#for those asking the media in question is 83 (2021)

[theinfinitedivides]

watching a movie about a sport you know nothing about can be the definition of vibing without comprehension and i experienced that today

[undertale-data]

[Image Description: an Undertale textbox with “INTRODUCTION AND DEMOGRAPHICS” in all caps in its middle. To its left and right are a radar screen and an egg, sun, and "WED" from the Dating Hub. End I.D.]

Our sample size consisted of a total of 2651 responses. We did not set any sort of age restriction to take the survey, and no other qualification than self identifying yourself as part of the Undertale fandom.

[Image Description: a pie chart titled “AGE OF UNDERTALE FANS”. In clockwise order, the results: 31%, or 812 responders, are 13-17 years old; 44% or 1160 are 18-24; 15%, or 398, are 25-30; 6%, or 158, are 31-40; 0%, or 6, are 41-50; 3%, or 91, preferred not to answer, and 1%, or 25, are 12 and below. End I.D.]

The age group most represented is composed of people between 18 to 24 years old (also known as emerging adults), corresponding to 44% of all participants. They are followed by teenagers aged 13 to 17 years old (31%) and young adults aged 25 to 30 years old (15%)

(Many more demographics under the cut.)

[Image Description: a pie chart titled “GENDER OF UNDERTALE FANS”. In clockwise order, the results: 374, or 14%, are male; 1144, or 43%, are female; 789, or 30%, are nonbinary; 167, or 6%, identify as ‘other’, and 177, or 7%, prefer not to say. End I.D.]

In terms of gender, most people identified as female with a total of 43%, followed by nonbinary with 30% and male with 14%.  A significant amount of people responded with “Other,” explaining their identity (or questioning) more in depth.

[Image Description: a pie chart titled “UNDERTALE FANDOM AND LGBT+ IDENTITY”. In clockwise order, the results: 1949, or 73%, identify as LGBT+; 293, or 11%, do not identify as LGBT+; 280, or 11%, are questioning; and 129, or 5%, prefer not to say. End I.D.]

Considering the great amount of LGBT+ representation present in Undertale, we decided to ask people whether they identify themselves as part of this community. The majority, 73%, has declared to be a part of it. It is relevant to add that 5% chose not to say, and 11% were questioning. It is possible that media containing well developed representation draws more people to it; many people said that the reason they liked certain characters was being able to feel represented as a minority.

[ID: a pie chart titled: “LOCATIONS OF UNDERTALE FANS”. In clockwise order its results: 1788 responders, or 67%, are from North America; 420 responders, or 16%, are from Europe; 141 responders, or 5%, are from Asia; 94 responders, or 4% are from South America; 83 responders, or 3%, are from Australia; 11 responders, or 0% are from the Pacific Islands; 22 responders, or 1% are from “Other” locations; 92 responders, or 4%, selected ”Prefer not to say.” End of ID.]

The internet has made the game known all over the world, which motivated us to look into the way its fans are distributed around the globe. It is important to consider that since this survey is in English, people were more likely to respond to it if they understood the language, whether it is their native language or not (like Vessel #1, who’s writing this paragraph). It would be interesting if other communities did a similar exercise in the future by translating the survey. 

Having said that, we present the results. To get these numbers some of the answers were distributed into their corresponding existing group, and at least three new categories were created.

North America: 1788 votes 

Europe: 420 

Asia: 141 votes

South America: 94 votes

Australia: 83 votes

The most represented area is North America, which is no surprise considering it’s composed by a majority of native English speakers. It should also be noted that considering Toby Fox is from the US, it makes sense that people with a similar cultural background would more likely hear about Undertale and join the fandom. Europe follows with 420 votes, which could be due to their usage of the English language either as a native language or a frequently taught second one. Asia has a similar situation, however, if we take global population estimates (e.g: 141 per 4.561 billion in the case of Asia compared to Europe with 420 fans in an area with a population of around 746 million people), we can see that the density of Asian fans is drastically lower. After that we have both South America and Australia with a similar amount of votes. In those cases, knowledge of the English language may also factor into the density. Common social media used around the world could also be a factor but we do not have enough data to draw any conclusions.

92 people preferred not to specify and 50 people answered the survey with “Other”, giving their explanation. A few of these responses were put in bigger categories (Canada is in North America, for example). Besides them, the most notable group were Pacific Islanders, making up 11 people, 3 more than Africa. Due to their sizes, further investigation is needed to know if this is a replicable result or just the product of the places the survey was able to reach this time.

[Image Description: a pie chart titled “YEAR FANS FIRST EXPERIENCED UNDERTALE”. In clockwise order, its results: 937 responders, or 35%, experienced it in 2015; 687, or 26%, experienced it in 2016; 231, or 9%, experienced it in 2017; 181, or 7%, experienced it in 2018; 123, or 5%, experienced it in 2019; 145, or 5%, experienced it in 2020; 88, or 3%, experienced it in 2021; 231, or 9%, don’t know when they experienced it, and 25, or 1%, have never experienced Undertale. End I.D.]

We asked about the exposure to the source material. After all, to be a fan of something, you should know about it. The biggest proportion of fans experienced Undertale for the first time in 2015 and 2016, with those two years amounting for more than half of our sample. As for people who have only started playing during this year, they represent 3% of all participants.

[Image Description: a pie chart titled “YEAR FANS FIRST EXPERIENCED DELTARUNE”. In clockwise order, its results: 1585 responders, or 60% of those responding, experienced Deltarune in 2018; 275, or 10%, experienced Deltarune in 2019; 213, or 8%, experienced it in 2020; 126, or 5%, experienced it in 2021; 115, or 4%, don’t know; 253, or 10%, have not played but want to; 77, or 3%, have not played and don’t plan to; and 7, or 0%, do not know what Deltarune is. End I.D.]

Many people are familiar with Deltarune as well. Most of them played the first chapter of the game as it was released in 2018, and other people followed in the next few years. Among the people that didn’t play, 253 manifested interest in playing in the future, while 77 stated they knew of the game’s existence but did not plan on playing it.

[Image Description: a pie chart titled "HOW FANS FOUND UNDERTALE". In clockwise order, its results: 870 responders, or 33%, saw someone play it online; 576 responders, or 22%, were introduced by a friend; 539, or 20%, saw fancontent first; 195, or 7%, read reviews or recommendations on social media; 63, or 3%, came through the Kickstarter before release; 50, or 2%, came through a different fandom; 34, or 1%, came by following Toby Fox, Temmie Chang, or other collaborators; 221, or 8%, came through another way; and 101, or 4%, don't remember how. End I.D.]

33% of responders found Undertale by watching someone play it online.  The next largest categories were those who were introduced by friends or saw fancontent first, comprising 22% and 20%, respectively.  These statistics are indicative of the love that fans have for Undertale: they want to share the game with others, whether by creating and sharing fancontent, or just by talking about the game positively enough to inspire others to give it a chance.  In the “other” category, many fans mentioned specific fanworks or AUs as their reasoning for giving Undertale a chance.  Other common answers in the “other” category were through the soundtrack, through memes, through connections to Homestuck, and through curiosity about the infamous fandom.  One humorous response that stuck out said, “I was searching for the word ‘sand’ and had wrote ‘sans’ by wrong.”

[perennialphilosophy]

Online vs. Offline Radicalisation

The use of the internet in radicalisation is indisputable, but the question is really how often does radicalisation take place online compared to ‘offline’ (interactions with people in the real world) radicalisation?

A study conducted in 2021 by Kenyon et al. looks at over 200 extremists convicted of terror offences in England and Wales and analyses the way each individual was radicalised. It’s important to note too that these individuals do not all belong to one type of extremist, but it looks at all types including right-wing extremism, Islamist extremist, animal rights etc. 

The findings showed that between the years 2005 and 2017, radicalisation online has been on the rise, while ‘offline’ radicalisation has been declining. Of those convicted on extremism charges, 35% of the offenders arrested between the years 2005 and 2009 were radicalised online. Between the years 2010 and 2014, there was a rise in online radicalisation with 64% of offenders having been radicalised online, and a sharp increase again in 2015 to 2017, where 83% of those convicted on extremism offences were radicalised online.

While online radicalisation has been on the rise, ‘offline’ radicalisation has been declining over the same period. Between the years 2005 and 2009, 65% of offenders were radicalised offline, which saw a decline between the years 2010 and 2014, when 36% of offenders were radicalised offline, and a further decrease in 2015 to 2017 when only 17% of offenders were radicalised offline. 

This reflects society’s increased use of the internet and extremist groups’ ability to radicalise individuals with greater ease. 

I was having a chat with someone over dinner yesterday and we spoke about these statistics, and he asked me why it was that there was a decline in offline radicalisation. He said he understood that online radicalisation was on the rise – this is to be expected with the internet taking off the way it has done and the influence of social media in our lives, but wouldn’t that mean radicalisation as a whole is just on the rise, rather than one increase and the other decrease?

Fundamentally, I think the way individuals are radicalised is different in the digital age and the aims of the extremist groups are also different. Before the year 2000, when an individual was radicalised they usually joined a group, and they acted together. This is the same for all kinds of extremism, including (not limited to) animal rights, right-wing extremism, and Islamist extremism. There was a group element to radicalisation. If we focus just on Islamist extremism for now (because that’s what my PhD is on), individuals who joined a jihad would travel to the country where the jihad was, such as Afghanistan or Bosnia, because a jihad was usually in a country where a war was taking place. But the definition and understanding of jihad started to change for extremists sometime around the year 2000 and it no longer meant joining a fight or struggle but could be fighting against a perceived threat to Islam. This saw, for example, many terror attacks carried out by Saudi men on their own country in the early 2000s, which was to protest against the House of Saud and the westernisation and modernisation of the country.

There are three key terms to know for this bit: dar al-Islam (land of Islam), dar al-harb (land of war), and dar al-kufr (land of unbelief). Dar al-Islam is commonly accepted as being any Muslim country/land that is ruled by Shari’ah law, however, there is some disagreement on what qualifies as dar al-harb and dar al-kufr. The traditional understanding is that dar al-harb is any country where there is a war or jihad happening and is an actual and literal land of war, and dar al-kufr is any land that is not under Islamic rule and is the land of the ‘non-believers’. Islamist extremists in recent decades have been conflating dar al-harb and dar al-kufr, and promoting the narrative that military personnel from any country which partakes in a (perceived) war against Islam (whether they be fighting or stationed there) accept that their country is now a land of war too or dar al-harb. This was pushed in extremist magazines which made the case that the UK and US as well as many other countries were to be considered countries of/for war, because of their involvement in Iraq, their being stationed in Saudi Arabia, and many other reasons. They also argued that any land that is not under Islamic rule is one of war.

The pushing of such sentiments and promoting individuals to carry out attacks in their home countries meant introducing a new type of attack – lone wolf attacks. In the past we saw terror attacks carried out by groups who were affiliated with some higher group such as al Qaeda, but now people are encouraged to act alone from their homes. In the past we had intelligent and coordinated attacks such as 9/11 and 7/7, but now we see more rash and indiscriminate attacks where, for example, individuals use cars to drive into pedestrians. 

In a 2010 issue of al Qaeda’s Inspire, they pushed for the use of vehicles in attacks because of the ease and accessibility, referring to the vehicles as ‘ultimate mowing machines’. The 2010s saw one attack after another where vehicles were used, peaking in the latter half of the decade. 

Think of the film Four Lions (if you haven’t seen it, it’s a comedy about a group of four men who want to become ‘martyrs’ so they leave the UK to go and carry out jihadi training with the aim of returning to carry out an attack in the UK – it’s quite a serious theme but it is funny, I promise) we don’t have that anymore. Individuals or groups of individuals don’t leave their home countries to train in an al Qaeda camp and then return to attack (though they couldn’t return anyway). I’m not saying this doesn’t ever happen, it did happen for the devastating November 2015 Paris attacks where Salah Abdeslam and others had trained with IS and returned to carry out that attack. The general pattern however is that individuals act alone and from their home countries.

Groups such as IS remind Western countries often that the threat isn’t in some far away country with individuals planning how to attack – the threat is in your home country, walking your streets. With the use of the internet, extremist groups are able to reach a larger number of people and have great influence on people’s lives without having to meet them. The group and social element of radicalisation is no more because extremist groups have found a better way of reaching vulnerable people, which is quicker and more efficient. 

The digital age of radicalisation is well and truly upon us.

[comrade-meow]

GERMAN CHILD-PROTECTION REGULATORS are on the verge of blocking one of the world’s largest pornographic websites. The officials are set to issue a blocking order to the country’s biggest internet service providers saying a pornographic website, believed to be xHamster, should be made inaccessible to Germany’s 83 million people.

The blocking order, which may be issued in the coming weeks by the Commission for the Protection of Minors in the Media (Kommission für Jugendmedienschutz in German, or KJM), follows a failure by xHamster to introduce age-verification checks to stop under-18s from accessing pornography. The order is the latest salvo in a two-year campaign by regulators to compel all pornographic websites accessible in Germany to implement age-verification checks.

Legislators around the world—including in Canada, France, the UK, and some US states—are looking to introduce more measures aimed at stopping children from accessing adult material online. But the move by Germany is one of the most sweeping measures taken so far, with critics comparing it to censorship.

German officials are taking action against four major pornography websites, says Marc Jan Eumann, chair of the KJM. The group, which represents the country’s 14 state media authorities, is responsible for enforcing a broad treaty agreed upon by all states around the protection of children. It is in addition to other German laws on child protection. Eumann refuses to confirm the four websites the KJM is taking legal action against. However, German reporting says the cases are against xHamster and three websites, YouPorn, Pornhub, and MyDirtyHobby, all of which are owned by MindGeek.

The regulators have been trying to force pornographic websites to introduce age-verification checks—which can involve the uploading of identity documents—since September 2019. Much of this has been pushed by one state regulator, Tobias Schmid of the State Media Authority of North Rhine-Westphalia, who has been criticized for his views on sex, but the matter is now also being handled by the KJM.

Eumann says companies should put in place age-checking systems to make sure their visitors are not children. The law says pornographic content should be accessible only by adults, Eumann says. In all four of the cases the pornography websites, which have German-language versions, are accused of not introducing age-verification systems.

One pornographic site, thought to be xHamster, was first contacted by regulators in March 2020 and then the others by June 2020. The requests for age verification have now turned into a legal tussle, and three cases are waiting for hearings in one of Düsseldorf’s administrative courts, Eumann says.

In the case of xHamster it is believed there was no response from the website’s owners. As a result, the case is thought to be the most advanced and could result in the order issuing the site to be blocked in Germany in the coming weeks. At the end of June 2021 the KJM identified the company that hosts xHamster and asked it to make the website unavailable. “We have a blocking order for the hosting provider, which is based in the Netherlands,” Eumann says. “If the host provider does not comply, we will take the last step.” That order expired at the start of this week, the KJM has confirmed. “The last step is taking actions, a blocking order, against German access provider,” Eumann adds.

In reality this means issuing a blocking order to Germany's biggest web providers—including Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom, O2, and 1&1—demanding that they block the website for people trying to access it in Germany. The largest providers will be targeted first, with smaller ones following, and it is likely a block would happen at the Domain Name System (DNS) level. When you are browsing the web, the URL that you type into your browser’s address bar is converted to an IP address by DNS. Imposing a DNS block would mean anyone typing the pornography site’s address into their browser wouldn’t be able to see the page.

It’s likely German web companies may challenge any blocking orders through the country’s legal system—meaning the battle over age verification could be dragged out for years to come. Officials initially tried to get the web companies to voluntarily impose web blocks on xHamster in August 2020, documents show. The internet providers refused to block the sites voluntarily, potentially setting in motion a lengthy legal showdown. “We've already talked to them, they are not happy,” Eumann says.

