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How to Use Technology and Social Media for Business Growth

August 25, 2020 No Comments

By Zeinab Mehdi Poor.

What business doesn’t use technology? Yes, that is the unmistakable sound of crickets. But here’s another, more pertinent question: which businesses maximize their use of technology to generate revenue? The world is abuzz with technological chatter, with the noisy flux of shifting processes, incoming apps, innovative start-ups and increasingly simplistic digital tools which help us streamline our businesses and make a bigger splash for less cash.

As a business leader, you’re constantly learning. Searching for new growth strategies, emerging trends in your industry, and new products and services is a consistent part of your routine. Technology is about innovation and innovation in business is all about doing things differently so as to supply better products and solutions, and an improved service to customers.

If you are a business owner or leader means you’re constantly learning.

Researching new marketing strategies, emerging trends in your industry, and exciting new products is certain to be a continuing a part of your weekly grind. But are you furthermore may maintaining with similar changes in technology? If not, you’ll be missing out on tools which will make your life easier and your business stronger. Technology isn’t just essential for day-to-day business processes, but it also can help companies to realize growth and success when utilised effectively. Successful businesses don’t view technology simply as how to automate processes, but instead use it to open up new ways of doing business. But are you furthermore may maintaining with similar changes in technology? technology is helping firms of all sizes fulfil their business potential. While the pace at which technology is evolving is faster than ever before, these advancements present a range of growth opportunities for business leaders.

Technologies help you reach more potential customers, around the clock.

Various types of content marketing increase the visibility of your business far beyond your local community—often on a reasonable budget. Technology can help business owners leverage capital in smarter, more effective ways. In some cases, using technology provides greater efficiency and versatility, making it a natural progression for processes you may already have in place in your business. In others, you may need to make some adjustments to reap the benefits of tech-friendly alternatives. Use digital technologies for more effective marketing.

Businesses are now operating in an era where having a strong digital presence is essential, not only for success, but often simply for survival too. The lack of a strong digital presence is thought to be a contributing factor in the failure of many SMEs, half of which are failing in their first five years of existence. With limited marketing budgets, SMEs got to be wise about how they utilize digital technologies for max impact.

They key is to develop a clearly defined digital marketing strategy, including your aims, your tactics and how you’re going to measure performance. Many companies are digitally active, but not following a defined strategy. This can lead to resources being wasted and opportunities being missed.

Here are ways technology can help your business grow

1. Use a high-quality VoIP system

The benefits of using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) should be obvious, but if you’re still tempted to use the conventional or analog system in your office, know that you could be missing out massively. Using the internet to make calls far cheaper and means you can log in anywhere in the world, conduct videoconferences, discuss important deals, and otherwise stay on top of things as if you were in the office. Mobility, functionality and adaptability are the three key benefits of putting in VoIP, which has undoubtedly enhanced communication within the business world and led to increased productivity across the board.

2. Don’t be afraid of video

A lot of business owners are afraid to put themselves out there: to add a face and voice to the text-based voice which narrates their online story. But embracing video, whether within the sort of live videos and ‘stories’ on social media or product-, category- or topic-led videos on your website, are often a winning strategy. Not only will it help to build brand transparency, making browsers feel like they’re getting to know you, but it will help to stimulate engagement.

3. Connect with people.

One of the best features of technology is the ability to communicate and connect with other people right at the fingertips. More people in the United States are leaning towards the use of technology for connectivity. It has become an essential and worthwhile part of not only an individual’s life but also his business. Technology is a great tool to get in touch with customers and employees. Nowadays, even remote working is a theme. When it involves modern technology, sending targeted emails and newsletters to the designated customers can lead one to grow his or her business over time.

4. Technology as a mean of security.

Apart from the many benefits of using technology for business owners, the best one is how it impacts the security of the business. Technology can be used to prevent any hacking done by hackers over the original work of authorship. In this way, issues like copyright infringement and other copyright laws get easily bypassed. Usage of the proper amount of technology or rather information technology can prevent any breach of security. With active firewalls and encrypted passwords, avoidance of this particular problem, in the long run, is possible.

5. Save on IT spending

Cloud-based technologies help businesses grow with technology by providing state of the art tools without the high cost usually related to huge enterprise software programs. Web based technologies allow multiple users to collaborate during a single document or provide unlimited data storage. Cloud technologies eliminate the necessity for IT departments and therefore the solution providers perform backups, tuning and upgrades as a part of their offering. Small business owners can access their data from any location at any time. These tools are often free or pay as you go eliminating the need for long term contracts.

Social Platforms for Business Growth

Social platforms helps you connect with your customers. What are the advantages of using social media for business? Consider that there are now quite 3 billion using social networks across the world and these people are using social to interact with brands. Social networks offer you the chance to interact directly with customers and fans, and likewise give them the prospect to interact directly together with your brand.

