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PepsiCo is building an in-house media and data team to shape its adtech agenda

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By Katie Deighton

PepsiCo is in the process of building out an in-house team dedicated to bridging data with media planning in anticipation of the company’s “data-driven future”, The Drum has learned.

The North American outfit will be known internally as the media and consumer data team. It comes with a remit of bringing together the “science of data with media insights and activation” and shaping the beverage company’s core digital media and adtech strategies, according to postings on its jobs site.

The company has been recruiting roles in the fields of CRM, digital, data management, shopper marketing and AdTech.

The latter’s roles, in particular, will be crucial to implementing the company’s refreshed approach to digital media buying. Pepsi is looking to create and implement a new adtech strategy, inclusive of first party, third party, social, and connected partner data.

The new adtech vision will see an in-house team sit at the core and work with external vendors.

Execs within this function will also be expected to launch internal marketing initiatives to “build awareness and adoption of the adtech” within the company. PepsiCo is set to recruit for the first time an adtech senior analyst and an adtech lead.

The team will be headed up by Mike Scafidi, the company’s director of marketing technology and data strategy. The Razorfish veteran took up the role in October 2018 after leading PepsiCo’s ‘data accelerator’ for nearly two years.

Scafidi stated his new function will “be working every day to drive the organization’s data-driven future”.

The company unveiled an in-house ‘augmented intelligence’ tech dubbed Ada last year, in partnership with automated marketing platform Zappi. It hopes the AI will allow for a more seamless processing of its data in order to better inform marketing, pricing and sales decisions internally.

Outside of North America, PepsiCo has been putting more pressure on its media agencies to deliver stronger online media results through innovation. It recently partnered with Mindshare in APAC to test a blockchain programmatic alliance, which resulted in a 28% uplift in the efficiency of viewable impressions through the deployment of ‘smart contracts’.

PepsiCo has slowly been bringing its marketing functions in-house for some time. Back in 2015, its president at the time, Brad Jakeman, predicted “the agency model is not going to bend, it’s going to break” and warned agencies they would be getting a “smaller and smaller share of the pie”.

It has since pulled its core social media teams in-house and recently ended its relationship with VMLY&R, which had run its digital accounts for Gatorade and Tropicana for the best part of eight years.

The company’s in-house creative team, Creators League Studio, was famously responsible for the disastrous 2017 release of a spot featuring Kendall Jenner.

However, it recently tapped Goodby Silverstein & Partners for its 2019 Super Bowl spot.

Pepsi did not respond to The Drum’s requests for comment.

By Katie Deighton

Sourced from The Drum

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Brands Have Utterly Lost It on Twitter, or Why Everybody Is Tweeting About Pee and Coconut Water

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I’m just gonna get right into this because there’s really no vamp that’ll do it justice: The official, verified account of Vita Coco, the coconut water brand owned by All Market Inc., is tweeting about piss.

On Wednesday, an amateur MMA fighter named Tony Posnanski was tweeting about how coconut water is “fucking disgusting.” The Vita Coco account, seeing an opportunity for brand engagement, offered to send him some free product. Posnanski replied, and I quote, that he’d “rather drink your social media persons piss than coconut water.” Which is what gets us to, well, this picture of a Vita Coco social media person standing in a bathroom stall holding a giant jar — with a Vita Coco sticker — full of, allegedly, pee.

Honestly, just take a minute to sit with that.

Upon closer inspection of the photo, I became increasingly skeptical that the jar actually contained urine. The color seemed wrong to me. Frankly, it looked a little like coconut water. (If you’ve never actually looked at coconut water in a glass, well, just know there is a reason it comes in opaque packaging.) It seemed like too much liquid. I reached out to Vita Coco for comment.

Here is the official statement from the Vita Coco Twitter account: “Madison. It’s pee.”

