#as in like it is not about whether it's marketable or will ever be monetiseable

[dkettchen]

me, procrastinating on one project with another one: it's fine they're both for content I do this for the people and the people will receive SOMETHING sooner by me working on either one 😤

[dukestewart]

I actually have a question, I'm wanting to start a webcomic at some point in the future myself, do you have any recommendations or advice for me?

Okay, I have a million things to say on the subject but to save you a lot of scrolling I’ll cut it down to the main things I wish I knew when starting my webcomic.

Don’t overprepare

It’s easy to fall into the trap of perfecting your art style or developing your character arcs before you actually, like, make the thing. The truth is you get diminishing returns on the pre-production phase, and too much planning will just waste your time. I once wrote an entire script and sketched out 200 pages for a graphic novel version of my webcomic Roundhouse, 90% of which is now redundant or contradictory. Probably took me hundreds of hours. Whoops. Make a basic plot line and some concept pictures by all means, you gotta start with something, but you’ll be much more motivated to make the comic when you’re already making it.

Collect references

This might sound kind of contradictory to my previous advice but bear with me. It’s important to prioritise creation over planning but gathering a compendium of your favourite artworks and writing techniques will save you time in the long run. If I’m ever stuck on how to draw a certain expression for example I know I have a folder full of expertly drawn faces to remind me how nostrils work. Personally I keep separate reference folders for colour, anatomy and character designs. Fantastic cure for artist’s block, swear by it.

Get someone to proofread

You have no idea how important it is to get a second opinion. No one in the history of media has ever been better off without a different pair of eyes to catch a mistake. They’ll see the obvious things you missed, a typo, a pacing issue, a joke that makes no sense… if you’re embarrassed to show it to anyone in your life then get an internet friend to have a look. Hell, I’ll have a look. Send me a message, I’m easy.

Even the most talented creators struggle to be seen

A good comic will always have a better chance of success than a crap one but that’s only a part of the equation. We’re forgetting our two troublesome neighbours, Monsieur Marketing and Lady Luck. It stinks, but we operate in an algorithm-based economy, and getting things out there takes a lot of hard research. I hate the marketing side of things, personally. I’d much rather make a page every week and not care whether it’s seen or not but such is the nature of capitalism that I have to try and monetise my work any way I can. Knowing someone in the business can’t hurt either.

Look, I’ll never be able to condense everything I know about webcomics in a single post so consider this my declaration to give advice to anyone who asks for it. Got a specific question about comics? Message me.

[chinascientist]

China’s Kuaishou steps up monetisation of AI video generation services with new price plan

Kuaishou is charging 19 yuan (US$2.66) for the first month of use, and 58 yuan per month thereafter under a ‘gold member’ plan for the video generation service.                                                                                                                                                           Chinese short-video app operator Kuaishou Technology is offering a monthly subscription to its Sora-like artificial intelligence (AI) video generating service, as China’s AI players step up efforts to monetise the cutting-edge technology. Kuaishou, the major domestic rival of TikTok’s sister app Douyin, is charging 19 yuan (US$2.66) for the first month and 58 yuan per month thereafter under a “gold member” plan for video generation services based on its Kling AI model.The plan, claimed to be “the lowest price among similar products”, would support the generation of around 3,300 photos and 66 videos per month, according a statement from Kuaishou on Friday.

The move marks the latest effort by a Chinese Big Tech company to step up commercialisation of products in the hotly-contested AI video generation market. San Francisco-based OpenAI, which pioneered text-to-video generation with the announcement of Sora in February, has yet to make its model available to the general public. In comparison, OpenAI charges US$20 per month for its ChatGPT Plus plan, which includes the DALL-E3 text-to-image generator, but not video generation. Kuaishou also unveiled two premium plans which allow users to generate 15,000 photos and 300 videos under the “platinum plan”, and 40,000 photos and 800 videos under the “diamond plan”.

Released in June, Kling can process text into video clips of up to 2 minutes long with 1080p resolution, while supporting various aspect ratios, Kuaishou said at the time. The company later upgraded the model to include some new features, including image-to-video, video extension functions, as well as enhanced editing capabilities such as start and end frame control and shot control.Kling, which was released after Kuaishou’s KwaiYii large language model (LLM) and text-to-image model Kolors, shows how Chinese AI players are finding it increasingly difficult to make money in the overcrowded market. That was reflected when a heightened price war broke out for commercial AI services. ByteDance’s Doubao models were priced 99.8 per cent less than OpenAI’s GPT-4, while a number of major players �� from e-commerce conglomerate Alibaba Group Holding to social media and video gaming behemoth Tencent Holdings, followed suit. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post. When Kuaishou released its second quarter earnings earlier this week, co-founder and CEO Cheng Yixiao said the company would strive to achieve “commercialisation scale” for the Kling model as soon as possible.

Kling has more than one million users and has generated over 10 million videos, Kuaishou said in the earnings report.The company has also launched the first-ever AI-generated fantasy short drama in China – Legendary Mirrors of Mountains and Seas – which attracted over 50 million views within two weeks of its release in July.      

We are thrilled to extend a warm welcome to the China Scientist Awards!Join us for the China Scientist Awards, a premier event in the realm of research. Whether you're joining virtually from anywhere in the world, this is your invitation to explore and innovate in the field of research. Become part of a global community of researchers, scientists, and professionals passionate about advancing research. visit: chinascientist.net Nomination Link: https://chinascientist.net/award-nomination/?ecategory=Awards&rcategory=Awardee Registration Link:https://chinascientist.net/award-registration/ For inquiries, contact us at contact@chinascientist.net ------------------------------------- Other website: https://x.com/ChinaSciAwardshttps://in.pinterest.com/chinamails123/https://www.instagram.com/cs_chenguang/https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61560863696916https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOwukWCIjAyH-UgH-larrsA 

[thetoxicgamer]

Vampire Survivors Creator Has “No Idea” Why Roguelike is Successful

It was "amazing" to be nominated for The Game Awards after the release of the first Vampire Survivors DLC, Legacy of the Moonspell, according to the game's creator, Luca Galante, who claims to have "no idea" why the independent Steam survival game has become so successful. Beginning development back in 2020, Galante launched the full version of Vampire Survivors in October 2022. Since then, it has received over 165,000 reviews on Steam, earning the coveted “overwhelmingly positive” status, and a nomination for best debut indie game at The Game Awards. Asked why Vampire Survivors has proven so popular, Galante says he has “no idea”, making the game’s success seem “really scary”. “Since launch I’ve been trying to not look at numbers or at what’s happening online specifically to not get too carried away,” Galante tells IGN. “ kept my head down and kept working on the game and on the company, focusing almost entirely on the feedback from the players in Discord and the Steam forums. The one thing I’m sure made a difference though is our community managers who did and are doing an incredible job at keeping communications open with the players”. Galante also says it was “straight up incredible” to be nominated at The Game Awards, and discusses the ethos around Vampire Survivors DLC. “As a player, I absolutely am into the idea of being able to keep getting content for the games I love, but very often nowadays I feel like DLC is designed around monetisation rather than around a good service to the players. “Having a negative preconception of DLCs, I was very hesitant to try to make one, but I also couldn’t just keep adding stuff to for fun while there’s a company to think about. My greatest hope is that we managed to make it a fair deal for the players and they’ll like it”. Despite its title, its full launch, and now its first DLC pack, Vampire Survivors still does not feature any actual vampires – among all the enemies and monsters you fight in its roguelike levels, not one of them is a verifiable bloodsucker. Galante still cannot confirm whether Vampire Survivors will ever feature vampires. “Our marketing team said we can’t answer that,” he explains. “The problem is our legal team said the same. Also, what’s a vampire?” If you’re jumping into Legacy of the Moonspell, check out our guide to the best Vampire Survivors builds. You’ll also want the best Vampire Survivors characters, and a full explanation on how to kill Vampire Survivors Enders boss, to become a true roguelike champion. You might also want to grab some of the other best survival games on PC. Read the full article

[profitabundancesoftware]

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[profitabundance]

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[bloggervickysworld]

The Future of Digital Marketing and it’s scope

The Future of Digital Marketing 

From print marketing to soft data, digital marketing has continuously adapted to meet the needs of customers and brands alike. Today, with increased connectivity and established digital infrastructure, changes are happening much faster.1 The traditional digital marketing landscape of paid media, SEO, content marketing, social media, community management, and more, are experiencing drastic developments and changes as innovations in technology development.

Get a Job in Industry:

To start your career in digital marketing is to find a job is very simple and best way as given below, In digital marketing, we have many different specializations so you will have many more options to kick start your career.