A spokesperson for 1&1 says it would “assess” any blocking order as and when it is received. “Legal requirements for website blocking orders are quite high according to the Supreme Court (BGH) Judgements,” the spokesperson says. A Vodafone spokesperson says they would look at any order if and when it is received. None of the other web companies replied to a request for comment. MindGeek did not respond to a request for comment and xHamster declined to comment, citing ongoing legal proceedings.

Making pornographic sites introduce age checks to make sure people accessing them are over 18 isn’t a new suggestion—but it is one that’s proved controversial. In 2017, the UK passed the Digital Economy Act, which required adult websites to introduce age-verification technology for all visitors from the UK. But the law, which was dubbed the porn block, was delayed multiple times before collapsing altogether in October 2019.

History could repeat itself in Germany but the idea of age verification is taking off around the world. Europe’s Audiovisual Media Services Directive requires companies to put measures in place to protect children, a bill in Canada is looking to introduce age verification but has faced privacy concerns, Australia has recommended using digital IDs to access pornography and officials in Utah have been pushing a law that would require new smartphones and tablets to have pre-installed and on-by-default pornography filters. France has also threatened to block pornographic websites that don’t put age-verification systems in place.

But German regulators are the closest to introducing any blocks—and the approach is proving divisive. Paulita Pappel, a cofounder of adult site Lustery and the curator of the Pornfilmfestival Berlin, says the worst-case scenario would be if Germany “creates this firewall, that they start blocking sites and say France follows suit. That would push production companies even further to the margins. They would probably move their servers”.

Pappel says that such moves are “comparable to China's censorship” and could put the pornography industry back decades in terms of its reputation. She worries the focus on age verification will filter down to adult companies with less resources to implement them. “Smaller companies, queer performers of color, these are the people that are going to suffer the most,” Pappel says, adding that there should be more of a dialogue between regulators and the industry to ensure positive outcomes and provide young people with better education around sex.

Eumann argues that the actions it is taking are not about pornography itself, but rather protecting children. “We're not going from this perspective that we have something against pornography,” he says. “It's not against net neutrality, it's not against freedom of speech. It's just for protection of the minors.”

Since the UK proposed age-verification checks around half a decade ago there have been questions about the effectiveness of any such systems. A multitude of age-verification technology companies have sprung up, and experts say to best protect people’s privacy and security there need to be consistent standards in place. This also applies to laws around the world: it is easier for pornographic websites to put age verification in place if multiple countries have the same requirements. One point of tension is social media: Some proposed age-verification laws focus only on commercial pornography websites and ignore the huge amount of adult content on websites such as Reddit and Twitter.

“There is a legitimate question about how effective this kind of legislation will be,” says Neil Thurman, a professor in the University of Munich’s department of media and communication, who has studied pornography regulations and people’s opinions on them. Thurman recently surveyed 1,000 16- and 17-year olds in the UK and found that 63 percent of them had seen pornography on social media, while 47 percent of them had seen it on dedicated pornographic websites. (It also found those seeking out pornography would be more likely to do so on dedicated pornographic sites).

Then there’s the question of how well any such systems work. Simply using a VPN or Tor allows you to get around location blocks that are placed on content. Someone in Germany can easily set their location to the UK to avoid local restrictions in much the same way that some people use VPNs to access US Netflix in the UK or BBC iPlayer in Europe. And both teenagers and regulators are very aware of these limitations. Thurman’s research found that 46 percent of the teenagers surveyed had either used a VPN or Tor in the past—another 23 percent knew what they were. The KJM says it doesn’t expect its age-verification laws to stop every person under the age of 18 from accessing pornography.

To date, only one major international pornographic site has introduced age-verification checks in Germany. On May 25, subscription-based website FanCentro, which lets adult performers sell access to their content and has ten million users, introduced age checking developed by UK-based firm Yoti. Nicholas Hörger, FanCentro chief sales officer, says the US firm decided to follow German rules to protect its adult influencers who could potentially be held liable if their subscribers don’t complete age checks. The company spent six months reviewing different age-verification options before picking Yoti’s.

Hörger says the move has gone down well with its German influencers but says he suspects other companies are waiting to see the results of regulations and legal challenges before they adopt any such technology. “In addition to the potential loss of adult consumers, a platform must pay for each verification attempted, which can become costly, depending on your business model and platform,” he says.

So has the age-verification tech made any difference? Hörger refuses to share specific numbers on whether it has resulted in a decrease in users but admits there has been a difference. “There is a percentage of adults who still don’t feel comfortable uploading their ID on an adult site,” Hörger says. “FanCentro’s age verification check happens after they’ve input a credit card or bank details, so we know it’s not an issue of age, but rather concerns about privacy. It’s possible this will change over time.”

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

July 26, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

As the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol starts its work, former president Trump and his supporters are consolidating their power over the Republican Party. Through it, they hope to control the nation.

Trump this morning tried to assert his dominance over the party by issuing a statement in which he demanded that Republican senators scrap the infrastructure bill that has been more than three months in the making. Although he did not note any specific provisions in the bill, he claimed that senators were getting “savaged” in the negotiations because Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) “and his small group of RINOs wants nothing more than to get a deal done at any cost to prove that he can work with the Radical Left Democrats.” Trump ordered lawmakers not to do an infrastructure deal “until after we get proper election results in 2022 or otherwise…. Republicans,” he ordered, “don’t let the Radical Left play you for weak fools and losers!”

The term “RINO” comes from the 1990s, when the Movement Conservatives taking over the Republican Party used it to discredit traditional Republicans as “Republicans In Name Only.” It reversed reality—the Movement Conservatives were the RINOs, not the other way around—but it worked. Movement Conservatives, who wanted to get rid of the New Deal and take the government back to the 1920s, pushed aside traditional Republicans who agreed with Democrats that the government should regulate business, provide a basic social safety net, and promote infrastructure.

Now, the former president is doing the same thing: claiming that the Movement Conservatives who now dominate the leadership of the Republican Party are not really Republicans. True Republicans, he says, are those loyal only to him.

He is using the infrastructure bill as a loyalty test. The reality is that an infrastructure package is very popular, and walking away from it will cost Republicans in states that are not fully under Trump’s sway. A new poll by the Associated Press and NORC at the University of Chicago (NORC is the nonpartisan National Opinion Research Center affiliated with the university) finds that 83% of Americans, including 79% of Republicans and 80% of Independents, want funding for roads, bridges, and ports. Sixty-six percent of Americans, including 43% of Republicans and 53% of Independents, want to pay for it with higher taxes on corporations.

Walking away from those kinds of numbers seems like political poison, and yet the discussions to whip the bipartisan bill into shape seemed to veer off track today.

The demand for Republican loyalty is playing out as the January 6 committee gets down to business. Organizing that committee has driven a wedge through Republican lawmakers. After an initial period in which leaders like House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) expressed outrage and a desire to learn what had created the January 6 crisis, the leaders have lined up behind the former president. Emboldened, Trump’s supporters have become more aggressive in their insistence that they, not those interested in stopping a future insurrection, are the good guys.

After Republican senators rejected the establishment of a bipartisan select commission and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) set up a House select committee instead, McCarthy tried to sabotage the committee by putting on it two extreme Trump supporters out of the five slots he was assigned. He named Jim Jordan (R-OH) but pretty clearly expected Pelosi would toss him and put up with Jim Banks (R-IN), whom McCarthy had named the ranking member of the committee. Banks was on record attacking the committee as a leftist plot, and could undermine the committee’s work while getting enough media time to launch him as a national political candidate (his hiring of Fox News Channel host Tucker Carlson’s son long before this indicated his hope for good media coverage for a possible swing at a higher office).

But Pelosi didn’t play. She refused to accept either Jordan or Banks, prompting McCarthy to pull all five of his nominees. She had already chosen Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) as one of her eight seats on the committee; yesterday she added Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) as well. Both Cheney and Kinzinger are Movement Conservatives, but they are not willing to jump on the Trump bandwagon.

Today, when PBS correspondent Yamiche Alcindor asked McCarthy what he thought of Cheney and Kinzinger’s participation on the committee, he called them “Pelosi Republicans.” He has suggested that they might face sanctions from the party for their cooperation with the committee.

Both Cheney and Kinzinger voted for Trump. Cheney voted with Trump more than 90% of the time. Kinzinger voted with him 99% of the time in the president’s first two years in office. Trying to make them into Democrats because they did not support the insurrection is a double-edged sword. McCarthy is trying to read them out of the Republican Party, for sure, but he is also tying the entire party to Trump, and it seems likely—from Trump’s rising panic, if nothing else—that the committee will discover things that will not show the former president and his supporters in a good light.

Today Representative Bennie G. Thompson (D-MS), chair of the select committee and of the House Homeland Security Committee, published an op-ed in the Washington Post. He noted that in a recent CBS News survey, 72% of Americans said they thought there was more to learn about what happened on January 6. He promised that “nothing will be off-limits” as the committee figures out “what happened, why and how. And we will make recommendations to help ensure it never happens again.”

Along with Thompson, Liz Cheney will deliver opening remarks from the committee before it begins to hear the testimony of Capitol Police.

But McCarthy and other Trump supporters are doing all they can to derail the investigation into what happened on January 6. The committee’s work is not a criminal investigation: that is the job of the Department of Justice, which has already charged more than 535 people for their actions in the insurrection. The committee will try to piece together the events leading up to January 6, along with why the response from law enforcement was so delayed. It will look at the response of the White House, as well as the funders and organizers of the rallies of January 5 and 6. It will look at members of Congress, and how they intersected with the events of that day.

Politico’s congressional reporter Olivia Beavers reported that McCarthy will try to counter the committee’s first hearing tomorrow morning with a press conference. Sometime later in the day, Representatives Matt Gaetz (R-FL), Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Louie Gohmert (R-TX) and Paul Gosar (R-AZ), staunch and vocal Trump supporters all, are planning a press conference outside the Department of Justice, where they plan to demand “answers on the treatment of January 6th prisoners” from Attorney General Merrick Garland.

One of the hallmarks of a personality like that of former president Donald Trump is that he cannot stop escalating. It’s not that he won’t stop; it’s that he can’t stop. And he will escalate until someone finally draws a line and holds it.

—-

Notes:

Cheney:

BrooklynDad_Defiant! @mmpadellanRep. Liz Cheney will be delivering the opening remarks of the January 6th hearing before Capitol Police testify. This should be...interesting.1,762 Retweets13,293 Likes

July 26th 2021

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/trump-rino-rino-rino

https://apnorc.org/projects/views-on-the-infrastructure-bill/

Yamiche Alcindor @YamicheI asked Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy what he makes of GOP Reps Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger sitting on the January 6th Select Committee. He replied in two words here at the WH: “Pelosi Republicans.”842 Retweets4,461 Likes

July 26th 2021

https://www.oneillinois.com/stories/2021/1/8/kinzinger-voted-for-with-trump-before-turning

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/26/cheney-mccarthy-jan-6-investigation-500741

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/january-6-opinion-poll/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/07/26/bennie-thompson-jan-6-investigation/

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/bipartisan-infrastructure-talks-in-dire-state-ahead-of-pivotal-week/ar-AAMzKuV

Olivia Beavers @Olivia_BeaversGOP Strategy: 2 sources tell me House Rs — including members McCarthy picked to serve on the 1/6 select panel and then pulled & likely Scalise/Stefanik — will hold a presser tomorrow AM to try to counter Dems’ messaging about the 1/6 probe ahead of committee’s first hearing.103 Retweets269 Likes

July 26th 2021

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/capitol-riot-arrests-latest-2021-07-22/

https://www.justsecurity.org/77588/questions-the-january-6-select-committee-should-ask-its-witnesses/

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/prime/where-things-stand-july-26-2021-tomorrow-sinister-counter-programming

https://www.axios.com/jan-6-graphic-footage-capitol-attack-041e0422-42b7-4f4b-8d1b-bc55612733b8.html

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[go-redgirl]

Fact Checking Biden’s First Press Conference D'Angelo Gore  17 hrs ago

Neil Gorsuch Couldn’t Stop Complaining About the Rest of the Justices Today

 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: How ‘The Bachelor’ Went Off the Rails Dealing With Racism In his first press conference since being inaugurated 64 days ago, President Joe Biden got some facts wrong Biden claimed that former President Donald Trump “eliminated” over $700 million in aid that Biden helped get for Central American countries. 

That didn’t happen, but the Trump administration did reallocate some money and temporarily suspended other funding.

The president used the wrong statistics when saying that “nothing has changed” regarding “children” trying to enter the U.S. at the southern border. There was a significant 63% uptick in unaccompanied children being apprehended from January to February.

Biden said, “We’re sending back the vast majority of the families that are coming.” But in February, 41% of those in a family unit apprehended at the southern border were expelled.

The president said “over 50%” of Republican voters supported the American Rescue Plan Act. Some polls show that but others show a majority opposed the COVID-19 relief legislation.

He repeated two familiar talking points on taxes, including the misleading claim that “83%” of the benefits in the GOP’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act are “going to the top 1%.” That only becomes the case in 2027 when most of the individual income tax cuts are set to expire but corporate tax cuts remain.

Biden got it wrong when he said there were five times as many cloture motions “last year alone” than there were “between 1917 and 1971.” There were twice as many motions filed last year than there were from 1917 through 1970.Biden took questions from reporters on March 25.Aid to Central America Biden falsely claimed that his predecessor “eliminated” and “didn’t use” more than $700 million in funding to address migration from Central American countries that Biden helped secure when he was vice president.

“They’re coming because of the circumstances in country, in country,” Biden said of the thousands of people who are illegally entering the U.S. through Mexico. “The way to deal with this problem, and I started to deal with it back when I was … vice president, putting together a bipartisan plan of over $700 million to do the root causes of why people are leaving. What did Trump do? He eliminated that funding. 

He didn’t use it. He didn’t do it. 

”Biden appeared to be referring to funding for the “U.S. Strategy for Engagement in Central America,” which was as high as $750 million during the Obama administration in fiscal year 2016. It’s true that the annual budget for that initiative declined significantly during Trump’s presidency, but it wasn’t completely “eliminated” or unspent, as Biden said. According to the Congressional Research Service, the nonpartisan research arm of Congress, appropriations for the program declined to $685 million in FY 2017, $615 million in FY 2018, $528 million in FY 2019, $533 million in FY 2020 and $506 million in FY 2021.

Biden may have been referencing money that Congress authorized for use in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador that the Trump administration either reallocated to other initiatives or temporarily suspended in 2019.As a January CRS report said: “From FY2016 to FY2020, Congress appropriated more than $3.1 billion to improve security, governance, and socioeconomic conditions in Central America as part of a whole-of-government initiative to address the drivers of irregular migration.

 However, in March 2019 — less than two years into the initiative’s on-the-ground implementation — the Trump Administration suspended most foreign aid to El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. The Administration proceeded to reprogram approximately $396 million of aid appropriated for the Northern Triangle countries in FY2018, reallocating the funds to other foreign policy priorities within, and outside of, the Latin American and Caribbean region.

”The report indicated that the Trump administration “withheld most of the assistance Congress appropriated for Central America in FY2019 while it negotiated a series of agreements intended to stem the flow of migrants and asylum-seekers from the Northern Triangle to the United States.” As a result, the report said, the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development were forced to close down or cancel some projects and planned activities.

