Now let us take a look at the digital platforms that are available for marketing. Although there are many digital platforms around only a few digital platforms are available for marketing. On the top of the list are google and Facebook. This is due to the popularity of these platforms. Digital platforms such as Facebook and Google have billions of users online. They are constantly innovating the way that businesses market their products and brands. However we shall also take a dive in some of the less common platforms. Some of the less common platforms are email marketing and using sites such as quora. The reason why these platforms are less common is due to the less number of users. Google marketing involves a lot of keyword marketing. This is why google analytics is commonly used for google marketing. This is by far the best way to know which keyword potential customers are constantly typing onto the search engine. Since google is by far the largest search engine tit would make sense to apply this form of marketing.
You’ll need to know two things to really make your blog posts effective: your audience, and your goals.
Know and understand your audience.
Before writing a single word and even a post draft, you have to know how the ideal customer would be and what they want.
Who is buying your product? (Age, gender, location, device..)
Why are they buying it?
What do they care about?
What do they believe to be true?
Think how much easier it will be to create amazing blog posts for a 25-year-old male with a medium-high salary that loves photography and that in his free time he actually take pictures. Targeting people like this instead of people who “just like photography”.
Now that you know exactly what kind of audience you are going to target you need to set a few goals for your blog.
Know your goals
Sure, posting twice a week is a goal, but it’s not anything to get all that excited about.
In order to give yourself the right motivation to push your blog up to another level, try setting goals directly related to your business. An example like driving more customers or increasing sales.
Thanks to the opportunities of online marketing, you can fully track the result of your blog post. How can you track this? Google Analytics makes a great work at this.
Now you may focus on business-oriented goals, like having 2% of all your blog traffic-audience convert to sales. Think now how much more motivated you will be to post those articles.
You also want to make sure that your post are set up for sales conersions. This might mean linking your shop’s prosucts, using banners, or including a non-invasive pop-up that provide a coupon code that encourages sales.
FURTHER READING: Not sure how to measure your blogging goals? Check out this free guide to ecommerce analytics for everything you need to know, starting at square one.
Now it’s time to get going on those four powerhouse posts!
AR or Augmented reality uses your smartphone’s camera to turn the real world around you into a different reality.
AR works by using computer vision and tracking through your camera to anchor a virtual object to a physical point in your environment.
But even with all the potential, you can imagine for technology like this, the quality of the experiences so far meant as a side business instead of an e-commerce business game changer.
Augmented Reality: Not new but widely improved
The term “augmented reality” was firstly used in the first 90s. It was developed by the U.S. Air Force’s Armstrong Labs and involved a complicated setup that looked like this.
Since then, there have been different attempts—like the AR glasses by Google that lets you view augmented reality on the go. But these never became a mass product—the technology and the market just weren’t ready for wearable AR.
But that wasn’t the case for mobile AR. An example can be the Snapchat’s Lenses and the extremely successful location-based game Pokemon Go that allowed the user to familiarize with the concept of interacting with virtual objects through their smartphone’s camera in what was the first solid and tested example of AR completely embraced by customers.
The technology was really far from perfect, though. The AR objects couldn’t adjust in size, this was due to an unperfect evaluation of the algorithm that perceived distance objects nor it would stay in place.
As a result, you could still easily distinguish between real and augmented reality.
But everything changed when Apple announced iOS 11—giving developers the ability and the tools to create more realistic AR experiences—where the virtual (added) objects that “augment” the reality were nearly indistinguishable from the real ones.
And with it, augmented reality’s potential has moved beyond the games and started moving towards architecture and interior design.
Bringing Products to Virtual Life
Perhaps the biggest commercial opportunity within these improved AR experiences is how they give us a better sense of scale and let us closely evaluate products as if they were right in front of us.
The best commercial opportunity within this augmented reality is the chance it gives. We can now choose a better approach to shopping by directly seeing the product we want to buy in our real environment.
“Will this painting fit with the hall?”
“How will this lamp look on my desk?”
Instead of hesitating on this decisions, customers can simulate every purchase scenario possible into their own homes through their smartphone.
This was the result:
“This technology allows users to check and control the peculiarities that make that given product unique,” James says. “We always want to surprise our customers with this amazing service and experience that we provide”
The fantastic opportunity to virtually place products everywhere you want leads to a more informed and exiting buying experience.