Junior & Mid-Level Career Options

Digital marketing intern

Digital marketing executive

SEO Executive

Link Building specialist

Social media specialist

Google Ads specialist

Email marketing specialist

Web Analyst

Online reputation executive

Content marketing executive

Scope of Digital Marketing in Online Business:

1. Become a Professional Blogger:

Now a day's lots of digital marketing professionals choose full time blogging as their career choice. if you have dedication and hard work then you will definitely successful bloggers in your chosen niche. Any Bloggers can generate income with advertising & affiliate marketing strategies.

 2. Earn with Affiliate Marketing & AdSense:

You can easily start your blog/website/app in a specific niche of your interest and initially put your effort to build traffic & viewers. With generating good traffic, you can earn a good income with AdSense & affiliate marketing trick and techniques.

 3. Start Freelancing Services:

Freelancing is the conception of offering your services to clients on a part-time basis from your home or from small office . By staying at home you can build your clients globally. Thanks to online websites like fiverr.com, freelancer.com etc. you can start offering your freelancing services.

 4. Start your own agency:

If you have experience to manage a business & have resources, contacts, you can start your own digital marketing agency. With your agency, you will build marketing strategies for your clients and implement them with digital marketing.

 5. Become a YouTuber:

You have option to become a YouTuber in a selected niche. You need to focus on the quality of content and create your audience base on YouTube. Once you start getting subscribers and views, you can make money with YouTube monetisation.

 6. Start your Drop shipping business:

Drop shipping a business model in which you are able to sell products online to customers without having the product physically with you. Generally in this business you need to develop as a e-commerce website in Shopify and select your products based on your niche. Then you connect your store with manufacturer and online retailers from China from Ali baba or ali Express. All product manufacturers will directly send the product to customer and you make a profit.

There are huge job opportunity in digital marketing and it is is the magic tool for brands and businesses. As more frequently entities join the online bandwagon for a wider market reach, the job opportunities in digital marketing are ever growing. Unlike other fields of employment, this arena is an all season sector. It's too inviting to turn a blind eye, folks.! No doubt Digital marketing industry celebrates a very open culture. With skills and tools knowledge advancement, empiricism holds a huge portion and that pushes you up for being the next level of the marketer. There is countless number of branches and sub branches within the digital marketing field such as SEO analyst, Social media marketing executive, online reputation management executive, digital marketing manager, PPC specialist and so on. And so is the payment package range.  Highly paid profile Digital marketing profession is one of the large paid job profiles. Google is also saying, the national average salary of the senior digital marketing manager is $95,415 and that in India is Rs 447, 346. The average pay tends to defy the law of gravitation – ever on the rise – by at least 30% YOY.

What are the different types of digital marketing?

There are seven main different types of digital marketing which are presently being used everywhere in the world. All the seven categories are as per below:

SEM ( SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING )

Search Engine Marketing or SEM is one of the expressive things which should be taken care with outmost care in digital marketing. SEM  manages the traffic whether it may be the organic traffic or paid traffic through PayPerClick-PPC. However, the traffic is generated from the SEO while SEM manages the traffic.

SEO (SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION)

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the cause you get the traffic or the viewers to your URL. Optimizing the content on your website, building the backlinks, having relevant keywords will help to increase the page traffic and a lot of viewers come to visit your website. SEO improves the organic search results.

PPC MARKETING

Paid marketing is also known as PPC marketing which means PayPerClick marketing. It is one of the rapid ways to rank high in the organic search results. Every time when your ad is clicked by visitor you are then charged with some amount which is why it is known as the pay per click or PPC marketing.

CONTENT MARKETING

Content is overlord for any website and the online media. Whenever a user visit your site first, he will find the content. By writing blogs, making videos and creative images increases the ranking of the website, which helps in the gradual increase in the viewers.

EMAIL MARKETING

When you re-targeting a customer and doing the re-branding of your company then email marketing is the best thing, as it behaves to be more customized. Marketing by emails helps in targeting individual customer and making them to know about the latest things.

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

Social Media Marketing or SMM is a expressive thing which no marketer can never neglect. Marketing through Social media involve both paid and unpaid marketing strategy. You have to aim to engage as much amount of people as possible and increase the social engagement who can later to turned into the loyal customers.

AFFILIATE MARKETING

Promotion of a brand name is fundamental which we can not avoid. Anybody can be an influencer or Affiliate marketer be that person in social media or any other industry promoting the brand is necessary. The Affiliates marketers promoting  the brand and product name with the help of content.

[purple-spring]

Hey I just saw the video of Kendall Jenner 'opening up' and how much her mom made a hype of it. But I actually want to know your thoughts about it. Like most of the times your ideas reflect my own and cause you have such a great way with your words I would really like to know what you think of it

Is this about Kendall’s acne problem? Sure, I have some thoughts.

Firstly, there’s a fantastic dialogue going on right now about how perfect skin and teeth are seen as markers of status and wealth, which contributes directly to the social idolisation of both. We spend a fortune on products like La Mer and Invisalign, and it’s all part of this burgeoning market that tells us that beauty must encompass both of these things.

Now, that’s all good and true, and it’s easy to understand that on an intellectual level, but try telling that to a 16-year-old who just wants that massive pimple to go away. Or, better yet, tell that to a 23-year-old young woman (i.e. Kendall) who 1) models for a living, 2) has had nearly her entire life televised on a show, 2) is part of a family whose existence invites constant scrutiny, that is willingly monetised and sold for likes by their matriarch.

Pimples are a big deal, and also they aren’t. They’re unsightly, but also, they’re normal. They’re annoying, but also a part of growing up. And unfortunately, we are part of the tension between all those things. It sounds as though Kendall, like any woman in her late 20s, is just navigating her way through it all. 

What I don’t like, obviously, is how the whole thing, rather than being a good story, has become a Proactiv ad, willingly shaped and hyped by her mother. It contributes nothing to the dialogue around beauty standards other than, here’s another product you can try. It doesn’t question or interrogate or push against the issue in a way that is thoughtful to Kendall’s burgeoning audience of young women.

I’m not gonna lie here and say that I wouldn’t love a fix for my own adult acne. While my skin has largely moved on from its intense teenage phase, I still get breakouts here and there. I have a bit of acne scarring that I’d love to get rid of.

But I don’t know whether this is helpful to any extent for me. As a woman, the most empowering thing I’ve ever seen in recent years is Alicia Keys making the commitment to go makeup-free, and, on the other end of the spectrum, Rihanna creating a lingerie line and using various body types to model the product and not making a big fuss about it. Showing it as something that is normalised.

This might be controversial, but the time is past for raising awareness. We are all hyper-aware. We get it. What we need now is for thoughtful, smart, hard work to go into changing the standards we hold for ourselves, and then making it stick.

I want Kendall to be part of that. EVERY WOMAN should be part of that. But if your participation a) reinforces the standards we all struggle under, and b) comes with a price tag… well, I’m just saying it would be nice to have a conversation with her. 

[coopdigitalnewsletter]

26 Mar 2021: Amazon: cooler but not fresher. Facebook’s habit. NFTs.

Hello, this is the Co-op Digital newsletter. Thank you for reading - send ideas and feedback to @rod on Twitter. Please tell a friend about it!

[Image: part - about 3.5m worth - of Beeple’s Everydays: the first 5000 days]

Amazon: cooler but not fresher

“I asked [two young employees] if they liked working at Amazon Fresh and they both said, “Yes.” I followed up with, “Beats working at a supermarket?” and they both said, “Yes.” It’s a problem that it’s not cool to work in a supermarket.” 

That’s a US supermarket executive visiting an Amazon Fresh store in Chicago. Also:

“I was amazed that the cart weighs the produce and snaps a picture of each item. [...]

“I couldn’t find a ripe avocado and the bananas looked chilled. [...] The stores don’t seem to have a personal touch, especially if you need something special. I don’t think it will be a weekly destination for me, but I’m sure it will be for some people.”

Elsewhere in grocery and retail:

Asda equal pay: when seeking equal pay, lower-paid shop staff, who are mostly women, have won the right to compare themselves with higher paid warehouse workers, who are mostly men. 

John Lewis will permanently close eight more shops - most were already struggling before the pandemic. 

Big investors shun Deliveroo[’s IPO] over workers' rights. 

43% of weekly shoppers experience spoilage, damage or theft of delivered grocery - HomeValet has a “smart box” take on grocery delivery packaging that fixes those problems.

