it’s probably less than 70 domains that I own now, of which I probably use 10, some of which, are projects that I worked on with, students at some of the colleges I was doing guest speaking for and some mentoring for.

but the only two sort of companies or anything that I’m doing at the moment, one is just running our small group here at Wayman consulting. You know, we’ve got nine employees now and. we support everything from, you know, your local HVAC company to, you know, one of the largest restaurant, casual dining chains in the country.

and the other, the other sort of role I’m taking right now is an adjunct professor at Cal state Fullerton, UC San Diego. I’m not teaching six classes at Portland community college. So when everyone else gets off the clock and they go home and eat dinner and. You know, and watch the very entertaining news right now.

no I’m being sarcastic. I’m not, I’m, I’m putting courses together and helping students and helping the next generation of SEO so that, you know, in five, 10 years from now, You know, the, the, hopefully there’ll be more transparency, more ethics and more strategy and less, tactic, less, black hat and, you know, things that, that manipulate search results.

Instead, we’re building good foundations on how we, you know, how we handle digital marketing. So collectively I think I have. just over about 160 students. So, you know, it’s, it’s, because it’s an online course for digital certificate programs. Some of them are only one unit long. it’s not that challenging, but there are days where I’m like, I’m not going to get home tonight.

It doesn’t do things I’m doing, I’m running that demand at the moment. And, and with, wait a minute, we’ve got, you know, our, our training programs and our digital programs. And then I have the teaching side and the teaching side actually helps build a weight of insight. As we reinvent our website over the next month or two, it’s gonna be very educational and it’s going to leverage a lot of the content that I’ve created for the students.

Spencer Haws: Yeah. You know, I think it’s very cool that you’re teaching in college and the fact that there actually is a degree or courses for SEO and search engine marketing, that didn’t didn’t exist when I was going to college. I was actually surprised to hear that there was an E business, Degree when you graduated.

I didn’t know that existed back in there, but

Steve Wiideman: I got that postcard. I’m like really? Wow. I’m not going to say no to that. And then I saw a full sale, had a, an actual master’s degree program, like, Hmm. Should I go back to school and get a master’s degree? And, an e-business and I just never did. So did you graduate in, like, what

Spencer Haws: was it?

2003,

Steve Wiideman: 2004, 2004? Yeah. Okay. All right. So,

Spencer Haws: I hate to admit it, but I might be older than you. I graduated in 2002 and they didn’t have any online business courses that I was aware of. At least

Steve Wiideman: this was through Westwood college of technology and that’s awesome. It was a tech school, but. I also had a bit of a break between high school and college.

I had, you know, three years where I served in the us army in Fort hood. and then, you know, came back and did the work grind for a few years before I went back to school. So. Gotcha.

Spencer Haws: Very cool. So we did a brief call, before hitting record here and we kind of talked a little bit about what I’m involved with.

I mentioned that a lot of my listeners are building affiliate sites. I built a lot of affiliate sites and sort of in that discussion, you mentioned. Sorta that you don’t do your, your group doesn’t do a lot of consulting. I essentially asked you have any clients that are doing sort of affiliate marketing, you said no, not, not really.

and you sort of mentioned that, oftentimes, you know, affiliate sites are building a lot of doorway pages and, it’s just Google. Doesn’t really like that very much. It’s I’m

Steve Wiideman: paraphrasing. Yeah. A lot of, a lot of our effort is around lower funnel content. How do we drive customers? To our clients, you know, that the brick and mortars and the small stores and restaurants and some online, you know, e-commerce websites that we support where there’s an actual sale or a product.

So we can actually calculate ROI. One of the. One of the things that we really enjoy is geeking out on analytics and being able to say, Hey, you invested X, thousands of dollars in SEO this month and generated X dollars of revenue. It’s really to do that. Or you’re really easy to do that when you have an e-commerce website or a hybrid, if you’re a brick and mortar and you can place an online order, especially now during the pandemic, but can’t you do that with an affiliate site to some degree?

Yeah. I mean, you could do it where you’re, you’re calculating and importing data back. If you’re doing some. online ads to promote your, your page from an organic perspective, I suppose. Depending on how you’re doing it. If you’re doing it through a third-party network tying in which, which keywords generating traffic and that sort of thing can be a little more tricky with affiliate when there’s not a sale on the site itself, unless you’re drop shipping.

Of course job, ship’s different. Cause they’re still ordering on your website. I see.

Spencer Haws: When you, when do you want to get that granular data, right? You want to see that you ranked number one for this

Steve Wiideman: particular keyword. You want to see

Spencer Haws: how much this particular product sold from that page. cause, cause certainly we’re doing a lot as affiliate site owners, we’re doing a ton of analytics, you know, cause, that is the primary driver of traffic for affiliate sites is SEO.