Since the dawn of advertising, most beverage products have sought to avoid comparisons between their products and urine. Not in 2019; in 2019, the pee discourse on Twitter is the stuff brands dream about — the kind of social lift companies can try to test in focus groups and plot for months but often end in failure, and even criticism, when they get implemented in reality. Think about it this way: Everyone on Twitter is talking about Vita Coco right now. What brand wouldn’t want that kind of word of mouth, piss or no piss? Brands spend thousands of dollars on writers and marketers and consultants trying to develop “authentic” voices on social media, but nothing is more authentic than a big jug of pee. Earlier this month, Burger King released a line of “Real Meals,” one of which was called the “Pissed Meal.” It didn’t go over super well. I can’t imagine the dollars and time that went into planning that campaign. Maybe they should have interpreted the “Pissed Meal” a little more literally.

Feature Image Credit: Vita Coco via Twitter

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Sourced from Intelligencer

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Is Your Business’ Website Traffic Declining? Here Are 14 Tips To Diagnose The Drop

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Sourced from Forbes

Website traffic is an important marketing metric for most companies. The more visitors who see your Web content, the more chances you have to make an impact, develop relationships and boost sales. That’s why a sudden and sharp decline in traffic can be such an unpleasant jolt—it represents lost opportunities to convert viewers to customers.

Identifying the issue is one thing; diagnosing it can be much more tricky. There are many potential causes of a decline in website traffic, ranging from a Google algorithm update to technical issues. We asked members of Forbes Agency Council to offer tips on where a business should start investigating a significant loss in website traffic. Here’s what they had to say.

1. Check For Recent Google Updates

For a dip in organic traffic, the first place to look is with Google to see if they’ve recently released an algorithm update that negatively affected your rankings and visibility. The most recent example of this happened in August 2018, when Google released its “Medic” update. – Steve Cross, iSynergy

2. Improve Your SEO

The best place to start is checking to make sure you are up on Google algorithms and that your content matches the parameters of how Google performs searches. It is ever-changing, which means you can’t just throw some keywords in and expect results. Lower traffic means fewer people are seeing you—improving your SEO strategy is how to fix that. – Jason Hall, FiveChannels Marketing

3. Check Your Traffic Sources

What’s great about analytics is that you can “see” why there is a decline in website traffic. Check your traffic sources before and after the decline so you can find which source was mostly affected. If it’s organic (search engines), look at your rankings; if it’s social, track down what you were posting before and after; and if it’s referrals, then make sure these sites are still linking to you! – Rafael Romis, Weberous Web Design

4. Determine If It’s A Technology Issue

In the markets we serve, a sudden drop in traffic is virtually always a technology issue. If you build great content that ideal prospects cannot resist and you market it appropriately and with respect, there is almost never a steep decline unless the technology breaks. There are all kinds of tech issues that can cause declines. This is why our clients rely on us to have really sharp tech skills. – Randy Shattuck, The Shattuck Group

5. Look At The Stories You’re Telling

Have you experienced a lull in new content? Have you made a shift to different types of stories? If you’re doing A/B testing to see what types of content your consumers prefer, then congratulations—you just figured it out. If not, then maybe it’s time to take a hard look at your strategy and find ways to tell new stories that will be more engaging for your readers and keep them coming back for more. – Lisa Arledge Powell, MediaSource

6. Check For Outdated Terminology

First, review your site’s text for the latest terminology. An example is “marketing” versus “sales enablement.” Second, review how prospective customers find or don’t find your site. Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) is one approach. An example is a Web search for “marketing agency” versus “sales enablement agency.” As industry buzzwords change, so will your page rank. – Jim Caruso, MediaFirst PR – Atlanta

7. Check Web Hosting Infrastructure

I would recommend checking the server/Web hosting infrastructure to ensure everything is technically performing and optimal. Then I would look to SEO, including the page rank and any recent on-site changes that may have impacted index scoring. – Jordan Edelson, Appetizer Mobile LLC

8. Look At Your Bounce Rate

The first place to look is bounce rate to determine if traffic arrived but dropped off or if traffic never arrived in the first place. If the former, it’s time to look at design and navigation as well as website performance to figure out where the problem is. If the latter, then it’s time to review SEO and see if there was a change in the search algorithm that you can adjust for. – Stefan Pollack, The Pollack PR Marketing Group