“Thanks to AR, online shoppers will now have the answers to: How will this piece look in my home? How big is the item in real life? What does the inside look like, or the back? At the end of the day, nothing tops the in-store experience, but AR provides the capabilities for guests to make equally informed buying decisions from afar, at all hours of the day.”
Your Smartphone Camera: An Augmented Mirror
For other businesses, AR is not only for shopping or home decoration but also for your own appaerance.
Now you can use your front camera as a mirror so you can use AR that lets you answer the question, “I wonder what this would look like on me?”
Since facial features are approximately equally placed, fun applications of this technology on Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat have already become popular through social media.
But besides the puppy feature on snap chat, some businesses are using this technology in a more practical way.
Eyewear and cosmetics immediately come to mind—two types of products that you’d want to try before you buy.
That’s why, earlier this year, Sephora updated its app with a “virtual try-on” feature that lets you sample their make-up against your specific complexion. Eyewear companies like Glasses.com have also experimented with a similar feature in the past to virtually try on different styles of glasses.
A web designer is always in search of nice web design blogs to check out the new tips, tutorials and trends of the designing industry. Time is precious and you just cannot keep on scrolling the internet to find the good blogs to gain some knowledge. However, it is essential to bring the highest quality blogs in the search results for the web designers to spend some time and find out what they need.
Subscribe to a few recognized web design blogs this coming year and acquire more knowledge about the latest web designs. See the list below and push your confusion away by adopting these blogs for inspiration:
Smashing Magazine
In the web design field, the Smashing Magazine blog is one of the largest and most popular web design blogs. To get a detailed scoop of the trending web design elements, graphic design and user experience, this website has it all for its readers. Want to get the innovative and useful information about the web design and development industry? Hop on to the smashing magazine website and get to learn latest happenings of the design world!
Tuts
In the areas like illustration, photography, web design, coding, Photoshop tutorials, nothing can beat the increasing popularity of the Tuts+ blog. If sources are to be believed, this website is one place that every designer would love to explore to get access to a wider range of topics. If you want to take your learning to an advanced level, Tuts+ is a flexible and the best option.
Creative Bloq
To get the latest insights of the web design, 3d design and graphic design world, the Creative bloq blog is the ruler. It is a portal that delivers exceptional blend of creative tips and techniques to master the designing genre. With its recognition across the globe, the designers can get to know the best trends of the design and development industry.
What are you waiting for? Browse these websites and see what’s trending…
Web Design is one of the most important aspects of your online presence. It increases your credibility towards customers. Some of the businesses don’t have any physical location. Their website is their business location. This doesn’t mean that you need to pay an exorbitant amount to top designers, but rather you need a design and plan that works for your business. Designing and building a website requires prudent planning when it comes to estimated cost and delivery.
Here are the 7 proven tips to Budget your Website Development:
Identify your Business Goal: –This is the very first step in the website development. You need to identify your business goal. You need to know what you want from your customer. The goal will definitely help to define the website flow.
Domain Name Registration: –Once you are done with goal setting, the next step is to register for a domain. The best site I feel for it is Godaddy.com as you can easily get a domain at Rs 99. But you can also check at Register.com or Hover.com. Comparing the prices and features will lead to the best selection.
Website Hosting: –If Domain is a name of your website, the website hosting is a place where your domain is located. You need to pay for space on the web. It is the physical location where your website is given space by servers so that visitors can come and visit your website and may get converted to leads.
Website Prototype: – Before actual designing of the website, we need to understand the flow of the website. It is important to make a wireframe for this activity. Website prototype is nothing but a sketch of the final website. Its says how my website will look like. Many free tools such as Moqups.com come for this task. You can make free wireframes for one or two websites using this. This doesn’t even involve cost if done precisely.
Start with simple one: –The most crucial step is to get started on a simple platform. Your website doesn’t need to be based on hardcore programming language. You can make your website based on WordPress. It doesn’t involve much cost and give a good look and feel to the website. Even Non-programmers can make a website on WordPress. There is no requirement of a separate code for making the site responsive. These are the built-in function of WordPress and you can easily cut cost in your website development.
