 Your new post is loading...
Your new post is loading...
Free pattern backgrounds that you can create yourself in PowerPoint. Use geometric pattern background and abstract pattern backgrounds for amazing designs!
Via Baiba Svenca
|
Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
September 3, 2017 1:20 AM
|
One of the biggest mistakes businesses make with content curation is sharing any and every relevant article they find, without giving consideration to how each piece reflects on their brand. Before you share a piece of content, ask yourself:Is this content well written? - Did it come from a credible source? - rDoes it align with your stance on the topicf? - Are we sure the source is not a direct competitoris? - Is the topic newsworthy and/or valuable to your audience? - If you can answer, “yes” to all of the above, go for it. If there is a “no” somewhere in there, you might reconsider....
|
|
Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
September 3, 2017 1:08 AM
|
Do you want to automate your content curation? All you have to do is follow the steps below. Step #1: Follow people within your industry on Twitter – once you follow people in your industry you will see what’s hot. This way you don’t have to browse the web and search around for what’s hot.Step #2: Use Pocket – this will allow you to favorite and save what you have found on Twitter that you like. That way, as you are reading you can save what you like.Step #3: Schedule out the content using Buffer – you can connect Pocket to your favorite social media scheduling tool and then schedule out all of the content you like.The content will then get pushed out on your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and any other social site you use....
|
|
Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
September 3, 2017 12:51 AM
|
“However, despite both now copying each other’s features – The Great Storification, anyone? – users still engage with the platforms in different ways,” he said. And therein lie some opportunities for savvy marketers. What’s more, Havey noted that Instagram posts tend to get 10 times more engagement than Facebook posts on average....
|
|
Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
August 30, 2017 11:24 AM
|
Are you sending potential new customers to old content on your blog that is out of date? Or….….do you have old content on your site that never gets any traffic? Both of these things are bad for your site, so you need to do something about them. And here’s why. Producing new content on a regular basis may not always work as you would expect it....
|
|
Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
August 30, 2017 11:02 AM
|
As marketers, we’re all doing two things: -Writing with the intent to sell something. Maybe it’s a product description in an e-commerce store, maybe it’s a landing page trying to generate a lead, or maybe it’s a blog post (like this one!) that’s trying to sell you an idea. - Writing phrases and clichés that turn off our audience. The point of copywriting to make somebody feel something, which causes action. You’ve likely seen tons of examples of emotion at work in copywriting: - Fear – fear of missing out (FOMO) is a common motivator for companies marketing to Millennials. - Pity – Look no further than the success of the ASPCA commercial featuring Sarah McLachlan. Or don’t. - Hope – Nothing gets somebody to open their wallet faster than the hope of fixing his problem. These are just a few examples. Making our audience feel something by using emotional triggers in our copy helps us sell. But what you don’t want your audience to feel is annoyance, or worse, outright anger, that you wasted their time. The marketing industry is producing more online content than ever, and there will be more tomorrow! If you want to stand out, do your audience a favor by respecting their time and intelligence by banishing the following clichés and filler phrases from your copy....
|
|
Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
August 29, 2017 7:22 AM
|
We need both art and science in marketing — the “MadMen” and “MathMen.” I think the most compelling campaigns of the future will bring together the greatest creativity and the greatest insight informed by data. But creatives and data scientists can make uneasy bedfellows. It’s one thing to optimize media; it’s another to optimize the creative itself. As marketing increasingly becomes data-driven, how will this impact creativity?...
|
|
Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
August 29, 2017 2:05 AM
|
I know I’ve certainly found myself pondering questions like: -What content should I share on our social media profiles - How can I share a blog post on Facebook in a new, creative way? - How can I use the latest Instagram feature effectively? To help you answer these questions, and countless others, we put our heads together to come up with 20 creative ways for sharing content on social media....
|
|
Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
August 29, 2017 1:50 AM
|
It’s extremely likely that your target audience wants video content. Brands that create useful, engaging video will quickly surpass their competitors who don’t. So whether your brand sells baby strollers or enterprise-level cloud-based SaaS solutions, it makes sense to get into video. Granted, video can be complicated and expensive. You could spend thousands of dollars on equipment, hire someone to shoot and edit the final product, or turn your conference room into a fully-functioning television studio. But there’s no need to go that far to see if video fits your content strategy. Here are four cheap ways to get started with video content marketing....
|
|
Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
August 29, 2017 1:33 AM
|
As a general rule of thumb,“ A good website is one which makes users take a desired action” This action could be anything from making users add a product to a cart or share a particular article, good website design urges them do it without a lot of clutter or text to go along. Consequently good websites are one which are - High Converting - Easy to Navigate - Cleanly Branded - Interruption Free. Whether you own an e-commerce website or are building a forum for dog lovers, there are a few basic guidelines you can follow to ensure high conversions and revenue regardless of what scale you are running at....