But CRS also said that — amid criticism from members of Congress who argued the funding freeze was counterproductive — aid to the Northern Triangle countries that was previously held back began to be released late in 2019, and “all of the previously suspended assistance for the region” had been “programmed” by June 2020.Immigration: Unaccompanied Children

Biden used the wrong statistics when saying that “nothing has changed” regarding “children” trying to enter the U.S. at the southern border. To be sure, there have been spikes before in unaccompanied children arriving at the border, but the uptick in Biden’s first full month in office was significant.

Biden: Truth of the matter is nothing has changed. As many people came, 28% increase in children to the border in my administration. 31% in the last year of – in 2019, before the pandemic, in the Trump administration. It happens every single solitary year. There is a significant increase in the number of people coming to the border in the winter months of January, February, March.

Biden’s figures don’t pertain to an “increase in children to the border,” as he said. Instead, they pertain to the total number of apprehensions at the border — including single adults and family units. Those figures were cited in a Washington Post opinion piece by immigration experts who, similar to the president, said the rise in total apprehensions reflected “a pattern of seasonal changes,” in which immigrant apprehensions increase in the cooler months of the year.

We get slightly different figures using Customs and Border Protection data. There was a 29% increase in total apprehensions from January to February, when the level reached 96,974. In 2019, the January-to-February bump was 39%. As we’ve written, the recent increase in border apprehensions did begin prior to the election under then-President Donald Trump. 

But the spike in unaccompanied children in the first full month of Biden’s administration is noteworthy — and, with a backlog of processing those children out of border custody facilities, it’s the main aspect of border immigration that has garnered media and political attention. 

The number of unaccompanied children being apprehended at the border also began rising in October, before the election, but it spiked 63% from January to February, reaching 9,297 kids.

The Washington Post opinion piece noted that the apprehensions of unaccompanied children “appears to be more than just a seasonal pattern. ”CBP data show the fiscal year 2021 numbers of unaccompanied children apprehended are on track to rival or surpass a spike that occurred in 2019.Immigration: Families The president went on to say the “vast majority, the overwhelming majority of people coming to the border and crossing are being sent back,” mentioning “single people.” That’s correct. But then he added, “We’re sending back the vast majority of the families that are coming.” That’s not the case for the month of February, the most recent data from CBP.

The administration expelled 41% of family units in February. (See the figures for Title 42 expulsions.)Single adults, who make up the vast majority of those apprehended on the border, have been largely expelled under Title 42, a public health law. We asked the White House about Biden’s claim, but we haven’t received a response. Polling on American Rescue Plan  Act told Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Biden has gone too far left, the president responded by saying “over 50%” of Republican voters supported the American Rescue Plan Act.

But public polling offers a more mixed reaction among Republicans to the new law than the president lets on. Biden: I would like Republican, elected Republican support, but what I know I have now is, I have electoral support from Republican voters. Republican voters agree with what I’m doing. 

And so unless Mitch says the last thing I did, the last piece of legislation I did was so far left, well, then he ought to take a look at his party. Over 50% of them must be over that edge, as well because they support what I did. This has become a talking point for the president. He stated something similar on March 19, when he said “we didn’t get any help in the Senate or the House, but you have 55% of the Republicans in America supporting it,” referring to the COVID-19 relief bill. For sure, there are polls that show more than 50% of Republicans supported the bill earlier this month when it was before Congress.

A Morning Consult/Politico poll conducted from March 6 to March 8 found 59% of Republicans surveyed said they “strongly support” (29%) or “somewhat support” (30%) the COVID-19 aid package. Similarly, a Data for Progress poll conducted from March 5 to 7 found 54% of Republicans supported the bill. However, other polls found Republican support below 50% — not “over 50%,” as Biden said. A CNN poll from March 3 to 8 found only 26% of Republicans supported the bill (see Table 031).

A Pew Research Center survey from March 1 to 7 found that 41% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents said they supported the bill. That poll showed a pronounced partisan divide in particular on the cost of the legislation — which was the primary reason for Republican opposition in Congress. Sixty-one percent of Republicans told Pew that the $1.9 trillion bill, which Biden signed into law on March 11, spends too much.

Lastly, we found a CBS News/YouGov poll taken from March 9 to 10 found 46% of Republicans supported the American Rescue Plan Act. “Among Republicans, there is more support for it among those with lower household incomes than among those with higher incomes,” CBS News wrote.

Taxes Comparing his tax priorities to those of Republicans, Biden revived two talking points from the campaign: the misleading claim that 83% of the tax cuts in the Republican tax law championed by Trump went to the top 1%; and the false claim that middle-income families pay a higher tax rate than “the average person making $1 billion a year. 

”Biden said he found it “kind of interesting that my Republican friends were worried” about “the cost” of tax cuts and relief checks in the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act. The law, he said, “puts money in people’s pockets. Ordinary people. 

”The law provides an average tax cut to middle-income earners of $3,720 this year, according to an analysis by the Tax Policy Center. The law also includes stimulus payments for most Americans, and extends unemployment compensation. Biden said he didn’t remember hearing Republicans express similar concerns about the cost of the Republican-backed Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which is projected to add nearly $2 trillion to the deficit over 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. “Did you hear them complain when they passed a close to $2 trillion Trump tax cut, 83% going to the top 1%?” 

Biden said. This is a well-worn but misleading claim. As we have written, in order for the legislation to be passed via reconciliation, most of the individual income tax provisions are set to expire by 2027, while the corporate tax cuts would remain, making the tax benefit distribution more lopsided for the top 1% than in earlier years. So, while the top 1% got 20.5% of the total tax benefits in 2018, and 25.3% of the tax benefits in 2025, the share of the total tax savings that accrues to the top 1% in 2027 is 82.8%, according to an analysis by the Tax Policy Center. Republicans say they expect a future Congress will extend the individual tax cuts, rather than allowing taxes for many to increase, but of course there is no assurance that will happen .Biden went on to claim Republicans “reduc[ed] taxes to a point that people who are making, you know if you are a husband and wife, school teacher and a cop, you’re paying at a higher rate than the average person making $1 billion a year is. Something’s wrong. ”Actually, that claim is wrong.  This is another version of a claim Biden made during the campaign, that the top 1% of taxpayers, on average, pay a lower effective tax rate than middle-income people.

In general, people in higher-income categories pay a higher tax rate. According to an analysis by the Tax Policy Center, the top 0.1% — those making over $3,452,300 a year — paid an average federal tax rate of 31.3% in 2019. That’s a higher rate than any other income category below it. By comparison, for example, those in the middle 20% of earners — with an expanded cash income of $50,001 to $87,300 — paid an average federal tax rate of 12.4%, according to the TPC analysis.  Tax Policy Center did not break down its analysis for billionaires, but they would obviously be a fraction of those in the top 0.1%.“On average the top 0.1 percent of income pays more,” Howard Gleckman, a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center, told us via email. “Are there outliers? Sure. But would be very rare. ”As Gleckman told us back in 2019, “You can invest all your money in tax-exempt bonds and pay no federal income tax on the interest. Investors can avoid paying tax on capital gains by simply not selling the assets (but they’d also have no income). 

But in general, the federal tax system is very progressive. The more you make, the more you pay. 

”William McBride, vice president of federal tax and economic policy at the Tax Foundation, told us Biden may be referring to an analysis by economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman of the University of California at Berkeley that concluded the average effective tax rate (for federal, state and local taxes) paid by the richest 400 families in the U.S. was 23%, slightly lower than the 24.2% rate paid by the bottom half of American households.

notes, however, that the Saez/Zucman data “excludes refundable tax credits so that the tax burden is overstated at the lower end of the income spectrum. When they are included, average effective tax rates for federal taxes go from 3.3% for the lowest quintile up to 30.3% for the top 0.1% (about 120,000 households).”McBride said the Saez/Zucman estimates for the top 400 households “rely on their assumptions about returns imputed from underlying wealth and income shares, which have been challenged by other economists like Gerald Auten and David Splinter. 

They find that the top 0.01 percent (a bit more than the top 400) paid an average combined tax rate of nearly 50 percent in 2018.”In a post challenging some of the methodology of the Saez/Zucman report, Gleckman of the Tax Policy Center said that while it is true that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act “cut the taxes of high earners by more on average than for low- and moderate-income households, as a share of after-tax income,” that doesn’t mean, as a Washington Post headline put it, that “billionaires paid a lower tax rate than the working class. ”Cloture Motions Even though he pulled a card out of his pocket to read aloud statistics on the rise in cloture motions, Biden got the numbers wrong.

 Biden: That it used to be that from between 1917 and 1971, the filibuster existed, there were a total of 58 motions to break a filibuster, that whole time. Last year alone, there were five times that many. So it’s being abused in a gigantic way. Cloture motions are filed to set a time limit on debate and bring a bill to the floor for a vote. The motion must receive 60 votes to pass — not a simple majority.

The Senate website lists all cloture motions since 1917, when the Senate first adopted the cloture rule. We counted a total of 58 from 1917 through 1970, the figure Biden cited. But last year alone there were 118 — which is more than double 58, not five times greater.

It appears that the president meant to say in the last Congress — not “last year alone.” In 2019 and 2020, which was the 116th Congress, there were 328 cloture motions filed — which is more than five times the motions filed from 1917 through 1970.But cloture motions aren’t necessarily filed “to break a filibuster,” as Biden said. That used to be the primary use, but not in modern times — a fact noted in a Congressional Research Service report on filibusters and cloture motions.

“In recent times, by contrast, Senate leadership has increasingly made use of cloture as a normal tool for managing the flow of business on the floor, even when no evident filibuster has yet occurred,” the CRS report said. “It would be erroneous to assume the presence or absence of cloture attempts is a reliable guide to the presence or absence of filibusters.

 ”Also, both parties are responsible for the escalating use of cloture motions. 

There were 504 filed in six years (2009-2014) when the Democrats were in control, and 657 in six years (2015-2020) when the Republicans were in charge.

Editor’s note: FactCheck.org does not accept advertising. We rely on grants and individual donations from people like you. Please consider a donation. Credit card donations may be made through our “Donate” page. If you prefer to give by check, send to: FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, 202 S. 36th St., Philadelphia, PA 19104. 

The post FactChecking Biden’s First Press Conference appeared first on FactCheck.org.

_______________________________________________________

OPINION:  Joe Biden need to be “Fact Checked every time he makes a Statement or comment about anything that he says!

[brandtreein]

8 EFFECTIVE MARKETING TIPS TO SKYROCKET SALES IN 2021

How do you think marketing works? Well, my perspective on digital marketing in simple layman’s terms is the use of the internet to reach consumers. It is believed that business has only two functions – MARKETING AND INNOVATION.

Marketing Advertising Commercial Strategy Concept

1. Right Strategies, Implementation, & Success.

Planning out business goals and how to achieve them is very important for any brand, don't you think so? I believe it is important to figure out where the brand stands right now and its goal in the forthcoming years. And to achieve the above-said goals, it is necessary to have a well-planned set of strategies in a cost-effective yet impactful manner so that no stone is left unturned. To mention a few strategies:

Creative Web Design/Development: Using UI/UX interface designs and catchy graphic designs and standardized software along with developing the website further helps in generating leads.

Personalized Content: Content is king. Make sure to give out content that grabs the attention of the readers by making it more relatable and personalized to adhere to their requirements.

Discounts/Sale: Providing discounts, cashback, and season sales is something that catches the eye of every given consumer. This will ensure website traffic and to reach a wide range of consumers.

Social Media Marketing: Social media has become a rage amongst people. Marketing a certain business on social media is one of the most effective ways to reach a wider audience and helps to constantly engage with your followers/consumers in different ways.

Omnichannel Marketing: This is the practice of marketing a business across many channels including online and offline modes. It helps to provide an enhanced and customized user experience across numerous channels through any method that the customer prefers.

Once we have a plan, it's now time to implement them! Reach out to various platforms and make sure that your brand visibility is improving with every passing day. It is important to use all the technologies at hand and put your best foot forward in getting your brand on the radar. With this outline, every process can go on organically and effectively which will eventually lead you to success.

2.Content Still Matters

It is said that great content is the best sales tool in the world. Content marketing is an effective approach to marketing that involves the creation and sharing of online material such as videos, blogs, website content, social media posts, etc and eventually not only promotes the brand but also intends to stimulate interest in the services it has to offer. HubSpot research suggests that businesses that blog are 13 times more likely to witness ROI than those that don't. Now, how will content help, improve brand marketing? Here are a few content marketing tips that will answer the above question:

Perfect Keyword Research: It is of utmost importance to make a list of relevant keywords that people are searching for and to make sure to use them in your content. This helps improve brand visibility and eventually to reach out to numerous customers.

Constant Content Optimization: Great headlines catch the attention of the readers and force them to read the blog. It is important to keep optimizing your content with time to make sure that your brand is hand-in-hand with the current trend.

Visual Appeal: Videos/pictures are what adds more understanding to any given concept that you are trying to explain. Add relevant yet innovative photos and videos to grab the attention of readers.

Promotion: Once we have an initial set of audience, it only makes sense to keep expanding it. Promote your blogs/website on various platforms like social media, another fellow brand, and others make sure your brand attains success in every possible way.

3.Social Media is a Game-Changer.

How many of us don't use social media? I'm sure not many of us can say "ME" to that. As of 2020, over 3.6 billion use one or the other social media platforms. With that huge number, isn't it only logical to make use of social media in the field of digital marketing as well? SMM (Social Media Marketing) is a process where the marketer uses social media networks as a tool for promoting their website thus increasing traffic. This is done because, when a website is connected to a social media network its position in the search results increases drastically. Here are a few tips:

Device a full-fledged social sharing strategy.

Use the maximum number of social media platforms possible.

Discuss the current trends and make sure to use them, thus attracting an audience on a larger scale.

Constant engagement with your followers. Run contests/games to stay connected.

Regular social media creation and optimization.

Put across simple and fundamental concepts that can be understood by anybody who reads it. Try not to complicate the content.

Analyze and improve.

4.Make Your Customer the Hero of Your Story.

What determines the success of a brand ultimately? Its customers. Every brand’s ultimate goal is to reach the maximum number of customers and doing this is not an easy task at all and involves a series of best marketing strategies that could be:

Market Research: Make sure to do a quick market survey and collect data as it is very important to understand the needs of your customers and the current trend.

Email Marketing: Emails happen to be one of the easiest means of customer communication since time immemorial. Sending out personalized emails to a set of customers makes it easy for them to stay updated about any new launches/services thereby, increases customer engagement with the brand and increase the potential number of customers from time to time.

SMM: 83% of people who use the internet, use social media as well. This is yet another platform to reach out to a wide range of customers. This has been explained above in detail under the heading, “Social media is a game-changer”.

Content Marketing and web design: It is important to have a website that can be easily accessed on all devices be it smartphones, tablets, or laptops, and also to make it visually attractive. Content is king. The more entertaining and relatable the content is; the more will be the readers who will eventually become loyal consumers. Ain't that so simple?

Ask Customer Reviews: Ask the customers how satisfied they are with the service you are providing. Asking for feedback is one of the ways where the brand understands what it needs to improve whilst making the customer feel important and that their opinion/feedback matters.

5. Page Speed Matters

According to a study, 40% of customers discard websites that take more than 3 seconds to load. So yes, I still stand by what I said, “Page speed matters”. With good page speed, comes, better conversion rates, better search engine rankings, and user experience. Let us see as to how page speed can be improved:

Google Page Speed Insights: This is a free tool, made available by Google which runs performance tests on your website and also gives insights on how to improve the same. It works for desktop and mobile versions.