9. Check Google Analytics

If you see an unexpected dip in traffic in Google Analytics (GA), you simply have to dig further to see what the cause is. Check the Acquisition Overview in Google Analytics to determine which channel had the biggest dip—organic, direct, referral, paid search or social. This typically will point you in the right direction to determine where you need to investigate further. – T. Maxwell, eMaximize

10. Do Analytics Integration And Messaging Audits

If the spike is sudden, it’s likely an issue with your analytics integration. If the decline is gradual, the situation is likely more serious. It might mean your messaging no longer resonates, the content you have on your website is stale or you’re not getting media coverage that can push additional readers to your site. Conduct a website audit or find out if a search engine algorithm changed. – Kathleen Lucente, Red Fan Communications

11. Make Sure The Drop Is Real

Start by making sure it’s an actual loss of traffic and not an issue with your analytics measurement tool (e.g., pages dropped GA code). Once you’ve ruled that out, investigate the source(s). In other words, what channel(s) dropped? Was it organic search? Paid media? Email? Direct? All of the above? Knowing which channels/sources/mediums were impacted will help you understand the cause. – Gyi Tsakalakis, AttorneySync

12. Analyze Trends By Source And Channel

When traffic is on the decline, it’s important to understand where the loss is coming from. This means a deep dive into the source (the origination of the traffic—e.g., Google) and the channel (the type of traffic—e.g., social media) to determine where the attrition is occurring. Once that’s uncovered, look at what has changed. Once you identify these factors, you can create a strategy to improve. – Bryan Shetsky, Lamark Media

13. Check Backlinks To Your Site

First check backlinks to your site on different directories, industry association pages and even paid listings that may be powering traffic to your website from a credible source. Changes to those sites that impact your links could be devastating. Quality backlinks from authoritative and relevant sites also help in getting better search engine rankings. – Jim Heininger, The Rebranding Experts

14. Catch It Early With A Daily Scorecard

With tools like Google Data Studio, it’s easy to create a custom scorecard for your analytics and have it emailed each day. The trick is setting up segmentations for monitoring changes in traffic against a monthly or yearly cadence. Next, breaking down site traffic by channel (SEO/paid/email/social) helps to quickly identify what’s happening by channel and fix small issues before they become big. – Jacob Cook, Tadpull

Sourced from Forbes

 

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Google Has Teamed Up With Stella McCartney In An Effort To Help Reduce Fashion’s Environmental Footprint

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Sourced from ELLE

The pilot scheme will compile data that will encourage fashion companies do better.

With the fashion industry’s environmental impact significant and growing, pressure is on brands to rethink their production processes. However, one of the main problems with this is that brands do not have the ability to clearly see and understand the supply chains they are using – there is essentially a gap in data and a lack of clear explanation, and this is where Google comes in.

At the Copenhagen Fashion Summit today, a new pilot scheme will be announced, which aims to give brands a more comprehensive overview of their supply chains, particularly at the level of raw material production, which is where much of the environmental impact takes place. To give you some idea, the fashion industry is responsible for 20 per cent of wastewater and 10 per cent of carbon emissions globally and most of this occurs in the first stage of production.

Google will be developing a tool which uses data analytics and machine learning to compile this information. It will then work with eco-luxury label Stella McCartney – which has been a pioneer in the fashion industry when it comes to environmental impact – to translate the data into meaningful figures that can be shared with the industry, so that brands can take action.

The pilot scheme will begin by looking at cotton and viscose, which have been chosen due to the scale of their production, the availability of data and impact considerations.

The hope is that better visibility for brands will allow them to take action in choosing raw materials and processes which have more sustainable practices in mind. This is just the first stage of the process, with Google hoping to continue to develop further schemes that will help the fashion industry to drastically reduce its impact on our environment.

Sourced from ELLE

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Axiata urges operators to be realistic on data analytics

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By Chris Donkin

LIVE FROM DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION WORLD, NICE: Mobile operators generally hold an inflated view of their ability to sell internal services using data analytics, but underestimate the technology’s cost-cutting potential, Axiata Analytics Centre head Pedro Uria-Recio (pictured) told Mobile World Live.