|
|
Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
August 28, 2017 10:44 AM
|
ON FRIDAY EVENING, inside an old-movie-house-cum-art-gallery at the heart of San Francisco's Mission district, Google graphics guru Blaise Agüera y Arcas delivered a speech to an audience of about eight hundred geek hipsters. He spoke alongside a series of images projected onto the wall that once held a movie screen, and at one point, he showed off a nearly 500-year-old double portrait by German Renaissance painter Hans Holbein. The portrait includes a strangely distorted image of a human skull, and as Agüera y Arcas explained, it's unlikely that Holbein painted this by hand. He almost certainly used mirrors or lenses to project the image of a skull onto a canvas before tracing its outline. "He was using state-of-the-art technologies," Agüera y Arcas told his audience. Neural networks are not only driving the Google search engine but spitting out art for which some people will pay serious money.His point was that we've been using technology to create art for centuries—that the present isn't all that different from the past. It was his way of introducing the gallery's latest exhibit, in which every work is the product of artificial neural networks—networks of computer hardware and software that approximate the web of neurons in the human brain. Last year, researchers at Google created a new kind of art using neural nets, and this weekend, the tech giant put this machine-generated imagery on display in a two-day exhibit that raised roughly $84,000 for the Gray Area Foundation for the Arts, a San Francisco nonprofit devoted to the confluence of art and tech....
|
|
Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
August 27, 2017 12:23 PM
|
So you’ve started blogging. It’s a great way to start building traffic, acquiring new customers, and developing brand awareness. But I have some bad news. Unless your articles are ranking well in Google search, you’re not going to make much progress. Understanding SEO is critical to making your website presence stand out. To accomplish that, you need to implement some proven tactics to boost your ranking in Google. This is your guide to getting your content ranked higher....
|
|
Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
August 25, 2017 11:30 AM
|
There's a good chance you already have video editing software installed on your computer. For Windows, that's Windows Movie Maker, and for Macs, it's iMovie. But depending on your particular skill set and what it is you're trying to accomplish with your videos, you may find that these options aren't packed with enough features. The good news: There are several free video editing solutions you can download that run the gamut from super simple to Hollywood-level powerful. Use these to start making videos today....
|
In this list we're sharing some of our favorite websites that offer free resources for presentation design such as templates, icons, images, fonts and more.
Via Baiba Svenca
|
|
Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
September 3, 2017 1:13 AM
|
Social media managers need to share interesting content with their audiences. It’s part of the new way customers buy. Sharing content from the company’s own blog is easy, but you need to share content from other sources, too. By sharing content that’s not about your brand, you can avoid being too self-promotional on social media. You can also build awareness of your brand and improve your credibility. While there are clear benefits to content curation, it’s not easy. Social media managers could spend a lot of time looking for great content to share, and they may wonder if they’re doing it right. Here are seven tips for easier and more effective content curation....
|
|
Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
September 3, 2017 12:56 AM
|
On average, Instagram ads generally see 2.5 times more clicks than other social media sites, and regular Instagram posts see up to 10 times more engagement than Facebook posts. The difference lies within the app’s clutter-free layout and a user-friendly mobile experience. Instagram offers several advertisement options depending on your budget and brand image. Don’t underestimate the value of clean, consistent Instagram content and consult with your marketing team about implementing paid Instagram ads within your campaign. Given the potential to grasp thousands of loyal new followers, many brands are curious about the pricing to advertise within their intended consumer demographic. We’ve simplified the details and broke it all down for you below. ...
|
|
Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
September 2, 2017 1:53 PM
|
From legacy media companies like Fox to cannabis-themed startups, many publishers are going all-in on video.
Recent investments in video have usually come at the expense of the written word, as media companies like MTV News and Mic have laid off writers to shift to video. With ad budgets shifting to video, publishers are frantically chasing the money, spawning consternation and second-guessing throughout the media industry.
Here are five charts that summarize what’s going on.
|
|
Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
August 30, 2017 11:15 AM
|
A recent Reuters Institute study, aptly titled ‘‘I saw the news on Facebook’ looks at how audiences recall the source of news found via social media and search. The study takes into account how users recall where they found a particular story (search, social, or by landing directly on a website), as well as going a step further to measure their likelihood of remembering the actual source of the information. It turns out that accurate source recall is a legitimate concern for publishers. Here’s the key line from the report: “Less than half could remember the name of the news brand for a particular story when coming from search or social media. Correct brand attribution was just 37% from search and 47% from social media. This compares with an attribution rate of 81% for users who arrived directly from another page on a destination website.” So on average, less than half of the people clicking links to news stories in their social media feeds could correctly recall the actual source of the story afterwards, leading to the common scenario where someone says they saw a story ‘on Facebook’....