Image optimization: Images hog the maximum bandwidth of a website. Thus, we can use images in jpeg, jpg, or png formats and compress them, so that they occupy less space which will eventually increase the speed of the page.

Use a CDN strategy: A CDN (Content Delivery Network) is a network spread across various locations in the world. A website with a single server is bound to have an increased loading time. Hence, by incorporating the CDN, user requirements are put across to the closest server(in accordance with their location) and as a result, website speed is increased and keeps the customer engaged.

HTTP Compression: It is mainly used for text-based data like HTML, Java, CSS, and others. These days everybody makes sure that their webs server is GZIP enabled. SO, compressing content will lead to faster loading of web pages.

Transfer the database: Moving the entire data to a separate, optimized server is one of the most effective to improve page speed.

Performance budget calculator: The importance of catchy content has been repeatedly made very clear. This tool helps you to improve your existing content on the website and to constantly optimize it.

Effective tools: There are a bunch of tools that help you to test websites and understand the flaws. To name a few: Pingdom, YSlow, and others.

6. Data Privacy

While the internet is a vast ocean of technology, it also comes with its own risks. This is when cybersecurity/data privacy comes into the picture. During consumer and company interactions, there will be a need to share some personal contact and bank information which need to be protected no matter what. Now, how can that be done? Read along.

Ask for permission: California consumer privacy act (CCPA) and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) act in such a way that, it gives the consumers all the control over the data/information they wish to pass on according to their own will.

Know and agree: Create a page enlisting all the security tools and policies and go further only if the customer agrees to it upon reading the security you have to offer.

Focusing the right data: Data is most important for any kind of marketing. So, it is important to collect the required data and make sure none of it goes unused. Thus, making it comfortable for the customer while fulfilling the data the website needs as well.

7. Constantly Optimize User Experience

Developing a website and getting customers is one thing, while constantly being able to optimize the user experience is another key aspect. Better user experience leads to better conversion rates and increased revenue. With rapidly increasing trends, don't you think, it is necessary to make sure that your website is not looking old? Well, here are a few tips that can help you improve your website experience:

Google is definitely the most popular and used search engine in the world. Google search rankings play a very important role for any website from any sector. Google algorithms are a set of complex systems that determines the rankings of websites in SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). Google makes updates/changes thousands of times, and given the importance of it for our website, it only becomes necessary to keep ourselves updated.

Improved page speed.

Use attractive images and videos to keep the website engaging.

Keep the web pages consistent with catchy and well-designed headlines.

Based on the data fed by the user, provide personalized and reliable suggestions/services to the users.

Conduct behavioral UX data analysis and with the final results, work on improving the user/website experience

8. Always Analyze The Results.

There is always an increasing drive to provide the customers with the best experience under any given circumstances. Constant analysis of the results or outcome of the website is the only way to improve any business. Here is how it can be achieved:

Collect data on the works of the website or brand in the past week/month.

Make a statistic analysis by making a graph for better understanding.

Understand why certain aspects might have gone wrong and in the meantime also make sure to keep up with the existing highlights of the website and keep optimizing it and making it better.

Make sure to make all the necessary changes/updates required on a weekly/monthly basis and be at the top of the game and hand-in-hand with the ongoing trend.

A brand is no longer what we tell the consumer – it is what consumers tell each other it is. – Scott Cook

For more visit Brand Tree

[loveonwallstour]

i didn’t read any of the questions im just picking random numbers so sorry if these are weird but: 3, 11, 13, 23, 33, 43, 53, 63, 73, 83, 93, and 99

thank u miss maggie i’m assuming you really love the number 3

3. what colour are your eyes?

brown!! really dark (i had to do like an assignment with two different groups and it was like figure out who the darkest eyes has and both of the times it was me so probably really darK)

11. favourite social media account?

tumblr

13. any siblings?

one brother and two (half) sisters, i’m the baby of the family

23. describe your dream date

bold of you to assume i know what that would entail (but also maybe a walk through the forest or a picknick idk)

33. favourite actor?

according to my brother it’s tom holland (i mean he’s not wrong) but also robert pattinson (throwback to when i bought a book about him when i was 13 plus i’m willing to rant about him for an hour in the possible podcast)

43. what is your skin type?

i never know how people know this? but i think a little oily? no thoughts 

53. opinion on smoking?

hate it!! with a passion!!

63. do you prefer chicken nuggets from wendy’s or mcdonalds?

i mean i’ve never had wendy’s in my life and i have meat like 3 times a year so i’m going to say neither

73. do you want to get married?

yes? no? i truly don’t know rn i can’t see myself being married but maybe if i meet the right person?

also update yes bc i’m getting married to you in italy in spring 2021

83. regular oreos or golden oreos?

i fully believe oreos are overhyped there are so many better cookies but i’m cheating by saying red velvet oreos because those do slap

93. last thing you ate?

i kind of cheated and made dinner before answering this so now it’s gnocchi 

99. what is your zodiac sign?

i’m an aquarius baby

send me an unusual ask

[iwbfinterviews]

Jake Brown Interview

When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer? Is there a particular reason you chose to write about music, singers, etc?

I didn’t actually, lol.  I’m a songwriter/producer first, I grew up playing and writing music but always wrote as a way to kind of get through school because I was terrible at math, sciences, tests, etc.  I think there’s alot of people in the music business who started out like that.  It kind of happened accidentally, I was working for a record label right out of college and started writing copy for their catalog titles, press releases, etc and it just expanded from there.   I met a literary agent through that who suggested I try to write a book, and we sold the Suge Knight memoir to Amber Books, who gave me my start.  Another big early foot in the door moment was when I had the opportunity to write books with Ann and Nancy Wilson & Heart in 2007 and in 2009 with Lemmy Kilmister and Motorhead.  Then the book nearly 10 years into my career that really kind of made me appreciate this career was the opportunity to work with legendary guitar player Joe Satriani on Strange Beautiful Music: A Musical Memoir.  I’d also started specializing in anthology-style books that feature LOTS of exclusive interviews in one book in chapter profiles so you could tell a bunch of people’s live stories at once, including the BEHIND THE BOARDS series, which began 10 years ago as a Rock & Roll producers’ series, the aforementioned In the Studio series with Heart, Motorhead, and others, and then finally about 10 years into living in Nashville I began working on the NASHVILLE SONGWRITER book series and most recently the BEHIND THE BOARDS: NASHVILLE book.  SO: the long answer to that question is, because I love telling the behind-the-scenes stories of both the hits and those who make them, be it songwriters or producers or drummers in the case of the BEYOND THE BEATS rock drummers series, or Hip Hop producers with the DOCTORS OF RHYTHM audiobook and upcoming physical version in 2021.  I’ve also been fortunate to write memoirs with some interesting characters like Kenny Aronoff, country rapper Big Smo and upcoming Freddy Powers The Spree of ’83 book which features Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson.  So it's been an interesting run.

How long does it take you to write a book?

I work on several at once usually, that’s kind of my process, half day on one, a day on another, but for BEHIND THE BOARDS: NASHVILLE, I spent 4 straight months day in and out writing this book exclusively as it was over 600 pages.  I was reading the audiobook for Blackstone as I was writing it too, which was the first time I’ve ever done that.  Usually the audiobook is read after the book is completed.  Then it’s about a month of editing before its handed into the publisher.  So this was a real push, but it was worth it because of the feedback I’m getting first from the producers I worked quite extensively in many cases with on their individual chapters, and collectively in the book being a first of its kind for country music fans where they can read about how their favorite hits by country’s biggest stars were made while listening along on Spotify, iTunes, Tidal, etc.

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?

Oh, I don’t know... I write every book thinking from the outset before I’ve even started putting words down to paper thinking about how that book will be marketed and promoted upon release.  There’s no point in writing something no one is going to read because when you get to the finish line you don’t have a gameplan on how to make readers aware of it.  Publishers, to be honest, can only do so much in that arena, every publisher’s publicist is usually like a social worker with 30 cases on their desk, so yours can only get so much attention.  So for instance, I always recommend to a writer to hire a great publicist and know that while that’s a considerable expense, it may be the best money you spend in getting the word out about your book because that publicist is working for YOU, not for 30 authors at once.  It's just a fact of the business that I think should get more light shed on it because you’re competing with that number I  mentioned above of 60,000+ books a YEAR coming out.  I also negotiate the right to press my own promo runs of 100 if needed because if not, you’ll wind up with a paltry 10 copies from the publisher, who for their own budgetary reasons, might not for instance be able to service all the physical review copies you’ll have to give away during the book’s promotion, whether to a disc jockey interviewing you on the air or the listener he or she is giving away a free copy to during that broadcast, as just one example.  If you don’t plan ahead for that, you’ll wind up paying that publisher $6 or $7 per promotional copy, which is something I’m SURE some of my own publishers would hate for me to pull the curtain back on, but its true.  Writers are paid LAST usually in the royalty chain, especially early on, but you move up in that order as you build a value into your name as a writer, which only comes with people hearing about you and your book.  So again, HIRE A PUBLICIST, HIRE A PUBLICIST, HIRE A PUBLICIST!  Your agent can be helpful too, but its typically up to you as an author to maintain your own social media presence and look for every available avenue to spread the word about your book so it has a chance to be read.  This is equally important for newer or more established writers, because there’s always a new generation of equally-as-talented new wordsmiths knocking on those publishers’ same doors... 

What do you like to do when you're not writing?

In a studio making music or writing books for the various publishers I work for, or recording audiobooks for Blackstone Audio, so it’s pretty time-consuming.  I did just sign a worldwide music publishing deal for my songwriting catalog with Streets Music and David Gresham Company.  So I’m lucky to stay busy, to be honest, you have to too make a living in the entertainment business.  I have a wife and a dog too, so I spend what time I have left with them. ☺ 

Your 50th book is coming out June 23rd, “Behind The Boards: Nashville”. Can you give us insight on what it will be about? 

First, I exhale deeply every time I get asked that because it's finally DONE!  I spent 2 years collecting extensive, first-hand – many for the first time in a book – interviews with 30 of country music’s biggest producers, and in some cases, that meant waiting for a break in their busy studio schedules to talk, in others it meant multiple conversations over a couple years as we wanted to make sure we had all their current hits as they kept banging them out, and in other cases, because of the sheer volume of their catalog – some of these guys have been in the business since the early 70s – it took that long to chronicle it all.  That’s just the interview process too, then I had to write it and I write everything in one shot vs. a chapter here and there.  Its to me like staying in character as an actor throughout an entire performance, and when you’re writing a book like this, you’re in a headspace that never lets you sleep because creative narrative is CONSTANTLY hitting you about specific hits, and there’s over 300 # 1s in this book.  Additionally, there’s an EXHAUSTIVE amount of research I do to source out certain critical quotes of praise, for instance, from way back in the 80s, 90s, early 00s, etc from magazines that aren’t even in print anymore, as well as supporting quotes from the actual superstars these producers work with in the studio, which also takes a great deal of time.  So after all of that prep, once you begin writing, there’s another 3-4 months before the manuscript comes to life as a finished product.

As a result of that, country music fans here are given arguably the MOST definitive to date book chronicling the stories behind the making of their favorite hits in the studio, again how those artists specifically and uniquely work at their craft – i.e. does George Strait sing each hit over 3 or 4 vocals or 25 or 30 takes, etc – as well as how specific # 1s within those individual catalogs of Greatest Hits were created in the studio.  Then from the other side of the boards, so to speak, you get the producer’s first-hand recollections of their own personal journeys from the time they could first crawl and walk and started discovering music to their teenage bands and first tape-recorder or 2-inch reel to reel or 4-track or laptop home recording sessions all the way up through their rise to become the biggest names in the business working in country music today.  

Collectively, BEHIND THE BOARDS: NASHVILLE features Dann Huff, James Stroud, Jim Ed Norman, Dave Cobb, Justin Neibank, Ross Copperman, Zach Crowell, Chris Destefano, Jesse Frasure, Norbert Putnam, Josh Osborne, Luke Laird, Clint Black, Frank Liddell, Shane McAnally, Jimmy Robbins, Josh Leo, Nathan Chapman, Paul Worley, Jeff Stevens, Jody Stevens, Bobby Braddock, Michael Knox, Don Cook, Frank Rogers, Joey Moi, Ray Baker, and Buddy Cannon, who did the Foreword, which was a TRUE honor.  Frankly, it was an honor to have every one of these legends speak to fans so candidly and openly about both their personal and professional lives in the music business.  Their stories are inspiring, ear-and-eye-opening, exciting, insightful, and hopefully educational for those kids growing up on their records now hoping to break into the same business.  So hopefully, there’s something for everyone who opens the book.

What were the methods you used to get ‘the’ interview with all the big names you’ve written about?

When you’ve been around this long, fortunately you can get in touch with just about anybody, whether they say yes or not to the interview is another story! (laughs)  But I’ve been pretty lucky, especially for instance with my NASHVILLE SONGWRITER book series, which has TWO volumes and 50 of the biggest songwriters in country music in the first two volumes, and a THIRD volume with another 30 legendary songwriters coming out at the end of 2021, and especially with BEHIND THE BOARDS: NASHVILLE, which has 30 of the most legendary record producers in country over the past 50 years, guys like Norbert Putnam, who ran Quad and produced Jimmy Buffet’s “Margaritaville,” Jim Ed Norman, who produced Hank Williams Jr’s Born to Boogie album, Ray Baker, who produced that whole 70s Honkytonk soundtrack including Moe Bandy, Whitey Shafer, and Merle Haggard and Freddy Powers among others.  Then you have the Millennial generation’s biggest names like Joey Moi, Dave Cobb, Dann Huff, Jesse Frasure, Ross Copperman, Shane McAnally and Josh Osborne, Ray Riddle, and on and on.  

What do you think makes a good story?

Well, for this book, the most common thread woven throughout many of the chapters/live stories of these producers were the long-term working relationships they’ve  maintained with many of country music’s biggest stars throughout their entire careers or the majority, for instance, Jeff Stevens and Luke Bryan, Byron Gallimore and Tim McGraw, Buddy Cannon and Kenny Chesney, Michael Knox and Tony Brown, Frank Rogers and Brad Paisley, Miranda Lambert and Frank Liddell, the list goes on and on as long as the Greatest Hits track listings do.  Equally as importantly for a book like this, is the fact it takes the reader quite literally inside the studio and pulls back the curtain on how their favorite country music stars record their biggest hits, and almost literally re-creates their recording from behind the boards by the producers interviewed.  Then on a totally separate front, from the academic side, its a 600-page book full of tips about how the recording process works from all sides, points of views, approaches, ages, and technologies, old and new, from analog to digital and the hybrid of both in the “in the box” generation of record making.  Hopefully, we’ve covered all sides of the process, that was the aim anyway so readers get a 3-D look, so to speak, at how the recording business really works.  

How did publishing your first book change your process of writing?