Unlike traditional media, which offers only one-way communication, social media may be a street . If you would like customers and followers to be engaged, you’ve got to be engaged yourself. Stay active and answer comments and questions on your own social media posts during a way that’s appropriate to your brand. Here are reasons why investing in social media may be a wise business move.

1. Build Awareness

If people don’t realize your business, they can’t become your customers. Social media boosts your visibility among potential customers, letting you reach a good audience by employing a great deal of your time and energy . And it’s liberal to create a business profile on all the main social networks, so you’ve got nothing to lose. Define what you would like to urge out of social media to develop a social media strategy. does one want new customers to get your services? does one hope to bring more local shoppers into your stores? By keeping your strategy specific, you’ll determine which social media channels are the simplest fit your business.

2. Improve Search Engine Ranking

There’s a lot of debate around this subject , but rock bottom line is that, this social media can (and will) improve your program ranking. How? The domain authority increases when the social media share rate increases. This results in an improved program ranking of your pages. But it’s quite just that. Many consumers visit your social media profiles before heading to your website to urge a far better understanding of your brand before they create a sale .

3. Social media is cost-effective

As more social networks add algorithms that filter what users see in their news feeds, your organic content may stray within the shuffle. cash in of the low-cost advertising features offered by the social networks to market your content and special offers. Some social media advertising is cheaper than traditional advertising, so you don’t need to spend tons of cash to increase your audience, and grow your business.

4. Tell Your Brand’s Story

Using social media may be a good way to share your brand’s mission and share stories. Effective stories can have an excellent impact on your brand’s image. they will be simple or extensive counting on what you think that are going to be best .

5. Boost sales

No matter what you sell, social media can assist you sell it. Your social accounts are a critical a part of your sales funnel—the process through which a replacement contact becomes a customer. As the number of individuals using social media continues to grow and social sales tools evolve, social networks will become increasingly important for product search and ecommerce. The time is true to align your social marketing and sales goals.

Feature Image Credit: Pixabay

By Zeinab Mehdi Poor

Sourced from Entrepreneur India

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How Technology Will Help Redefine The Workplace Post COVID-19

July 29, 2020 No Comments

BY NATASHA MATHUR

When talking about technology’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, few major innovations come to mind – drones for surveillance, delivering food and disinfecting places, healthcare automation services like robots, AI-powered content moderation to beat COVID-19 misinformation, contact tracing apps, and a lot more. It’s no surprise that technology’s response to the ongoing pandemic has been astounding. And it’s going to continue being a strong pillar of support in the post-pandemic world, especially when it comes to re-establishing workplaces. Although the pandemic isn’t over yet, the lockdown has been lifted across different parts of the world, and many people have already started working from offices.

In India, there have been lockdown relaxations across several states and more people have started to work from offices, which is why it’s important than ever for companies to ensure the health and safety of its employees does not get compromised. While maintaining social distance and hygiene practices like washing your hands, wearing a mask, and carrying a hand sanitizer is an obvious answer to curb the spread of COVID-19, there’s a bunch of tech innovations in the market that companies can opt to make their office space clean and safe.Speaking of which, several tech start-ups and firms have come up with innovations that can ramp up sanitization and safety practices within a workplace.

Video Monitoring and Analysis

Video monitoring can help play a big role in making sure all the employees working at an office are abiding by social distancing compliances and guidelines. Amazon has already rolled out an AI-powered system called ‘Distance Assistant’ that provide employees live feedback on social distancing via a 50-inch monitor, camera, and a local computing device. As people walk past the camera, a monitor displays live video with on-screen indicators to show if employees are within 6 feet of one another. Indian start-ups have also come out with similar tools for monitoring purposes. Staqu, a Gurgaon-based start-up, for instance, is using video analytics for smart monitoring. The company is leveraging its proprietary video analytics platform JARVIS to roll out cutting-edge use cases aimed at identifying, tracking, and curbing the spread of COVID-19.

Video analysis and monitoring is a simple, cost-effective tech solution that can help in big ways. Keeping surveillance around social distancing within offices will help ensure public safety. It can also be deployed across hospitals, pubs, malls, etc, using video surveillance cameras. Since these video analytics tools offer real-time information, it can be quite effective for employees’ safe office return.

Advanced Cleaning Tech

Apart from making sure that all employees follow the guidelines and practice social distancing, it’s very important to keep the office space clean, especially during these times. To curb the spread of coronavirus and other diseases, companies can opt for technological tools and systems that can help ramp up the cleaning process. Robots can be of great help in this case. For instance, there’s a floor disinfecting robot that can navigate and sanitize the floors without any human intervention at various places, including offices, hotels, hospitals, etc. Developed by Milagrow Humantech, the robot moves autonomously without falling and avoids obstruction while planning its own path. It makes use of LIDAR and advanced SLAM technology. Milagrow’s patented Real-Time Terrain Recognition Technology (RT2RT) scans at 3600, 6 times per second to make a floor map in real-time with an accuracy of up to 8mm over a 16m distance.