In an interview, Uria-Recio said: “Typically telecom operators overestimate their ability to increase their own revenue through analytics, because it is not only about analytics. That information will tell you who is likely to buy something, but then you have to reach the customer through the right channel and make the right offer, so it goes far beyond.”

However, he added operators were generally behind the curve on taking advantage of data to improve network performance and cut overheads.

“The second case is reducing cost. Here, I think telecom operators underestimate their ability to optimise the network through [technologies such as] artificial intelligence,” he noted. “There are things you can do to optimise the antennas and location of the network assets.”

When it comes to external use cases and partnering with other industries, he added “there is huge potential, but telecom operators have not yet cracked it”.

Opportunities cited include credit scoring, fleet management and advertising, though he warned many of the most lucrative sectors are “difficult to get into” and require collaboration with vertical companies.

To aid its own efforts, Axiata Group has a team of around 170 people working in data science and analytics. The division works on both optimising its own processes and selling services to third parties.

By Chris Donkin

Chris joined the Mobile World Live team in November 2016 having previously worked at a number of UK media outlets including Trinity Mirror, The Press Association and UK telecoms publication Mobile News. After spending 10 years in journalism, he moved to telecoms PR as a content specialist producing white papers and marketing collateral for some of the biggest names in the mobile sector. Now working as Content Editor across all channels of the MWL portfolio, Chris produces news and in-depth features on key issues from across the industry. @ChrisDonkin1

Sourced from Mobile World Live

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Interview: Understanding the difference between analytics and AI

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Sourced from IT Brief

Recently IT Brief had the opportunity to sit down with SAS CEO Dr Jim Goodnight to discuss analytics, AI and the future of SAS.

To start off with can you just tell us a bit more about SAS’ journey within the education industry?

We have always had situations where businesses approach us and ask us to work with higher education institutions to ensure that students are familiar with our products because those skills are vital to the aforementioned businesses. So, we work with universities to set up programs that teach students analytics, and we’ve been doing that for a while.

Can we just switch gears a bit to healthcare, how do you see the industry changing with emerging tech?

A lot of stuff in healthcare we’re doing right now is around computer vision, to help the doctors. In Amsterdam, we’re working with them to try to better understand whether chemotherapy is working or not, whether it’s reducing the size of tumours. And I think as the doctor on stage said that is one of the worst parts of a doctor’s job is to sit there for hours going over CAT scans. We’re working on making that process more automated.

Obviously, we’re still working on this mainly at a university level, however, the potential impact of this technology is immeasurable. When it comes to data, I am of the belief that anything a human can see, we can teach a machine to learn it.

On the note of higher analytics, AI is often used as an umbrella term for analytics tools and this, in turn, can lead to misconceptions about its capabilities. What are some of the major risks of these misconceptions and what would your advice be to CTOs looking to adopt this technology?

Well, that once again depends on what you believe AI is. Artificial intelligence is defined as a computer making choices a human would normally make, however, that could mean a lot of things. The AI systems we have at the moment are primally rules-based, as you mentioned they analyse data and then refer to a set of rules to make their choice. Sometimes this can lead to some issues.

Take for example a bartender serving drinks and replace him with a robot, now the robot asks for age if the person displays proof that they are over 21 they get served a drink because the machine deems that the legal move, however, it does not take into account behaviour or intoxication level. You can see how that might complicate things, it’s the same for most businesses, you need to be aware of the limits of the current technology and not expect it to act beyond its programming.

I consider that most of the heavy-duty machine learning is artificial intelligence, but the strict, strict definition of that term. So, CTOs do have to be careful.

Just to finish off, SAS does a lot of work with children, schools and education programmes, what’s been the major driver behind this?

I think it’s important that the youth be able to read and write and do mathematics. So we do a lot of work in poorer places where kids aren’t often afforded the same kind of education that you and I have received and I believe its important that we do our best to help them receive that and prepare them for a better future. In the US for example, only about 40% of the kids can read at the third-grade level when they graduate from the third grade. We need to live up to our societal duty and help those in need.

