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Why Is It Important to Follow Your Own Path?

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By Brian D. Evans,

There are plenty of benefits to being a trailblazer.

From the moment we start crawling, we’re programmed to look to those around us and mimic what they’re doing. A huge part of growing up is simply learning to replicate other’s actions in order to fit in with family, friends, and society at large.

But for many people, especially entrepreneurs, there are plenty of benefits to taking a slightly different path.

I don’t mean you have to necessarily abandon what works for everyone—there’s no need to reinvent the wheel at every turn—but experimentation is crucial to success. In fact, most successful entrepreneurs I know didn’t follow a script. Instead, they found a different way to approach a problem and managed to create a better solution than anyone else before them.

Here’s why every aspiring entrepreneur can find value in wandering off the beaten path:

You find your own formula.

Today, you can use a formula for just about anything. There’s always a program, a webinar, or a course that purports to teach you the “secret” to doing something well.

I’ve typically stayed away from those types of courses because it’s easy to fall into the trap of buying a product and expecting it to solve all your problems for you. There’s plenty of value in seeing how someone else found success, don’t get me wrong. But the value you get from reading a book or taking a class is more about activating your creativity and helping you think about what your path forward will be.

A webinar isn’t going to do the work for you. In fact, that person’s secret to successmay have been dependent on a specific set of circumstances or fortunate timing. Even worse, the market may have become saturated after thousands of people jumped in and tried to do the exact same thing.

You can’t buy the formula to success—you have to discover it on your own.

Your creativity gets a boost.

Following your own path creates a virtuous creative circle. You have to be creative in order to do something new, and by using that part of your brain repeatedly, you become better at thinking creatively.

When you follow someone else’s footsteps exactly, you’re essentially checking items off a list. It’s possible you might have to use some creativity to accomplish them, but it’s not the same as truly creating a new path.

If you have to come up with that checklist yourself and develop the entire strategy behind it, that’s a different story. Personally, I find that when I have to create my own path, something activates in my brain. It feels like all neurons are firing, and I start coming up with ideas on how to do things even better.

Remember, the more you work on thinking a little differently than everyone else, the better you’ll get at it.

You feel energized and empowered.

One of the most important aspects of following your own path is the feeling you get when you realize you’ve done something great.

I’ve always felt a sense of accomplishment when I’ve had success, whether or not it was my own idea. There’s something about following your own path that’s extremely empowering. You look around and realize, “I did this. I should be proud of myself.”

When you just copy what someone else has done, you don’t get the same sense of empowerment or the same confidence boost.

You perform at your best.

To get to the highest level of competition—business, sports, music—you have to follow your own path.

Because in any competitive field, you’ll quickly reach a point everyone is talented and works hard. Everyone knows the game inside and out. There are no easy wins anymore. If you’re going to succeed, you have to be able to do something a little different, to make a unique move.

It’s easy to see this dynamic at work when you watch competitive chess. When two grandmasters play, both of them know every strategy and gambit. In order to win, one of them has to use their creativity to employ a maneuver in a unique way.

Honestly, you can get fairly far by copying what other people do. But to reach true heights, you have to follow your own path.

You develop a sixth sense about ideas.

Finding your own route doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll have a consistent string of victories or success stories to tell people about. You’ll have ups and downs just like anyone else.

But after a while, you’ll learn to gauge the merit of an idea or a venture by how you feel about it.

You’ll start on a new project, and even though you may not immediately start making money or finding customers, you’ll feel that sense of energy and empowerment that you had in other promising situations. That part of your brain lights up again and you just know you’re on to something with plenty of potential.

When you thoughtfully deviate from what everyone else is doing, you get the best of both worlds. You can take what you know works, and then use your creativity to build something uniquely your own—something no one else has done before.

And while that path may not be taken as often, it’s the surer route to success.

Originally published on Quora.

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Feature Image Credit: MaDedee/Shutterstock

By Brian D. Evans,

Inc. 500 Entrepreneur / Founder at Influencive

Sourced from Thrive Global

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The mind distracted: technology’s battle for our attention

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Sourced from PHYS ORG

Are we hooked like digital junkies or can we wean ourselves away from the screens which dominate our lives?

Between distractions, diversions and the flickering allure of a random suggestion, the major computer platforms aim to keep us glued to our screens come what may. Now some think it is time to escape the tyranny of the digital age.

Everyone staring for hours at a screen has had some exposure to “captology”—a word coined by behavioural scientist BJ Fogg to describe the invisible and manipulative way in which technology can persuade and influence those using it.

“There is nothing we can do, like it or not, where we can escape persuasive technology,” this Stanford University researcher wrote in 2010.

All of us experience this “persuasive technology” on a daily basis, whether it’s through the endlessly-scrollable Facebook or the autoplay function on Netflix or YouTube, where one video flows seamlessly into another.

“This wasn’t a design ‘accident’, it was created and introduced with the aim of keeping us on a certain platform,” says user experience (UX) designer Lenaic Faure.

Working with “Designers Ethiques”, a French collective seeking to push a socially responsible approach to digital design, Faure has developed a method for assessing whether the attention-grabbing element of an app “is ethically defensible.”

In the case of YouTube, for example, if you follow the automatic suggestions, “there is a sort of dissonance created between the user’s initial aim” of watching a certain video and “what is introduced to try and keep him or her on the platform,” he says.

Ultimately the aim is to expose the user to partner advertisements and better understand his tastes and habits.

Dark patterns

UX designer Harry Brignull describes such interactions as “dark patterns”, defining them as interfaces that have been carefully crafted to trick users into doing things they may not have wanted to do.

“It describes this kind of design pattern—kind of evil, manipulative and deceptive,” he told AFP, saying the aim was to “make you do what the developers want you to do.”

One example is that of the newly-introduced EU data protection rules which require websites to demand users’ consent before being able to collect their valuable personal data.