Facebook’s habit

Facebook’s AI algorithms gave it an insatiable habit for lies and hate speech. Now the man who built them can't fix the problem. Good long read on Facebook’s efforts to understand the system it had created. 

“A former Facebook AI researcher who joined in 2018 says he and his team conducted “study after study” confirming the same basic idea: models that maximize engagement increase polarization”

Needless to say, there are competing views within FB about what “fairness” should mean, particularly in relation to politics. And unfortunately *testing* for fairness remains a nice-to-have:

“But testing algorithms for fairness is still largely optional at Facebook. None of the teams that work directly on Facebook’s news feed, ad service, or other products are required to do it. Pay incentives are still tied to engagement and growth metrics. And while there are guidelines about which fairness definition to use in any given situation, they aren’t enforced.” 

It ends on this despondent note:

“Certainly he couldn’t believe that algorithms had done absolutely nothing to change the nature of these issues, I said.

“I don’t know,” he said with a halting stutter. Then he repeated, with more conviction: “That’s my honest answer. Honest to God. I don’t know.””

Political platforms

Bad news at the newsletter platforms. Mailchimp employees on unequal working conditions that led to women and people of colour quitting jobs. And Substack writers are mad at Substack over advances given against future revenue shares to writers who may have controversial or discriminatory opinions (although tbh, this is what all publishing companies do: offer authors with varying views advances on future royalty revenues).

It is getting harder for all platforms to remain neutral. Partly this is because neutrality is impossible: as platforms (and tech companies generally) get bigger, they wield more power. And partly it is because people actually want the platforms they use to take political, ethical and value positions.

Related: Very interesting read on moderation: whether each layer in the infrastructure stack should moderate its own layer or moderate the layers above it. It has interviews with leaders at Stripe, Microsoft, Google Cloud and Cloudflare. 

NFTs, “non-fungible tokens” and art

Last week, a digital image by artist Beeple sold for 69 million US dollars. It’s a jpeg image by an artist called Beeple, and the auction house Christie’s handled the sale. To be more accurate, it wasn’t the image that sold for $69m, but a digital file on the blockchain that references the original image, although of course the very idea of “original” is complicated by digital files anyway (look, is this the original, on the Christie’s website?!). OK, let’s do NFT questions:

What is an NFT? A “non-fungible token” is a digital file that is put on some kind of blockchain so that it behaves less like a digital thing (infinitely and easily copyable and shareable) and more like a physical thing (not easily copyable and shareable). 

Hold on, what, “non-fungible”? Money is fungible: it doesn’t matter whether you have this £10 note or that one, they’re both worth £10. “Non-fungible” is the opposite: only you have this unique thing, like a painting.

Is an NFT art? Everything can be art. The question is always whether it is good art, and the easiest way to know is to look at a lot of art.

Are NFTs good? Sometimes. They let true fans express their fandom by buying and collecting things. They make some money for artists, although most aren’t going to make 69m. They let artists benefit from the secondary market - that’s a good but occasionally sweary piece.

Are NFTs bad? Often. They’re hard to understand. When they use proof-of-work blockchains - eg Ethereum as of mid March 2021 - they are profoundly wasteful of energy. They are prone to scams because while the blockchain guarantees the chain of ownership of a digital file, it doesn’t do the same for the artwork the digital file points at, so there are some instances of artists being NFTised without permission. Though this may be more a characteristic of scammers than of NFTs. Some people speculate that NFTs are being used as marketing for cryptocurrencies.

How can NFTs be both good and bad? NFTs - and cryptocurrencies more generally - are a mirror: you see what you want to see. The excitement of being part of something new. The wish to make the world afresh. Taking apart industries that are inefficient. The white heat of investing in things that go to the moon. A way to socially signal others. The virus amplifying wealth inequalities. The underlying trend to monetise everything. Pointless showing off. Buying a file that merely points at some art. A scam.

Can you get off the fence, newsletter? OK, NFTs are on balance, bad. NFTs are everything you don’t understand about art multiplied by everything you don’t understand about technology multiplied by everything you don’t understand about money. And, right now, most of them are bad for the environment.

Who’s Beeple again? Beeple is an artist. The newsletter featured a Beeple image in August 2020. Co-op Members will be pleased to hear that the newsletter didn’t pay him $69m for it.

In other countries

A changing nation: how Scotland will thrive in a digital world - “this strategy sets out the measures which will ensure that Scotland will fulfil its potential in a constantly evolving digital world”.

Data, surveillance and how India is creating platforms to give people more control over how information about them is used (Related?: Two UK broadband ISPs trial new internet snooping system with UK Home Office.)

Spain to launch trial of four-day working week - “government agrees to proposal from leftwing party Más País allowing companies to test reduced hours”.

Various things

Self-driving startup Voyage bought by Cruise, which is owned by GM and Honda. Voyage was interesting because it focussed on a taxi service in retirement communities, and has designed an interior for Covid safety.

Is test and trace really the most wasteful public spending programme ever? Or have there, in fact, been larger squanderings of taxpayers’ money in the past?

'Right to repair' law to come in this summer. Manufacturers will need to make spare parts for appliances available to consumers - will this apply to mobile phones and other devices which have become decreasingly repairable as they became smaller and more complex?

A petition to Amazon: lower the number of parcels we have to deliver.

Black tech employees rebel against diversity theater.

I have one of the most advanced prosthetic arms in the world - and I hate it.

Co-op Digital news

Reflecting on one year of remote working at Co-op Digital - Co-op Digital colleagues in their own words.

Thank you for reading

Thank you friends, readers and contributors. Please continue to send ideas, questions, corrections, improvements, etc to @rod on Twitter. If you have enjoyed reading, please tell a friend! If you want to find out more about Co-op Digital, follow us @CoopDigital on Twitter and read the Co-op Digital Blog. Previous newsletters.

[jobinterviewghost]

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5 years earlier, Ally Sheehan was at a birthday event when a good friend's daddy started quizzing her about the countless individuals who followed her on social media.

"I remember his papa said to me, 'This is so insane, you need to try to monetise it'," Ms Sheehan says.It was the very first time she ever believed about earning money using social networks. Not long after, brands and organisations began to approach her to ask if she 'd promote them.Half a decade later on, the 26-year-old Melburnian spends a great deal of her time and earns the majority of her earnings from online material creation.She's now got more than 53,000 followers on her Instagram account and 10,000 subscribers on her YouTube channel,

where she posts content mainly about her vegan diet plan and travel.Her Instagram is filled with eye-capturing pictures of Ms Sheehan in different, aesthetic locations, in some cases featuring products she

's been paid to promote.She winces a little at being called an influencer however says it's proper."The term influencer does often get a bad wrap,"she states."However ultimately, I want to be a great impact. I wish to be like an older sister or an excellent buddy." How the industry has altered from a side gig to a career The concept of influencer marketing

pre-dates the web-- star recommendations or targeted giveaways are offline examples-- however today the term is predominantly associated with social networks users promoting ideas, items or organisations to their audience for a cost or goods.The emergence and rise of social networks as a crucial source of information has placed influencers as a major form of marketing today.In the time she's been involved,

Ms Sheehan has seen the market mature and its participants diversify.She states the obligations of influencers and expectations from their audience and customers have actually grown and become more sophisticated.Marketers aren't simply looking for the super star influencers with countless views, however online creators with smaller sized, specific audiences and know-how, like herself."Once upon a time, they would simply try to find the greatest reach or the most amount of followers. That's changed.The Australian influencer industry is becoming professionalised in 3 main locations: increasing revenue; the advancement of skills, institutions and structures; and the mainstreaming of influencer culture, says Crystal Abidin, a digital anthropologist at Curtin University.In 2019, a PwC report approximated that spending in the market would reach$240 million in Australia that year. More individuals are joining the market, with work for micro -and nano-influencers producing new chances for more and diverse kinds of people participating." It utilized to be something that would be piecemeal earnings or a side gig,"Dr Abidin states."Given that 2015, individuals have been able to make a totally comfy income in this industry." Anybody can be an influencer however it takes ability to succeed The influencer profession path is significantly an accepted, even typical choice for people.The greatest in business, such as Australian way of life influencer Shani Grimmond, are family names. Even stars who came to fame in standard kinds of media like film or television like Will Smith are acting like influencers online.Skills and practices once related to influencers-- like how to place a camera for selfie or video call-- are now simply part of routine task readiness in the digital age."Five years back, if I was teaching a class, I would ask

them whether they wanted to be an influencer and they would state,'No ',"Dr Ablin says.