|
|
Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
August 29, 2017 8:03 AM
|
Millennials now represent the largest generation, having finally overtaken the painfully self-regarding, drug-favoring boomers. Which means that brands want to attract them, move them and inspire them to higher levels of loyalty. Millennials are, though, supposed to be fickle beings. How can you get them to be committed? In the week that Amazon finally takes over Whole Foods, CEO Jeff Bezos showed how.
|
|
Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
August 29, 2017 2:24 AM
|
Reputation is everything. And on the internet, that couldn't be more true.It's important to always know what people are saying about you -- whether it's your customers, your competitors, or the press. And on any given day, it can be tricky to keep up with what your audience is sharing across a variety of social media platforms. So, we've rounded up some of the best free social media and brand monitoring tools from around the vast web of social networks. Nearly all of these tools are free, but some offer paid versions with more features and capabilities. Let's dive into each one -- and see if you want to test them out today....
|
|
Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
August 29, 2017 1:59 AM
|
With a professional twist, we asked the experts presenting at Content Marketing World what they see in the next five years as the biggest changes in content marketing. This isn’t a list of predicted tech advances or outlandish guesses – it’s practical and proactive. You could take one or all 25 and begin working on them today (if you’re not already) – to plan strategically for short- and long-term success. We’ve segregated the answers based on the five emerging themes – personalization, formats, implementation, voice-activation, and data. As you’ll see, the impact of artificial intelligence is a theme that runs through all the categories. Ironically, Michael Brenner points out, it is technology that will help us better connect with people. “We are in a quick march to deep content personalization, add machine learning and AI to help us predict what to create, for whom, where, and how often,” says the CEO of Marketing Insider Group....
|
|
Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
August 29, 2017 1:41 AM
|
Are you in the process of choosing a colour scheme for your new website? Perhaps you’re wondering if your existing colour scheme is right for you? Iconic Fox share their guide to colour and branding in this infographic....
|
|
Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
August 29, 2017 1:16 AM
|
"Between two such beings as he and I, the one a perfect volcano, the other boiling too, inwardly, a sort of struggle was preparing." In February of 1888, a decade after Van Gogh found his purpose, he moved to the town of Arles in the South of France. There, he exploded into a period of immense creative fertility, completing more than two hundred paintings, one hundred watercolors and sketches, and his famous Sunflowers series. But he also lived in extreme poverty and endured incessant inner turmoil, much of which related to his preoccupation with enticing Gauguin — whom he admired with unparalleled ardor (“I find my artistic ideas extremely commonplace in comparison with yours,” Van Gogh wrote) and who at the time was living and working in Brittany — to come live and paint with him. This coveted cohabitation, Van Gogh hoped, would be the beginning of a larger art colony that would serve as “a shelter and a refuge” for Post-Impressionist painters as they pioneered an entirely novel, and therefore subject to spirited criticism, aesthetic of art. Van Gogh wrote to Gauguin in early October of 1888:I’d like to see you taking a very large share in this belief that we’ll be relatively successful in founding something lasting. Despite his destitution, Van Gogh spent whatever money he had on two beds, which he set up in the same small bedroom. Seeking to make his modest sleeping quarters “as nice as possible, like a woman’s boudoir, really artistic,” he resolved to paint a set of giant yellow sunflowers onto its white walls. He wrote beseeching letters to Gauguin, and when the French artist sent him a self-portrait as part of their exchange of canvases, Van Gogh excitedly showed it around town as the likeness of a beloved friend who was about to come visit.Gauguin finally agreed and arrived in Arles in mid-October, where he was to spend about two months, culminating with the dramatic ear incident....
|
|
Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
August 28, 2017 10:37 AM
|
A METRONOME TICKS time. Not for the student, but for the teacher, who plays a short piano melody. Without missing a measure, the student follows with an improvised, yet derivative, cello run. The student plays the same run again, and then again. "I have it looping, actually, so you can hear the response over and over again," says the teacher, Jesse Engel, a computer scientist with Google Brain. "And you can hear some similarities with what I played, but it’s not doing the job of trying to replicate what I played. It’s trying to continue it in a meaningful way." The student here is an artificial intelligence algorithm; the instrument, a synthesizer. And the real lesson is teaching an audience of hundreds how computers might someday become capable of producing real works of art. Engels is onstage at NYU's Skirball Center for the Performing Arts as part of the 2017 World Science Festival, along with three like-minded experts. Each of them is there to showcase how they nurture creativity in computers....
|
|
Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
August 27, 2017 12:11 PM
|
An anonymous, crowdsourced list of which publications pay freelance writers, and how much.Search by publication and see a huge range from Ars Technica at $0.17 per word to Wired at $2.50 per word.
|
Scoop.it!
Enhance your slides with attractive backgrounds. Some good examples here.