“You can make it very, very easy to make people click ‘OK’ but how can you opt out, how can you say ‘no’?”

Even for him, as a professional, it can take at least a minute to find out how to refuse.

In today’s digital world, attention time is a most valuable resource.

“The digital economy is based upon competition to consume humans’ attention. This competition has existed for a long time but the current generation of tools for consuming attention is far more effective than previous generations,” said David SH Rosenthal in a Pew Research Center study in April 2018.

“Economies of scale and network effects have placed control of these tools in a very small number of exceptionally powerful companies. These companies are driven by the need to consume more and more of the available attention to maximise profit.”

Internet as tool, not trap

Faure suggests that for a design to be considered responsible, the objective of the developer and that of the user must largely line up and equate to the straightforward delivery of information.

But if the design modifies or manipulates the user, directing them towards something they did not ask for, that should then be classed as irresponsible, he says.

French engineering student Tim Krief has come up with a browser extension called Minimal, which offers users a “less attention-grabbing internet experience” on the grounds that the internet “should be a tool, not a trap”.

The extension aims to mask the more “harmful” suggestions channelled through the major platforms.

An open source project, the extension should “make users more aware about such issues”, Krief says.

“We don’t attribute enough importance to this attention economy because it seems invisible.”

Design as a defence

But is this enough to fight the attention-grabbing tactics of powerful internet giants?

Brignull believes some designers can bring about change but are likely to be restricted by the wider strategy of the company they work for.

“I think they will have some impact, a little impact, but if they work in companies, those companies have a strategy… so it can be very difficult to have an impact on the companies themselves.”

Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin, former head of the French Data Protection Authority (CNIL) also believes that design can be used to effect positive change.

“Design could be another defence whose firepower could be used against making individuals the ‘playthings'” of developers, she said in January in a presentation on the “attention economy.”

Faure says he has seen a growing demand for an ethical approach to digital design and thinks his method could help “bring better understanding between users of services and the people who design them.”

This type of initiative “could be a way to tell the big platforms that such persuasive designs really bother us,” Krief says.

Sourced from PHYS ORG

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6 Predictions for Creatives in 2019

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With tech speeding ahead, what’s in store for creatives? We asked the pros for their best guess.

With the first few months of 2019 behind us, it looks like the old adage is true: the only constant is change.

For creatives, that’s good news. As organizations look to navigate new technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, they are increasingly relying on the help of those who can think creatively, innovate and adapt.

Hoping to get a pulse on where things are headed, we asked a handful of seasoned digital creatives across a variety of disciplines to help marketers, designers, and other creatives spot opportunities this year. And we got what we hoped for—completely different perspectives that all hold equal merit in our consideration of the current landscape.

1. A shift to work that’s less slick, but more impactful
Charlie Weisman, associate director of business development, Big Spaceship

“Looks aren’t everything. A couple of years ago an agency could get by simply making good-looking work. Today every design detail big and small needs to derive from data-driven insights. A proper agency still needs to be able to make beautiful creative, but leading with an understanding of the audience’s culture and behaviors will yield the most effective results. In some cases, this might even mean intentionally trading polish for authenticity.”

2. A concerted effort to break through the ‘sea of sameness’
Rina Miele, creative director and designer, Honey Design

“The biggest change in 2019 is focus, projects used to be all about aesthetics & things were more linear. Lately I feel pushed in other directions, including the use of a multitude of new tools beyond just visual design and the oversimplification of look-and-feel itself. Both are in service of a better user experience, but I feel design is losing its essence, it’s soul. Design is less about art direction than it used to be. This is a new challenge — keeping projects looking different in a sea of sameness. We must stay vigilant in maintaining a brand’s personality and perspective when most products look, feel and interact similarly. It is much more difficult to find that ‘je ne sais quoi.’”

3. A wave of totally new immersive experiences
Bryan Le, group director of design, Huge

“5G [high-speed wireless network technology] will make us consider the mobile experience and the range of application is going to change design significantly.

“5G will be leveraged with artificial intelligence and machine learning to create an evolution of personalized, dynamic content. Speed and bandwidth will change how we capture data and provide experiences. I can imagine applications in retail, critical situations for emergency responders, improvements in logistics and in supply chain operations. Cities will become smarter and communicate directly to people. Design can now fully utilize the environment and the space a person is in, in ways that were only ‘blue sky’ concepts before.”

4. The return of playful, emotionally-driven visual storytelling
David Navarro, executive creative director, Ueno

“We should stop talking about the label ‘digital.’ We’re working in a digital world where technology is part of daily life. The medium matters, but the principles of design scale across different touchpoints. Designers needs to think holistically, medium agnostic, and then apply the specifics to each execution.

“A change I am already seeing this year is intention beyond the systems, where visual storytelling is coming back. With type, editorial layouts, use of sound and motion, micro-interactions create rich experiences. A few years back everything went systematic and templatized. That transformation from chaos to systems was great for the maturity of the industry, we had to catch up to make digital design a real business-oriented medium. Now it’s time to bring the feels back!

“Experiences are at the service of the businesses, but also understand that, as humans, design can be emotional and stimulate the playful brain.

“Let’s bring change. Let’s ‘play’ again.”

5. The end of ‘take all we can get’ data collection
Tina Glengary Cordes, owner and strategist, Ambeti

“We need to get smarter about privacy. Society is creeped out by big tech and big data. That data is rarely used for the users’ good, this data is generally used to benefit the company not the user. Companies using our data isn’t going anywhere, but let’s make sure we get something out of the equation.”

6. A more diverse, inclusive workforce
Mike Ramirez, senior integrated producer, Phenomenon

“The biggest change in digital design in 2019 will be the makeup of the people doing the actual design work. Because of inclusion and diversity initiatives, we will see work across the spectrum that is more informed, accessible, and delightful due to the changing face of the modern designer bringing new perspectives to the work.