Similarly, to keep the air clean and fresh within office spaces, companies can invest in tech to deep clean air. A start-up, Magneto CleanTech, launched an enhanced version of Central Air Cleaner co-powered by Filterless Magnetic Air Purification (FMAP) and Ultraviolet (UVGI) technology. This air filtration framework uses the ‘Trap and Kill’ with hostile to microbial UV-C beams to completely sterilize the indoor air. As per the claims, it can slaughter over 90% of airborne infections and diseases. Another solution to ensure cleanliness at the workplace is MicroGO’s GOassureTM IoT-enabled Hand Hygiene device. It ensures good hand hygiene practices, sustainability (water and other savings), and provides real-time data monitoring. It follows a six-step of hand hygiene and a 25-second process to ensure thorough cleaning and disinfection of hands.

Contactless Tech Solutions

Since Coronavirus spreads from touching an infected surface, offices will need a better alternative to biometric attendance systems that requires finger impression to mark attendance. This is where contactless biometrics will be a game-changer to authenticate employees without having them touch or place their hands on a scanner. This can be possible via several technologies out there such as facial recognition tools and digital fingerprint detection systems. Contactless solutions are going to be all the rage in the post-pandemic world and can help not only prevent the virus from spreading, but also make their office space cleaner.

Facebook agrees to $550M slap on the wrist following facial recognition suit

Other examples of contactless technology includes temperature scanners. We’ve already witnessed extensive use of handheld thermometers to scan temperature that helps with the detection of COVID-19-prone patients during the pandemic. While these handheld thermometers require a person standing around with it at all times to scan people, a number of contactless technologies have emerged that automatically scans people as they enter an office. Zesta India’s Wall Mounted Automatic Thermometer is a good example. With Zesta’s Wall Mounted Automatic Thermometer, companies can simply install it at the entrances of the workplace and let everyone scan themselves with zero physical contact. This can be used at the office, shops, hospitals, schools, malls, and other public areas. It also comes with colour code alarm, fast and accurate detection.

Apps For Employees’ Safe Return

Apps have been playing a critical role in the war against COVID-19, and they can also help companies prepare better for employees’ return to offices. Tech companies have been developing apps that’ll act as additional support in keeping employees safe. For example, ServiceNow, a digital workforce company, has released a four-app suite and dashboard that’s aimed to help companies better manage the necessary steps required for returning employees to the office. These include apps around safety management, inventory management, health screening, and employee surveys. Apart from these, there are several other apps in the market that can help keep track on how employees are doing after returning to the workplace.

The post-pandemic world has started to come into focus, and it’s crucial that companies start taking steps that will shield both their employees and the business overall. Technology is helping us more than you realize during the pandemic and it will continue to do so after the pandemic is over.

BY NATASHA MATHUR

Sourced from Mashable India

In News

China and AI: what the world can learn and what it should be wary of

July 23, 2020 No Comments

By Hessy Elliott

China announced in 2017 its ambition to become the world leader in artificial intelligence (AI) by 2030. While the US still leads in absolute terms, China appears to be making more rapid progress than either the US or the EU, and central and local government spending on AI in China is estimated to be in the tens of billions of dollars.

The move has led – at least in the West – to warnings of a global AI arms race and concerns about the growing reach of China’s authoritarian surveillance state. But treating China as a “villain” in this way is both overly simplistic and potentially costly. While there are undoubtedly aspects of the Chinese government’s approach to AI that are highly concerning and rightly should be condemned, it’s important that this does not cloud all analysis of China’s AI innovation.

The world needs to engage seriously with China’s AI development and take a closer look at what’s really going on. The story is complex and it’s important to highlight where China is making promising advances in useful AI applications and to challenge common misconceptions, as well as to caution against problematic uses.

Nesta has explored the broad spectrum of AI activity in China – the good, the bad and the unexpected.

The good

China’s approach to AI development and implementation is fast-paced and pragmatic, oriented towards finding applications which can help solve real-world problems. Rapid progress is being made in the field of healthcare, for example, as China grapples with providing easy access to affordable and high-quality services for its ageing population.

Applications include “AI doctor” chatbots, which help to connect communities in remote areas with experienced consultants via telemedicine; machine learning to speed up pharmaceutical research; and the use of deep learning for medical image processing, which can help with the early detection of cancer and other diseases.