Sourced from IT Brief

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Why General Mills is spending more of its digital budget on influencers

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By Seb Joseph

General Mills is spending up to a third of the digital budget for some of its brands on influencer marketing.

A recent campaign for the CPG advertiser’s vegan and fruit snack Lärabar cost £700,000 ($905,000) to promote online in the U.K., and around £230,000 ($298,000) of it went to influencers. Speaking at an Oystercatchers event in London on May 14, Arjoon Bose, head of marketing for Europe at General Mills, said the decision to spend more on influencers came from the need to show his bosses how effective influencers are compared to other forms of marketing.

By Seb Joseph

Sourced from DIGIDAY UK

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A primer for using music in marketing

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By Adrianne Pasquarelli.

Brand Playbook looks at best practices for using copyrighted music—and how to avoid snafus.

Indoor cycling company Peloton pedaled into some legal trouble in March—to the tune of $150 million—when the brand was sued for trademark infringement by a group of music publishers representing the likes of Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars. For Peloton, which has made a name for itself by selling a fitness experience built on music, the lawsuit exemplifies a larger issue that newer brands face as they grow from scrappy upstart to seasoned marketer.

“The small startups may get away with using music without a royalty for a couple of reasons: They’re unknown to musical artists or their publishing houses, or they’re just too small to be bothered with,” says Scott Rogers, a partner in the copyright and trademark litigation group at the law firm Ulmer & Berne. “But as companies grow, continued use of unlicensed music certainly has the potential to be a real problem for them.”

When Peloton debuted seven years ago, it was relatively small and unknown. But the brand has exploded in popularity in recent years, investing more in marketing and introducing a new treadmill product as it prepares to go public this year. While it eventually removed classes featuring songs by the popular artists in question, it has also changed tactics, recently counter- suing the group of music publishers, alleging anticompetitive behavior.

“Very often there’s a cavalier attitude toward licensing music, even though music is a big part of what they’re doing,” says Owen Sloane, partner in the entertainment, media and arts department at law firm Eisner, noting the risks could include complaints from brand investors.

Experts say there are several strategies marketers can employ to avoid musical snafus—as well as the unwanted press that goes along with them—and also get the most bang for their buck. Some tactics could even improve brands’ use of music in their marketing by encouraging more consumer engagement.

“Brands that incorporate a good music strategy play a role in the consumer’s life beyond the product,” says Eric Sheinkop, author of the book “Return of the Hustle: The Art of Marketing With Music,” and an executive board member of SoStereo, a company that provides sonic identities for brands.

Try a cover
Marketers that might not be able to afford the costs of securing licenses from all of the creators involved with a song—writers, publishers and
artists—could opt for a cover version of the song instead. In this strategy, the brand only needs to get rights from publishers and, in some cases, from others, but covers are much cheaper options, experts say. Brands could also personalize cover songs for different markets—an Italian version in Italy, for example.
“It gives you the ability to localize anthems or campaigns by doing covers,” says Sheinkop.

Experiment with shorter terms
When Budweiser aired its Super Bowl spot earlier this year, it paid top dollar for the rights to Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” to promote its use of wind power—but those rights were only for a limited time, compared with the typical three-to-six-month minimums. Anheuser-Busch InBev had the Dylan rights for two weeks before turning to a rerecorded version of the song by the Cloves for future broadcasts. Using short-term rights is a smart way to save money but still make a big splash, experts say.

Do it in stages
Some music publishers are willing to work on alternative plans for startups short on cash, according to Sloane. He says that startups could devise a contract with a publisher that starts with a less expensive license, and builds to something more lucrative as the brand becomes more successful and has more money to allocate to music license fees. While this practice is not widespread, it could work for marketers like Peloton, which start small and grow more popular.

Mix it up
Some brands have found success in both avoiding lawsuits and keeping costs low by using a mix of music sources. Zumba, the global fitness brand based in Hallandale Beach, Florida, creates one-third of its music in-house as exclusives; sources one-third from lesser-known, independent artists; and licenses hits from established, popular musicians for the last third. The formula has worked well for the company, which can also claim it “discovered” several musicians who went on to larger success and recognition, such as Jenn Morel and Don Omar. Zumba works with thousands of artists.

