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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
June 29, 2017 9:58 AM
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Bitcoin isn’t like traditional currencies, and not just because it doesn’t exist as actual coins or paper banknotes. Unlike traditional currencies like the dollar or euro, Bitcoin isn’t controlled by a single government or central bank. Instead, every transaction involving the popular cryptocurrency is logged in a computerized public ledger called a blockchain. This collection of receipts is maintained on millions of devices around the world in individual collections called blocks. Each time there’s a transaction involving Bitcoin, an anonymous data “fingerprint” appears in a block recording the exchange. This key innovation is the basis for "Block Bills," a collection of paper banknotes that bring the virtual payment system into the real world. As works of art, the whimsical bills have no monetary value. But they provide a “map” to the inner workings of the Bitcoin system—and they have a subtle beauty all their own....
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
June 29, 2017 9:39 AM
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Political viewers of all stripes have been inundated with news about President Donald Trump, whose immigration policies and potential ties to Russia have sparked controversy while his tweets routinely set digital chatter ablaze. Socialbakers just wrapped up eight months of research, looking at Twitter consumption around Trump-related subjects in six countries and offering eye-opening insights into just how immersed consumers have become in all things Donald. "Audiences are tuning in more, but polarization means you’re seeing a lot of negative reactions to political statements,” noted Moses Velasco, chief product evangelist at the Prague, Czech Republic-based tech agency. Despite the raw, public discourse, media brands have undoubtedly benefitted: CNN, Fox News and MSNBC saw double-digit TV ratings gains in May, while subscriptions for The Washington Post and The New York Times have jumped considerably. Here, Socialbakers’ statistics spotlight the impact of Trump’s Twitter. (And if you keep scrolling past the infographic, you will see a video with SocialBakers founder Jan Rezab analyzing the data.)...
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
June 29, 2017 9:18 AM
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Predictive intelligence might sound like a futuristic tool that belongs in a science fiction film. But today’s marketers are using the technology to deliver what their customers want before they even know they want it. Predictive intelligence tools are helping companies like furniture retailer Room & Board improve their bottom line and reach customers more effectively. They implemented Salesforce’s Marketing Cloud technology that analyzed customer traffic data and predictive analytics to suggest additional purchases to customers in real time. The result was an incredible 2900% ROI. Granted, not many businesses will enjoy the same success as Room & Board. But the technology has evolved so much to the point that marketers can’t ignore some new revelations — like a system that offers recommendations based on customer traffic patterns. Providing customers with a personalized experience continues to prove a positive ROI. If you’re unfamiliar with the concept, you should know what predictive intelligence is and what tools are available....
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
June 27, 2017 11:24 AM
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In marketing circles, we tend to rely on things like flow charts, diagrams, and pyramids. But according to Hausmann, that’s no way to tell a story. “You wouldn’t summarize a trip by saying, I’d like to show you a couple of the key message points and summarize those for you in a beautiful pyramid and diagram,” he says. To close the time and efficiency gap between the typical (and boring) marketing strategy language and creative execution, bringing a screenwriters’ toolkit into the process can make a world of difference, according to Hausmann. At #ThinkContent Summit 2017, he provided step-by-step instructions for “brand scripting,” which he defines as identifying a company’s core brand narrative and building the story structure that aligns all executional efforts. Take a look at Hausmann’s script for content marketing success, illustrated through the brand Beats by Dre....
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
June 27, 2017 11:10 AM
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As it turns out, there are a ton of studies that explore the influence of specific types of music as they relate to your productivity levels. To help you find just the right mix, we've sourced and curated seven Spotify playlists designed with specific studies in mind. Whether you're into Mozart or Chance The Rapper, we're confident that there's something on this list that will do the trick....
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
June 27, 2017 10:08 AM
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Do you want to sell on Facebook? Wondering how to increase product sales without investing in Facebook ads? In this article, you’ll discover how to organically optimize your Facebook page for more sales....