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, medical AI applications have surged as Chinese researchers and tech companies have rushed to try and combat the virus by speeding up screening, diagnosis and new drug development. AI tools used in Wuhan, China, to tackle COVID-19 – by helping accelerate CT scan diagnosis – are now being used in Italy and have been also offered to the NHS in the UK.

The bad

But there are also elements of China’s use of AI which are seriously concerning. Positive advances in practical AI applications which are benefiting citizens and society don’t detract from the fact that China’s authoritarian government is also using AI and citizens’ data in ways that violate privacy and civil liberties.

Most disturbingly, reports and leaked documents have revealed the government’s use of facial recognition technologies to enable the surveillance and detention of Muslim ethnic minorities in China’s Xinjiang province.

The emergence of opaque social governance systems which lack accountability mechanisms are also a cause for concern.

In Shanghai’s “smart court” system, for example, AI-generated assessments are used to help with sentencing decisions. But it is difficult for defendants to assess the tool’s potential biases, the quality of the data and the soundness of the algorithm, making it hard for them to challenge the decisions made.

China’s experience reminds us of the need for transparency and accountability when it comes to AI in public services. Systems must be designed and implemented in ways that are inclusive and protect citizens’ digital rights.

The unexpected

Commentators have often interpreted the State Council’s 2017 Artificial Intelligence Development Plan as an indication that China’s AI mobilisation is a top-down, centrally planned strategy.

But a closer look at the dynamics of China’s AI development reveals the importance of local government in implementing innovation policy. Municipal and provincial governments across China are establishing cross-sector partnerships with research institutions and tech companies to create local AI innovation ecosystems and drive rapid research and development.

Beyond the thriving major cities of Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, efforts to develop successful innovation hubs are also underway in other regions. A promising example is the city of Hangzhou, in Zhejiang Province, which has established an “AI Town”, clustering together the tech company Alibaba, Zhejiang University and local businesses to work collaboratively on AI development. China’s local ecosystem approach could offer interesting insights to policymakers in the UK aiming to boost research and innovation outside the capital and tackle longstanding regional economic imbalances.

China’s accelerating AI innovation deserves the world’s full attention, but it is unhelpful to reduce all the many developments into a simplistic narrative about China as a threat or a villain. Observers outside China need to engage seriously with the debate and make more of an effort to understand – and learn from – the nuances of what’s really happening.

By Hessy Elliott

Sourced from The Conversation

In News

These 25 Technology Trends Will Define The Next Decade

May 14, 2020 No Comments

By Bernard Marr

We may not be living on Mars or traveling to work using jet packs, but there’s no doubt the coming decade will bring many exciting technological advances. In this article, I want to outline the 25 key technology trends that I believe will shape the 2020s.

1. Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. The increasing ability of machines to learn and act intelligently will absolutely transform our world. It is also the driving force behind many of the other trends on this list.

2. The Internet of Things (IoT). This refers to the ever-growing number of “smart” devices and objects that are connected to the internet. Such devices are constantly gathering and transmitting data, further fueling the growth in Big Data and AI.

Today In: Enterprise Tech

3. Wearables and augmented humans. What started with fitness trackers has now exploded into a whole industry of wearable technology designed to improve human performance and help us live healthier, safer, more efficient lives. In the future, we may even see humans merge with technology to create “augmented humans” or “transhumans.”

4. Big Data and augmented analytics. Big Data refers to the exponential growth in the amount of data being created in our world. Thanks to augmented analytics (highly advanced data analytics, often fueled by AI techniques), we can now make sense of and work with enormously complex and varied streams of data.

5. Intelligent spaces and smart places. Closely linked to the IoT, this trend is seeing physical spaces – like homes, offices, and even whole cities – becoming increasingly connected and smart.

6. Blockchains and distributed ledgers. This super-secure method of storing, authenticating, and protecting data could revolutionize many aspects of business – particularly when it comes to facilitating trusted transactions.

7. Cloud and edge computing. Cloud computing – where data is stored on other computers and accessed via the internet – has helped to open up data and analytics to the masses. Edge computing – where data is processed on smart devices (like phones) – will take this to the next level.

8. Digitally extended realities. Encompassing virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality, this trend highlights the move towards creating more immersive digital experiences.

9. Digital twins. A digital twin is a digital copy of an actual physical object, product, process, or ecosystem. This innovative technology allows us to try out alterations and adjustments that would be too expensive or risky to try out on the real physical object.

10. Natural language processing. This technology, which allows machines to understand human language, has dramatically changed how humans interact with machines, in particular giving rise to…

11. Voice interfaces and chatbots. Alexa, Siri, chatbots – many of us are now quite used to communicate with machines by simply speaking or typing our request. In the future, more and more businesses will choose to interact with their customers via voice interfaces and chatbots.