“Additionally, brands have a huge opportunity to define the ‘aural identity’ of products and services. The proliferation of podcasts and voice interfaces create an opportunity for brand consistency across existing and emerging consumer touch points.”

Feature Image Credit: Illustration by The Project Twins

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With a life mission to create exceptional experience Dave founded interactive design firm metajive in 1999. Focused on collaborating with his clients and team Dave is always looking for new opportunities to disrupt. When Dave isn’t working he’s trying to catch a few waves.

Sourced from 99U

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Three Architecture Firms Explore the Benefits of BIM in “By Design: The Next Frontier”

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Sourced from arch daily

 

What can you learn from enterprising firms who push tech to new limits? It is time to be inspired to experiment with innovative technology that supports BIM. The software that opens projects up to unlimited possibilities is the one that helps you benefit from ground-breaking techniques. For firms, using ARCHICAD, 3D modeling photorealism and VR experiences are more than gimmicks. These technologies are part of a powerful toolset that opens the door to unlimited possibilities. Hear from the firms who have unlocked that power in By Design: The Next Frontier.

“The Next Frontier” highlights an inspiring approach to design, coordination and project management – rooted in BIM and enabled by the design flexibility found in ARCHICAD. Three firms explore the way every aspect of their design process can be used to collaborate with the structural engineer, inform the contractor and the owner on a higher level.

Their approach to communicating design and maintaining open collaboration changed their workflow for the better. Including 3D modeling, photorealism, VR and AR – all supported in ARCHICAD – enhances the conversations they have with clients, it enriches the process and leads to new work. Technological advances partnered with the power of ARCHICAD allows firms to leverage technology, help their clients be more engaged and make their projects more efficient.

Three Architecture Firms Explore the Benefits of BIM in "By Design: The Next Frontier"

Communicating changes, cost, quantities, sequencing in addition to great design add up to running the project efficiently. Contractors want that added level of clarity, all stakeholders want the accurate and complete data set. A smoother, more efficient process is out there for you and your client – engineers and architects working in the same virtual model to name just one benefit.

Be inspired by the revolutionary firms who embrace the fascinating things that come from having the right combination of technology and innovation.

Sourced from arch daily

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YouTube Is Plotting A New Metric That Would Reward ‘Quality Watch Time’ (Report)

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By Geoff Weiss

Amid a ferris-wheeling slew of scandals with respect to objectionable content across its air, YouTube has reportedly been developing a new algorithm to reward content of “quality.”

According to Bloomberg, YouTube has been developing two internal metrics over the past two years — one that is straightforward and gauges total time spent on the service (including posting and reading comments; not just watching videos) and a second that is slightly more nebulous, which the video giant is still working out. This second stat, per Bloomberg, is being referred to internally as ‘Quality Watch Time‘, and aims to identify content that is not only appropriate but constructive and responsible in some way.

Such an algorithmic development would presumably seek to help YouTube promote ‘quality’ videos — whatever that means — while marginalizing inappropriate videos and extremism. That said, the quality watch time metric could reportedly be used to calculate more than just video recommendations, according to Bloomberg, and is also being considered in realms like search results, ad distribution, and creator compensation. In prizing videos that are constructive and responsible, the metric would also help to combat the growing notion that YouTube is addictive and encouraging of mindless entertainment, according to Bloomberg.

YouTube has not finalized how quality watch time metric will be measured. And Bloomberg notes that coming up with a scalabe notion of ‘quality’ as ascertained by machine technology — or even human reviewers — feels like something of a herculean feat given the enormity of YouTube’s library and the variety of opinions out in the world.

YouTube told Bloomberg that “there are many metrics that we use to measure success,” but declined to comment on the development of either new metric.

YouTube implemented the ‘Watch Time‘ metric in 2012, replacing individual video views as its measurement of choice, despite the fact that critics both inside and outside of the company felt like such a shift could reward inappropriate and attention-seeking behavior, according to Bloomberg. YouTube declined to comment to the outlet about whether it might abandon watch time in favor of quality watch time.

By Geoff Weiss

Sourced from tubefilter

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We’ve been warned about AI and music for over 50 years, but no one’s prepared

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By Dani Deahl

is capable of making music, but does that make AI an artist? As AI begins to reshape how music is made, our legal systems are going to be confronted with some messy questions regarding authorship. Do AI algorithms create their own work, or is it the humans behind them? What happens if AI software trained solely on Beyoncé creates a track that sounds just like her? “I won’t mince words,” says Jonathan Bailey, CTO of iZotope. “This is a total legal clusterfuck.”

The word “human” does not appear at all in US copyright law, and there’s not much existing litigation around the word’s absence. This has created a giant gray area and left AI’s place in copyright unclear. It also means the law doesn’t account for AI’s unique abilities, like its potential to work endlessly and mimic the sound of a specific artist. Depending on how legal decisions shake out, AI systems could become a valuable tool to assist creativity, a nuisance ripping off hard-working human musicians, or both.

already face the possibility of AI being used to mimic their style, and current copyright law may allow it. Say an AI system is trained exclusively on Beyoncé’s music. “A Botyoncé, if you will, or BeyoncAI,” says Meredith Rose, policy counsel at Public Knowledge. If that system then makes music that sounds like Beyoncé, is Beyoncé owed anything? Several legal experts believe the answer is “no.”

“There’s nothing legally requiring you to give her any profits from it unless you’re directly sampling,” Rose says. There’s room for debate, she says, over whether this is good for musicians. “I think courts and our general instinct would say, ‘Well, if an algorithm is only fed Beyoncé songs and the output is a piece of music, it’s a robot. It clearly couldn’t have added anything to this, and there’s nothing original there.’”

Law is generally reluctant to protect things “in the style of,” as musicians are influenced by other musicians all the time, says Chris Mammen, partner at Womble Bond Dickinson. “Should the original artist whose style is being used to train an AI be allowed to have any [intellectual property] rights in the resulting recording? The traditional answer may well be ‘no,’” Mammen says, “because the resulting work is not an original work of authorship by that artist.”