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
June 25, 2017 10:53 AM
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Instagram’s stories has quite quickly become the standout feature of the app, allowing you to share delightfully ephemeral clips and pics that vanish after just 24 hours. Sounds familiar, right? The feature was cribbed shamelessly from Snapchat. If you use Instagram Stories to share the times you’re at your drunken, debauched worst, you’re probably glad to know that the feature comes with some pretty nifty filtering features. This means you can block your boss from watching your stories, without having to block them from the rest of your posts. How does this work in practice? Well, suppose I just posted a story showing me binge-watching The West Wing when I should be working. If I wanted to keep Alejandro Tauber, TNW’s Editor in Chief, from watching it, I’d just have to dive into the Options menu, tap Story Settings, and then select Hide Story From. Then, I can just have to key in the first few characters of the account I wish to block....
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
June 25, 2017 10:41 AM
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When it comes to total daily users, Instagram Stories, the section of the app for daily, disappearing posts, is beginning to pull farther ahead of Snapchat. According to Instagram, at least 250 million users use the app’s vertical format every day, up from 200 million just two months ago. The latest count places the Facebook-owned app’s feature at nearly 100 million more per day than Snapchat, which reported 166 million daily users for as of its first-quarter earnings results. The latest total from Instagram was announced in a blog post today, along with news that it would start allowing users to replay live video on the platform instead of it disappearing the moment the livestream is over. Instagram, which first announced Live Stories in January, began letting users save their own live videos back in March. However, it’s now bringing the app more in line with Facebook’s strategy of letting people tune in even after the broadcaster has tuned out....
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
June 25, 2017 10:25 AM
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Millennials say they are spending more time with video and social, but they are not necessarily cutting back their time with other media. But according to a recent study, younger internet users, those ages 13 to 17, are shifting away from text-based online content—and a bit from TV—while spending more time with video and social. Both the younger and older groups were considerably more likely to say they were spending more time streaming full-length TV shows and movies, and similar percentages said they were spending more time with short online video. But the amplified video viewing didn’t necessarily mean they were watching less TV. Among the younger group, 40% said they were watching the same amount of TV as last year, while 35% said they were watching at least a bit less and 25% were watching at least a bit more. The older users (ages 18 to 34) were more likely to say they were....
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
June 24, 2017 11:00 AM
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Named ‘the iron fairies’, the mysterious interiors of this bar conjures up scenes from a fairytale book or Lord of the Rings. With three locations: Bangkok, Hong Kong and Tokyo, the underground den is reminiscent of a blacksmith’s workshop; reflected in the iron, timber and leather materiality and the curious decorations all across the eclectic interior. Created by designer Ashley Sutton, a distinctive element of the iron fairies is the ceiling enveloped with 10,000 preserved butterflies that suspend over the main ‘workshop’ room furnished with low seating and circular tables. Rooms branch out to form individually designed ‘furnaces’ and ‘casting rooms’, offering private spaces for smaller groups. The element of enchantment is distilled into every detail of the bar interior, with the concept itself deriving from sutton’s days working in the underground iron-ore mines in Western Australia. With this, the décor follows a fantasy imagined by the designer where ore miners stumble upon little winged spirits, mixing roughly hewn wood, massive rusty cogs, rickety piping, and walls lined with vials of fairy dust....
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
June 24, 2017 10:41 AM
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Flying cars have proved this year that they are far from just a science fiction concept, but the winner of the race to become street legal is Autogyro, a Czech helicopter company whose ‘gyrodrive’ vehicle has now been officially authorized to travel both road and sky. The unique vehicle is more a ‘copter than a car, yet has been modified to be able to be driven on the public road. the car has been developed by Pavel Brezina, a pilot who has been in the industry for 30 years. The two-seater vehicle can reach up to 25 mph on the ground, but once it takes to the air the gyrodrive can speed along at 110 mph.
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
June 24, 2017 10:12 AM
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One of the big issues for everyone in this space is measurement and Traackr allowed me to confront this issue head-on. It’s HARD establishing the value in a B2B setting since the sales cycle can be long, the decisions owned by different people on a purchasing team and other complications. And yet, progress is being made in this area. Do we aim for ROI? Yes. But that measurement may not always be accessible, especially in the short-term. The report looks at six different measurement alternatives.Maybe it’s not “marketing” The best companies are managing influencer relations in the same style as they would analysts or members of the press. Some of the experts I interviewed said we should not event call the practice influencer marketing any more, recognizing that the passionate experts in a field cannot be a marketing mouthpiece for a brand. The field is evolving to a more sophisticated level of engagement. The report contains some fascinating examples of the cultural transition needed to effectively make this change....