Content Development: –A website developer is more concerned about designing the website. Content Development generally remains under-budgeted because we don’t understand its importance. Website designing may lead to good traffic and people love to visit it, but the most important is the content part as it will only convert into leads.
Search Engine Optimisation: -Sounds weird? But yes, it’s important. No one is going to see your design and content if it is not ranked on 1st Page of Google. Investing in SEO is always a good idea. It involves doing SEO of webpage title, URL, Content and Meta. It also includes link building activities that make websites more credible. The actual cost for this differs in various agencies. You can also hire freelancers for this
.
The above mentioned tips can certainly help in cutting down the budget of your website development to a large extent. And yes, it would be done without compromising on the content quality, look and feel of the website. So, here’s your chance to apply these tips and develop a successful website.
To acquire brand new customers, you may run various marketing campaigns adopting tools like Kit, Google and Facebook, or apps like MailChimp.
All these marketing activities are now all in one place: Shopify
You will see immediately what is working and what’s not, and can gain knowledge in order to improve your marketing campaigns.
“Within just a couple of minutes using this feature, I have learned more about my conversions and how everything works—and how they affect different products categories and sales funnels—than in weeks and weeks of looking at previously available analytics.”
Imagine that you created an ad with Kit, or sent emails to your customers using MailChimp. Our new Marketing Reports (accessible in the Analytics section) will show you in detail what’s going on on your store so that you can focus on what’s working and avoid what’s not.
You will now have all the statistics with analytics and reports available on your home page. Click to dig deeper and learn:
Sales, visits, orders, and avg. order value linked to each marketing activity
Your best-selling products and highest-spending customers
The difference between returning customers and new customers: which group needs more attention?
How your clients behave on your Shopify store (avg. visit duration, number of viewed pages, your checkout rate, etc.)
Sales-Attribution Reports: Understand Your Customers’ (Buying) Habits
Usually, your customers will visit your store multiple times before purchasing a product, so analyzing what ultimately brought them in to buy is hard yet crucial. They may run through your store through, then advertised by a Kit retargeting ad. But if you aren’t aware of this information you can’t act on them.
With this functional update, you’ll be able to know what funnels led them to buy and track your customers’ paths to purchase. Here’s what’s new:
Conversion Details
Conversion by First Interaction
Conversion by Last Interaction
Attribution Model Comparison
You will be able to know what leads to future sales and you will be able to track your customers’ path to purchase.
Seeing which sources helped you increase your first-time visitors, and which sources directly led to a sale from repeated visitors, will help you market to each of those targets precisely and maximize every dollar.
“This is fantastic additional information. Being able to see the full journey across multiple visits to the website and conversion is very valuable.”
The best online marketers live by a simple rule: launch, measure, and learn. And they never stop analyzing and pivoting their marketing activities and campaigns for maximum results.
Your new reports are now ready to help you do the same. Start creating more effective, proof-based marketing campaigns just in time for the busiest shopping weekend of the year.
“If you’re a good marketing person, you have to be a little crazy.”
– Jim Metcalf
Google Photos and WordPress Combine to Help Access Your Photos, Anywhere and Anytime
As a blogger, photos must always be an important part of your blogging experience. It is very obvious that visual content adds a much-needed appeal to textual content, making it more relatable and easier to grasp. But where do you find the right photos? There is always Google for searching random pictures, but images you clicked yourself are always a better option. They add a personal touch as well as save you from copyright infringement. But for so long, there was no easy way out. Even with cloud-storage options like Google Photos, you would always have to download the images locally and then upload to your WordPress account. Well, not anymore.
WordPress and Google Photos, Rolled into One
WordPress.com now supports Google Photos as an in-built feature. All you need is to click on “Photos from your Google Library”. For the first time, you would have to link your Google account with your WordPress. Make sure that you use the same Google account as the one linked to the Google Photos you want to use. And after that, things become very simple.
Access Your Entire Library of Google Photos
Every time you need a photo, you simply have to check your Google Library, find the image, and “Insert”. The image would be added to your WordPress library and inserted into your blog. Just like that. But wait, it gets even better.