"However now, if I ask a class if they consider what will show up when a potential employer searches them and sees their social media, I inform them you're doing influencer practices." In stating that, you require to have a huge selection of skills to be successful, Ms Sheehan says.And she's needed to learn them

all on the task."It seems like a 100 jobs in one often. You're collaborating with brand names, you're working out, evaluating agreements,"she says." Photography, styling, editing (if you're doing scripted content you're composing), directing, all of these elements yourself. " How influencers deal with marketers Professionalisation of the market includes influencers routinely working with groups or contracting out elements of material development, Dr Abidin says.Guyala, a Birri Gubba and Wonnarua lady, model and actor, works as an influencer on Instagram. Photographs of her presenting for the video camera in clothing or with products she's paid to publish on her account are sprinkled with personal and sometimes political images.

She deals with a management agency that acts as a conduit to the brand names and organisations that Guyala promotes."Before I signed, people would simply [direct message] me and send me things,"she says."Now, it's more expert. They'll send it to the firm, and my agent will send through a quick. I go there and choose it up, I take the pictures, ensure whatever matches up with the briefs and send it back to my representative. "On the other side of the equation, online marketers are likewise codifying expectations and requirements as they spend millions on influencers.Last month, the Australian Influencer Marketing Council(AIMCO)released its very first set of standards for the industry.This document consists of"finest practice "for everything from advertising disclosure requirements, to copyright rights and metrics for the success of influencers.Head of AIMCO, Josanne Ryan, states the code was established in assessment with more than 50 Australian marketing agencies, which future modifications will include input from influencers too. "These are not only designed to safeguard the online marketer, they're also created to help the influencers," she says.As part of building trust with their audiences, influencers are anticipated to be transparent about their relationships through clearly labelling what is sponsorship and what is not. Stopping working to divulge relationships may be a breach of Australian Consumer Law, although no influencer has ever been pursued for a breach, according to a representative from the Australian Competitors and Customer Commission.Ms Ryan says marketers are also more conscious of brand threat of influencer marketing, as parts of the community have come under fire for promoting misinformation and conspiracy theories. Perceptions of being an influencer do not match reality While the idea of being an influencer has been mainstreamed, developers say that, ironically, the public's perception of the influencer does not match the truth for the huge majority of them.Like many other imaginative industries, the lifestyles of the leading influencers who receive the most attention from mainstream media aren't agent of the lots of others in the field.Ms Sheehan reviews the tough elements of what she does: undefined work-life boundaries, insecure work, unclear career course and a continuously evolving industry.She states the independent nature of the role isn't all bad--"it provides you liberty "-- and that she's struck up relationships with other influencers and developers, often sharing details or brainstorming what to do."Taxes are a fantastic example. I had to ask numerous pals: what did you do here? How does this work?" Ms Sheehan says.Guyala thinks some individuals might underestimate how much work enters into being a professional influencer.Even after she's produced an image for a brand name, the course to publishing can feel extensive, she says.

"I'll send it to the agency, who will send it to the customer, who will inform me which images they want. They'll normally examine over it 3 times before I post, inspecting the caption, the edit, the image and the product placement. It normally takes a week to really post it, there are simply so many actions, "she says.Guyala still experiences individuals who assume that being an influencer is something you do if you're abundant, rather than something you do as a livelihood.

"A great deal of individuals believe it's a luxury life. Even being called an influencer, you're taken into this classification, you're labelled as someone who has a great deal of cash and has a good life and a huge house and doesn't have that much stuff to do, "Guyala says." I don't reside in a great house, I do not have a nice vehicle. I'm working every day, I'm trying to hustle every day."

[kentonramsey]

Meet The New Social Media Stars Making A Hobby Of Dismantling Influencer Culture

Consider how much the events of this year have reprioritised your world: Are you thinking about injustices or societal problems you hadn’t considered before? Do you still spend money in the same way? Have you altered big career goals or personal life plans? 

For many of us, this means that the social media celebrities and influencers we used to love (or maybe loved to hate) have dropped to the bottom of what feels necessary these days. Frankly, some have become just plain difficult to watch. Whether they’re hopping on the latest hashtag trend that seems like just another excuse to post a selfie, or engaging in more actively harmful activities — like attending crowded gatherings, posting performative “social justice” messages, or knocking off struggling small designers — it can be hard to justify tuning in, if it means lining their pockets. The simplest-seeming choice is to smash the unfollow button and move on. But for some observers, that’s not enough. 

There’s a small but growing number of social media users dedicated to calling out shady influencer behaviour, whether it’s photoshopping images and pretending they’re hadn’t, or potentially endangering the lives of others during a pandemic. Among most popular of these social media vigilantes is Instagram account InfluencersTruth, which currently has over 68k followers, and is structured similarly to Diet Prada, the famed fashion world caller-outer. The creator, C., who spoke to Refinery29 on the condition of anonymity, says that InfluencersTruth’s goals are simple: “I can assure you that this wasn’t part of some grand plan. Right now, InfluencersTruth is a solo act with no plans to monetise itself in any way,” she explains. 

For C., her motivation was purely emotional. After seeing how some high-profile influencers — ones with millions of followers, high-profile sponsorship deals, and successful businesses in their name — dealt with COVID-19, she felt compelled to speak out. “I started InfluencersTruth the first week of April during the height of the pandemic in New York City. My friend was at that time in the hospital due to COVID. He later passed away. What I kept seeing on Instagram from influencers was disgusting. The lack of self-awareness was and continues to be appalling,” C. says. 

While much of what InfluencersTruth posts are observations about influencers’ content that anyone could theoretically come across, followers also occasionally send along secrets — some of which, C. says, are too mean to post. “I try not to be too snarky,” she explains. “But I think that everyone is tired of these influencers presenting a version of life that just isn’t reality.”

Indeed, what may have once felt like fun voyeurism — a window into the world of an ultra-connected one percenter, where designer bags come free in the mail with handwritten cards and everybody has a house in the Hamptons — now feels incredibly tone deaf, especially when the content creator in question tries to have it both ways, posting faux-woke social justice content alongside unboxing videos and #sponcon. Our fatigue for the community is growing, and people are noticing. Earlier this year, Marie Claire asked “Is This The End of The Influencer?,” Vanity Fair questioned “Is This The End of Influencing As We Know It?,” Wired to inquire “Could The Coronavirus Kill Influencer Culture?,” and Adweek shot back, “No, Coronavirus Isn’t the End of Influencer Marketing. But It Has Put It Under a Microscope.”

It may be premature to tout this backlash as the definitive “end” of influencer culture. Certainly, it’s slowing down, especially as marketing budgets have been slashed for all but the biggest content creators. But thanks to our diminished IRL social lives, we’re spending more time on social apps than ever before. According to data from eMarketer, time spent on social media is expected to rise by 8.8% this year, which means there’s still a real hunger for content. If it’s not the end of influencer culture, then it’s perhaps the end of eye roll-inducing, aspirational-at-all-costs influencer culture. It makes sense to have high expectations of those who claim to lead the lives, inhabit the perspectives, and communicate the ideas that are valuable enough to influence others.

These call-out accounts are hardly the first internet-personality watchdogs. Before there was InfluencersTruth or Diet Prada, there was Get Off My Internets (GOMI, for short), an abundantly snarky message board on which anonymous users posted about bloggers, vloggers, and whomever else  annoyed them on the internet that day. Reddit also has a similar community called BlogSnark (there’s also, incredibly, now another subreddit called “blogsnarkmetasnark: a place to snark on the snarkers,” because the snarkers will inevitably become the snarkees, I guess?). But while GOMI and Reddit allow unverified gossip and pure speculation, accounts like InfluencersTruth tend to do some due diligence before publishing. “I think these ‘influencers’ forget that Google is a really powerful tool and you can find anything and everything on there,” C. says. 

Sophie Ross, a copywriter and freelance journalist and former Refinery29 employee, has brought the business of calling out bad influencer behaviour to Twitter, where she has about 11k followers. “A lot of people are so fed up with the facade, especially right now,” she says. “We’re experiencing a cultural shift. People are really seeing through the bullshit. The influencers that are flaunting their Chanel bags when there’s record unemployment rates… there’s just a lot of privilege-flaunting and bad behaviour happening.”

Neither Ross nor InfluencersTruth have dealt with much backlash, perhaps because what they post tends to be rooted in truth and legitimate issues with influencer culture as opposed to pure snark for snark’s sake. C. says she’s received some “poorly veiled threats” from unhappy influencers, and Ross has, too: “I don’t care,” she says. “Maybe people are thinking I could be burning bridges. But I’m okay without these people. The people who I call out on Twitter aren’t people I would want to associate with ever, anyway.”