“The Zumba experience has many different elements,” says AlbertoPerlman, CEO at the 18-year-old brand, noting switches from Reggaeton to hip-hop to salsa, for example. “When we can’t find the right song we say, ‘Let’s create one.’”

Consider tapping technology
There’s also more technology available to help marketers find the best music mix for their brands. Sheinkop’s company SoStereo has developed an AI tool that will create music in the vein of popular songs already in existence.
“It’s not all or nothing,” Sheinkop says, referring to the choice between expensive big-name artists or bland elevator music. “There’s a lot of opportunity in-between.”

Feature Image Credit: Tam Nguyen

By Adrianne Pasquarelli.

A reporter with Ad Age since 2015, Adrianne Pasquarelli covers the marketing strategies of retailers and financial institutions. She joined Ad Age after a dozen years of writing for Crain’s New York Business, where she also focused on the retail industry. Over the course of her career, she has won awards from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers, the National Association of Real Estate Editors and the Jesse H. Neal Awards.

Sourced from AdAge

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What Is Business Intelligence?

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Business Intelligence software collects, stores and analyses data, turning it into useful information to help businesses make better decisions.

As the internet is used by companies to discern and target potential consumer trends, the desire to collect vast amounts of data has grown exponentially. Making sense and use of the data collected requires a system for collecting, storing and analysing it.

If you’re old enough to remember, or have seen the original “Star Trek” series, you may recall that Captain Kirk and others could merely ask a computer a question, and the computer, after some blinking of lights and strange beeps, would deliver an answer either by voice or print-out.

With Business Intelligence software, an employee at a desk with a computer merely needs to type in a query, and within a much shorter time and without the strange beeps, an answer is displayed.

What Is Business Intelligence?

Business Intelligence, or BI, is the term given software applications that change raw data into meaningful and useful information to help businesses make better decisions. The term Business Intelligence actually came into use around the 1950s. It grew out of early computing technology called ‘decision support systems.’

Business Intelligence systems have grown more powerful since then, due to increased data collection and greater storage capacity, and the burgeoning use of smartphones and wearable devices that all help in data collection.

In the 1950s, companies didn’t have access to smartphone metadata, internet usage records, social media activity, or “smart home” assistants like Alexa and Echo.

How Does Business Intelligence Work?

The main purpose of Business Intelligence platforms is to sift through data to find patterns and trends.

There are usually four components to BI software:

Data analysis, the reports from which can influence company direction, product line ups and even hiring decisions;
Data mining, which is the analysis of large sets of data to find patterns and correlations;
Text analytics software, which sifts through unstructured textual data to find patterns and is used to analyse sentiment in social media posts or online customer feedback, and
Business analytics, which has its own three main forms:

  • Descriptive, which describes data you already have, to look to identify trends and relationships inside of it, like page views, and even sales numbers within a specific department.
  • Predictive, which searches for a correlation between a single unit or factor, and the features pertaining to it to find some correlation between different sets of data. This allows companies using it to predict future patterns from past trends, and is according to experts the fastest growing form of analytics.
  • And decision analytics, which helps companies make decisions by analysing not only past data, and extracts trends, but also looks at future conditions such as manufacturing trends, or what the market it going to be like in a few years. Decision analytics even makes predictions on shortages of resources, to help map out the safest course for a company to take over a number of years.

The main way to make use of all the info available is “data visualization,” which also is growing sub-field in Business Intelligence. Data visualization is the graphic display of results of your data mining efforts, or analytics, and can update in real time.

There are three main types of data used in Business Intelligence functions:

  • Structured, which resides in a fixed form, is labelled, such as with a name and other information collection boxes on websites, or address fields for shipping information, has a header, and can be put into a database program like Excel, and you can query it or search it with a computer, so it can be analyzed.
  • Semi-Structured, which has elements of both structured and unstructured data.
  • Unstructured, which has information that can’t be easily read by computers, and is difficult to organized in traditional databases, because it can’t be stored or collated in rows or columns. This is the most common form of data found on the internet.