Smart Search
Google automatically analyses and categorizes your photos according to the content of the image. So even if you forgot to add labels, no worries. Just type the keyword you are looking for and all related pictures would appear in front of you.
Even if you have hosted WordPress locally, you can use the JetPack plugin to use this feature. And depending on the plan, you can even insert videos in a similar fashion.
It goes without saying; WordPress makes sure that your blogging experience remains awesome.
Everyone is subject of soem degrees of stress throughout their daily lives, whether it’s from your growing bisiness, family or your brand new job..
You have to manage stress because nearly every time it generates more problems. It is known taht It can impact your sleep, which in turn can impact in a negative way your loved performance.
Everybody says that “stress is bad” and this definition and conclusion is vague and incorrect.
Is it true? Yes and no. Why? Because our relation with stress is far more complex than we think. It’s not just about how we overcome it, but how we understand it, manage it, and harness it to lead more productive lives.
What Causes Stress?
First of all. Why do we have anxiety?
Walter Cannon, tah psychologist who coined the “fight or flight response” concept said that the first function of anxiety is self-preservation.
In different cases, it is a neded response to threats or hostile situation that bring us mentally and physically ready to face and deal with them. The positie affects of anxiety is that it shapes your brain’s chemistry in a way that can cause better attention, enhanced cognitive functions, and improve your senses.
But not every circumstance need a high level of anxiety because it can be harmful if it sticks to our body for long (or longer) periods of time where it has no purposes. In this cases it can only distract us and therefore have negative consequences on our work and life.
Stress is ultimately how we react to stressors: actual or perceived challenges to our ability to meet our actual or perceived needs.
In psychology stressfull situations are called stressors. They can be external or internal:
External Stressors are changes that happens inside your environment. It can be your work conditions, or unfamiliar and unplesant tasks you have to accomplish.
Internal Stressors are composed by thoughts or your conduct, like how you behave through your day, how you eat or how good or bad you sleep. Even little moments of anger can be huge stressors.
However, not all stress is the same. It can be broken down into two main types: acute and chronic.
High level of stress (Acute) can boost your productivity
We’re all friendly with this kind of stress. This is the kind of anxiety that can help you solve difficoult problems and give you more endurance. This can be extremely useful if you have to face threats, both phiscal. like races or dangerous situations, and mental, like job deadlines or exams.
If you’re are a master-procrastinator, good chances are you’re used to needi high levels of acute stress/anxiety to “get you in the zone”. And that usually means a deadline staring you in the face. When you look at this situation stress is a friend that can help you put in the work.
These situation of more or less frequant and intense acute stress can take place in chaotic and hasty lifestyles. These lifestyles can “overcharge” your brain, which is counterproductive, unfavorable, adn can result in bournouts.
Chronic Stress Negatively Impacts the Quality of Your Life
This is the stress you want to sty away from; it drains your energies over time. It’s frequently due to a stressfull environment, such as a job you barely like, an unhealthy relationship, or various financial strains.
Chronic anxiety can damage the quality of your sleep and meke you older by speeding up the aging process. We can not always soccour the sources of chronic stress in our day to day life. But it, as mentioned before, is the way we react to stressors and that we can control at least to some extent.
Good vs. Bad Stress
Some people thrive under it and need the pressure to be just right before they dive into a task. Others meticulously plan ahead in order to avoid unnecessary pressure at all costs. Neither approach is right or wrong. It’s just important to be self-aware of how you personally react to anxiety and the nature of the tasks in front of you.
The right amount of stress can help you be more productive in some cases, and without any of it at all, some tasks would be hard to focus on. But it goes without saying that too much stress can result in over-arousal that can lead to frustration, anxiety, depression, impaired performance, and other negative consequences.
According to the Yerkes-Dodson Law, work that requires endurance (routine and mundane tasks or ones that require a steep commitment of time to complete) can actually benefit from higher levels of acute stress. However, you can usually focus better on new or unfamiliar tasks without too much pressure.
Hobbies can be really funny, but why don’t monetize them.
Choose one of your favorite hobbies and start making money.
Some hobbies and activities, if taken seriously, can be transformed into solid streams of income. Good skills and abilities can bring from free stuff to extra money to full income business. All this just from something that you might have done anyway. So.. Hobbies and more hobbies!