Though InfluencersTruth has a fraction of the followers that many of the influencers she posts about do, the conversation C. starts around our expectations from the people our likes, clicks, and views support are more relevant than given the events of this year. The demand  for authenticity, accountability, transparency, and just plain reality is what consumers are asking for in other sectors, too; we’re outraged for the same reasons when we find out the cute leggings or suitcase sold to us as emblems of progressive values are actually the output of abusive and unhappy work environments. And, like entrepreneurs, business leaders, and pretty much anyone else trying to brand themselves, social content creators who want to remain relevant in a post-2020 world are likely going to have to find a way to adapt.

“I don’t think you should wait for something to blow over or wait for people to forget about it,” Ross advises influencers who may have come up against criticism in recent months. “I think you need to handle it head-on, because all of your followers are wondering what’s happening. You owe transparency to your followers. Just be real for a second.”

But for those who have spent the better part of a decade airbrushing every aspect of their lives, do they even remember what real looks like? And is it possible for an influencer to apologise or rebrand in a way that doesn’t feel like a self-serving ploy to keep cancellers at bay? There are plenty of jokes about influencers donning messy buns and thick-rimmed glasses to make hollow apology videos, but for those who have had to do this, it can be crushing to realise that the persona you’ve spent years cultivating doesn’t resonate anymore, and maybe even hurts people. 

But the fact is, having an audience is a huge privilege that nobody is owed. And there are so many people on social media these days — like Ziwe, Rachel Cargle, or Kelli Brown — who are doing the important work of starting dialogues about race and privilege, celebrating diversity, or even just making people laugh, who many might rather see reap some of the benefits other creators with “safer” or more brand-friendly content have long enjoyed.

Even among more traditional influencer-types who want to stick with product recommendations and lifestyle shots, observers seem to think it’s still possible to cultivate an authentic relationship with an audience. “I really like Grace Atwood,” says C. “In my opinion, she’s so genuine and really puts in the work unlike a lot of other influencers who just take pictures of themselves.” That being said, C. thinks it’s impossible for influencer culture writ large to be reformed: “What I think should change is their relevance within our culture. If we all stop following, stop swiping up, and stop idolising, I believe that our society will be healthier and happier.”

Like what you see? How about some more R29 goodness, right here?

What Is The Role Of Influencers In This Crisis?

We Need To Talk About Black Joy On Social Media

How Does Instagram's Reels Compare To TikTok?

Meet The New Social Media Stars Making A Hobby Of Dismantling Influencer Culture published first on https://mariakistler.tumblr.com/

[zanytimetravelenthusiast-blog]

FunnelXpress Review

Presenting FunnelXpress

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A total affiliate system containing all elements called for, making it possible for customers quickly create leads as well as sales from integrated readymade products as well as affiliate funnels.

FunnelXpress consists of 30 DFY (editable) associate funnels all set to create leads as well as affiliate sales from day 1 without any additional price or experience.

Each channel comes total with all components required ... Consisting of 'Ensured Authorization' ahead marketing associate products

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A Quick Guide To An Associate Advertising Sales Funnel (Part 2)

A Simple Associate Marketing Sales Funnel

Since you recognize what a FunnelXpress sales channel is, allow's see what a straightforward affiliate advertising sales funnel looks like.

Note: The middle two steps entail procedures that are mostly similar to those involved in building your email list, which you ought to currently be doing anyway. If you require a refresher course, you can read this post.

For this write-up, I'm utilizing guitar lessons as an instance blog topic and a guitar lesson e-course as an instance of an affiliate product.

Awareness: Web content

After driving web traffic to your blog and maximizing your web content for online search engine, you must already have a respectable quantity of web traffic to your blog site at this point.

When customers are looking for solutions to their problems, you desire them to locate their means to your blog site and your particular web content discussing your associate item. When they're consuming your web content, they are familiar with concerning your item, and that creates the awareness in them that such an item exists.

Utilizing the guitar blog site as an example, you're likely to create about search phrases such as "guitar strumming techniques," "just how to play guitar," and also other relevant long-tail search phrases. You desire these individuals to discover your blog and your material.

You might have written a product testimonial of a guitar training course that aided you exceptionally (hint: your associate item), or a contrast of guitar training courses that you've taken. As a finest practice, you ought to have two or three of your affiliate links in your web content.

Interest: Opt-in Web Page

When your FunnelXpress viewers have read your web content, they either click among the associate web links you included in the message, or they file away the information in their mind and also never ever go back to your blog site. If it's the former, and also they end up in fact acquiring the product, after that congratulations!

But if it's the last, do not despair right now. There's still a way you can try to retain these viewers in your database to be able to sell to them later, which's obtaining them to join your newsletter.

Possibilities are you're currently doing this in your blog. However welcoming your readers to register for your newsletter when you have an item to use them is a somewhat different procedure from when you're just trying to get them to subscribe.

Typically, your lead magnet is related to the article or web content they were reading. However when you have an item to offer, your lead magnet or giveaway for that certain article need to be connected to the product you're using them.

Following our example, given that you're offering an e-course, you can supply among the video lessons of the e-course. This can be like a sneak peek of the e-course.

Besides the opt-in forms that you need to place on your blog post, you'll require to produce a touchdown web page that identifies the advantages of your lead magnet and consists of a kind to gather their e-mail address and also their name, at least.

The touchdown page of your lead magnet must be useful sufficient to pique as well as sustain your readers' interest. If they do decide to choose in to your e-mails, that symbolizes their rate of interest in the lead magnet and also, a lot more notably, in the item you have to provide.

Right here's an example of what your opt-in page might resemble.

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Desire/Decision: Thanks Web page.

Your Thanks web page is more than where your prospects (let's call them prospects since you have their e-mail address) download their lead magnet. More than that, though, this web page is a possibility for you to attract your visitors with a deal that they can't decline.

Okay, possibly they can reject, but FunnelXpress requires to be something considerable for them to wish to get the product, as well as get it NOW.

Produce the need by stressing how useful the item is. Offer the three main benefits of your affiliate item. Then, provide a special price cut on your affiliate product that they can just get if they click the switch currently to learn more about the item.

FunnelXpress Testimonial & Introduction

Vendor: Venkata Ramana et al

Product: FunnelXpress

Introduce Day: 2020-Jan-20

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Front-End Cost: $37

JV Web page: https://www.socialleadfreak.com/funnelxpress-review/

Particular niche: General

FunnelXpress Evaluation - Quality & Perks

Done in 1

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Merely log-in, select a product, select a contemporary designed from 30+ DFY design templates (all verified to transform) then execute the integrated web traffic generation system to begin developing an email listing while creating affiliate compensation at the same time.

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FunnelXpress comes packed with functions consisting of

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50+ Handpicked Affiliate Provides to Advertise:

FX consists of over 50 top quality evergreen affiliate uses all set for customers to promote in numerous particular niches all with assured authorization (even for full newbies).

Produce Offers Walls:

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Connect GetResponse, Aweber or any other Autoresponder.

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Your users will not require to stress over creating seed traffic in any way. Using our constructed in website traffic generation system, customers will certainly have the ability to send out website traffic to all their funnels without any added price.

Develop 100 Funnels:

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[spicynbachili1]

Cards on the table: Artifact is out

I’ve already performed a bit, however I’m not but certain whether or not Valve and Richard Garfield’s ‘Dota however playing cards’ recreation Artifact goes to eat my each waking thought, or if I’ll bounce off it like exhausting cheese. A kind of two.

I’m about to seek out out, as a result of it simply launched on Steam.

Yep, there’s a brand new Valve recreation out within the wild. I don’t get to put in writing that each week.

Artifact takes Dota 2‘s heroes and its three-lane dynamic, and turns them right into a bewilderingly advanced card recreation that guarantees to be deeper than any TCG you ever did see. I performed a couple of matches within the beta, and I can attest to that not being empty advertising and marketing.

Right here’s what it appears like – when Valve attempt to make it appear as unintimidating as attainable.

It warms my coronary heart to see an enormous crimson axeman transcend bodily existence by leaping right into a blazing white rectangle that simply fell from the sky. That takes Axe to a airplane the place battles contain numbers extra overtly, and gremlins dance throughout an in-fiction recreation that represents key moments in Dota-land being altered by time-bending wizards. That’s defined on this prelude comedian, and this launch day one.

I’ve solely performed a couple of matches, so I’m nonetheless craning my neck up at a fittingly Dota-esque studying curve. You get one hand of playing cards to maintain three lanes, and win by both knocking over a tower on two of ’em or doubling down on one lane to drub up an Historic. That construction kinds the underside of a teetering pile of kit, consumables, lane upgrades and hero skills that’s consistently threatening to topple over and crush you.