Steve Wiideman: Right? Right. So if you were to perform a query right now for a product, with an intent to purchase, most of the results are going to be your, your Amazons and your, you know, your online stores. if you were to do a longer sweat, so query how, where compare versus ideas, strategies, tips, lists, right?

Those are the, the, the obvious opportunity for affiliate sites to create really rich long form content. Right. You’ll make recommendations within that content to, you know, to drive affiliate. We do have two affiliate clients that, that are in the medical industry and they’re selling like essential oils and those sorts of things.

And, and they’re doing really well because they create amazing content. They’ve got these great videos and like, hi, I’m Dr. So-and-so. And this is my wife, Dr. So-and-so and say, we’re going to be talking about backs, the unboxing, the YouTube videos that you know, that people are looking to decide whether they want to buy a product that.

You know, the, the product review keywords that you’re going after. I think there’s a huge opportunity there for affiliate marketing. but our, our forte has always been focused around, you know, direct sales and, you know, we really don’t have a lot of affiliate clients, but that’s not to say I don’t believe in it.

I think, I think affiliate’s amazing. And I think any, any entrepreneur, who’s not doing something to, to drive affiliate revenue. I mean our whole, our whole new website that we’re launching has a section for partners and folks that we recommend where the goal is to of course have affiliate relationship there.

So you’d be, you’d be silly not to diversify your, your online income streams by not doing a little bit of affiliate marketing. Right, right.

Spencer Haws: Yeah. No, and that’s, that’s good to hear just. To clarify for listeners, because most of them, that’s what they’re doing. You know, sort of those opportunities that you laid out said, Hey, there’s great opportunities for the comparison, the reviews, the lists, the all that, that, that’s exactly what I teach, and have been teaching for 10 years, right?

Is, is building these sort of niche affiliate sites. You write really in-depth content. You rank number one for Google for best XYZ product or. X versus Y product or whatever. and a lot of people built, you know, that’s their livelihood, you know, people do this full-time and they’re making really good money doing

Steve Wiideman: it at the equipment in my room was supposed to because of recommendations that I found likely.

Yeah. Ended up on BNH or somewhere else.

Spencer Haws: So just to clarify, you think Google is happy and, and they’re okay. Ranking this type of content affiliates that are building this in depth type of content that we just mentioned. Shouldn’t have to worry.

Steve Wiideman: No, not at all. I think, I think where they would have to worry is if, if they were trying to compete against a very behavioral targeted query, like by purchase order right out the gate, if you’re doing, you know, buy.

IPad case, you know, and, and I, I definitely encourage anyone who’s listening and watching to that, to do some of these queries where they’re using words like buy purchase order, reserve book, those, those types of call to actions, you know, really are conducive to somebody who’s in the, I need to buy now.

They’re not really interested right away to read an article. Their intent is I know what I want. I’m going to buy it. But if they’re in sort of mid funnel or upper funnel, it’s great. The greatest catalyst I can imagine. It’s more, you know, driving income through affiliate. back my, one of my first eBooks that I wrote in the two thousands was called SEO in a day.

And I went after, is it Monety or the little how’d you call it? It’s a saw you drink, right? Oh, I saw that they weren’t doing any, any sort of digital marketing for themselves and I’m like, all right, I’m going to pick, I want to pick one of these MLMs and just create a, a affiliate site and show that you can do optimization and get.

traffic and revenue in a day or less. And so we went through with this whole WordPress walk through our board, a little video on how to do it and create a content was up to like, you know, 10 o’clock at night creating content. The first thing that I optimized for was the thing that I had the most trouble with.

I couldn’t sign up. To become an affiliate without talking to an affiliate. I’m a tech introverted, you know, guy. I don’t at the time, I didn’t want to talk to anybody. So I did this search for Mondavi distributor ID, and I just wanted to set enters through your ID to sign up. I’m like, crap, I don’t have one.

They don’t want to talk to anybody. Five by pages into Google. I find a distributor ID and someone’s thread on some other website. And so I grabbed that and the very first page I create is Mondavi distributor. I need five, six, whatever, you know. Right, right. In the title of the page. And, you know, with, within a couple of weeks, I started getting calls from mom and be like, what are you doing?

You’re getting more downlines and more orders than like any of our affiliates who you working with, this, this person isn’t even responding to our emails. And I’m like, I don’t even know who the distributor ID was. I grabbed, I, I just, you know, I knew what I wanted. I was trying to find it and I optimized for it.