For there to be a copyright issue, the AI program would have to create a song that sounds like an already existing song. It could also be an issue if an AI-created work were marketed as sounding like a particular artist without that artist’s consent, in which case, it could violate persona or trademark protections, Rose says.

“It’s not about Beyoncé’s general output. It’s about one work at a time,” says Edward Klaris, managing partner at Klaris Law. The AI-made track couldn’t just sound like Beyoncé, in general, it would have to sound like a specific song she made. “If that occurred,” says Klaris, “I think there’s a pretty good case for copyright infringement.”

Directly training an AI on a particular artist could lead to other legal issues, though. Entertainment lawyer Jeff Becker of Swanson, Martin & Bell, says an AI program’s creator could potentially violate a copyright owner’s exclusive rights to reproduce their work and create derivative works based upon the original material. “If an AI company copies and imports a copyrightable song into its computer system to train it to sound like a particular artist,” says Becker, “I see several potential issues that could exist.”

It’s not even clear whether AI can legally be trained on copyrighted music in the first place. When you purchase a song, Mammen asks, are you also purchasing the right to use its audio as AI training data? Several of the experts The Verge spoke to for this piece say there isn’t a good answer to that question.

During a panel The Verge recently hosted on the state of AI and music at Winter Music Conference, which included Bailey; Matt Aimonetti, CTO of Splice; and Taishi Fukuyama, CMO of Amadeus Code, an audience member asked just that. “What if I wanted to license my catalog to a company so its AI could learn from it?”

“Currently,” replied Aimonetti, “there’s no need for that.”

Even if an AI system did closely mimic an artist’s sound, an artist might have trouble proving the AI was designed to mimic them, says Aimonetti. With copyright, you have to prove the infringing author was reasonably exposed to the work they’re accused of ripping off. If a copyright claim were filed against a musical work made by an AI, how could anyone prove an algorithm was trained on the song or artist it allegedly infringes on? It’s not an easy task to reverse engineer a neural network to see what songs it was fed because it’s “ultimately just a collection of numerical weights and a configuration,” says Bailey. Additionally, while there are scores of lawsuits where artists were sued by other artists for failing to credit them on works, a company could say its AI is a trade secret, and artists would have to fight in court to discover how the program works.

“Getting to that point might only be available to the biggest artists that can afford it,” says Becker.

law will also have to contend with the bigger issue of authorship. That is, can an AI system claim legal authorship of the music it produces, or does that belong to the humans who created the software?

Arguments about whether code can be the author of a musical work in the US are over 50 years old. In 1965, the Copyright Office brought up this concern in its annual report under a section titled “Problems Arising From Computer Technology.” The report says the office had already received one application for a musical composition made by a computer, and it “is certain that both the number of works proximately produced or ‘written’ by computers and the problems of the Copyright Office in this area will increase.”

Despite this early warning flag, current US copyright law is still vague when discussing authorship of works that weren’t created by humans. For now, lawyers are still grappling with the implications of one ruling, in particular, which doesn’t involve computers or AI at all: it’s about a monkey taking a selfie.

The case centered on a crested macaque that picked up the remote trigger for a photographer’s camera and took photos of itself. The resulting debate was over which creator should own the copyright: the photographer who set up the camera and optimized the settings for a facial close-up, or the monkey that pressed the remote trigger and took the photograph.

Ultimately, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit decided that the monkey could not hold a copyright. The court made two points: the copyright law’s inclusion of terms like “children” and “spouse” imply an author must be human, and although courts have allowed corporations to sue, corporations “are formed and owned by humans; they are not formed or owned by animals.”

Many outlets used the monkey selfie ruling to discuss implications about artificial intelligence and authorship. If a monkey can’t own a copyright, it goes, then what about a song created entirely by AI? Would authorship go to the humans who created the AI, the AI itself, or the public domain?

The heart of this problem is that current US copyright law never differentiates between humans and non-humans. But, the Compendium of US Copyright Office Practices actually spends a lot of time talking about how humanness is a requirement for being considered a legal author. In an internal staff guidebook for the Copyright Office, the Compendium has a section titled, “The Human Authorship Requirement.” There’s also a separate bit to address copyright when a work lacks a human author. According to the Compendium, plants can’t be authors. Neither can supernatural beings or “works produced by a machine or mere mechanical process that operates randomly or automatically without any creative input or intervention from a human author.”

The Compendium has been updated to note that “a photograph taken by a monkey” cannot be given a copyright. But there’s nothing yet on AI.

mashup of all of these weird problems happened just weeks ago. Recently, the developers behind Endel, an app that uses AI to generate reactive, personalized “soundscapes,” signed a distribution deal with Warner Music. As part of the contract, Warner needed to know how to credit each track in order to register the copyrights. The company was initially stumped with what to list for “songwriter,” as it used AI to generate all of the audio. Ultimately, founder Oleg Stavitsky told The Verge, the team decided to list all six employees at Endel as the songwriters for all 600 tracks. “I have songwriting credits,” said Stavitsky, “even though I don’t know how to write a song.”

It sounds like a ludicrous outcome, but preventing humans from obtaining copyright on AI-assisted works could limit our ability to use these algorithms for creative purposes. “If you accept AI-generated work as a new form of art and take away the intellectual property rights of the person who created the algorithm,” says Klaris, “you’ve basically said, ‘you’re out,’ and take away their incentive to create.”

Endel was able to list its employees as songwriters because, in the US, you only need someone to claim they authored a work. But if there’s pushback — like in the monkey selfie case — authors have to prove that they made the work in question. The same might have to be done for music and AI in order to establish any precedent about how to treat this type of material in copyright law moving forward. And there are a million ways to parse the problem.

