Niet Geleerd Op School

When it comes to marketing platforms, social media is a non-negotiable tool. Social ad spending in the United States is set to increase by over 20% this year. However, social media isn’t just for advertising to your customers. It’s also for communicating with them.  Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are hubs for identifying, and acting on, customer wants and needs. Here are some ways that your business can use social media listening to enhance not only your customer experience (CX), but also your entire experience management process. 1. Engage in Real Time  Your customers are active on social media day and night. And while traditional customer service platforms require some wait time, social platforms close this gap. Your social team can interact with your customers in real time. If a customer has a question or problem, your business can answer within seconds.  Real-time interactions help customers feel more immersed in your brand experience. Your busi...

When you are going through an acquisition with a good M&A advisor it is important to have a plan of action and set clear-cut objectives for the sale. While you might be thinking of your bottom line, there is a whole range of other objectives that need to be considered because they will impact your team and the company’s future success. What are the reasons you want to sell the business? Which acquirer is best suited for you? What are the exit strategies for the co-founders? What do you want for your team? What do you want for your customers? How will the mission be continued? Knowing what you want out of the acquisition will give you more control. Have minimum and maximum lines clearly defined, and plan for negotiating, and the unexpected.  Prepare The Team Preparing the team for an acquisition is another important aspect of keeping control of the process. The buyer needs to fit in with the company culture, or the transition can be painful. Can your team align with...

Now that we are more than half way through 2021 and COVID vaccines have been circulating for several months, the majority of Americans have been vaccinated or plan to be in the near future. Vaccine confidence is standing firm. However, there is still a small percentage that are staying hesitant. It’s important to enable vaccine confidence for everyone in order to create herd immunity.  Recent statistics show that 83% of social media users are vaccine confident; 92% of social media users believe the vaccines are safe; and 86% of social media users believe COVID vaccines are effective.  When it comes down to geography, race, and political affiliations we see that the likelihood of vaccination breaks down to 95% for the mainstream left, and 65% of the right; 90% for rural areas and 93% for urban areas; and 94% for Asian-American, 88% for African-American, 90% for Caucasian, and 93% for Hispanic.  Although those in the right wing political spectrum have the lowest percent...

Many organizations know they should do better when it comes to becoming a data-driven organization. The thing about human behavior is that we often know what we should do in order to improve, but the status quo and inertia of a situation to keep doing what we’ve always done in the past often sets in and clouds our thinking. Maybe we could all use a gentle nudge to consider making more data-driven decisions instead of just going with our gut. Consider that only 24% of executives had created data-driven organizations. Perhaps even more shocking is that 73% of all data within an organization is never even analyzed. Google Analytics can get you part of the way there, but there are some serious power tools found within Google Analytics 360 . Advanced tools such as BigQuery Export, Data Driven Attribution and more are accessible as well as benefits of privacy, support and training. Also shorter delays in accessing new data, unlimited sessions and reports that combine data from several prop...

When the head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, posted a video on his profile, he probably didn’t expect the number of disgruntled comments he’d receive from businesses and influencers around the world. Mosseri announced that Instagram has chosen to shift and become less of a photo-sharing app. It will now be geared toward becoming a video entertainment platform to keep up with competitors like TikTok and YouTube. Regardless of how you feel about this transformation of the app, we’ll all have to abide by the algorithm’s new guidelines to stay relevant and ensure our content continues to be seen by our followers. You might be thinking that video is not your strong suit, and if that’s the case, you aren’t alone. Numerous online tutorials explain how to become more confident in front of the camera. Posting to your stories and creating reels to add to your content strategy, however, aren’t anything new. Reels have been around since August 2020, and they won’t be going anywhere, anytime soon....

There are key ways for you to protect your brand on social media. There’s a pretty good likelihood that all your staff are on social networking sites, so you’ve got plenty of avenues to deal with. Your employees use Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, so ensure that they are using them in a professional manner, with appropriate comments. Ensure that there’s no blatant promotion of your business or products here, or there’ll be a problem with complaints from customers. Here are 7 tips on  how to protect your brand on social media .  You need to reinforce these principles with everyone on your staff that uses social media. Don’t spam: A spamming investigation could land you in trouble with the social media giants, so it’s best not to do this. Don’t push your brands, products or services on the people who are likely to use them. This is one of the tips to protect your brand on social media. It’s not illegal, but it’s not a smart move either. Mute or remove Facebook and Twitter bu...

Accurate and fair content moderation enables businesses to rapidly improve their site’s user experience, both as a result of a more enjoyable browsing environment, and a higher ROI. Content moderation using AI software allows web enterprises to quickly and easily scale up content moderation procedures in a manner that is more practical for human users, leaving this challenging yet time-consuming task for machines. Moreover, it allows enterprises to use sophisticated machinery for moderating controversial content, while keeping the results as consistent as possible. Machines can also apply manual moderation procedures, which make these procedures more effective and efficient.  For the past several years, many tools have been developed for improving content moderation. These include A.I. expert Advisor, Label Revolver, Web Intelligence Bar, and the Google content moderation dashboard. These tools can all be applied at the same time to improve a site’s performance. Below are some ...