12. Computer vision and facial recognition. Machines can talk, so why shouldn’t they “see” as well? This technology allows machines to visually interpret the world around them, with facial recognition being a prime example. Although we will no doubt see greater regulatory control over the use of facial recognition, this technology isn’t going anywhere.

13. Robots and cobots. Today’s robots are more intelligent than ever, learning to respond to their environment and perform tasks without human intervention. In certain industries, the future of work is likely to involve humans working seamlessly with robot colleagues – hence the term “cobot,” or “collaborative robot.”

14. Autonomous vehicles. The 2020s will be the decade in which autonomous vehicles of all kinds – cars, taxis, trucks, and even ships – become truly autonomous and commercially viable.

15. 5G. The fifth generation of cellular network technology will give us faster, smarter, more stable wireless networking, thereby driving advances in many other trends (e.g., more connected devices and richer streams of data).

16. Genomics and gene editing. Advances in computing and analytics have driven incredible leaps in our understanding of the human genome. Now, we’re progressing to altering the genetic structure of living organisms (for example, “correcting” DNA mutations that can lead to cancer).

17. Machine co-creativity and augmented design. Thanks to AI, machines can do many things – including creating artwork and designs. As a result, we can expect creative and design processes to shift towards greater collaboration with machines.

18. Digital platforms. Facebook, Uber, and Airbnb are all household-name examples of digital platforms – networks that facilitate connections and exchanges between people. This trend is turning established business models on their head, leading many traditional businesses to transition to or incorporate a platform-based model.

19. Drones and unmanned aerial vehicles. These aircraft, which are piloted either remotely or autonomously, have changed the face of military operations. But the impact doesn’t stop there – search and rescue missions, firefighting, law enforcement, and transportation will all be transformed by drone technology. Get ready for passenger drones (drone taxis), too!

20. Cybersecurity and resilience. As businesses face unprecedented new threats, the ability to avoid and mitigate cybersecurity threats will be critical to success over the next decade.

21. Quantum computing. Quantum computers – unimaginably fast computers capable of solving seemingly unsolvable problems – will make our current state-of-the-art technology look like something out of the Stone Age. As yet, work in quantum computing is largely restricted to labs, but we could see the first commercially available quantum computer this decade.

22. Robotic process automation. This technology is used to automate structured and repetitive business processes, freeing up human workers to concentrate on more complex, value-adding work. This is part of a wider shift towards automation that will impact every industry.

23. Mass personalization and micro-moments. Mass-personalization is, as you might expect, the ability to offer highly personalized products or services on a mass scale. Meanwhile, the term “micro-moments” essentially means responding to customer needs at the exact right moment. Both are made possible by technologies like AI, Big Data, and analytics.

24. 3D and 4D printing and additive manufacturing. Although this may seem low-tech compared to some of the other trends, 3D and 4D printing will have very wide applications – and will be particularly transformative when combined with trends like mass-personalization.

25. Nanotechnology and materials science. Our increasing ability to understand materials and control matter on a tiny scale is giving rise to exciting new materials and products, such as bendable displays.

Read more about these 25 key technology trends – including practical examples from a wide range of industries – in my new book, Tech Trends in Practice: The 25 Technologies That Are Driving The 4th Industrial Revolution.

Feature Image Credit: Adobe Stock

By Bernard Marr

Sourced from Forbes

In News

New technology in fight against cybercrime

April 16, 2020 No Comments

By Nick Hourigan.

Financial crime is growing ever more sophisticated, but so are the techniques used to fight and detect it. What are the developments in the crimefighting industry?

Financial crime isn’t isolating. Criminals — money launderers, terrorists, fraudsters — evolve apace or ahead of the institutions and individuals they exploit. Global headlines, encompassing Panama to Moscow and due South, beg the question: “Why can’t we keep up?”

How data experts can help combat financial crime

Nick Hourigan, Senior Managing Director and Head of Data and Analytics at FTI Consulting, is one of the people tasked with fighting this growing problem.

He says that, at the point a regulator is asking really probing questions of a financial institution, “harm has probably already occurred, most likely over the course of years.”

“If there is crime, it’s usually in layers and the extent is often broader than even the regulator’s influence.” While Hourigan always advises his clients to seek objective legal and strategic advice, he emphasises time and attention from senior leadership, compliance and systems owners is vital, but challenging to synchronise.

“These are hard problems that can have major reputational and financial impacts for organisations — but that isn’t always obvious at the outset.” Grappling with vast data is essential to get to the truth. “I tell my teams,” he says, “you make the computer work for you; because you can bet the criminal did.”

The benefits of ubiquitous data

So, what challenges can be met using advanced analytics and process automation? “The response must draw upon a complete picture of events and parties,” says Hourigan. “One of the key benefits of advanced analytics and process automation is the ability to combine, analyse and review information sourced from very different business systems and processes. Historically, you may not have been able to identify that someone’s activity didn’t match up with how they present themselves, because the inconsistencies are scattered across different systems.”