What are your favorites hobbies? Check them.
1. Writing
Writing and publishing online can give you amazing practical opportunities outside the fact of being just a hobby. It can be a plus in your working environment and/or help you establish as an expert on that topic. You can share your abilities on platforms or “rent” them.
The easiest way in order to turn your hobby into a stream of income is offering a service as an online freelancer. You can work as a ghostwriter or for blog posts and articles. Niche content writers with expertise are highly requested.
But if you don’t want to work as a freelancer or for somebody else you can start your own blog and therefore create a blog based business.
2. Comedy
If you like making people laugh why don’t try the most trending comedy type: memes.
You can use your humor and skills to build a fantastic and engaged audience on the internet.
I bet that you follow some social media accounts that have built a massive audience thanks to memes viral videos or just photos and vids on specific niches of humor that none is tapping into.
Then, once you have built an audience you can feature other pages (adn getting paid for it) and sponsor brands or just print t-shirts with one of your viral memes/phrases.
Here there is a way to transform your amazing hobby of
According to Sarah Owen, senior editor of digital media & marketing at trend forecasting firm WGSN, traveling the world as a lifestyle choice is on the come-up, and so influencers are increasingly sharing content that represents a well-travelled life, rather than just the clothes in their closet in the saturated fashion niche.
In a more indirect way, pursuing a “digital nomad” lifestyle can help you fuel your own wanderlust as you travel the world. Not only can you make connections and bring your products to new markets, an online business can be run from anywhere you can get a Wi-Fi connection.
Greenbelly Meals and Minaal are great examples of businesses where the founders are living that digital nomad life.
4. Photography
If you own a nice camera and know how to use it, you’ve got a few different ways you can make some money on the side.
While you can become a freelance photographer, you’re usually restricted to local events and gigs that you can physically attend.
For a more scalable side hustle, you can sell your shots on stock photography sites or as prints. Or, you can use your photography skills to grow a massive Instagram following and monetize it. You just need to pick a niche to serve or a “lifestyle” you want to capture in your photos.
Fun fact: Professional photography accounts are the 2nd most lucrative on Instagram in terms of how much brands are willing to pay for a sponsored post. And you don’t need hundreds of thousands of followers either.
Check out our guide on how to sell photos online for a more detailed look at how to monetize your photography.
5. DIY Crafts
If you enjoy working with your hands and making candles, bath bombs, jewelry, and other do-it-yourself items, why not share it with the world too?
“Handmade” communicates a certain quality, care, and uniqueness that department store alternatives often don’t. You can test the market for your products by selling them on a smaller scale to friends, family, or on Etsy, and think about scaling into a full-fledged business as you rack up customers.
Here are just a few DIY businesses you can start and resources to show you how it can be done:
Now Change Your Avatar within Your WordPress Account
Having the right profile picture is a necessity in almost every digital platform. On WordPress and similar sites, this is called an Avatar. Managing your avatar usually required going on Gravatar.com, which creates your avatar for sites like WordPress. However, the new feature on WordPress allows you to update your avatar within your WordPress account.
Your Avatar Is Important
On WordPress.com, your avatar forms your identity. Not only it appears next to your blog posts, but also when you comment or like someone else’s posts. Having a right avatar helps to establish credibility and making yourself more appealing to your readers. Usually, Gravatar was responsible for managing your avatar. However, now you can go to wordpress.com/me to edit your avatar. The changes would not be restricted to WordPress, but to every site that uses Gravatar, including Stack Overflow and Hootsuite.
How Does It Work?
Once you log into your WordPress account, you can either go to wordpress.com/me or click on the profile icon in the top. Both would lead to your profile page.
On the edit screen, you can choose to upload a photo from your system. Alternatively, you can drag and drop a picture directly. Once uploaded, you have some basic edit options like cropping and orientation. Once you find it satisfactory, you can save the changes. Your new avatar is ready.
There Is More to Know About It!
The changes you make on your WordPress avatar would automatically be reflected on other sites using Gravatar. Thus, it essentially means that going on Gravatar would be needless.
It is worth noting that the changes are made both on the WordPress website and the desktop app.
In case you have any further queries regarding how this works, you can always go to the WordPress support page or Gravatar support page.