I sold my first book to my first publisher, Amber Books, in 2001 and Tony Rose gave me my start in the business and I wrote for them almost exclusively for the first 5 years and 10 books of my career from 2002 to 2007.  So having a stable and still exciting publisher willing to take chances on you and equally-as-importantly, the kinds of books you might approach them with, is KEY for any new writer because writers must remember EVERY time a publisher takes a chance on their book, they’re putting real money behind it before they ever see a dime back.  It's a big leap of faith, and carries with it alot of obligations for the author, where it doesn’t just end with handing the book in, but also helping promote it and building a brand for your name so it can become more and more reliable for both readers and new publishers, as any writer’s goal should be to eventually build a catalog where they write for as many publishers as possible throughout their career.  But be prepared to start out writing for one, or anyone for that matter, who you can verify has a good track record as a publisher, or if they’re new to the game, doesn’t just want to put out an e-book, which anyone can do without a publisher, and is willing to commit to a physical pressing, and promotion of that pressing.  I wouldn’t go looking for advances on your first or even necessarily second book out, but start asking for them as soon as possible as its an important piece of the income stream for any working author, as much as royalties are later on down the road.  An advance lets an author know a publisher first can afford to put money into their book, and values them, vs. Alot of these starter deals that promise big back-end but nothing up front.  You have to be able to afford to take that hit once or twice out of the gate, but its not a career model any writer should plan on if they want to make a living as a working author.  The other reason I mention all this is because being a working writer is not just about the creative side of the process, but the entrepreneurial one too, because you have to be a self-promoter, and not be shy to doing interviews or promotion on social media, etc, as you’re competing with a THOUSAND new titles a week minimum these days between all the digital e-books and print books out there. I think the statistic was to be something like 60,000 books published in 2018 alone, so that tells you the competition you’re up against to even get a book sold to a publisher, let alone compete on bookstore shelves for the reader dollar.

What’s your favorite under-appreciated novel?

Of my own books, I wouldn’t say any are underappreciated, I’m grateful for the fact that people still read my books after 20 years and 2 or 3 generations of teenagers (which are a primary part of my reading audience) still buy my stuff.  I try to give them consistently interesting reading subjects, either in the personalities I co-write with – like country rapper SMO, whose memoir My Life in a Jar: The Book of Smo, was released in 2019, or the Freddy Powers Spree of ’83 memoir, which is presently in film development and that I co-wrote a screenplay for with Catherine Powers last year, that was also something different, and say something like legendary R&B producer/artist Teddy Riley’s forthcoming memoir Remember the Times, which we’ve been working on for the past 6 years off and on and is looking like it might be heading to Teddy’s fans’ hands in the next year.  One key thing I tell new writers when asked for input into starting a career in the current climate for our business is be prepared to commit as much time to a book as the artist needs, its similar to an album – if the publisher wants it on a deadline, be prepare to deliver, but getting an artist to open up in depth about their life takes time, both to build trust and to physically take the time to do the interviews not only with them in principle but also with the huge list of supporting cast members between peers in the band and business and family members and friends, record executives, peers, etc that usually wind up on those lists.  It's a process you should NEVER RUSH yourself, only move at the rhythm of the people you work with and for, and you’ll wind up working alot longer in the business than those who are in a hurry.  

How many unpublished and half-finished books do you have?

Haha, I actually have a folder called “Projects That Probably Won’t Happen” and its filled with all kinds of “famous” bands/musicians books that just never got off the ground for one reason or another, but they’re all under contractual deals where I can’t talk about them in case they want to put a book out in the future, and I hope they all do.  Sometimes you encounter someone who is thinking about writing a book but is really 10 years before they’re ready to, or they aren’t really committed yet past the concept, so you do some sample chapter interviews but it never gets past that starting line.  I’ve thankfully left on good terms with the majority of those names, but with 50 published books in my catalog, most of what I have committed my time to has thankfully made it to store shelves.  That’s important for any new writer to remember, because with every new book project you take on, you’re committing a year to two years of their life to that process from the start of interviews through the completion, handing it into the publisher, editing, etc.  Anyone in a rush usually isn’t going to get anywhere is what I’ve found, it takes time, even if your mind is moving a million miles a minute, and your ambition even faster, pace yourself and you’ll last a lot longer in the race I’ve found anyway (cheesy sports metaphor aside ☺).  

Do you read your book reviews? How do you deal with bad or good ones?

Haha, I’ve had some good and bad experiences there over the years.  I have NO problem with a consumer buying my book and then reviewing it one way or the other on say Amazon or Audible, etc, because that’s part of the business, but as far as book reviews from other writers, I just have to hope they like it and write fairly about it as it does matter impressionistically what readers then think of it as a potential product to buy and read themselves.  Sometimes, in walking the fine line I have to be between the technical and the creative in a series like this or Nashville Songwriter or say my In the Studio series, which has over 10 books in it alone, so you never know.  Its something I don’t pay alot of attention to as well because by the time a review comes out, the book has been out a couple months usually and we’re on the back-end of a promotional push, so if its a good review, it's a nice 4th quarter boost of coverage, and if it's not, then it's pretty buried vs. hurting the book’s launch on the front end.  I’m just being honest, sorry, but book reviews play a very MINIMAL role in most books’ launches if they’re properly promoted via author interviews, premier placements as we’ve done with American Songwriter, CMT, SoundsLikeNashville.com and others coming up, and for any newer writer, accept ahead of time that you’re GOING to get a bad review here or there, it's just part of the subjective review process, and doesn’t speak for your larger reading audience.  

Do you believe in writer’s block?

Not when you write for a living.  It's not a luxury I think any of the writers I know who work professionally writing books can afford, that’s why you have to follow the simple rule of A.B.W. (Always Be Writing) ☺.

Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

Probably doing the same thing, writing is how I make a living, so it's will be with me until arthiritis set’s in, but I’ve got 2 screenplays in development and hope to have at had at least one of them produced into a film.  I’m not unrealistic to think that it will go to theatres, but I’d be happy to see a streaming service selection with my name on it as a screenwriter, there’s 3 or 4 of my books fortunately in that cycle right now so we’ll hope one or two of them make it that far.  Beyond that, I’m in the studio every week as I have been the past 20 years making music and will continue doing that, hopefully to a greater degree with these new publishing deals I’ve signed as I have over 200 released songs in my own catalog, none in Country lol, but I just try to keep putting out new creative product across multiple mediums at as prolific a pace as the muse allows without the quality of the end-product being compromised.  That’s the point at which I’d stop I guess, if the quality of the writing lessens to where people don’t want to read my stuff anymore.  Thankfully, I have built up a pretty loyal reading and retail-buying audience over the past 2 decades, and hope to keep putting out books that help music listeners understand how hard and still rewarding a business the record business is.  It's an amazing world to wake up working in every day, and I love helping musicians tell their stories on paper, so we’ll just have to see.  I hope to have hit 60 books by then, although my ultimate goal is another 50 over the next 10 years! (laughs)  Thanks again for your time and support of this latest project!    

[ralphlayton]

The Great Marketing Get-Together

State fair season brings tasty new foods-on-a-stick and a grandstand full of marketing lessons for those willing to walk the midway. The Minnesota State Fair, known affectionately as the Great Minnesota Get-Together, begins tomorrow, and we’ll explore some of the wild new food concoctions on offer this year, and dig in to a bucket-of-cookies-size list of surprising things it can teach us about marketing. The fair, which began all the way back in 1859, is one of the largest in the U.S., now often topping the 2 million attendee mark each 12-day season and offering fair-goers 322 acres of summer fun in the form of amusement rides, live music from at least four stages, art, animals, parades and more. Marketers can gain plenty of insight from the spectacle of the Minnesota State Fair, so let’s take a food-centric look at some of the marketing lessons we can learn from the Great Minnesota Get-Together.

The Power of Anticipation On A Stick

Each year fair-goers eagerly anticipate the list of new foods being released, followed by a period of speculation about how each new food will taste before the event begins, including some who even place odds on each new fair food. Marketers have long built anticipation into campaigns, especially for organizations with popular products and services with many dedicated fans such as top car manufacturers and video game makers. Getting your audience excited, whether it’s by building anticipation through social media, search marketing, or influencer marketing, is a time-tested tactic in many successful campaigns, and we’ll see how the sometimes over-the-top foods of the fair parallel these methods. In our age of instant gratification and always-on answers, anticipation is sometimes overlooked as a powerful marketing element. [bctt tweet="“The idea of waiting for something makes it more exciting.” — Andy Warhol " username="toprank"] If your organization is lucky enough to already have throngs of hard-core fans, keeping them happy through clear communication about upcoming releases, teaser previews, behind-the-scenes glimpses, and other fan-pleasing methods is likely to build continued success. [bctt tweet="“Anticipation is sometimes more exciting than actual events.” — Ana Monnar " username="toprank"]

FOMO & The Power of Ever-New Fair Food

Over 30 all-new foods will premier tomorrow at The Minnesota State Fair for 2019, including:

Bada Bing Sandwich

Blueberry Key Lime Pie

Cheesy Sriracha Funnel Cake Bites

Pebbles & Bam Bam Nordic Waffles

Peaches n’ Cream Nachos

Whether it’s one of these or the new Wingwalker Donut Flight with user-injectable flavor filling syringes, each year state fairs do an admirable job of getting mouths watering — or perplexing us with unusual concoctions — ultimately driving interest in a way that even B2B marketers can emulate and achieve success with. Reading the list of new fair foods induces a super-size dose of Fear of Missing Out (FOMA), an emotion that marketers can play on and work to include in our own campaigns, even if they may not include chocolate coatings, tornado potatoes and other deep-fried delights. Try not to let FOMA detract from either your marketing or your personal life, however. [bctt tweet="“Joy comes to us in moments — ordinary moments. We risk missing out on joy when we get too busy chasing down the extraordinary.” — Brené Brown @BreneBrown" username="toprank"] State fairs thrive by augmenting each year’s wild new foods with tried-and-true standby favorites such as corn-on-the-cob, cheese curds, and corndogs, which fair-goers have come to expect, just as many midway thrill-seekers still expect to enjoy a ride on the Tilt-a-Whirl — a 1926 Minnesota invention. Knowing when to retire a food requires walking that fine line between getting rid of a slow seller and possibly removing mom’s favorite fair treat. Marketers too need to consider their audiences before dropping an old marketing tactic or channel in favor of a shiny new selling method. Conducting audience surveys can help you find out how your customers would feel if you removed an element from your organization’s systems, whether it’s a chatbot virtual assistant, an online form, or even support for a particular social media platform. Understanding your audience’s needs and desires goes a long way towards building strong customer relationships, and one way to gain these types of insight is through researching the questions that your audience is asking, as I wrote about recently in “10 Smart Question Research Tools for B2B Marketers.” [bctt tweet="“Finding trends in what your current customers need can help you answer questions that your prospective customers might be asking, too.” — Jessica Best @bestofjess" username="toprank"]

Corn Dogs & Classic Social Media Marketing

These days social media marketing is a classic tactic, a comforting corn dog of the marketing world. The specific platforms we use come and go, and their features change as frequently as the fair-goers riding the SkyRide or Octopus, yet many social tactics are bedrocks of marketing. A sizable part of a successful social media marketing campaign is keeping track of performance benchmarks, as Joshua Nite, our Content Marketing Manager explored in detail in “Social Media Marketing Benchmarks: What Works & Where to Focus,” which was our most popular social media marketing post of 2018. [bctt tweet="“We should approach evolving our social media with the same data-driven, strategic rigor that applies to everything else we do.” — Joshua Nite @NiteWrites" username="toprank"] Over the past 15 years we’ve written a midway-full of additional helpful articles about how you can best incorporate social media marketing into your own campaigns, and some of the top recent ones are listed here, with no midway ticket coupons even required…

80+ New Social Media Marketing Statistics for B2B Marketers

Social Media Secrets: 5 Under-the-Radar LinkedIn Features for Marketers

B2B Social Media Shakeup: 4 Developments That Have Caught Our Eye

Blooming Onions & Podcast Marketing

Podcasting has been among the biggest blooming marketing trends in recent years, with forecasts predicting that ad spending in the podcasting industry will top $1 billion by 2021, equal to more state fair blooming onions than you could shake a corn-dog stick at. As one of today’s most promising marketing opportunities, podcasting has found a new way to take the simple commodity of people talking and turn it into a highly desirable and profitable digital asset, much the same as how state fair vendors take an ordinary onion and transform it into a showy explosion of deep-fried rooty tentacles. [bctt tweet="“Stay closer to top-of-funnel with your podcast ideas. It’s far better to educate, inspire, and entertain your audience than to try and sell them something.” — Joshua Nite @NiteWrites" username="toprank"] As podcasting has bloomed over the past several years, our team at TopRank Marketing has explored its’ relevant use in B2B marketing, including the following recent articles:

How to Promote Your B2B Podcast

20 Podcasts To Elevate Your B2B Marketing

10 More Marketing Podcasts To Boost Your Business

Deep-Fried Candy Bars & The Promise of VR/AR Interactive Marketing

Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) have also taken marketing by storm, similar to how deep-fried candy bars have given many the promise of a bold new future of state fair indulgences. Dip your marketing Snickers and advertising Milky-Ways into a batter of VR and dunk them into the fryer, and read up on how interactive elements will play a bigger role in our future marketing efforts, with our recent articles here:

Augmented Reality: How to Leverage AR in Marketing With Cathy Hackl

The Future of B2B Content: Data-Informed, Interactive, and Influential

How B2B Marketers Can Make the Most of Interactive Content Tools

Cheese Curds & Search Marketing

Cheese has been around a lot longer than search engines, yet both are modern staples for most marketers and many fair-goers. As with social media marketing, the specific tactics needed to achieve success in search and SEO are highly-specialized. Get to the cheesy, gooey center of your search marketing learning by grabbing a bit bite of our recent posts on the subject here:

What the Future of Google Search Means for B2B Marketers

How B2B Marketers Can Win at Search with Best Answer Content

Our Top 10 Search Marketing Posts

The Full Food Court of Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is hard to pair with any single state fair delicacy, as the many benefits it offers when executed smartly are more akin to the virtually unlimited smorgasbord of flavors available in the state fair’s main food court. Influencer marketing spending in the U.S. and Canada has seen 83 percent year-over-year growth, accompanied by second-quarter spending of $442 million, according to recent research. Recent data also shows that micro and niche-influencers are forging stronger target audience connections and boosting long-term loyalty, and over the next 12 months, 65 percent of multinational brands plan to increase influencer marketing spending, according to the World Federation of Advertisers. [bctt tweet="“Whether you’re tired of or wired for “influencer marketing”, make no mistake: The growth of influence on individual and organizational effectiveness in the B2B marketing world will continue for years to come.” @LeeOdden" username="toprank"] In Minnesota our State Fair is considered our state’s Greatest Show on Earth, a similar theme we recently pursued as we partnered with the Content Marketing Institute to showcase the powerful and entertaining combination of influencer marketing and interactive digital assets, which you can experience here: If you’ve never had the opportunity to experience the splendors of a state fair, we hope you’ll someday be able to visit one, and if you’re near Minnesota be sure to take in our Great Minnesota Get-Together. I'll leave you with a photo of this author preparing to tackle a mountain of spiral potatoes at the Minnesota State Fair in 2014.

The post The Great Marketing Get-Together appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

The Great Marketing Get-Together published first on yhttps://improfitninja.blogspot.com/

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

March 16, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

Today, I’m watching some stories that have immediate significance, but also indicate larger trends.

First, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) has asked the Justice Department, now overseen by Attorney General Merrick Garland, to look into the unusual circumstances through which Brett Kavanaugh’s large debts disappeared before his nomination to the Supreme Court. While this question is important to understanding Kavanaugh’s position on our Supreme Court, it is more than that: it is part of a larger investigation into the role of big money in our justice system.

Last May, Whitehouse, along with Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) and Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), released a report titled “Captured Courts: The GOP’s Big Money Assault On The Constitution, Our Independent Judiciary, And The Rule of Law.” It outlined how the “Conservative Legal Movement has rewritten federal law to favor the rich and powerful,” how the Federalist Society and special-interest money control our courts, and how the system benefits the big-money donors behind the Republicans.