FTI itself aims to combine advanced analytics, e-discovery services and financial crime expertise to fight the growing problem.

“FTI does not have many people who try to be all things,” explains Hourigan. “We have technical and topical experts engaged on a project and we are able to put together teams in which the decision-making process is led by some of the most experienced global experts in the fields of financial services, regulatory investigations and data and analytics.”

Tailored financial crime solutions for large and small businesses

The critical areas of development of advanced analytics and process automation to combat financial crime depend on the size and profile of the institution, says Hourigan.

“Larger institutions will likely need to leverage data from across a greater range of geographies and services, each supported by many-layered operations. Smaller and ‘challenger’ institutions may have a simpler data and systems landscape but less established operational and compliance support. Across the spectrum, there are powerful techniques such as network analytics that can be tailored to compliment traditional investigation techniques and provide a comprehensive, sophisticated and robust response to financial crime.”

In essence, to continue to meet and prevent the threat of financial crime, financial institutions need to rapidly combine, evaluate and make decisions on any data that may indicate criminal activity. Across all those incumbent, advanced analytics and process automation are essential tools to get the right data to the right person at the right time.

By Nick Hourigan

Senior Managing Director, Head of Data and Analytics, FTI Consulting

Sourced from CITY A.M.

In Uncategorized

Video: Marketers discuss challenges around technology, scaling-up and more

March 13, 2020 No Comments

Sourced from DIGIDAY

For brand marketers, the still-new year brings new opportunities and new priorities alike. Changes in platforms and measurement are keeping some execs on their toes, while others remain restless over ROI and attribution.

At the Digiday Brand Summit in Scottsdale, Arizona, we asked five prominent marketers about what’s keeping them up at night. Their concerns ranged, but one thing remained consistent: these marketers are ready to tackle these worries head-on.

Here are some highlights:

Rachel Finley, content & community strategist at Hero Cosmetics, is kept awake by concerns about scale, particularly with influencer marketing. It’s one thing to maintain personal relationships and a level of intimacy with a set number of people — but what happens when that number goes from 100 to 1,000?
Antonia Hock, global head of the Ritz-Carlton Leadership Center, wants to see a world in which business leaders better understand their power. She discusses people at brands and companies that simply punch in and punch out, and says that’s a waste of human energy.
Ben Conniff, co-founder and CMO of Luke’s Lobster, names communication as his chief concern. He says he wants to ensure that all of his teams are moving toward the same goal — a constant challenge for a business that’s growing in multiple verticals.
David Zane, managing director, marketing, NASCAR, stays up thinking about emerging platforms. He says the goalposts are always moving, and so it’s up to marketers to stay ahead and determine what constitutes success.
Erica Chan, strategy and operations, North America B2B at Alibaba Group, says her team operates like a startup: that means worrying about prioritization and ROI. Being able to attribute cause and effect is difficult — and figuring out how to make that case compellingly is what keeps her up at night.

Sourced from DIGIDAY

In News

It’s not about length: SEO content trends to stay ahead of in 2020

November 14, 2019 No Comments

By Paul Melis

Hard as it may be to believe, it’s that time of year again – and no, I’m not talking about making Christmas lists, planning how best to avoid the in-laws over the festive season, and having mild panic attacks about how you’re going to afford all the presents and festivities that the coming months have in store. No, it’s the end of another year, which means it’s time to speculate about content trends for the coming 12 months.

Here are four trends that I think will have a significant impact on SEO content in 2020:

It’s not about length – it’s what you do with it that counts

As digital marketers, we sometimes get a little obsessed with hard and fast rules. It’s inevitable. We work in an industry based on understanding and algorithms, on following best practices, using fool-proof formulae, getting the inputs just right to achieve a precise result. A lot of the time, I think that’s what makes what we do rewarding. But I think one of the mistakes we make is to look for a right answer when there isn’t one.

The question of how long a piece of content should be is divisive because there really is no right answer. Actually, it’s worse than that. There are a lot of right answers. People have short attention spans, so writing concise, 500-word blogs is the way to go, right? But if you look at the top result for just about any search, you’ll find the word count rarely dips below a thousand. So longer must be better, then. Well, you can’t argue with the fact that most readers only get about halfway through a piece of content, and that many don’t even scroll to begin with. The reality is that there’s no ideal length for content, because length in itself doesn’t mean anything. What does matter is how well you’re answering the question, or addressing the needs of your reader.

In my experience, it’s safer to lean towards the longer side. There’s nothing more frustrating than seeing a great-sounding blog title, and opening the link to find 200 words of half-baked, keyword-stuffed content that doesn’t really say anything at all. It’s equally painful, though, when you start reading a long-form article and realise the writer is trying to draw out a 300 word idea into 3,000. Ultimately, longer content is good, but there are certainly diminishing returns.