Guidesman Dave has had longer to dig himself out of the rubble, and has loads of recommendation on tips on how to go about that your self.

To get began you’ll must fork up £16/€18/$20, which nets you two decks, ten packs of random playing cards, and 5 “occasion tickets” to enter aggressive modes to win extra playing cards. In the event you do effectively sufficient in occasions you’ll be able to earn earn one other ticket, although I wouldn’t depend on that initially.

Extra money can (and sure will) be spent on extra card packs and occasion tickets, in addition to particular person playing cards from the Steam Neighborhood Market. The monetisation mannequin is reportedly much less stingy than deliberate, although I nonetheless see a cash chasm opening up earlier than me.

Right here’s the Steam web page.

from SpicyNBAChili.com http://spicymoviechili.spicynbachili.com/cards-on-the-table-artifact-is-out/

[itslikethatfrenchthing]

069: How To Use Pinterest For Business (When You Don’t Know Where To Start)

  TUNE IN: ITUNES | STITCHER | SOUNDCLOUD | OVERCAST | SPOTIFY | TUNEIN | CASTBOX

Today’s talking point:

I am so excited to dig into this episode which is all about Pinterest.

I see so many passionate purpose driven online business owners that are struggling to get that visibility that they want in their business. You are created for big things and I truly do believe that. Pinterest has been a game changer for me and my online presence and my business and I want to help you get those same results as well!

We go over why Pinterest is so important, how to use it, common mistakes (+how to fix them) and how to set up your own Pinterest profile.

CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE FREE MASTERCLASS ON HOW TO FOCUS ON THE RIGHT TASKS IN YOUR BUSINESS WITHOUT WORKING 24/7!

How To Use Pinterest For Business (When You Don’t Know Where To Start)

Today's episode is going to be split into four sections:

Why you should be using Pinterest for business and why it is so important

How Pinterest is working currently

Three mistakes you're making on Pinterest that make it hard for your ideal client to find you and how to fix those mistakes

How to set up your Pinterest profile

We want to build a long term scalable, sustainable business and focus on the long term game. We want to focus on the strategies and tasks that are going to pay off for us in the best way possible: long term results.

If what I just described resonates with you, and you are focusing on Facebook or Instagram, you are doing it wrong.

I see so many online business owners that are spending so much time creating content for these social platforms that just disappears after 24 hours. I'm sorry if I'm calling you out right now, but it's coming from a good place. Your content is too good to be ignored. 

When you implement the strategies that I teach you, you put them into practice and you create this boss Pinterest strategy, you are going to get your content and your business seen by more people. So if you're done getting ignored, or you're fed up with your posts on Instagram getting rubbish engagement, you are in the right place.

Why Pinterest?

 So why Pinterest? 

87% of pinners actually come to shop. Pinterest isn't full of people that are just searching to search. They are searching with an intention.

Pinterest gains traction over time. Remember, we are in this for the long game. With Pinterest, you post something today and that pin can still be driving traffic to your website, months, even years after you've published it. I still have pins that are bringing traffic to my site that I published in October 2018. Let your content work harder for you.

Pinterest users have a 9% average higher income. Pinterest is a search engine platform, and pinners are performing 2 billion searches per month. When you understand keywords, and how to use keywords the right way, you will dominate your industry on Pinterest. 

How To Use Pinterest

Pinterest is always updating their platform, so I thought it would be helpful to share the best up to date information with you at the time of recording this.

#1 | Pinterest favours fresh pins

Any pin that you create for a new blog post or an old blog post or product and pin to a board is considered a fresh pin. Now this is very interesting because before this big change, Pinterest was great for old established seasonal pins. Still, a pin you created two years ago can live on Pinterest during that entire time and help you with traffic and monetisation as well. It's important to know that Pinterest is favouring and prioritising fresh pins over old pins currently.

Related Tutorial: How To Create Pins That Go Viral

#2 | Pin directly from your site

Pinterest is encouraging pinning from your blog or website. The best move now is to pin straight from your website. Because Pinterest is encouraging pinning from your site, it is more important than ever to claim your website with Pinterest and make sure that you have verified it. 

This is important because it enables analytics and rich pins, as well as lets Pinterest know that you are a content creator and not just a consumer of Pinterest. So you give Pinterest content versus just save content on Pinterest. 

#3 | Pin consistently

Pinterest doesn't really care how many times you pin or what you pin. It is only concerned that you are consistent on their platform. So they don't want a pinner to pin every day and then stop pinning for two months. They want consistency, whether that's every day, once a week, once a month, whatever works best for you. 

Now, this also means that Pinterest won't mind what you pin. So you can actually pin 100% of your own content and products if you want to. But I do advise against that since for certain strategies you need third party pins. 

#4 | Grow your followers

Growing your Pinterest followers is important, I'll dive deeper into this in another episode potentially. It’s an important metric that allows you to be seen and share your content.

#5 | Space out your content

Pinterest wants pins to be well spaced on your boards. This means that Pinterest doesn't want content creators to spam their boards with the same looking pin row after row. If they feel that you are pinning the same pin too frequently, they may close your account or suspend it. Tailwind suggests every three to six months to pin the same pin. 

COMMON MISTAKES

You Don’t Create Original Content

If all you do is re-pin, you're leading no one to your own website and we want people to come to your website. So pinning original content can mean saving images from one of your blog posts or linking to your products in your shop.

If you're not creating pins that lead to your own site, then you're not helping those amazing dream customers find you. In fact, you're just sending them somewhere else.

You Don’t Use SEO

Now, don't get scared by this. Pinterest has its own unique SEO (search engine optimisation). 

Let's say someone is looking for a quick easy vegetarian butter pie recipe. Even if you have loads of amazing content and recipes on your website, and even if you have proper keyword phrases throughout your blog posts that make it known that you're a cook extraordinaire who makes an amazing butter pie…

Do you really think that your dream client will find your recipe if you've pinned it with the description that says “yummy yummy get in my tummy?” No!

When posting on Pinterest, you have to think like someone using a Google search bar. What are they going to type in to find what they are looking for? 

You Don’t Rank For Your Search Terms

Now, having proper SEO and keyword rich descriptions for your pins is part of it. But your account as a whole needs to be on brand. That means:

Your account name, bio website link and board names should all make sense for what your business and brand entails.

Your board names and descriptions within those boards should also be consistent.

You’re Not Targeting Your Ideal Customer

With Pinterest, just as you would with anything in your business, you have to have a specific ideal customer. And you need to know who it is that you are trying to serve. 

What are their pain points? 

What are their deepest desires? 

What do they need help with? 

And then most importantly, when they come to Pinterest, what are they searching for?

3 Easy To Implement Strategies

#1 | Create original content and pin your own work

Now for product based businesses if you are constantly creating and launching new products, this is great because you can constantly be pinning your own products to Pinterest. But having a blog is so crucial. There's no other way to create original content than seeing your own blog posts and pinning those.

#2 | Utilise SEO by including descriptive and on-point key phrases in your pin descriptions and board descriptions

Remember, don't just guess these, take your time and do your research. It doesn't take long and it will massively pay off. Think about what people are searching for and use the features within Pinterest to find all the associated keywords based on what you've searched for.

#3 | Optimise your profile for search

From your account name to your bio to your board names to your board descriptions. 

How To Set Up Your Pinterest Profile

This is going to help you gain even more clarity when it comes to your pinning and everything else.  

In 160 characters or less, your bio is going to briefly explain who you help, how you help them and what you should do next. This is where you can include an opt-in of some kind.

There are loads of different words that you could use for this: an opt-in, a freebie, a lead magnet, they're all the same thing. It's basically something that you offer for free in exchange for someone's email address. 

If you don't have a freebie yet, don't worry, we will get there. But really, the whole point of Pinterest is to build your email list. 

When you're creating your bio, just keep in mind that Pinterest is a search engine. So you can actually infuse relevant keywords into your bio, and I even have certain keywords in my actual profile name as well. Keep it simple and just keep in mind your target audience.

I want to list this out for you so you can answer the following questions:

I help (insert who you help, what is their identity) learn, do, become (a deep desire or goal that they have)

Sign up for my “...”

OR find out more at my blog or join our Facebook community.

A few other things for your Pinterest profile:

Use a headshot of yourself or your company logo. 

Make sure you're using keywords in your name and your bio.

Communicate your brand and what it is that you're about (Who are you? What do you do? What should people expect from you?) 