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
June 23, 2017 11:12 AM
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One of the most commonly asked questions for digital marketers is: how can I grow my email list? When so much of a marketing campaign’s success hinges on your ability to capture a prospect’s email and nurture them to sale, how can you get more potential customers into the sales funnel? Simply asking people for their email address won’t provide stellar results. Understandably so. Why should they willingly give up personal information without receiving anything in return? Instead, marketers are increasingly turning to lead magnets as part of their inbound and content marketing strategy. What is a lead magnet? A lead magnet is a valuable offer that you provide to your prospects in exchange for contact information such as name and email. The best way to promote that offer is with a landing page. Therefore, a lead magnet landing page encourages a reciprocal relationship between a company and prospect. They provide their personal information in exchange for what is behind the form. There are plenty of lead magnet ideas to draw inspiration from on the web, and it’s important to note they do not have to be a content download (PDF file or otherwise). We’ve compiled 15 lead magnet examples that demonstrate the various ways marketers use gated offers to maximize leads and drive sales....
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
June 29, 2017 9:52 AM
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The price of cryptocurrency Ethereum dropped dramatically following news of its creator’s death. One problem: he wasn’t dead. A post on 4Chain claimed Vitalik Buterin — creator of blockchain technology Ethereum and currency Ether — died in a fatal car accident. Following news of what was later confirmed to be a hoax, the price of Ether went from $317 to $286 in moments, before bottoming out at around $216. Buterin dispelled any notion he was dead with a selfie. In it, he’s holding up blockchain-based data mined from days after his “death,” to prove was around. Still, this wiped out about $4 billion in Ethereum’s market value. Ether has since recovered — it was trading at around $300 at the time of writing. While this was likely not the sole reason for the drop, it certainly didn’t help....
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
June 29, 2017 9:32 AM
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While brands have been buying ads for niche audiences on Facebook for years, they’ll soon be able to target ads down to the specific household. Just in time for the holiday-planning season, the social network is introducing a new household audience feature that will let brands direct ads to entire families or to specific people within a household. The tool, which the company announced today, could help aim ads at people who influence purchasing decisions and other ads to the people making the actual purchases. Here’s how it works: Brands can select a source audience—a custom audience uploaded to Facebook that represents their customers based on an email list, for instance—and then turn on the household audience feature to reach not just the person they’re targeting, but also other people in the same household....
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
June 29, 2017 9:11 AM
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In a few short years, house paint might be able to do more than simply brighten your walls. A team of researchers in Australia have created an experimental paint that attracts water molecules from the air and chops them up to produce hydrogen, a clean-burning fuel that can be used to generate electricity. “Our new development has a big range of advantages,” Dr. Torben Daeneke, a research fellow at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology School of Engineering in Melbourne and leader of the team, said in a written statement. “There’s no need for clean or filtered water to feed the system. Any place that has water vapor in the air, even remote areas far from water, can produce fuel.” If the technology is perfected and the paint can be made commercially available, it could find widespread application in sunny places. It would generate only a fraction of the power generated by conventional solar panels, Daeneke told NBC News MACH in an email, but it could supplement panels on homes and other buildings. The paint could be used on walls and other surfaces where it’s not feasible to use solar panels....
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
June 27, 2017 11:16 AM
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Small businesses are constantly on the lookout for faster, easier and more cost-efficient ways to create new content. And smartphones are now like all-in-one production studios, empowering us all to make world-class content using a range of fun and often simple-to-use apps. In this post, we’ve teamed up with Product Hunt to guide you through the creative process and share 26 apps that’ll help you create incredible social media content using just your smartphone....
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
June 27, 2017 10:59 AM
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In a world where everyone seems to be constantly churning out content, you may be feel like you’re not doing enough. However, there’s an upside and a downside to what I’m about to tell you. The upside is: There is no universal “right amount” of content to publish. There’s no magic publishing cadence for achieving content marketing success. Rather, the key is to figure out how much high-quality content you can produce on a regular basis – and then maximize it through your distribution channels to reach your goals. And that’s the downside: You have to find your own best publishing cadence – based upon your goals – through testing, trial, error, and optimization....