Voice search will make you question everything

‘Always read your writing aloud.’ That might be the single best piece of advice I’ve ever heard as a writer. And, since voice search is expected to account for as much as half of all online search traffic by 2020, it takes on a new meaning: if you aren’t reading your own writing out loud, Google’s going to do it for you, and you’d better make sure the results are good enough to drive interaction or conversion.

The key thing to realise here is that voice search is fundamentally different from text search. The average text search phrase, for example, is around one to three words, while the average voice search phrase hovers more around three to six words. Voice searches are also far more likely to be phrased as questions. People talk to their voice assistants like they’re talking to a real person, so it follows that content should respond in kind if it hopes to meet the needs of the searcher.

For content to soak up the lion’s share of voice searches, it needs to be written more conversationally than you might be used to, and it needs to hone in on answering the questions that the user is asking. Content that answers questions head-on, shows a clear understanding of search intent and sheds as much of the unnecessary detail as possible is bound to perform better for voice search traffic, so expect this trend to become increasingly prevalent in the coming months and years.

Zero is greater than one

Another consequence of voice assistants becoming the go-to search channel is the importance of Position Zero: whenever a user inputs a voice search query, their assistant will read out the position zero result before delivering the rest. So, even if you’re dominating the search results for the entire first page, a competitor with the zero spot is going to soak up 100% of the voice search traffic and leave your hard-fought position one content starved for clicks.

Gartner estimates that around a third of searches will be done without a screen at all in 2020, which means that anything beyond the position zero result might as well not exist for voice search purposes. Expect blogging content and other written forms to include an increasing amount of structured data, rich data snippets, and content specifically designed to rank above position 1. This will be particularly important for content with a local element (since a large part of voice search queries centre around local search) and bottom-of-the-funnel searches.

This time, it’s personal

There’s no doubt that personalised marketing messaging works. We live in the age of the individual consumer: people are accustomed to their social media feeds, email inboxes and mobile experiences being tailored to their preferences and interests. So, it follows that expectations are the same for any content they engage with while searching or browsing.

For advertising the remedy is rather simple: serve ads that are targeted at specific factors and show an awareness of the individual customer’s context, preferences and their position in the sales funnel. But for ‘raw’ SEO content – that is, blogs, website copy, landing pages, etc. – it’s a little less straightforward. Depending on how deep down the rabbit hole you want to go, you could include forms, quizzes and surveys to understand exactly who you’re talking to before serving them tailored content, or you could go the simpler route and profile your user base into different personas who are likely to respond to different messaging.

Expect increasingly tailored, topic-focused content to come to the fore even more so than it already has in recent years. Again, customers are increasingly engaging with content that makes real conversation with them and demonstrates an understanding of their context, preferences and what they’re looking for. The more granular you can get when it comes to understanding those factors, the better you’ll resonate with your readers.

By Paul Melis

Sourced from The Drum

In News

What’s the difference between analytics and statistics?

September 9, 2019 No Comments

By Cassie Kozyrkov

Understanding the value of two completely different professions

Statistics and analytics are two branches of data science that share many of their early heroes, so the occasional beer is still dedicated to lively debate about where to draw the boundary between them. Practically, however, modern training programs bearing those names emphasize completely different pursuits. While analysts specialize in exploring what’s in your data, statisticians focus more on inferring what’s beyond it.

Disclaimer: This article is about typical graduates of training programs that teach only statistics or only analytics, and it in no way disparages those who have somehow managed to bulk up both sets of muscles. In fact, elite data scientists are expected to be full experts in analytics and statistics (as well as machine learning)… and miraculously these folks do exist, though they are rare.

Human search engines

When you have all the facts relevant to your endeavor, common sense is the only qualification you need for asking and answering questions with data. Simply look the answer up.

Want to see basic analytics in action right now? Try Googling the weather. Whenever you use a search engine, you’re doing basic analytics. You’re pulling up weather data and looking at it.

Even kids can look facts up online with no sweat. That’s democratization of data science right here. Curious to know whether New York is colder than Reykjavik today? You can get near-instant satisfaction. It’s so easy we don’t even call this analytics anymore, though it is. Now imagine trying to get that information a century ago. (Exactly.)

When you use a search engine, you’re doing basic analytics.

If reporting raw facts is your job, you’re pretty much doing the work of a human search engine. Unfortunately, a human search engine’s job security depends on your bosses never finding out that they can look the answer up themselves and cut out the middleman… especially when shiny analytics tools eventually make querying your company’s internal information as easy as using Google Search.