Include a link for them to connect with you.

Resources Mentioned In This Episode:

Watch the free masterclass here.

Want access to a library full of online marketing resources plus weekly bitesized breakthroughs to help you boss your online presence? Find it here.

What did you think of the show? Leave a review on iTunes!

Subscribe to the show and get notified when a new episode goes live.

Come join my free FB group.

Apply to work with me 1:1 as a private client here.

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[idombledore]

Natural Selection

It was July 2003 and a second-year Harvard student called Mark Zuckerberg had been playing around with a pet project. He had no commercial aspirations for it. It was just fun to code. It was a "hot or not" photo comparison site. He called it FaceMash and his friends loved it. Then it found its way onto the main Harvard servers and Zuckerberg’s education as a young entrepreneur began. Facemash showed how an idea can go wrong, how an idea can be snuffed out, not because people don't like it. They did. Its first four hours online attracted 450 students and 22,000 photo views. Facemash was snuffed out due to rules. It was deemed inappropriate by the Harvard administration. As the Harvard Crimson reported in November 2003, “The charges against you are for security, copyright and privacy violations and you're staring down the barrel of expulsion from Harvard.” There was also an angry backlash from women, in particular, not least the Association of Harvard Black Women. The charges were subsequently dropped but the experience taught him that an idea is just the start. Although Facemash wasn't a startup per se, if it had been, the regulatory issues and the backlash from women would have strangled it at birth. The idea that it generated, Facebook, would need to overcome significant obstacles, regulatory, financial, staffing, competition and so much more. Survival of the fittest didn't just apply to biological life. It applied to startups too. Zuckerberg and Facebook went on to achieve great things but why do nine out of ten startups fail? You have solid ideas. You know your markets. You know your ideas can make money. So what happened to your vision? Neil Patel offers an insider's insight into what happens in his article, 90% Of Startups Fail: Here's What You Need To Know About The 10%. Patel summarises that, if a startup is already attracting a lot of customers like Facemash, you don't really need a business plan until you go out and get funding. Otherwise, it's vital. Planning from the start is among the key reasons your startup company will fail early. Planning sets the scene on your entire vision. Know your market universe. Know your strategy. Bill Gross of IdeaLab also wanted to know why so many companies fail. He looked into some of his own successes and disappointments at IdeaLab and some of the where-are-they-now companies of recent times and he discovered something he didn’t expect. Your timing, when you launch, at 42%, was by far the most important factor between a project that succeeded and one that didn't. "Your timing is vital," said Gross. "Are you too early? Do you need to educate the market first? Or are you bang on time? Airbnb launched at the height of the recession when people found it really useful to rent a room or two out and draw in a little extra money. Or are you too late, there are already too many competitors?" Second in the list was your team at 32%. Your people. The people who make the whole thing tick, their adaptability, the all-important customer experience. Gross says a company has to be prepared to be shouted at by unhappy customers. Things will go wrong. It's how a company reacts that defines the company. Gross quotes Mike Tyson, former world heavyweight boxing champion. "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.” The uniqueness of the idea came in 3rd at 28%. Gross said he wasn't surprised by Business Planning (24%) and Funding (14%) if a startup already has some traction. If your customers are demanding what you're producing, you can develop a plan later and intense funding can easily follow. If you've got no market traction yet, like the vast majority of startups, The Business Planning and Funding pieces are vital to your survival. Your business plan will tell an investor if you and your idea are up to it, but more importantly, it will tell YOU if you're up to it. "It's at this point," says Gross, that "...sensible people see a bad idea play out on the page and just leave it alone right there."   In three years time, what are your startup's projected sales? How much do you need to spend to get those sales? How many people will you need to employ and train, how much server space? What are the costs of giving away the free version before you monetise it? "You will find there's a lot more than you thought," says Gross. Out of your business plan will emerge a map. Suddenly there's a real business opportunity. Your business plan covers it all, revenue models, ad campaigns and how to design a seamless customer experience. And how to time it all to hit the market at the right time. It will tell an investor two things: 1. You can run a fifty-million dollar company. 2. Your startup will give them a Return on Investment (ROI) they can work with. So, now you're funded, you take a moment to enjoy the feeling. You give someone a hug. Can this be your dreams coming true? You're dizzy with the buzz it gives you. As Chris Herd writes on Hackernoon, "Welcome to the most exciting time in your life." Now it's time for you to crank up the engines. You do all the things you said you would in the business plan. There are deadlines, people to find, marketing agencies to meet, prices to negotiate. Neil Patel says, “It's now time to focus harder than ever. Ideas spring up everywhere but, unless it's a free energy idea or London to Sydney in six minutes, do not bother your current strategy with it. Focus. Keep your eye on the ball. You've still got so many more obstacles to come.” Before long, your idea will be copied. Products will hit the market that are cheaper than yours, maybe have a few nice ideas yours doesn't. It's inevitable. That’s why you chose the blitzkrieg option, saturate, colonise and cling on to your market share with all you've got. The nice ideas on those other sites? You were first to market. You're the market leader. Build them into your future releases. You were the first, so set yourself as the first right from the start. Keep improving it, keep inventing, keep creating new products with your brand all over them. There is another factor that so many entrepreneurs ignore or simply don't believe is important. And it's the fundamental essence of 'survival of the fittest'. If you invent a machine that can produce free energy, what are the big power companies going to do? Insist quite strongly you sell it all to them? Tie you up in lawsuits till you lose the will to live? It doesn't matter if it's the biggest energy company in the world or a company just a bit bigger than you. If they lose market share, they'll want you stopped. Life was just fine before you came along. Patel says, "This is the stage where your whole vision can be torn up and stamped on and this is the stage where it's most damaging. This is where all that hard work can vanish down the plughole overnight." Your competition is fighting for its survival. You're under attack. That photo of you on Facebook doing something nefarious, your less-than-exemplary school record. It all finds its way into the media and your brand suffers. When the co-founder of Facebook, Eduardo Saverin, underwent a week-long induction ritual at Harvard, he had to take a chicken with him everywhere he went, he couldn't imagine later being accused of animal cruelty but, eventually, the negative publicity was used as one of the reasons to write him out of Facebook. Zuckerberg had learnt well from his Facemash experience. This is survival of the fittest in its most corporate form. It's not fair, you say. It's all going so well. Everything is on-plan. You didn't do anything wrong. Or did you? You didn't see it coming but you should have. And where in the business plan did it mention anything was fair? Ever heard of a CDO? It's a Chief Defence Officer. In Sean Lyon's book, Corporate Defence and the Value Preservation Imperative, Lyons explains how to Bulletproof your Corporate Defences. "These problems are very real," he says. "If you haven't addressed it, you have a significant weakness." Your CDO needs to engage anti-hacking measures and have strategic contingencies in place for anything that comes after you. It could be industrial espionage, a negative PR campaign. The bigger you are, the nastier the things they say about you. You will even need to watch out for sabotage from within. Lyons says, "It's not paranoid. It happens. It's real. If you want your baby to get past childhood, realise what sort of world we're in and get ahead of it.” So why do nine out of ten startups fail? According to some of the most successful entrepreneurs in the world, including Neil Patel and Bill Gross, it's bad planning, you took your eye off the ball and natural selection wasn't considered. Bill Gross said, "The startup is one of the greatest ways we've go to make the world a better place. If you take a group of people with the right equity incentives, and organise them in a startup, you can unlock human potential in a way never before possible. And to do that, you must miss nothing.” Mark Zuckerberg's human potential was unlocked with Facebook but Geoffrey James, writing for Inc.com had one more word of advice for all the future Mark Zuckerbergs out there. "There is one thing and one thing alone that every great entrepreneur absolutely must possess: Courage. When all's said and done, you can plan and strive and do all you can but if you don't also have the pig-headed courage of an entrepreneur, you won't be an entrepreneur." If Mark Zuckerberg had had a business plan for Facemash in 2003, he would have learned about woes about to befall him. Whether he would have done anything differently, only he can say.

[entergamingxp]

Harmonix’s Fuser bets on user creativity as the future of music gaming • Eurogamer.net

Where do you go after Guitar Hero and Rock Band? That’s a question the music genre has been trying to answer for about 10 years, with varying degrees of success. Some games have looked to VR to replace the physicality of performing on peripherals, yet the platform still remains out of reach for many thanks to cost and space requirements. Others have taken risks with unique spins on rhythm-action – often brilliant in their own right, but none have captured the mass market like the guitar games of the 2000s.