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
June 26, 2017 4:29 PM
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It is difficult to overstate the importance of headlines. A good headline can entice and engage your audience to click, to read, and to share your content. In many cases headlines are the thing that is shared rather than the article. So you knew that. But do you know what makes an engaging headline?
To help answer this question we analyzed 100 million article headlines. We have set out below our findings from the research including the:Cox
- Headline phrases that drive most engagement on Facebook
- Worst performing headline phrases on Facebook
- Most effective phrases that start or end headlines
- Optimum number of words and characters to use in a headline
- Most impactful numbers to use in headlines
- Most engaging Twitter headline phrases
- Differences between B2C and B2B headlines.
While there is no magic formula for creating a viral or popular headline, there are many lessons we can learn to improve our content engagement. We shared our findings with a number of content experts to reflect on the implications of the research for writers. We have included their expert thoughts and advice at the end of this post. We have also included a section on how you can analyze headlines yourself using BuzzSumo.
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
June 25, 2017 10:49 AM
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Netflix is putting a new spin on the old Gamebook genre. Today the company announced that it’s launching an all-new interactive format that ultimately turns viewers into legitimate storytellers. In comparison to standard television, these so-called interactive shows put the viewers in charge, letting them dictate each choice and direction the story takes. Two first two interactive shows that will be available on Netflix are Puss in Book: Trapped in an Epic Tale and Buddy Thunderstruck: The Maybe Pile. Puss in Book launches globally today, with Buddy Thunderstruck slated to make its debut a month from now on July 14. The new experience will be available on most television setups and iOS devices....
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
June 25, 2017 10:32 AM
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So let’s do the math. Ten years is 3,650 days. Multiply that by 5,000 ads per day, and you get an unbelievable number: 18,250,000. My jaw dropped when I realized that. I’ve seen over 18 million ads in the last decade. In all that time, I’ve learned a lot, especially about conversions.And that’s what I want to talk about today. I’m going to distil everything I’ve learned from those 18 million ads and break it down into bite-sized, actionable tips for you. To make things as relevant as possible, I’m going to address display ads specifically. Display ads are among the most popular and widely used digital advertising methods today....
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
June 24, 2017 11:11 AM
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Reading is solitude’ italian novelist Italo Calvino once said — an insight that emphasizes the idea behind this sublime series of photographed spaces. The subject: libraries — imposing, majestic, magnificent and refined, these architectural havens of literature and learning have been poetically portrayed by paris-based photographer Thibaud Poirier. through his lens, Poirier seeks to pay homage to each architect’s personal interpretation of the literary experience, accentuating the important, and deeply individual interventions hidden within each space.
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
June 24, 2017 10:50 AM
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Overlooking the gisselfeld klosters skove forest, south of Copenhagen, EFFEKT’s spiral treetop experience allows visitors to immerse themselves in the stunning danish nature surrounding them. The observation tower is nestled in a luscious forest characterized by a hilly landscape, with several natural elements such as lakes, creeks and wetlands. The 600 meter-long walkway is connected to a 45 meter-tall observation tower, creating a unique opportunity to meander above the trees. both the tower and the walkway function as a seamless and continuous ramp, making the forest accessible for all.
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
June 24, 2017 10:29 AM
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The greatest accomplishment of my professional life is owning the top three results on Google for “content marketing buzzwords.” We did it, guys. You, me—all of us, really, for saying horrible, nonsensical things every day. We are mad men and women, speaking in an indecipherable tongue, cruelly confusing our nana at Rosh Hashanah, who heard CPC as PCP and got excited. Let’s get to it....
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
June 23, 2017 11:35 AM
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Quite often I give presentations to groups of entrepreneurs who think that social media is all about building up followers and fans. You hire a social media intern to share some updates, you get some fans and followers, and that somehow generates business for you.It doesn’t work that way. People get impressed with lots of followers on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, but the truth is, the majority of those followers never see your content and you don’t get a lot of value from them. Your focus should not be on social media. What I tell to the groups I speak to is that they need to focus on strategic content, relationships, and technology. I’m not saying social media is not important, but if you switch your focus a little, your social following will be a lot more valuable. It’s not all about the numbers, and in this article I’ll explain why....
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There’s a lot of information embedded in this artist’s colorful renderings.