On March 10, Whitehouse began hearings to investigate the role of big money in Supreme Court nominations and decisions. Aside from Chief Justice John Roberts, every Supreme Court justice named by a Republican president has ties to the Federalist Society, a group that advocates an originalist interpretation of the Constitution, which prohibits the use of the courts to regulate business or to defend civil rights.

So while it is the Kavanaugh story that is getting media attention, the longer story is about whether our courts have been bought.

Another story on my list is that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell today warned Democrats in the Senate not to get rid of the filibuster to pass voting rights legislation. “Nobody serving in this chamber can even begin, can even begin, to imagine what a completely scorched-earth Senate would look like,” he said. But, in fact, they can, because it was McConnell himself who got rid of the filibuster to hammer through Trump’s Supreme Court nominees, and who pushed through Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, which benefited only the very wealthy, by using a technique that avoided the filibuster.

McConnell warned that, without the filibuster, he would defund Planned Parenthood, pass anti-abortion legislation, and create national concealed-carry gun laws. But all of these measures are quite unpopular in the nation, so it’s not clear that these are threats the Democrats want to avoid. It’s entirely possible that permitting the Republicans to push through those measures would hurt the Republicans, rather than the Democrats.

Democrats are talking about reforming the filibuster because they are keen on passing H.R. 1, the voting rights act that would defang the voter suppression measures Republicans are pushing in 43 states. If those measures become law, it will be hard for the Democrats ever again to win control of the government, no matter how popular they are. H.R. 1 will level the democratic playing field, so both parties compete fairly. But fair elections will disadvantage Republicans, who have come to rely on voter suppression to win.

Hence McConnell’s threats.

For his part—in a third story I’m watching-- Biden is reaching out to Republicans with an infrastructure package. Republicans were caught wrongfooted when they all voted against the enormously popular American Rescue Plan, and he is offering them an infrastructure bill at the same time Democrats have gotten rid of a ban on so-called “earmarks,” local spending funded in a federal package. Earmarks tend to increase bipartisanship by enabling lawmakers to go home to their constituents with something tangible in hand in exchange for their vote on a bill. Infrastructure spending is popular among voters in both parties, so this approach might break the united front of Republican lawmakers to oppose all Democratic policies.

Finally, I am fascinated by the Democratic-led, bipartisan move among congressional leaders to repeal the 2002 authorization for the Iraq War. President Biden has called for a “more narrow and specific” authorization of military force (AUMF), and 83 Democratic lawmakers and 7 Republicans agree. Their dislike of the AUMF comes from its expansion under former president Trump, who used it to justify the assassination of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani—an official from a country with which we are not at war—saying that Soleimani was undermining efforts to stabilize Iraq’s government. This was an expansion of military action that legal analysts think might well have been illegal.

In the past, Congress had justified AUMFs with the idea that they could control the president by controlling the money behind military actions, but Trump commandeered money to build his wall by declaring a national security emergency, buying time to do what he wished by forcing Democrats to take him to court to stop him. This opened up concerns that the power of the purse was really no power at all if a president chose to undermine it.

The willingness to hand to the president the power to engage us in military action illustrates the dangerous growth of power in the executive branch. I will follow with interest whether Biden’s interest in returning us to the traditional forms of the Constitution extends to reducing the power of the president to assume Congress's role in taking us into war.

—-

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[samuelpboswell]

The Great Marketing Get-Together

State fair season brings tasty new foods-on-a-stick and a grandstand full of marketing lessons for those willing to walk the midway. The Minnesota State Fair, known affectionately as the Great Minnesota Get-Together, begins tomorrow, and we’ll explore some of the wild new food concoctions on offer this year, and dig in to a bucket-of-cookies-size list of surprising things it can teach us about marketing. The fair, which began all the way back in 1859, is one of the largest in the U.S., now often topping the 2 million attendee mark each 12-day season and offering fair-goers 322 acres of summer fun in the form of amusement rides, live music from at least four stages, art, animals, parades and more. Marketers can gain plenty of insight from the spectacle of the Minnesota State Fair, so let’s take a food-centric look at some of the marketing lessons we can learn from the Great Minnesota Get-Together.

The Power of Anticipation On A Stick

Each year fair-goers eagerly anticipate the list of new foods being released, followed by a period of speculation about how each new food will taste before the event begins, including some who even place odds on each new fair food. Marketers have long built anticipation into campaigns, especially for organizations with popular products and services with many dedicated fans such as top car manufacturers and video game makers. Getting your audience excited, whether it’s by building anticipation through social media, search marketing, or influencer marketing, is a time-tested tactic in many successful campaigns, and we’ll see how the sometimes over-the-top foods of the fair parallel these methods. In our age of instant gratification and always-on answers, anticipation is sometimes overlooked as a powerful marketing element. [bctt tweet="“The idea of waiting for something makes it more exciting.” — Andy Warhol " username="toprank"] If your organization is lucky enough to already have throngs of hard-core fans, keeping them happy through clear communication about upcoming releases, teaser previews, behind-the-scenes glimpses, and other fan-pleasing methods is likely to build continued success. [bctt tweet="“Anticipation is sometimes more exciting than actual events.” — Ana Monnar " username="toprank"]

FOMO & The Power of Ever-New Fair Food

Over 30 all-new foods will premier tomorrow at The Minnesota State Fair for 2019, including:

Bada Bing Sandwich

Blueberry Key Lime Pie

Cheesy Sriracha Funnel Cake Bites

Pebbles & Bam Bam Nordic Waffles

Peaches n’ Cream Nachos

Whether it’s one of these or the new Wingwalker Donut Flight with user-injectable flavor filling syringes, each year state fairs do an admirable job of getting mouths watering — or perplexing us with unusual concoctions — ultimately driving interest in a way that even B2B marketers can emulate and achieve success with. Reading the list of new fair foods induces a super-size dose of Fear of Missing Out (FOMA), an emotion that marketers can play on and work to include in our own campaigns, even if they may not include chocolate coatings, tornado potatoes and other deep-fried delights. Try not to let FOMA detract from either your marketing or your personal life, however. [bctt tweet="“Joy comes to us in moments — ordinary moments. We risk missing out on joy when we get too busy chasing down the extraordinary.” — Brené Brown @BreneBrown" username="toprank"] State fairs thrive by augmenting each year’s wild new foods with tried-and-true standby favorites such as corn-on-the-cob, cheese curds, and corndogs, which fair-goers have come to expect, just as many midway thrill-seekers still expect to enjoy a ride on the Tilt-a-Whirl — a 1926 Minnesota invention. Knowing when to retire a food requires walking that fine line between getting rid of a slow seller and possibly removing mom’s favorite fair treat. Marketers too need to consider their audiences before dropping an old marketing tactic or channel in favor of a shiny new selling method. Conducting audience surveys can help you find out how your customers would feel if you removed an element from your organization’s systems, whether it’s a chatbot virtual assistant, an online form, or even support for a particular social media platform. Understanding your audience’s needs and desires goes a long way towards building strong customer relationships, and one way to gain these types of insight is through researching the questions that your audience is asking, as I wrote about recently in “10 Smart Question Research Tools for B2B Marketers.” [bctt tweet="“Finding trends in what your current customers need can help you answer questions that your prospective customers might be asking, too.” — Jessica Best @bestofjess" username="toprank"]

Corn Dogs & Classic Social Media Marketing

These days social media marketing is a classic tactic, a comforting corn dog of the marketing world. The specific platforms we use come and go, and their features change as frequently as the fair-goers riding the SkyRide or Octopus, yet many social tactics are bedrocks of marketing. A sizable part of a successful social media marketing campaign is keeping track of performance benchmarks, as Joshua Nite, our Content Marketing Manager explored in detail in “Social Media Marketing Benchmarks: What Works & Where to Focus,” which was our most popular social media marketing post of 2018. [bctt tweet="“We should approach evolving our social media with the same data-driven, strategic rigor that applies to everything else we do.” — Joshua Nite @NiteWrites" username="toprank"] Over the past 15 years we’ve written a midway-full of additional helpful articles about how you can best incorporate social media marketing into your own campaigns, and some of the top recent ones are listed here, with no midway ticket coupons even required…

80+ New Social Media Marketing Statistics for B2B Marketers

Social Media Secrets: 5 Under-the-Radar LinkedIn Features for Marketers

B2B Social Media Shakeup: 4 Developments That Have Caught Our Eye

Blooming Onions & Podcast Marketing

Podcasting has been among the biggest blooming marketing trends in recent years, with forecasts predicting that ad spending in the podcasting industry will top $1 billion by 2021, equal to more state fair blooming onions than you could shake a corn-dog stick at. As one of today’s most promising marketing opportunities, podcasting has found a new way to take the simple commodity of people talking and turn it into a highly desirable and profitable digital asset, much the same as how state fair vendors take an ordinary onion and transform it into a showy explosion of deep-fried rooty tentacles. [bctt tweet="“Stay closer to top-of-funnel with your podcast ideas. It’s far better to educate, inspire, and entertain your audience than to try and sell them something.” — Joshua Nite @NiteWrites" username="toprank"] As podcasting has bloomed over the past several years, our team at TopRank Marketing has explored its’ relevant use in B2B marketing, including the following recent articles:

How to Promote Your B2B Podcast

20 Podcasts To Elevate Your B2B Marketing

10 More Marketing Podcasts To Boost Your Business

Deep-Fried Candy Bars & The Promise of VR/AR Interactive Marketing

Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) have also taken marketing by storm, similar to how deep-fried candy bars have given many the promise of a bold new future of state fair indulgences. Dip your marketing Snickers and advertising Milky-Ways into a batter of VR and dunk them into the fryer, and read up on how interactive elements will play a bigger role in our future marketing efforts, with our recent articles here:

Augmented Reality: How to Leverage AR in Marketing With Cathy Hackl

The Future of B2B Content: Data-Informed, Interactive, and Influential

How B2B Marketers Can Make the Most of Interactive Content Tools

Cheese Curds & Search Marketing

Cheese has been around a lot longer than search engines, yet both are modern staples for most marketers and many fair-goers. As with social media marketing, the specific tactics needed to achieve success in search and SEO are highly-specialized. Get to the cheesy, gooey center of your search marketing learning by grabbing a bit bite of our recent posts on the subject here:

What the Future of Google Search Means for B2B Marketers

How B2B Marketers Can Win at Search with Best Answer Content

Our Top 10 Search Marketing Posts

The Full Food Court of Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is hard to pair with any single state fair delicacy, as the many benefits it offers when executed smartly are more akin to the virtually unlimited smorgasbord of flavors available in the state fair’s main food court. Influencer marketing spending in the U.S. and Canada has seen 83 percent year-over-year growth, accompanied by second-quarter spending of $442 million, according to recent research. Recent data also shows that micro and niche-influencers are forging stronger target audience connections and boosting long-term loyalty, and over the next 12 months, 65 percent of multinational brands plan to increase influencer marketing spending, according to the World Federation of Advertisers. [bctt tweet="“Whether you’re tired of or wired for “influencer marketing”, make no mistake: The growth of influence on individual and organizational effectiveness in the B2B marketing world will continue for years to come.” @LeeOdden" username="toprank"] In Minnesota our State Fair is considered our state’s Greatest Show on Earth, a similar theme we recently pursued as we partnered with the Content Marketing Institute to showcase the powerful and entertaining combination of influencer marketing and interactive digital assets, which you can experience here: If you’ve never had the opportunity to experience the splendors of a state fair, we hope you’ll someday be able to visit one, and if you’re near Minnesota be sure to take in our Great Minnesota Get-Together. I'll leave you with a photo of this author preparing to tackle a mountain of spiral potatoes at the Minnesota State Fair in 2014.

The post The Great Marketing Get-Together appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

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[mediacalling]

10 Social Media Predictions for 2019

For social media managers this time of year is less about decking the halls with boughs of holly and more about planning for 2019.

The social media landscape is changing fast and with tougher KPIs, changing technologies and new techniques, it’s more important than ever to stay ahead of our game. At Contentworks Agency we’ve already planned next year’s social media strategies for our clients. So, I’m going to give you a sneak peak into what lies ahead with 10 social media predictions for 2019.

1. GDPR Seeps Into Social

I know you’re sick of hearing about GDPR and I’m with you but it’s relevant so let’s get it out of the way first. Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into effect on May 25 this year. In doing so, it began an overhaul of the data protection process giving users more authority over their personal data.

FUN FACT- If the famous Cambridge Analytica scandal had happened after GDPR, Facebook’s fine would have been €1.4 billion.

In line with GDPR rulings, Facebook and the main social media channels made changes to the way advertisers can use data. For example, page visitors can now publicly see the adverts that are running in their region:

Similarly, page managers can no longer upload any old contact list for custom audience targeting. Custom audiences must now be opted in, approved contacts. Violation of this policy can leave you without a Facebook ad account so take it seriously if you’re not already.

Takeaway: A massive tightening of social media advertising rules is probably coming

Right now, we can target end users based on a basket of measures such as their age, gender and occupation. This could soon be viewed as an invasion of privacy and even discrimination.

Organic social media marketing remains largely unaffected by GDPR but paid social media marketing methods will continue to evolve. Marketers relying heavily on paid ads will need to keep an eye on the latest rules regarding customer consent and data protection.

2. Social Media Storytelling for the Greater Good

Let’s move away from the dark clouds of GDPR and onto something a little more fun. Let’s talk about social media storytelling for the greater good.

Storytelling emerged in 2018 as a core technique for engaging consumers.  But up until now a lot of storytelling was stored on blogs and websites and then shared to social media. I see 2019 being the year when storytelling combined with augmented reality is hosted on the main social media platforms.  I also see 2019 as the year when brands align their storytelling with enacting positive social change.

Studies show that 92% of consumers have a more positive image of a company when it supports a social or environmental issue. And almost two-thirds of millennials and Gen Z express a preference for brands that stand for something.

Nike nailed social media storytelling even before the emergence of sophisticated AR technologies. In its Equality campaign it focuses on social change and inspires people to act. The message: by wearing Nikes or even interacting with them on social media, you are supporting the movement.

Watch the video

It was a powerful message that millions stood behind especially given that Nike donated $5 million to organizations advancing equality in US communities.

Takeaway: It’s time to tell great stories

Finally there’s a chance for social media managers to enact positive social change and it doesn’t have to cost a fortune. If your audience is millennial or Gen Z they’ve embraced the push for social change. Shape your social media stories around your supported charities, community activities and local causes. Embrace 360 video and AR technologies to tell your story in the most engaging way possible.

3. Live Streaming Gets Authentic

Live streaming is going to be bigger and better in 2019 so if you’re not already using it, you will want to start. 80% of audiences would rather watch a live video from a brand than read a blog. As an avid reader and writer, I find the reading drop off sad but also understandable. We are busier than ever, and video is just so easy to absorb without effort. One of my social media predictions for 2019 is to go live!

FUN FACT: In 2016, live streaming was already a $30 billion+ industry. It’s projected to more than double in growth by 2021 to become a $70+ billion industry.

2019 will see a demand for more authenticity and personalization. Something that has been lacking in many key sectors such as financial services. Live streaming gives you the opportunity to present an intimate, personalized, and behind-the-scenes look at your brand.

Takeaway: Embrace authenticity (and do it live)

It’s time to get key stakeholders in your company behind live streaming. I know it’s tough. Fears over revealing too much and mistakes that cannot be undone will be at the forefront of your directors’ minds. Start thinking about how you can film in your office, broadcast from your cafe or shop, live stream product launches and demonstrate product features.

4. Chatbots

I’ve got one word for you… Skynet.

Just kidding. Sort of.