Does the answer lie in user-created content? That’s what Harmonix is betting on with its latest title, Fuser, a music-mixing game officially unveiled today. Part performance game, part creative tool, it’s a far cry from the days of rocking out with a peripheral in your living room – instead favouring a Coachella-influencer vibe as players mix current tracks together to satisfy crowd demands.

“A lot of our traditional games – whether it’s Rock Band or Dance Central, even some of the stuff we’ve done in VR like Audica – are very different in that those games are either a recreation of, or performance to, an existing song,” Harmonix exec Dan Walsh told me during a preview session. “Fuser is a music-mixing game where you are creating things as opposed to recreating things.”

Launching with over 100 tracks, players will be able to pick and choose from set song lists to develop a mix. The gameplay centres around a deck where you can play four different discs at once, with each song broken down into four components: drums, bass, lead instruments (such as guitar, synths and horns) and vocals. Players can mix these into any combination they want – even four voice parts at the same time, although this doesn’t sound the best.

Oh, and there’s no peripherals: just a regular release on PC, PS4, Xbox One and Switch sometime this autumn. That’s pretty close to when next-gen consoles launch, but Fuser will also be playable on PS5 and Xbox Series X thanks to their backwards compatibility support, “so you won’t be shut out or have to wait”, Walsh confirmed.

All it takes is a tap or drag-and-drop to add music tracks from the cards above to the deck below.

It’s an impressive bit of tech, with tracks automatically adapting to the key and tempo as they’re introduced. Both can also be adjusted by the player as part of the overall mix, such as switching between major and minor. Harmonix used a similar system for its 2017 card game DropMix, in which songs were divided into parts and then mixed together on a peripheral. Fuser expands on this by giving players more creative control, allowing them to change the texture by muting tracks, or adding in custom sounds via what looked like an in-game MIDI pad with six instrument options (something Harmonix plans on detailing at a later point).

So, that’s the mixing interface: how does this work as a game? Fuser is divided into three core gameplay modes: campaign, freestyle, and multiplayer. The latter is listed as two to four players in the press release, with the opportunity to “collaborate or compete with players from around the world” – but Harmonix is waiting until later on to reveal more details of how this works, too.

Freestyle gives players the opportunity to mess around, save mixes and upload them directly onto social channels. The campaign, meanwhile, is about 10-15 hours long, and follows the career of a DJ from “some level of success” to headline act.

Points are scored by fulfilling crowd requests, keeping the mix moving, and hitting mission goals such as keeping the track within set bpm parameters. You can get combos on crowd requests by dropping a track that satisfies two at once: for instance, Billie Eilish’s bad guy would fulfill a request for pop, and a request for 2010s music. If you introduce new tracks on a downbeat you get bonus points, while yellow lines on the time bar indicate “musically interesting” parts of loops which are particularly suitable for changes.

Players are able to fully customise the character, and perform in six different venues. To keep things varied, the campaign gives different narrative reasons for each mission: such as playing the second day of a festival when everyone is…. fragile, and wants something calm.

In the context of the release of Media Molecule’s Dreams this month, it’s interesting timing for Harmonix to announce Fuser – and it feels like part of a larger trend giving players the tools to create content within a game. I asked if Harmonix felt this was the future for the music genre, too.

Pushed to the periphery

Almost inevitably, the topic of peripherals came up when discussing music gaming – and it’s unsurprising why the industry has moved away from them.

“I will never speak ill of the Rock Band instruments – [they] really sell that full experience,” Walsh said. “But it’s also a lot of complication… you’ve got to figure out manufacturing, shipping timelines and inventory logistics, and selling people on them. Also getting retail to dedicate the space, and asking people upfront to make a much larger investment than a traditional game because they have to buy all the extra stuff.

“It’s nice to be able to have people either purchase it physically or digitally. You don’t have to worry about whether or not you have something that’s compatible with the last generation, and it’s going to work with your current generation. [It’s] much more straightforward.”

Not to mention all that plastic probably isn’t great for the environment.

“At the moment, yes, just because if you look back at when rock band and Guitar Hero came out, rock star culture and the rock star fantasy were very much of that time,” Walsh explained. “Late 90s, early 2000s, mid 2000s. People wanted to be on stage at Lollapalooza, they wanted to be shredding on the lead guitar out in front of thousands of people.

“Music culture has sort of shifted over the last 10-15 years to where DJ culture is influential, mashup culture is really influential. Festival culture is bigger than it’s ever been right now. So this game is sort of our attempt to reflect modern music culture in a way that’s still a game, but it’s also creatively fulfilling in a different way than Rock Bands or Dance Central or Guitar Hero.

“From a creative standpoint, you look at influencer culture as well where people just want to create and share things all the time. And this is sort of a reflection of that, Dreams is a good reflection of that. Mario Maker is another example, Minecraft of course – it’s like turning people loose into a sort of gamified playground with a lot of access to a lot of like tools and interesting and interesting things.”

The music-mixing aspect of Fuser is something Harmonix has been thinking about for a while: Walsh told me the studio “started experimenting” with games Fantasia and DropMix. “[With Fuser], it feels like we figured out the rest of it, the game wrapper around it that makes it still accessible,” Walsh said. Getting the balance between creative freedom and game rules was a challenge, so Harmonix tried to focus on “purposeful decisions that are also musical in a way you [can] score them.

“Figuring out that balance took a little while and some of our other experiments… I don’t think quite found the way to make your creative decisions ‘gaming'”, Walsh added.

Fuser is already launching with a significant number of tracks, but Harmonix hasn’t ruled out adding more post-launch. ‘Harmonix has a long tradition of supporting its titles with ongoing content and features,’ project director Daniel Sussman told me over email. ‘You can expect Fuser to be similar.’

Given Fuser’s focus on influencer-style sharing, I started to wonder how the music world’s strict licensing rules would work with publishing mixes to social media. How do the music rights work with that? Well, Harmonix doesn’t quite have the answer yet.

“It’s definitely complicated. For normal people, you’ll be able to share to your personal timeline,” Walsh explained. “When it comes to like influencers or YouTubers, things of that nature… that’s something that we’re still working through, both with licence holders as well as platforms. We know them both very well over the years. Obviously, when the game comes out it will include guidelines on how to do it.”

Is it more of a problem when people are monetising on top of the mixes they’ve produced?

“Monetisation does add a layer of complication… yeah, that is harder to navigate,” Walsh added. “Not necessarily impossible, but still something that we’re working through.”

Much to sphinx about.

I did manage to get a little hands-on time with Fuser for 10 minutes (and watched some gameplay expertly demoed by community manager Zoe Schneider) – and I was pretty bowled over by the mixing technology on display. It’s easy to use, packed with a good assortment of current hits and classics, and complex enough that players will be able to produce some unexpected mixes. Dropping new tracks on-beat was surprisingly satisfying in a different way to timing a Rock Band note, as hearing a great transition is rewarding to the ears. And there’s a certain novelty to hearing Smash Mouth and Migos inexplicably work together.

That said, I’m not yet entirely convinced by the core gameplay shown in the campaign, particularly the request system. In later levels these requests come in “pretty frequently”, Schneider told me – and while you can ignore them, the game encourages you to hit as many as possible to get a high score. This means the track is constantly shifting, and it often felt a little frantic and unnatural to my ear, as the music wasn’t given time to settle. The alternative, I suppose, is to dial back the amount of crowd requests: but then this risks making the gameplay slow.

The idea of responding to crowd requests also seems a little weird to me, as it suggests successful music artists only follow the demands of fans – and I’m not sure how many people actually want to live out a wedding DJ fantasy. And, unfortunately, the gameplay often looks quite static. It doesn’t have the drama of Rock Band – either on-screen, where rows of glowing blobs would hurtle towards you, or in the entertainment value of watching a friend perform on a peripheral in your living room. I wonder if this will impact the game’s ability to spread on social media platforms, as Harmonix would clearly like.

There are still so many unknowns surrounding Fuser it’s impossible to know how it’s going to pan out: we still know very little about multiplayer, precisely how the custom instrument tracks work, or what players will eventually make in freestyle mode. I really admire the focus on creative elements, along with the strength of the mixing system which makes the process accessible. Personally, I can see myself spending quite a few hours in freestyle mode tinkering with tracks. But is there enough of a game amongst the mixing tools to keep me hooked? We’ll see.

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/02/harmonixs-fuser-bets-on-user-creativity-as-the-future-of-music-gaming-%e2%80%a2-eurogamer-net/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=harmonixs-fuser-bets-on-user-creativity-as-the-future-of-music-gaming-%25e2%2580%25a2-eurogamer-net