For now, there are far more questions than there are answers. If you take these problems a few steps further, you get into issues around AI and legal personhood that start to get “existential,” says Rose. Can software be creative? What if an AI software’s creations belong to no one at all?

“We haven’t figured it out,” Becker says. “This road is literally being paved as we’re walking on it.”

By Dani Deahl

Sourced from The Verge

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10 Remarkable significance of Social Media Marketing to Business

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By Martin, Sourced from Thrive Global

The word social media marketing refers to various online administration/communication that empowers people with similar premiums to share information, gain from others or framework in an open system about a business entity. The information found on these platforms is regularly based on ‘customer made substance’, which infers anyone can post with inconsequential oversight.”

  1. Cost effectiveness

When a comparison is done for marketing between social media and other channels of marketing, it will surprise you that this approach is less expensive. This is advantages in terms of cost and it also gives instant feedback.

  • Ability to gain new client’s insights

Through social media interactions, it is easy to grow and establish a good relationship with the target audience as clients. This is enhanced by analytics platforms in social media like Facebook by finding out which content is most popular with your audience.

People who may know your organization well are your followers, fans, and other connections

  • Disintermediation

There is a good chance with this approach to eliminate the need for the middle person in the chain of distribution for both buyer and seller by doing away with the retailer.  It is high time business to embrace this attribute for their success.

  • An opportunity to reach unknown customers

This kind of business Marketing is popular and is growing very rapidly in all assortment of business. Awareness is the most imperative things that one ought to know about social marketing.

Social Media advertising with applying new innovations and techniques is the most up to date approach to draw in new clients.

  • Easy access for consumers recommendation

Through this approach is easy to get vast recommendation via an online survey on how your business is performing.

  • Pervasive and Cross-cutting

Social media marketing has the benefit of pervasive and cross-cutting since it is applicable to almost all sector without discrimination in terms of age, color, gender, from personal to private business and government. Due to this factor, it is multifunctional and flexible. Thus allowing for tailored solutions based on localization and personalization to meet diverse needs.

  • Increased Profits

It is likely that the profit margin will increase due to the wide market, buyer’s recommendation.

  • Globalization

The most significant aspect of this business is the ability to enhance globalization thus expansion of the market to people, companies, and government worldwide

  • Fasten information acquisition

Throughout social media had enabled people to acquire fast hand information and business people can communicate with crowds, group or audiences. Social Media conveys the message between clients in term of customer’s services and support, the medium of instruction, item improvement, and feedback. At the same time with social media, there is a faster circulation of information about the business on the market

  1. Increased  Customer service and Loyalty

Internet-based Marketing is a compelling method to assemble associations with leads and clients that lead to more noteworthy fulfillment and faithfulness after some time.

Conclusion

The users of the internet are over 72% hence it is advantageous for any business to incorporate social media marketing

By Martin

Sourced from Thrive Global

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Proven Influencer Marketing Tips For Those Just Getting Started

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By Will Robins

Influencer marketing can be a powerful way for businesses to connect with consumers. Today’s brands are leveraging the power of influencers in mutually beneficial ways. Fortunately, this is a great time to get involved. Here are a few reasons why:

• According to Reuters, 27% of consumers in the United States use some form of ad-blocking software on a day-to-day basis. Antiquated ad models are no longer working, and companies are turning to influencers to reach their target markets in more humane ways.

• According to a study conducted by Collective Bias, 30% of consumers are more likely to buy a product that is recommended by a non-celebrity blogger. Additionally, non-celebrity influencers are 10 times more likely to drive in-store purchases.

• Linqia, an influencer-focused marketing company, found that 39% of marketers plan to increase their influencer budget in 2018.

Stats are great, but how do you apply influencer marketing to your brand?

Don’t just focus on growth. Finding the right fit for your product is the first step in the process of building meaningful relationships with influencers. Focus on the fit. This should be easy at first. If you are a health-related company, engage with health-related influencers. And don’t underestimate the power of microinfluencers; they make for a great testing ground when you first begin.

What do you need to know to get started?

Starting is easy. Begin surfing the web. You can use a lot of different tools, but here are my favorites: I use the search function on YouTube to find influencers in my niche. Next, I document on a Google Sheet their social media stats and contact information. Many creators have their business emails listed in their Twitter profiles — I’m not sure why, but I’ve noticed it is a common place to find contact information.

How do you know which influencers to work with?

Testing is the answer to everything. While you may not be able to judge performance and results in the beginning, use data to your advantage throughout the process. Start by looking at the percentage of views the influencer has in your country. That will be the first number to use for all calculations. Use that percentage to calculate how many people are going to see videos that the influencer will share for your brand.

In my experience, YouTube videos have a longer life cycle than other channels. Videos gain views over time, and that helps attribute for the cost of the engagement.

How can you leverage influencer relationships for mutual benefit?

Look for influencers in your market to ensure brand alignment between your company and the influencer. It is better to micro-niche down and work with influencers who have smaller but engaged communities. Don’t try to hit home runs — hitting singles is a great way to engage customers over time. Here is a quick list of action steps to get started:

• Start by working with five smaller influencers and test.

• Know your numbers for conversions on your website. Views become site visits. Site visits need to convert. These numbers will inform the results you expect from your influencers and how much to pay them.

• Have continuous outreach efforts.

• Look for deals. Who can you work with at a discounted price?

• Influencer marketing isn’t just a visual medium; ask the influencer to include copy in the description and comments of an Instagram post or YouTube video.

• Create a campaign document that outlines phrasing and copy to be used when describing your brand, and hold your influencers accountable for that language.

• Ask to view every video first before it goes live for any errors or off-brand comments.

• Get meaningful feedback early on and adapt.

• Channel into different sub-niches. For example, instead of the general “health” niche, consider keto, paleo and fitness influencers.

• Build an influencer page for your brand — I get new domains from NameCheap.com for $0.88. Then, create an email campaign and send out the site link asking for signups and directing people to “pitch you.”