Data usually resides across different systems, such as CRM programs, marketing automation systems, customer information – such as consumer sentiment – or reviews in social media platforms.

The first step in BI is to take inventory of data your company already produces, and figure out how you can analyse it and how you can cross-reference them.

The more often data is extracted and analysed, the more up-to-date analytics reports from the data will be.

A method of collecting open-source software utilities to facilitate use of a network of many computers to solve problems that involve massive amounts of data, Apache’s Hadoop, is used with Business Intelligence by large customers such as Facebook (FB – Get Report) , which customizes it, and Ebay (EBAY – Get Report) .

Why Is Business Intelligence Important?

Business Intelligence Trends

The trends in BI seen most important in a survey of 2,679 users, consultants and vendors by BI-Survey.com were master data and data quality management, data discovery, and self-service BI.

According to the survey, “While master data and data quality management builds a strong foundation for handling data, the significance attached to data discovery and self-service BI shows that the empowerment of business users is a consistently strong trend.”

The same survey also found that agile BI development and advanced analytics and analytics teams are increasing in importance; agile BI development is connected to a cooperative approach between lines of business and IT, while advanced analytics expresses the need for businesses to use data in a more beneficial way. Advanced analytics also includes machine learning, tightly interconnected to the sphere of artificial intelligence, the survey said.

Meanwhile, real-time analytics and mobile BI appear to be decreasing in importance, the survey discovered. Either current tools and systems aren’t able to provide these kinds of applications, or priorities have changed, the survey suggested.

Feature Image Credit: Shutterstock

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Sourced from TheStreet

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How to Turn Your Book into a Year’s Worth of Content

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By Tanya Hall

If you have a book, you’ve already done the hard work and have a full year’s worth of content at your fingertips. Here’s how to divide and conquer your book to make it work for your online spaces.

Though most entrepreneurs understand the value of a strong online presence, blogging and social media can be a pain to upkeep when you’re also trying to run a business. Even when you set aside the time to focus on your online brand, it can be a struggle to come up with ideas, create content, and find the time to post that content once it’s created.

The good news is that, if you have a book, you’ve already done the hard work and have a full year’s worth of content at your fingertips.  Here’s how to divide and conquer your book to make it work for your online spaces.

Step 1 – Start With Blog Posts

Assume your book has 12 chapters. Consider each of those chapters a monthly theme. From each chapter, dissect the information into 4 key points. Turn each point into a blog post by recycling content from the book, changing or adding 10-20% to make it readable as a stand-alone piece of content, and including a fresh example or connection to a current event.

Step 2 – Draft Social Media Posts

After you’ve parsed your book into 52 blog posts, it’s time to think about promoting each blog post to your community in order to drive them to your website to engage further with your brand. Draft one LinkedIn update, one Facebook update, and 3-5 tweets that pull out a fact, quote, or key point from each blog post. Plan to sprinkle those social shares in throughout the week.

Bonus: Are you encouraging people to sign up for your newsletter when they visit your website? Be sure to keep those subscribers engaged! You can easily create 12 monthly newsletters that highlight each month’s theme and corresponding blog content. When it’s time to send, just update with current news and upcoming events to make the content timely.

Step 3 – Schedule In Advance

Once you have you have your individual pieces of content, schedule all 52 blog posts, 52 LinkedIn updates, 52 Facebook Updates, 156-260 tweets, and 12 newsletters. This is the tedious part, but it’s worth it to automate your content calendar. Platforms like Hootsuite can help you keep track.

Congratulations! In just a few days, you’ve created and scheduled a full year’s worth of blog, social media, and newsletter content. Now all you have to do throughout the year is engage, and that only takes 15 minutes a day. Respond to comments on your blog and social channels, share current events and news stories, and interact with others. Try to tie your daily engagement back to your monthly theme (which you pulled directly from your book, repurposed into 4 valuable blog posts, and further developed into a week’s worth of social promotion) to maintain consistency and give your content purpose.

Feature Image Credit: Getty Images

By Tanya Hall

Sourced from Inc.

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