And so, yeah, four months later I’m getting checks from people who are buying this product and. so it was called STO in a day and it’s totally outdated now because it was pre Google penalties, like, you know, their penguin link penalty and they’re Panda content penalties. So a lot of the suggestions in there and the methods that I used to get links to the site quickly, you know, were obsolete.

But, but yeah, I love and passionate about it. Affiliate is I’m sure. All of us are awesome. Not

Spencer Haws: very cool. So, now you’re focusing more on, at least through Wiedemann group consulting. You’re more focused on local companies. e-commerce companies, those, those that, you know, they’re, they’re making purchases either on their side of they’re trying to drive foot traffic into their business potentially.

Steve Wiideman: Right, right. And part of it’s because you know, it, it gives us more of a challenge. You know, when, when we get a large corporate client who comes in and says, we’re on this really wonky CMS system, and we’re getting beat by all these competitors, what do we do? It gives us the opportunity to really challenge ourselves.

you know, the best could that competition and really big industries and, and, and explore and pioneer new areas of search. So, you know, for one of our restaurant chains, for example, we did a study recently of some 300 local pages. You know, if you have a brick and mortar company and you’ve got multiple locations, you’re going to have multiple pages or those locations.

And so we got to study all of those different pages and their attributes. What’s the difference between one that’s ranking higher and one that’s not, you know, and, and in doing that, you know, we’re, we’re creating and we’re building data and best practices and sort of the anatomy of a local landing page.

And, and that’s exciting because now, now you’re a pioneer now you’re. You’re someone who’s, who’s looked on as the guys who, who love to research and discover things and people will pay for the information. That’s the best part is we, as we do, you know, push a lot more of our educational stuff and the road, you know, the, the, the sales part of that and how we really generate revenue is when they purchase, you know, some of the research that we built.

Spencer Haws: So I wanted to ask a little bit about that. Just kind of how, your consulting group is set up. I understand that you’re not an agent agency, but you are a consulting group. So can you clarify that? And, and why is

Steve Wiideman: that? Sure. You know, I, I didn’t have a good experience in agency when I left the corporate world, 2008 or so I did two years in the agency and I was miserable.

I didn’t like it. How, how agencies treated clients in general. I didn’t like that. Yeah, the way that they they’ve really tried to have their secret sauce of what they do. And instead of being transparent, you know, when I, when I went off on my own and, you know, decided to be a freelance consultants, you know, late 2009, it was built around transparency.

Hey client, here’s all the things we’re going to do together. I’m gonna load it up into our project management system and we’re going to work together to get it done. And they’re like, wait, you’re giving me everything you do. Are you afraid? I’m just going to do it all myself. I mean, you’re looking at all this, so you really, you really want to do it all yourself.

Like no. So, and those clients that are DIY, they’re going to figure it out one way or the other. Anyway, those people who know and trust your expertise would feel better knowing that you’re their wing man. So we’re, we’re, we’re using a model that, that allows us to, to really help. Businesses to bring in their own SEO team, their own content writer, their own technical, you know, resources managing the tech side of SEO and their, their own outreach and link building digital PR teams.

And now all the things that they’re doing have the brand voice on them. And they’re, and they’re saving so much money. Once these resources get trained up and, and are able to do all the same things, agencies do. They get to save so much money in what would have gone to overhead and leadership and, you know, and, and, other costs.

By Spencer Haws

Sourced from NICHEPURSUITS

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Behind Shopify’s move to embed payments on Facebook and Instagram

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By Rimal Farrukh

  • Shopify landed a partnership with Facebook to expand seller checkout through Shop Pay on Facebook and Instagram.
  • According to Shopify, 28 percent of young online shoppers made purchases through social media.

Shopify announced a partnership with Facebook to expand its online checkout platform Shop Pay to all Shopify merchants selling across Facebook and Instagram. The expansion will enable Shop Pay as a payment option on Facebook Pay for consumers on Facebook and Instagram.

Currently the feature is available in the U.S on Facebook Pay for Shopify merchants using checkout on Instagram. In the coming weeks, it will be accessible to Shopify sellers in the U.S using checkout on Facebook.

“Facebook continues to be one of our most popular sales and marketing channels for our merchants,” said Carl Rivera, general manager at Shopify and head of product at Shop Pay.

“For example, at the start of the pandemic from March through April, marketing on Facebook and Instagram via Shopify’s channel integration saw 36 percent growth in monthly active users — a trend that continues to rise — paving the way for the very natural expansion of Shop Pay onto these platforms.”