What is the pay structure of an influencer like?

I get this question a lot, so I wanted to address it in this article. A survey conducted by Later, an Instagram scheduling tool, found that 66% of brands pay under $250 per post. However, the bigger their follower count and engagement, the more an influencer will be able to charge. After all, it’s not uncommon for influencers to be paid $50,000 for a single post.

When evaluating how much to pay, focus on engagement and potential return. Look for smaller influencers (with less than 100,000 followers) and do a test campaign at an inexpensive price. Track the results; if it performs well, then engage the influencer for multiple videos.

The most important part of the pay structure is the ask. Don’t be afraid to test first before you commit to a relationship. Stacking up smaller wins is more important than signing on for one huge deal with higher risk. Once you know your numbers, you can go for bigger deals — they aren’t as risky once you have a proven model.

Final thoughts: How can you ensure influencers and subscribers actually like you?

Don’t just think about the numbers. I know, I know — I base all of my decisions on the numbers. But it is just as important to engage in meaningful conversations with the influencers with whom you are working. Don’t be all promo all the time. Let them promote you while you engage their fans.

You can do so by buying ads to promote the video of your brand on their channels. Watch and comment on their videos. It takes time to have a relationship. Make it fun, but remember that the human element is the most meaningful way to stand out. When influencers and followers realize that you are a likable person who really cares about other people, then everyone in the community will relate to you more. That is when your influencer marketing can start to soar.

Feature Image Credit: Getty

By Will Robins

Organic Marketing Director at Manscaped.com, Overseeing SEO, influencer marketing, and branded content.

Sourced from Forbes

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IBM CMO Michelle Peluso Shares Her Top 3 Trends In B2B Influencer Marketing

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By  Kate Talbot

YouTube stars and the Kardashians are not what you’d typically expect to discuss with one of the most sought-after marketers, who spends her days thinking about how to help people better understand how technology will shape our lives.

However, if from my interview with IBM’s Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, Michelle Peluso, reinforced one core theme, it is that sometimes your most powerful influencers come from unexpected places.

IBM

Influencer marketing has become commonplace within B2C marketing. Now, more than ever B2B companies are racing to do to the same. The fact is that influencers are pivotal to brand success and remain a growth lever to promote products and inspire community. B2B influencers might just look different than a stereotypical fashion influencer posing in front of the Coachella Ferris wheel or the fitness trainer promoting protein powder.

Peluso has the task of marketing a legacy brand within a world of digital content and consumption. This new wave of consumerism leans heavily on influencer marketing; especially as the next generation of millennial and Gen Z buyers and consumers look at technology through a more digitally savvy lens:

“When you have a company that has reinvented itself over 100 years many, many times, there’s a legacy that’s quite attractive. But we have to tell our story in the right way – we’re always  working on the latest, most cutting-edge technology, and helping clients make a difference in their companies and in the world.”

Peluso and I talked at length about a topic that is integral to the future of B2B marketing. Here are three takeaways about the current state of B2B influencer marketing gleaned from IBM’s strategy.

It’s all about authenticity.

Similarly to B2C trends of using nano influencers over macro influencers, Peluso encourages quality over volume, “It’s not necessarily about how many followers someone has, but rather what makes them valuable and interesting to their audience. It’s crucial that B2B companies commit to preserving an influencer’s authenticity as credibility is paramount.”

IBM’s ad campaign, “Dear Tech, Let’s Talk,” features an array of celebrities, influencers, and IBM employees and advocates. This includes IBMer, Lisa Deluca — a Distinguished Engineer and mother of four. She wants the world to know that STEM isn’t just a boys club. Peluso is determined to show that, “Whoever you choose to associate with your brand – they have to have that authentic connection. It simply can’t be manufactured or bought.”

Enterprise marketers must remain focused on finding influencers that relate to their products and values, and in turn, whose personal communities and followers will do the same.

B2B influencers differ than B2C influencers, and that’s awesome.

B2B influencers engage and thrive across a variety of offline and online channels – both inside the workforce and online through communities like LinkedIn or Reddit. These influencers are able to on their unique ability to convert non-physical concepts like artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud computing into consumable and exciting ideas for the masses…not just techies.

This is extremely important as content creation has a huge effect on the sales cycle as 80% of B2B buyers consume at least three pieces of content before talking to a salesperson.

“Employees are often an untapped influencer base for enterprise companies. Companies must find a way to identify these people, learn about their audience, and then support them to expand their mission and goals,” Peluso shared.

“In regards to external brand advocates, IBM works with this one developer, for example, Tanmay, who started learning how to use IBM’s AI platform (Watson) when he was a little kid. He has this uncanny ability to break down the technology in ways that people can understand. He does Facebook Live, YouTube, attends our events, and is becoming incredibly influential in his sphere.”

B2B influencers have a different audience than their consumer counterparts, which requires a different approach to content creation. Luckily, their audiences are passionate and drive results that can have a huge impact on the bottom line.

Give life to the intangible.

With sophisticated technologies like artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and blockchain in their technology stack, IBM brings abstract products to life through creative content. “What I think is really interesting is that, even now, a lot of what we do, you can’t see and touch. There are so many ways that AI and Cloud are touching people’s lives that you can start to make real,” Peluso explained.

One of the most famous examples of this is when IBM Watson won Jeopardy in 2011, defeating super champion Ken Jennings. This event brought the topic of artificial intelligence into mainstream conversation. And more recently with Project Debater, which showcased how AI could effectively debate a world-class human debater.

Another includes IBM engineer, Benin Saffo, who used machine learning and cognitive computing when she built a custom model to define different hair types through Watson Visual Recognition. By taking photos of hair, she could classify the unique characteristics associated with different hair types and further demonstrate the power of Watson.

By illustrating complex technologies in a digestible way for the modern audience, B2B influencers can share product vision and capabilities in an entertaining manner.

In the end, storytelling delivers.