Inspiration prospectors

If you think this means that all analysts are out of a job, you haven’t met the expert kind yet. Answering a specific question with data is much easier than generating inspiration about which questions are worth asking in the first place.

I’ve written a whole article about what expert analysts do, but in a nutshell they’re all about taking a huge unexplored dataset and mining it for inspiration.

“Here’s the whole internet, go find something useful on it.”

You need speedy coding skills and a keen sense of what your leaders would find inspiring, along with all the strength of character of someone prospecting a new continent for minerals without knowing anything (yet) about what’s in the ground. The bigger the dataset and the less you know about the types of facts it could potentially cough up, the harder it is to roam around in it without wasting time. You’ll need unshakeable curiosity and the emotional resilience to handle finding a whole lot of nothing before you come up with something. It’s always easier said than done.

Here’s a bunch of data. Okay, analysts, where would you like to begin? Image: Source.

While analytics training programs usually arm their students with software skills for looking at massive datasets, statistics training programs are more likely to make those skills optional.

Leaping beyond the known

The bar is raised when you must contend with incomplete information. When you have uncertainty, the data you have don’t cover what you’re interested in, so you’re going to need to take extra care when drawing conclusions. That’s why good analysts don’t come to conclusions at all.

Instead, they try to be paragons of open-mindedness if they find themselves reaching beyond the facts. Keeping your mind open crucial, else you’ll fall for confirmation bias — if there are twenty stories in the data, you’ll only notice the one that supports what you already believe… and you’ll snooze past the others.

Beginners think that the purpose of exploratory analytics is to answer questions, when it’s actually to raise them.

This is where the emphasis of training programs flips: avoiding foolish conclusions under uncertainty is what every statistics course is about, while analytics programs barely scratch the surface of inference math and epistemological nuance.

Without the rigor of statistics, a careless Icarus-like leap beyond your data is likely to end in a splat. (Tip for analysts: if you want to avoid the field of statistics entirely, simply resist all temptation to make conclusions. Job done!)

Analytics helps you form hypotheses. It improves the quality of your questions.

Statistics helps you test hypotheses. It improves the quality of your answers.

A common blunder among the data unsavvy is to think that the purpose of exploratory analytics is to answer questions, when it’s actually to raise them. Data exploration by analysts is how you ensure that you’re asking better questions, but the patterns they find should not be taken seriously until they are tested statistically on new data. Analytics helps you form hypotheses, while statistics lets you test them.

Statisticians help you test whether it’s sensible to behave as though the phenomenon an analyst found in the current dataset also applies beyond it.

I’ve observed a fair bit of bullying of analysts by other data science types who seem to think they’re more legitimate because their equations are fiddlier. First off, expert analysts use all the same equations (just for a different purpose) and secondly, if you look at broad-and-shallow sideways, it looks just as narrow-and-deep.

I’ve seen a lot of data science usefulness failures caused by misunderstanding of the analyst function. Your data science organization’s effectiveness depends on a strong analytics vanguard, or you’re going to dig meticulously in the wrong place, so invest in analysts and appreciate them, then turn to statisticians for the rigorous follow-up of any potential insights your analysts bring you.

You need both!

Choosing between good questions and good answers is painful (and often archaic), so if you can afford to work with both types of data professional, then hopefully it’s a no-brainer. Unfortunately, the price is not just personnel. You also need an abundance of data and a culture of data-splitting to take advantage of their contributions. Having (at least) two datasets allows you to get inspired first and form your theories based on something other than imagination… and then check that they hold water. That is the amazing privilege of quantity.

Misunderstanding the difference results in lots of unnecessary bullying by statisticians and lots of undisciplined opinions sold as a finished product by analysts.

The only reason that people with plenty of data aren’t in the habit of splitting data is that the approach wasn’t viable in the data-famine of the previous century. It was hard to scrape together enough data to be able to afford to split it. A long history calcified the walls between analytics and statistics so that today each camp feels little love for the other. This is an old-fashioned perspective that has stuck with us because we forgot to rethink it. The legacy lags, resulting in lots of unnecessary bullying by statisticians and lots of undisciplined opinions sold as a finished product by analysts. If you care about pulling value from data and you have data abundance, what excuse do you have not to avail yourself of both inspiration and rigor where it’s needed? Split your data!

If you can afford to work with both types of data professional, then hopefully it’s a no-brainer.

Once you realize that data-splitting allows each discipline to be a force multiplier for the other, you’ll find yourself wondering why anyone would approach data any other way.

By Cassie Kozyrkov

Head of Decision Intelligence, Google. ❤️ Stats, ML/AI, data, puns, art, theatre, decision science. All views are my own. twitter.com/quaesita

Sourced from Towards Data Science

In News

The mind distracted: technology’s battle for our attention

May 16, 2019 No Comments

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

In News

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

May 16, 2019 No Comments

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.

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