The fears we had a few years ago about chatbots taking over the world have subsided. Apps like Messenger and WhatsApp are set to use chatbots even more to service customer needs in 2019. A chatbot is simply an automated chat program that sits on your website or Facebook Messenger and interacts with your customers to help them with requests. According to Facebook, there are already over  300,000 active chatbots so if your business uses Facebook but doesn’t have one, you’re missing out on a valuable tool.

FUN FACT: Only 19% out of 5,000 people surveyed had a negative perception of chatbots.

And social media channels are leading by example. Those of you using Facebook Business Manager will know that they actively use chatbots to communicate with advertisers. In fact Global research firm Gartner predicts that chatbots will power 85% of customer service interactions by 2020. And they can seriously boost your revenue. With 83% of customers saying that they need help at the point of purchase, a chatbot could improve your checkout conversion rate.

Image source headway capital

Takeaway: Embrace chatbots

Many people hear the word chatbot but cannot apply the functionality to their own business. In 2019 you can easily create a chatbot to answer the following questions on your Facebook page:

What are your opening hours/ delivery costs/ return policies?

What’s the status of my order?

What are your payment options?

I’m having difficulties placing an order. Can you help?

Send alerts about cancelled events, time sensitive offers and emergency notices

It’s time to put your chatbots to work enabling you to scale up your offering and provide higher levels of customer satisfaction.

5. Augmented Reality

Augmented reality is already a thing, but many social media marketers aren’t using the tools available to them.

What exactly is augmented reality? Well a simple example is Snapchats facial features.

FUN FACT: It’s estimated that the augmented reality and virtual reality markets will surpass $298 billion by 2023.

Expect to see more tools available to you in 2019 as Facebook has partnered with over 700 brands to achieve the company’s AR plan. What this means in my social media predictions for 2019 is that marketers can have more fun with their audiences and massively boost engagement. You should expect to see more augmented reality marketing stunts going viral on social media too.

Check out Huawei’s augmented reality bus shelter 

Takeaway: Tap into AR

One-third of consumers would make an immediate purchase if they could access an AR visualization of it first. Think IKEA and AR place or Sephora’s Virtual Artist app which allows users to try makeup on digitally. Social media managers should take advantage of new developments in AR. Expect the cost of AR tech to come down in the next few years. But for now, utilize AR apps that are already popular rather than developing your own.

6. Voice Search Gets Louder

Remember when we used to ask silly questions to Alexa and Siri? Ok some of us still do #guilty. Technology has seen rapid improvements since then and smart speakers are rapidly becoming a common household accessory globally.

FUN FACT: The voice search market grew by a jaw-dropping 187% in the second quarter of 2018.

In 2019, our dependency on voice search will increase. In fact it’s anticipated that 50% of all searches will be voice search by 2020.

But why does this matter for social media? It matters because social media platforms already show up in Google search if your keywords and search terms match. For example, if you wish to buy cakes, you might type “buy cakes online” whereas you may ask your voice assistant, “where can I eat cakes nearby?”

In 2019 and beyond, I expect social media networks to jump on the trend incorporating voice search into their offering. Just imagine if you could voice search Facebook for dress shops in your area or find the latest news.

Takeaway: Think about voice search when planning campaigns

If you’re running AdWords campaigns, you need to think about voice search. Do your AdWords campaigns match the likely terms customers are searching for? Similarly, your social media posts can include more direct text that will match with future search functionality. Start optimizing your ads and onsite content for the future.

7. Marketers Will Invest Heavily in YouTube Influencers

Every time you see a sponsored video by someone with hundreds of thousands of subscribers, you’re watching someone who’s an influencer. We all know that influencer marketing is huge but vlogging by influencers is set to get mammoth in 2019. By reaching out to Influencers on YouTube, brands are getting instant virality for their products.

FUN FACT: On average brands pay $2,000 per 100,000 followers on YouTube. So, for a famous vlogger with 1 million followers you should expect to pay a minimum of $20,000.

Takeaway: Look for ways you can leverage influencer marketing

Influencer marketing can be pricey. Before you approach any YouTube stars to promote your brand, think about the following:

ROI. What do you want for your money?

History. How successful has the influencer been in the past?

Business fit. Does the influencer match your brand and its ethics?

What do you get. Will you get one video? Do you need to write the content? Will they promote it on other social media channels?

8. User-generated Content Will Rock Your Networks

User-generated content (UGC) is content created by unpaid fans which businesses can use to promote themselves. UGC comes in the form of photos, videos, memes and stories and is set to rise dramatically in 2019.

There are two reasons for this. Firstly, brands are busier than ever and UGC can really take some heat off their busy content teams. Secondly and most importantly, UGC improves word of mouth interaction, conversion and leads to a better perception of your brand on social media. Ask yourself this. Whose opinion do you trust more when it comes to trying something new: your friends’ or a brand’s?

Example:

Explore Georgia reached out to millennial pet owners featuring photos of dogs from locals and visitors on their social media channels. By creating the #ExploreGeorgiaPup campaign, they amplified their fan base and created a bond with users. The campaign got over 3,000 uses of the hashtag in under a year and 14,000 visitors to their website. They also reached over 10,000 followers on their pet-friendly travel Pinterest board.

Takeaway: Invest in UGC

User Created Content is going to be big and there’s some good news. It’s easy and low cost to action. Four steps for a successful user-generated content campaign:

Design the concept and question

Figure out the best way to launch, promote and amplify

Curate the best entries and display them on your website

Share on your marketing channels

Pick a really engaging topic that your fans will feel passionate about and away you go. Remember engagement is key here so don’t ignore submissions.

9. Instagram Will Overtake Facebook

Instagram has proven that it’s the king of engagement in 2018 recently hitting a billion active users. It’s also projected to snare $5.48 billion in ad revenue in the US alone next year. So, what does this mean for social media marketers? If your brand is on Insta then it’s time to up your game.

As Instagram eats up more screen time for smartphone addicts, its value will increase. If you’re not on Insta then it’s perhaps time to revisit that decision.  Could Instagram overtake Facebook? Facebook has 2.27 billion users, but this figure is falling due to privacy objections and of course the under 30 drop off.

Fun Fact: there are over 4 billion  likes per day on Instagram, and each image posted gets an average of 23 percent more engagement than its Facebook counterpart.

Takeaway: Don’t ignore Instagram

There are many Instagram trends for 2019 but perhaps the most significant is vertical video. Launched in June, IGTV is the new video app exclusively for mobile users. IGTV offers vertical video playback so it’s suitable for Insta. Chipotle was one of the first companies to create and distribute a video on Instagram. In 2019, think Insta vertical videos and paying more attention to creating on the platform.

10. Twitter Will Get An Edit Button – Finally!

Ok so they never actually said that but I’m an optimist. In 2019 Twitter WILL get an edit button. And my social media predictions on this one are not entirely unfounded. A few months ago, make-up YouTuber Jeffree Star, who has over two million followers, tweeted the common complaint that Twitter need to add an edit option for posted tweets.

In a rare acknowledgement, Twitter replied saying the request had been “noted”.

The “EDIT” feature is one that avid Twitter users have requesting for years. We all know that sinking feeling when a posted tweet gathers traction and you realize there was a spelling error in it. Currently marketers must either leave it there and face the trolls or delete it and start again. Some of Twitter’s most influential users have lobbied for the introduction of an editing function. Even Kim Kardashian revealed she had pushed Twitter boss Jack Dorsey on the matter!

Takeaway: Make a wish

Keep your fingers crossed marketers. That is all.

2019 is set to be another rollercoaster year for social media marketers so it’s good to get your strategy in place. Which social media predictions for 2019 are you most excited about? Comment below or tweet us your comments.

10 Social Media Predictions for 2019 posted first on http://getfblikeblog.blogspot.com

[sempiternalsandpitturtle]

How to choose the right type of video marketing for your brand

Online video will account for upward of 83 per cent of all internet traffic by 2021, with 13 per cent of that going to live video.

Wowza! These meaty stats, from Cisco, highlight the spectacular importance of getting more video into your content calendar. Thankfully, though, you don’t have to be Steven Spielberg to create great video content – you just need time, a bit of company resource and a stellar video marketing strategy.

Today’s article is all about choosing that video marketing strategy. We’re going to cover the many different types of video that content marketers can make (with examples!) and whereabouts they might fit into your overarching goals.

Hey, speaking of goals…

Part 1: Goals! Where every video marketing strategy starts

Quite frankly if you don’t make your videos with a specific goal in mind, they are doomed to fail. So before you proceed any further, stop and read this section of the article:

Before you proceed any further, stop and read this section of the article.

Start by determining your objective

Your video objective is the wider goal you want your content to achieve, which can include increased web traffic, more sales, more newsletter signups, and so on.

Now think of specific goals that will help achieve this objective

Goals are for your audience – these are actions people must take that will help you achieve your objectives. So, if your objective was ‘increase newsletter signups’, your top goal would be ‘Sign up to our newsletter’.

Write this all down. It should underpin every other decision you make from this article.

Watch our short #video to discover why video and #contentmarketing go together like sunscreen and sensitive skin. https://t.co/s88zLfZSUd pic.twitter.com/7FF4ddOybc

— Castleford (@castlefordmedia) November 1, 2017

Part 2: Videos at the top of the funnel

At the top of the funnel, your audience is unaware of your brand and may not realise they require your services. Therefore, educational content and other brand awareness campaigns will work well.

Top-funnel goals include:

Follow on social media.

Sign up to a newsletter.

See more content.

Top-funnel video marketing ideas

Tutorials, how-tos and explainers

This content is all about education. Using animated graphics, someone speaking to camera or a blend of both, your video focuses on educating the viewer – there is a clear takeaway and little-to-no sales talk. Your brand may not even be mentioned by the speaker.

Why this video type? Educating an audience promotes your brand as a thought leader, which helps your name stick in their minds. Maybe viewers won’t convert straight away, but you’ve planted the seeds of trust and that’s important for the long term.

Expert interviews

Like the above, this video is about educating the reader. Rather than a tutorial, it could also be discussion on a hot topic – a video equivalent to a newspaper opinions column.

Why this video type? It will have the same impact as the above with the added bonus of having potentially greater reach. Try to find an influencer in your industry to interview. If they share your video to their following, it’ll greatly expand its reach with little extra effort on your end.

Presentations and event talks

Imagine TED-style talks and conference panels. Again, the focus is on education and discussing a message (not on sales). You can publish the entire talk or just an interesting snippet.

Why this video type? As above, it promotes thought leadership. But additionally, if this event is something you hold regularly, you’re promoting the event itself, too.

Behind the scenes looks

Showing what goes on in your company (i.e. revealing a little of your culture) can humanise your brand and show off some of the good work you’re doing. For example, if you have a sustainability initiative or work with charity groups.

In fact, 58 per cent of adults, according to Reach Solutions, don’t trust a brand unless it has shown them ‘real world proof’.

Why use this video type? This is your chance to show that your company isn’t run by corporate robots, but rather perfectly normal people.

Bonus point: Company culture videos can be used for recruitment purposes, too! Show potential candidates what your company is like to work for and answer some of their queries before they even apply.

Promoted brand ads

A good brand ad can do wonders for gaining awareness at the top of the funnel.

Consider Dollar Shave Club as an example of this in action. Who had heard of this company prior to 2012? Not too many. But as of writing this article nearly 26 million people have seen their clever YouTube ad.

So, in conjunction with your wider video and content marketing strategies, consider the occasional brand ad boosted via paid advertising on the likes of Facebook to spike your growth when needed.

Final note: You don’t need to be quirky or funny to raise awareness for your brand. If your ad clearly states your company’s value proposition in a way that would be appealing to its target audience, it’ll do just fine.

Why this video type? This is all about building awareness. At this stage of the funnel users aren’t likely to suddenly convert, but you can gain those small commitments (i.e. social media follows) to build an audience that you can then target with mid-funnel content later.

Part 3: Videos in the middle of the funnel

In the middle of the funnel, the audience is aware of your brand or that they may require its services. Now they are actively considering their options and debating whether to proceed or not. Educational content will still work well here, but we can also start bringing sales talk into the matter.

Mid-funnel goals include:

Download our ebook.

Sign up to our webinar.

Contact us for a chat.

Mid-funnel video marketing ideas

More educational content!

Education sits largely at the top of the funnel, but certain topics are highly valuable when users move into the consideration phase. For instance, a how-to-choose guide could help people work out what type of product they need to buy from a range of options. FAQ content can answer their next-level queries and give them greater confidence in proceeding to the bottom of the funnel.

Everything we talked about earlier in terms of specific video types will work well again here, whether animated or live.

Why this video type? Becoming educated takes little commitment from a viewer, but purchasing a product or service is a leap of faith. Mid-funnel education bridges that confidence gap.

More behind the scenes content

Behind the scenes videos work well here, too. In this case, though, we aren’t as interested in showing off our fun team culture, but more our specific service or product.

Consider having some of your experts discuss what they do and how it works, perhaps showcasing their machines on the factory floor. What you want to achieve here is educating the viewer on how this product/service works, using a visual medium to make it easier to comprehend.

You don’t need to go into heavy product demo detail here, but you should give away enough information that the audience learns something new. We cover more specific product demos later in this article.

Why this video type? Again, you’re giving your audience a little more confidence that this product/service is what they require. Knowing how something works is a surefire way to feel better about wanting it.

Webinars

Good webinars ticks many of the boxes in this list. They educate audience members while also promoting a product/service and someone’s personal brand expertise. As a bonus, they also require users to sign up so you’re capturing their contact details for sales people to follow up.

The reason webinars sit in the middle of the funnel instead of, say, the top (as educational content), is that they require a greater commitment from the viewer than simply clicking and watching. First there’s the actual signup phase, then they have to attend at the right time and finally view for the duration.

While a webinar audience will always be smaller than your top-funnel audience, users here are statistically more likely to proceed further into the funnel as they’ve shown a willingness to commit.

Why this video type? A good webinar doesn’t just promote your thought leadership, it also weeds out customers less likely to convert. You can nurture the remaining viewers with more content relevant to their interests, urging them further to your goals.

Live videos

We’ve split live videos from webinars because while a webinar is often live, ‘live videos’ can be pretty much anything. Companies commonly use live videos to stream panel discussions, 1:1 interviews, company events, seminars or conferences, and so on.

Additionally, live streaming has an audience interaction component. Chat rooms and real-time comments go hand in hand with live streaming. While your speakers or presenters are talking, audience members can write in instantly to ask questions or discuss talking points.

Why this video type? 80 per cent of brand audiences would rather watch a live video than read a blog, according to Vimeo’s stats. Live videos let you interact with your audience while promoting your message.

Video case studies

Some people put case studies at the bottom of the funnel – sales pieces to help clinch the deal – but we reckon they fit right here in the middle, too.

A case study is a story about how your service has helped someone in the past. It’s usually delivered in a problem-solution format, where you explain the issue and then recount how your service solved it. A video case study is the same thing, but in video format.

Why this video type? Case studies exhibit a real life example of your business in action, which can help viewers relate more to the product and what it does. Watching a case study also requires little in the way of commitment, so even a mid-funnel audience can be likely to view.

Part 4: Videos at the bottom of the funnel

At the bottom of the funnel, users have considered all the options and are ready to convert. The only thing left is to convince them that you are the best option for their needs.

Bottom-funnel goals include:

Buy now.

Request a demo.

Get a quote.

Bottom-funnel video marketing ideas

Customer testimonials

Video testimonials are like regular testimonials on steroids. You see, in a text-based testimonial, readers see what past customers have said about your business and generally this helps them trust your business. The thing is, a text-based testimonial could be edited or even fake.