Through understanding the importance of authentic storytelling and humanizing complex technologies, B2B companies can use influencer marketing for brand affinity and sales. The companies that get influencer marketing and social media right are those that consistently create engaging stories and compelling visual content, all with genuine intent for the audiences and stakeholders they serve.

Fortunately, B2B companies of all sizes have more opportunities than ever to connect with like-minded people through the power of influencer marketing.

I’m a content marketing consultant in Silicon Valley and millennial marketing expert. My book “Oh Snap! You Can Use Snapchat For Business” can be found here. Check out my website too! 

By  Kate Talbot

I’m a freelance content marketer, author, and entrepreneur who helps brands engage millennials. I’ve been featured on the Nasdaq, NPR, NBC News, CNBC, Huffington Post, VentureBeat and named an Instagram Marketing Expert from Foundr Magazine and Social Media Examiner. I wrote a best-selling book, “Oh Snap! You Can Use Snapchat for Business” which IBM named their ‘Book of the Month.’ My strong understanding of the digital landscape comes from my career managing social media for Virgin America and Kiva. I’m also a millennial marketing post-graduate lecturer at Ireland’s Digital Marketing Institute and social media expert witness. When not snapping, I spend my free time at Burn Pilates, reading at Dolores Park, and hosting art and charity events.

Sourced from Forbes

 

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Marketing Terms & Digital Advertising Acronyms You Should Know

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Sourced from Ad Espresso

When it comes to digital advertising and marketing terms, acronyms like UGC, GDN, ROAS, RTB, SOV, and even TrV are commonly tossed around when discussing campaigns.

If you’re not familiar with them, you’re not alone.

Although shorthand ways of describing concepts are nothing new, the ever-expanding laundry list of industry abbreviated terms can confuse even the most seasoned and savvy of digital marketing professionals.

The world of Web marketing and paid ads is littered with technical jargon, catchphrases, and abbreviations. And anything that can be turned into a catchy acronym often is.

While some online marketing terms have become more widely known as marketing has gone mainstream, many acronyms remain unknown outside the industry — and some are even mystery to many people inside it.

Here’s our compilation of acronyms you should know and what they all mean:

General Marketing Terms

  • B2B: Business to Business

One business making a commercial transaction with another business, from wholesale product purchases to providing services.

  • B2C: Business to Consumer

The traditional business model of businesses selling directly to consumers, including local retail business, ecommerce, online banking, insurance, residential real estate, and many other products and services.

  • CX: Customer Experience

One of two commonly used marketing terms (the other being “consumer experience”) used to describe every interaction people have with a company throughout the buying process that influences a prospect or customer’s perception of the brand.

  • CTA: Call to Action

CTA Marketing Terms

 

A hyperlink, button or image that drives the reader to take action on content or ads by downloading, calling, registering or attending an event.

 

  • DMA: Designated Market Area

A geographic location representing a neighborhood, city, county, state, region or country you choose to target.

  • IAB: Interactive Advertising Bureau

IAB Marketing Terms

A trade organization that sets the industry standard for digital advertising, including ad specifications, best practices and business standards for anything digital advertising related.

  • KPI: Key Performance Indicators

KPIs Marketing Terms

 

Metric used across all industries to evaluate the success of various marketing strategies and campaign goals by tracking and measuring progress in areas brand awareness, lead generation, bounce rate, and sales conversions

 

  • MAP: Marketing Automation Platform

A technology that assists marketers in converting prospects to customers by removing high-touch, manually repetitive processes with automated solutions. The email campaign service MailChimp and marketing automation software Marketo are examples of MAPs.

  • NPS: Net Promoter Score

A survey-based customer satisfaction metric that measures (on a scale of 0 to 10) how likely people are to recommend your brand or company to others.

  • ROI: Return On Investment

A ratio between the net profit earned from campaigns and the cost of investing in marketing and advertising.

  • SMB: Small and Medium Sized Businesses

Businesses with between 5 million and 200 million in annual revenues. Also refers to businesses with 100 or fewer employees (small) and from 100 to 999 employees (medium-sized).

  • SMART: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Time-Bound

The process of providing criteria for clear defining marketing or advertising goals or establishing objectives and outlining the action steps required to achieve them.

Digital Advertising & Marketing Terms

  • BM: (Facebook) Business Manager

Facebook Business Manager Marketing Terms

 

A free integrated tool used on Facebook to manage ad accounts and pages from a single location

 

  • CAN-SPAM: Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing

A U.S. law passed in 2003 that prohibits businesses from sending targeted emails without permission. (Marketers must include an unsubscribe option in all emails and they should not add names to it without the express permission of the recipient.)

  • CPC: Cost Per Click

CPC Marketing Terms

An online advertising revenue model through which advertisers are charged by the publisher (typically a website owner or a network of websites) for each time a user clicks on their advertisement.

  • CPL: Cost Per Lead

All of the costs associated with generating a lead, including advertising dollars spent, collateral creation, web hosting fees and various other costs.

  • CPM: Cost Per Mille

A method publishers use to assign a cost to advertise on their platform by charging per 1000 advertisement impressions (M is the Roman numeral for 1000) through which advertisers are charged for every time their ad is seen, not how many times it’s clicked.

  • CR: Conversion Rate

The number of people who take action on an advertisement, divided by the number that could have. For example, if your email campaign reaches 100 prospects and 25 of them respond, your conversion rate would be 25%.

  • CRO: Conversion Rate Optimization

A system for increasing the percentage of visitors or prospects that convert into customers or take any desired action on websites, landing pages, social media and CTAs. A/B split testing is commonly used to determine which version of an ad or web page (version A or version B) is more successful in optimizing conversion rates.

  • CTR: Click Through Rate

A performance indicator that measures the percentage of prospects or visitors who take the next action on an advertisement, web page or email. For example, in the case of a landing page, the CTR would be the total number of people who visit the page divided by the number who click and move on to the next step.