According to Rivera, Shopify sees social shopping as a growing area of commerce driven largely by a younger demographic who are more likely to use social media to discover new brands and shop.

Shopify’s Future of Commerce report states that 28 percent of younger online shoppers said they purchased via social media, compared to 20 percent of middle aged online shoppers and 8 percent of older consumers. It also demonstrates that 54 percent of younger consumers who purchase from independent retailers discover brands through social media compared to 43 percent of middle aged consumers aged between 35 and 54 and 25 percent of consumers older than 55.

“Social commerce is a very effective tool for e-commerce that has only just begun gaining momentum and widespread usage,” said Alexander M. Kehoe, the co-founder of digital marketing and strategy agency Caveni Digital Solutions. “Listing your products on every channel available is fairly standard for most e-commerce sellers. The inclusion of even more easily accessible channels to place products on means that e-commerce providers are positioned to benefit significantly.”

In addition to its social media expansion, Shop Pay allows users to track orders and see the carbon emissions offset from the deliveries of their purchases. According to Shopify, Shop Pay has offset 75,000 tons of carbon emissions, which is the equivalent of 85 million trees protected in the Peruvian rainforest.

“With 53 percent of consumers saying they prefer green or sustainable products, we’re now making it possible for more consumers who check out on Facebook and Instagram to shop sustainably,” said Rivera.

In 2020. Shop Pay processed more than 137 million orders and by the end of the year and has facilitated nearly $20 billion in cumulative GMV since its launch in 2017. A Shopify study found that checkout on Shop Pay is 70 percent faster than a typical checkout, with a 1.72x higher conversion rate.

According to Joe Sinkwitz, CEO of influencer marketing network Intellifluence, Shop Pay’s social media expansion will open up significant business opportunities for social media influencers. Through increased monetary incentives, influencers will be in the position to market Shopify enabled products which will ultimately encourage more purchases.

“From an influencer perspective, we’re seeing a lot of excitement surrounding the Shopify integrations into Instagram and Facebook, as that will give creators a sizable increase in monetization capacity, and will be great for those brands hosted on Shopify to have the additional sales channel,” said Sinkwitz. “We expect the integration will in time be a primary driver of influencer marketing requests, in terms of activating Instagram as a more direct sales channel.”

By Rimal Farrukh

Sourced from TEARSHEET 

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TikTok faces trouble in Europe after it narrowly escapes U.S. ban

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By Michael Allison

More trouble for the social media company.

What you need to know

  • TikTok is facing complaints from European consumer bodies.
  • The BUEC and 15 other bodies accused the company of being lax with data and having skewed terms of service.
  • By way of response, TikTok offered a meeting with BEUC representatives to “listen to their concerns.”

TikTok is facing multiple complaints from the European Consumer Organisation (BEUC), and other consumer organizations in 15 European countries over privacy rights violations. The BEUC today argued that the social media app breached EU consumer rights and failed to protect children from both inappropriate content and stealth advertising. It called for a comprehensive EU investigation into TikTok’s policies and practices and requested more transparency from the company.

More specifically, the BEUC alleged that TikTok was unclear in its terms of service with the terms drafted to give outsized benefits to TikTok rather than users when it came to content ownership and remuneration.

The BEUC also took aim that TikTok’s virtual coins as well as its hashtag challenges, noting that both provided significant financial benefit for TikTok with little benefit for users. when it came to hashtag challenges, the body also accused TikTok of not doing due diligence in protecting teen and child users from suggestive content.

Finally, the BEUC stated that TikTok violated the GDPR by being unclear about what personal data it collected and how it used it.

Monique Goyens, BEUC Director, said in a statement:

In just a few years, TikTok has become one of the most popular social media apps with millions of users across Europe. But TikTok is letting its users down by breaching their rights on a massive scale. We have discovered a whole series of consumer rights infringements and therefore filed a complaint against TikTok.

Children love TikTok but the company fails to keep them protected. We do not want our youngest ones to be exposed to pervasive hidden advertising and unknowingly turned into billboards when they are just trying to have fun.

Together with our members – consumer groups from across Europe – we urge authorities to take swift action. They must act now to make sure TikTok is a place where consumers, especially children, can enjoy themselves without being deprived of their rights.

Speaking to Reuters, TikTok responded:

We’re always open to hearing how we can improve, and we have contacted BEUC as we would welcome a meeting to listen to their concerns.

The company has faced more challenges than most nascent social media did in their early years including attempted U.S. bans, temporary bans in Pakistan, and a seemingly permanent one in India leading to potential divestment.

Feature Image Credit: Source: Android Central

By Michael Allison

Sourced from androidcentral

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