A video testimonial, however, has the literal customer standing right there talking about your business. If it sounds like they are speaking from genuine experience (as opposed to something that is blatantly scripted), it will go far to showing that their message is true.

Why this video type? This is about putting the stamp of trust on your marketing efforts. Users are ready to convert, but need a final push. If they see that you’ve worked wonders for people with similar needs to theirs, they will have more confidence in your service.

Event recap videos

In the event that your entire video marketing strategy was all about promoting, well, an event, a recap video could assist at the bottom of the funnel.

An event recap is like a movie trailer, but for your event. It will probably have fast cuts, vox pop inserts and short snippets from past talks. The idea is to show that last year’s event was stellar, so logic dictates that this year’s event should also be stellar.

Why this video type? Purchasing a ticket and attending an event is a big commitment – users at the top and middle of the funnel may not be ready yet. But an event recap at the bottom of the funnel speaks to a viewer who is almost there. You’re showcasing what happened last year to further prove that it will be worth the viewer’s time and money.

Product demos and tutorials

Finally, in the midst of your bottom-funnel users are viewers who are convinced they need your product/service, but still don’t know how it works. Or, if they have a general idea, they might want to know specifics. After all, they could be building a case to pitch it to their higher ups. The more detail, the better.

Product demos and service-specific tutorials are very product/service oriented. Someone knowledgeable will take the audience through your business offering and drill into its finer details. These videos will be much more specific than some of our earlier content of this nature.

Why this video type? Not many people will be interested in these videos, but for those that are it could be the last bit of detail they need to seal the deal. These videos trade general information for nitty-gritties, giving the viewer an accurate picture of what the product will look like, so they can imagine what to do with it if they got their hands on it.

from http://bit.ly/2OHvKrd

[bizmediaweb]

5 Essential Steps to Increase Revenue in Your Business

The past year has been generally a good one for most businesses and all signs point to continued economic growth in 2018. With the new year well underway, there’s still time to plan for additional growth this year, but it will take a well thought out plan and a map to execute that plan.

There are many paths you can take for growth however this article covers five very specific steps that have consistently generated increased revenue for the businesses that implement them.

Increasing your business revenue in 2018 starts with a plan for growth and a map for executing that plan.

Five Surefire Ways to Increase Revenue in Your Business

1. Determine your marketing goals for the year

“Plan your work and work your plan” may seem cliché, but developing a strategic plan with the help of your key people will go a long way towards getting off to a good start. One of the things I suggest to the clients I work with is to create a client wish list, these are the companies that you want to work with. Your client wish list can include a specific list of 50, 100 or even 500 of your ideal clients.

Let’s face it, not every potential prospect is a good fit for you or your business. In order to be intentional with your business (or sales) growth, you need to be focused on the prospects that would be ideal clients.

While determining your marketing goals for the year, ask yourself the following questions:

What is my overall revenue goal for the year?

What key metrics are important to measure my sales and marketing success?

What new product or service offerings will I be launching this year?

You should make sure you can answer these questions before moving forward with your marketing plan. Although plans can and do change throughout the year, the big marketing goals should be strategic objectives that fall in line with the rest of your company’s vision and direction.

Sellers are different, buyers are different and one content marketing strategy does not fit all. Some sellers need to persuade one buyer to give them their business, while others deal with a committee of five people every time they attempt to land a new customer.

— Melonie Dodaro

It can also be helpful to review and analyze marketing data from previous years. Tools such as Google Analytics can be helpful in creating dashboards that track year-to-year data on traffic visiting your website. From this information, you can find out which channels are performing the best or how your followers and their engagement with you has changed over the past year.

Which platform are you seeing the best engagement is another question to ask. Find out what’s working and what isn’t and don’t be afraid to make changes based on what works best for your business.

In addition, you can use email open and click-through rates to track how emails are being read. What subject lines are generating better open rates? What days of the week are best to send emails to your audience?

Great sales professionals don’t just work with anyone – they target a list of companies or individuals they want to do business with.

— Lori Richardson

Great sales professionals don’t just work with anyone – they target a list of companies or individuals they want to do business with.

— Lori Richardson

2. Decide on the marketing strategies you want to implement

There are a variety of strategies and channels you can implement to get your business noticed by your target audience. These include:

Web development

Pay-per-click advertising

Email marketing

Social media marketing

Social advertising

Search engine optimization

Public relations

Content marketing

Traditional marketing tactics

You don’t have to (and shouldn’t for time reasons) use all of them, but rather determine what works best for you and your audience and focus on those first.

83 percent of marketers consider a content strategy very effective in increasing revenue, but only 31 percent have documented theirs.

— Content Marketing Institute

According to a report by Content Marketing Institute, 83 percent of marketers consider a content strategy very effective in increasing revenue. That marks an increase over the 74 percent who mentioned the same strategy the previous year. More telling is this statistic: Even as more marketers understand the need to have a documented strategy, only 31 percent have documented theirs.

Consider also revisiting your marketing messaging and brand story. This requires taking a step back and looking at the “why” of your business. Ask yourself if your mission statement is representative of who you are as a company.

Have you been able to clearly articulate the “why” of your brand story? Do your current marketing messages connect with your audience and do they address your customers’ biggest challenges? If so, are they clearly showcasing your ability to help them overcome these challenges?

3. Add a new revenue stream

It’s far easier to sell something to an existing customer than it is to acquire a new customer. Is there a new product or service that is a natural fit for your existing customers? Adding a new revenue stream for your business allows you to widen your customer base and offer new products or services to the customers who already know and trust you.

While there are a variety of marketing strategies that most businesses would love to utilize, they don’t always fit into budget. Therefore, it’s important to prioritize your marketing needs and choose the tactics that are most effective in spreading your message – which will ultimately increase revenue in your business.

That begins by budgeting the most important items first, then adding secondary tactics as they fit into the budget. Hopefully your marketing priorities and budget should be a mix of tried and true tactics, with new methods you want to test. You can also learn by listening to your customers and then implementing the strategies that best speak to the audiences you are trying to reach.

4. Get more creative and personal with your content

Content that engages people on a personal level will always be liked the most. People don’t like content that isn’t relevant to them, but content that is personalized and based on user personas is more likely to be read and shared. Try adopting a storytelling approach and narrate the story in a manner and language that your audiences understand best.

Cisco estimates that visual content will account for 82 percent of all internet consumer traffic by the year 2021. At present, 74 percent of internet usage is being covered by videos, with live streaming growing in demand. So, with this information in mind, one of your strategies should be to have more videos (both live and recorded) as a part of your content marketing strategy.

Visual content will account for 82 percent of all internet consumer traffic by the year 2021.

— Source: Cisco

5. Review your online presence

It’s important to review your online presence at least once per year. Review the pages of you your website to see how they are being viewed on desktop, mobile and tablets. Go deep into your Google Analytics, is your website traffic growing? How about your SEO, where are you showing up for the keywords you want to be found for?

Look at how your posts are performing on social media. Are all of your social media sites up to date? Are you growing your followers on the various social media platforms?

 You may also find out that you are spending time on things that aren’t generating results. Is it time to cut these marketing activities or change your strategy?

Businesses that don’t transform how they operate in the online world will suffer and fail by not knowing how to create influence nor how to deliver their unique brand value to their audience.

— Doyle Buehler

Do not make the mistake of minimizing the importance of mobile. The trend has been to focus on making websites more mobile-friendly, as Cisco statistics tell us that mobile will account for nearly 80 percent of all Internet usage in 2018.

Therefore, it makes sense to optimize your website for mobile first, then add desktop functionality. Millennials and Generation Z consumers typically won’t recommend a business with a poorly designed mobile site, so adjust your priorities accordingly.

Three out of four marketers say email is their most successful distribution channel, but if you’re struggling to see success from email marketing you may have thought about giving up and focusing on social media. Instead, think about sending more targeted emails, especially in relation to a subscriber’s history.

Finally, don’t be afraid to ask for feedback. Ask others to poke holes in your plan and offer suggestions based on their experiences. Measuring, monitoring and adjusting your marketing plan is the key to success.

Final Thoughts

It’s easy to be overwhelmed when considering all the marketing choices and paths available to grow your business. But with all signs pointing to continued economic growth worldwide in 2018, there’s still time to create your plan to increase revenue in your business this year.

A well thought out plan and map to execute that plan doesn’t necessarily take a long time to put together, but now is the time to do so to take advantage of all the growth opportunities you have available this year. Take the plunge and let us know how it’s working for you.

If you would like help with lead generation or other strategies to increase revenue in your business, click here to schedule a time to chat about your goals and how we can help you achieve them.

The post 5 Essential Steps to Increase Revenue in Your Business appeared first on Top Dog Social Media.

5 Essential Steps to Increase Revenue in Your Business published first on https://themarketingheaven.tumblr.com/

[unifiedsocialblog]

5 Essential Steps to Increase Revenue in Your Business

The past year has been generally a good one for most businesses and all signs point to continued economic growth in 2018. With the new year well underway, there’s still time to plan for additional growth this year, but it will take a well thought out plan and a map to execute that plan.

There are many paths you can take for growth however this article covers five very specific steps that have consistently generated increased revenue for the businesses that implement them.

Increasing your business revenue in 2018 starts with a plan for growth and a map for executing that plan.

Five Surefire Ways to Increase Revenue in Your Business

1. Determine your marketing goals for the year

“Plan your work and work your plan” may seem cliché, but developing a strategic plan with the help of your key people will go a long way towards getting off to a good start. One of the things I suggest to the clients I work with is to create a client wish list, these are the companies that you want to work with. Your client wish list can include a specific list of 50, 100 or even 500 of your ideal clients.

Let’s face it, not every potential prospect is a good fit for you or your business. In order to be intentional with your business (or sales) growth, you need to be focused on the prospects that would be ideal clients.

While determining your marketing goals for the year, ask yourself the following questions:

What is my overall revenue goal for the year?

What key metrics are important to measure my sales and marketing success?

What new product or service offerings will I be launching this year?

You should make sure you can answer these questions before moving forward with your marketing plan. Although plans can and do change throughout the year, the big marketing goals should be strategic objectives that fall in line with the rest of your company’s vision and direction.

Sellers are different, buyers are different and one content marketing strategy does not fit all. Some sellers need to persuade one buyer to give them their business, while others deal with a committee of five people every time they attempt to land a new customer.

— Melonie Dodaro

It can also be helpful to review and analyze marketing data from previous years. Tools such as Google Analytics can be helpful in creating dashboards that track year-to-year data on traffic visiting your website. From this information, you can find out which channels are performing the best or how your followers and their engagement with you has changed over the past year.

Which platform are you seeing the best engagement is another question to ask. Find out what’s working and what isn’t and don’t be afraid to make changes based on what works best for your business.

In addition, you can use email open and click-through rates to track how emails are being read. What subject lines are generating better open rates? What days of the week are best to send emails to your audience?

Great sales professionals don’t just work with anyone – they target a list of companies or individuals they want to do business with.

— Lori Richardson

Great sales professionals don’t just work with anyone – they target a list of companies or individuals they want to do business with.

— Lori Richardson

2. Decide on the marketing strategies you want to implement

There are a variety of strategies and channels you can implement to get your business noticed by your target audience. These include:

Web development

Pay-per-click advertising

Email marketing

Social media marketing

Social advertising

Search engine optimization

Public relations

Content marketing

Traditional marketing tactics

You don’t have to (and shouldn’t for time reasons) use all of them, but rather determine what works best for you and your audience and focus on those first.

83 percent of marketers consider a content strategy very effective in increasing revenue, but only 31 percent have documented theirs.

— Content Marketing Institute

According to a report by Content Marketing Institute, 83 percent of marketers consider a content strategy very effective in increasing revenue. That marks an increase over the 74 percent who mentioned the same strategy the previous year. More telling is this statistic: Even as more marketers understand the need to have a documented strategy, only 31 percent have documented theirs.

Consider also revisiting your marketing messaging and brand story. This requires taking a step back and looking at the “why” of your business. Ask yourself if your mission statement is representative of who you are as a company.

Have you been able to clearly articulate the “why” of your brand story? Do your current marketing messages connect with your audience and do they address your customers’ biggest challenges? If so, are they clearly showcasing your ability to help them overcome these challenges?

3. Add a new revenue stream

It’s far easier to sell something to an existing customer than it is to acquire a new customer. Is there a new product or service that is a natural fit for your existing customers? Adding a new revenue stream for your business allows you to widen your customer base and offer new products or services to the customers who already know and trust you.

While there are a variety of marketing strategies that most businesses would love to utilize, they don’t always fit into budget. Therefore, it’s important to prioritize your marketing needs and choose the tactics that are most effective in spreading your message – which will ultimately increase revenue in your business.

That begins by budgeting the most important items first, then adding secondary tactics as they fit into the budget. Hopefully your marketing priorities and budget should be a mix of tried and true tactics, with new methods you want to test. You can also learn by listening to your customers and then implementing the strategies that best speak to the audiences you are trying to reach.

4. Get more creative and personal with your content

Content that engages people on a personal level will always be liked the most. People don’t like content that isn’t relevant to them, but content that is personalized and based on user personas is more likely to be read and shared. Try adopting a storytelling approach and narrate the story in a manner and language that your audiences understand best.

Cisco estimates that visual content will account for 82 percent of all internet consumer traffic by the year 2021. At present, 74 percent of internet usage is being covered by videos, with live streaming growing in demand. So, with this information in mind, one of your strategies should be to have more videos (both live and recorded) as a part of your content marketing strategy.

Visual content will account for 82 percent of all internet consumer traffic by the year 2021.

— Source: Cisco

5. Review your online presence

It’s important to review your online presence at least once per year. Review the pages of you your website to see how they are being viewed on desktop, mobile and tablets. Go deep into your Google Analytics, is your website traffic growing? How about your SEO, where are you showing up for the keywords you want to be found for?

Look at how your posts are performing on social media. Are all of your social media sites up to date? Are you growing your followers on the various social media platforms?

 You may also find out that you are spending time on things that aren’t generating results. Is it time to cut these marketing activities or change your strategy?

Businesses that don’t transform how they operate in the online world will suffer and fail by not knowing how to create influence nor how to deliver their unique brand value to their audience.

— Doyle Buehler

Do not make the mistake of minimizing the importance of mobile. The trend has been to focus on making websites more mobile-friendly, as Cisco statistics tell us that mobile will account for nearly 80 percent of all Internet usage in 2018.

Therefore, it makes sense to optimize your website for mobile first, then add desktop functionality. Millennials and Generation Z consumers typically won’t recommend a business with a poorly designed mobile site, so adjust your priorities accordingly.

Three out of four marketers say email is their most successful distribution channel, but if you’re struggling to see success from email marketing you may have thought about giving up and focusing on social media. Instead, think about sending more targeted emails, especially in relation to a subscriber’s history.

Finally, don’t be afraid to ask for feedback. Ask others to poke holes in your plan and offer suggestions based on their experiences. Measuring, monitoring and adjusting your marketing plan is the key to success.

Final Thoughts

It’s easy to be overwhelmed when considering all the marketing choices and paths available to grow your business. But with all signs pointing to continued economic growth worldwide in 2018, there’s still time to create your plan to increase revenue in your business this year.

A well thought out plan and map to execute that plan doesn’t necessarily take a long time to put together, but now is the time to do so to take advantage of all the growth opportunities you have available this year. Take the plunge and let us know how it’s working for you.

If you would like help with lead generation or other strategies to increase revenue in your business, click here to schedule a time to chat about your goals and how we can help you achieve them.

The post 5 Essential Steps to Increase Revenue in Your Business appeared first on Top Dog Social Media.

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