  • DSP: Demand Side Platform

A technology that allows advertisers to efficiently purchase display ad inventory across Real Time Bidding (RTB) networks like Google.

  • eCP(x): Effective Cost Per (fill in the blank)

Average spend based on total budget and results. The “e” can be applied to all cost models (such as CPM, CPL, or CPA). With any digital advertising campaign, you may have several placements, cost models, and budgets in place, and knowing your average spend is important to determine the effectiveness of your campaign.

  • GA: Google Analytics

Google Analytics Marketing Terms

This is a data-driven Google tool that is used by marketers to track, analyze and report website, app, and ad traffic to better understand their audience, reach, activity and metrics.

  • GDN: Google Display Network

Google’s network of over 2 million websites and apps that show display ads on their web pages, reaching over 90% of people on the internet, where businesses target consumers and other businesses on the display network using strategic topical keywords , placement on specific webpages and remarketing.

  • PPC: Pay Per Click

A digital advertising method through which publishers charge advertisers for each action (click) they take on ads. See also CPC.

  • PR: Page Rank

An algorithm used by Google to rank web pages in their search engine results using a numerical weight based on a number of different, confidential and proprietary criteria.

  • QS: Quality Score

Google Ads Quality Score Marketing Terms

 

A metric used by Google, Facebook, Yahoo! and Bing that determines both the rank and cost per click of digital ads.

 

  • ROAS – Return On Ad Spend

A PPC marketing metric that demonstrates the profit made as compared to the amount of money spent on the ads. Similar to ROI.

  • RON: Run of Network

A low-cost, high-reach form of online advertising delivery through which advertisers generally have no control over ad placement in return for lower rates and a broader reach on random pages of any site that is part of an ad network. Because of their low CPM, RON ads often used for testing using age or gender targeting analysis.

  • ROS: Run of Site

A form of online advertising that delivers and rotates digital ads on a specific website that advertisers use to maximize their budget without sacrificing exposure.

  • RTB: Real Time Bidding

A method of purchasing unsold ad inventory by CPM through an auction like — the now-ceased Facebook Exchange (FBX) — where the highest bid takes inventory priority.

  • SEO: Search Engine Optimization

SEO Marketing Terms

A technical and creative marketing discipline focused on growing visibility and improve rankings in organic (non-paid) results to increase awareness and drive traffic. It is based on algorithmic variables on search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo.

  • SEM: Search Engine Marketing

The promotion of websites by increasing their visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) primarily through PPC (pay-per-click) advertising.

  • SERP: Search Engine Results Pages

The pages displayed by search engines in response to a keyword query made by a user.

  • SM: Social Media

Platforms that allow users to post personal and/or business text, image and video content and socially interact.
Examples include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Snapchat and LinkedIn.

  • SMM: Social Media Marketing

The discipline of using social media platforms to promote businesses through organic and paid campaigns.

  • SOV: Share of Voice

A calculation based on a percentage your ad is seen versus other advertisers. For example, if there are four advertisers rotating ads evenly on a page, each advertiser would have a 25 percent share of voice. If that same page has just one advertiser, that advertiser would have 100 percent share of voice.

  • SSP: Supply Side Platform

An automated technology also called sell-side platforms or yield optimization platforms, that allow publishers to maximize the prices at which they sell ad impressions.

  • TrV: TrueView

YouTube Marketing Terms

 

Video advertising sold by Google and run through YouTube, which includes in-stream, discovery and bumper ads.

 

  • UGC: User-generated content

Content created by users of a blog, social media network or online system or service.

  • VTR: View Through Rate

A metric used to report a ratio of the number of completed views of a skippable video ad, based on the number of impressions it received

Website Marketing Terms

  • BR: Bounce Rate

Bounce Rate Marketing Terms

A bounce rate refers to the action a user takes when they land on a page of your website, and leave to go to another site (i.e. bouncing off of your page).

It can also refer to emails that don’t reach an inbox.

  • CMS: Content Management System

An application that consolidates and facilitates the creation, editing, management, and distribution of content. Generally used to refer to a website; WordPress is an example of a popular CMS.

  • IBL: Inbound Link

A hyperlink leading back to your website from a third-party site.

  • DNS: Domain Name System

A protocol that translates website URLs (which use alphabetic characters) into IP addresses (that use numeric characters).

  • GDD: Growth Driven Design

The design or development of a website in intentional increments through making continuous data-driven adjustments.

  • HTML: Hypertext Markup Language

A set of codes that are used by programmers use to create web pages and tell web browsers how to display them. Each individual code is called an element, or a tag, which is used to make up the structure and content of websites.

  • RSS – Really Simple Syndication

RSS Marketing Terms

A way for users to keep track of updates to multiple websites (news sites, blogs, and others) in a single place and in an easily-viewable format, as opposed to having to manually check every single site individually.

  • UI: User Interface

A series of screens, pages, and visual elements and other conduits — either graphical or voice-controlled — that enable people to interact with a website, app, product or service.

  • UV: Unique Visitor

The number of individuals visiting a page on a website during a set period of time.

  • UX: User Experience

How a user interacts and engages with a website, app or platform (where they click, tap, swipe and visit), which can be shaped by testing different page designs, layouts, CTAs, colors, and content to improve conversion rates.

  • XML: Extensible Markup Language

XML Marketing Terms

A language used to define a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. For example, an XML sitemap is designed to help search engine crawler robots to easily find all of the pages for a given website.

Conclusion

Well, that’s it: a primer on acronyms for some of the more important digital marketing terms.

From basic marketing terms to more specialized ad network-specific lingo, this list will help to build your vocabulary and navigate the increasingly complicated digital marketing and advertising industry.

New acronyms regularly pop up, so continually work to learn emerging marketing terms to help you better understand every aspect of your promotional efforts.

 

 

Sourced from Ad Espresso

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