It seems every year someone comes out with a new article saying that SEO died, is dying, or is six feet under. There are a few reasons for this, mainly centered around the way Google’s algorithm works. There are hundreds of search engines, but Google has managed to reign supreme through their general Google Search and their other specializations such as Google Images and Google Scholar. In 2019, Google products were used in 94 percent of searches. “It is no question that Google owns the market when it comes to internet queries,” says David Brenton, President of BluShark Digital, LLC . However, Google has made several changes to its algorithm over the years, leading some to claim SEO – or search engine optimization – is going the way of the dinosaur. Here are the facts and figures to get a better idea of why people think this (and why they are wrong). Why They Think SEO is Dying There are three main reasons people think SEO is dying, but first, let us get a firm grasp on what SEO t...

In addition to being the go-to online platform to post cat photos and express superficial opinions about popular social and political topics, Facebook can also be a powerful marketing tool. Due to frequent changes of Facebook’s advertising rules, marketers are sometimes confused which method to use in order to monetise their contacts. Standard tools like paid posts are very frequent on the network and many users are routinely ignoring them, forcing businesses to search for less spammy and more personalised approaches. At present time, Facebook sponsored messages are one of the most cost-effective engagement mechanisms available to businesses that want to advertise on the largest social media platform. Here is everything you need to know about this simple and innovative communication channel: How sponsored messages work? Sponsored messages are sent through Facebook Messenger, and are typically short promotional messages referring to a commercial Facebook page. They can contain text ...

Whether you’re selling online courses, kitchen appliances, or trivia games , getting noticed on social media can be a huge boon for your business. It’s not just about going viral — just amassing a loyal audience of a few thousand people is already enough to help signal boost both your current marketing efforts and the efforts associated with any new product you decide to launch. 1 – Target the right crowd Just like your marketing efforts in any other medium, your social media marketing campaign will work better if it is well-targeted. Trying to appeal to everyone will generally lead to you not quite appealing to anyone. So make sure you’re putting up posts and writing content with a specific target demographic in mind. Having a clear audience in mind will also help you find the groups where those users congregate, or which hashtags they use, depending on the platform you’re on. And while you don’t want to be that brand that floods hashtags with spam, making the occasional post with ...

Creating & Running a Successful Blog Blogging Creating and running a successful Blog is completely possible and even considered simple and easy for many. However, let’s ensure that one understands what a blog is and some of it’s background. With today’s innovative technology and the internet, blogging is very common and many even make a living fulltime from blogging. A blog is a website that is informational or sometimes it can be a discussion. The writing or post is typical informal or even diary style. Usually on a blog website the posts are displayed with the most recent first. Blogs can be individual or single-author which was very popular for a while(and still is), but now just as popular or even more popular are MABs which are multi-author blogs where there are more than one author and even edited professionally at times. It seems that MABs have cornered the market of newspapers, advocacy groups, think tanks, universities, etc… Blogs are mainly text but can consist of links...

3 Ways to Motivate Yourself Motivation Is Often Difficult Father George Rutler has given a lot of advice on how to motivate yourself. He does not take this subject lightly because motivation is often difficult to comeby when it is needed most. People who are working jobs they hate often find it difficult to do their best. When people suffer from depression, it is often difficult to get motivated. Father George Rutler has a few solutions to use when motivation is difficult to muster. Will his words instantly turn a person into a type A go-getter? It is unlikely that this will instantly happen, but his advice will put a person on the right path. Focus On Leadership It might be an odd thing to suggest to an unmotivated person, but focusing on leadership is a power method that will increase motivation. One rebuttal is that a person is not in a leadership position. The truth is that everyone is in leadership. Leadership is not a position, it is taking responsibility. Leaders do what ne...

Let’s face it: you probably spend more time with your smartphone than pretty much anyone in your life. It is likely and unfortunately one of the first things you see in the morning and one of the last things you see when you go to bed. That said, many of us have an impulse to always get the latest and greatest smartphone, but is this the wisest investment after all? Chances are, this is not the case. Let’s explore the phone repair economy. Smartphones over the last several years have been getting more reliable and have a longer replacement life. In 2019, the average American was replacing their phone after 33 months – this is a significant improvement over 23 months from 2016. In this same timeframe, smartphone prices have risen by 52%, quite a financial deterrent for many. Before considering replacing your phone, you might want to consider repairing the one that you have first. There are many services that can make quick work of fixing your existing phone quickly and in a cost ...

Although emotional intelligence is a newer term that has only been around since 1990, the characteristics of an emotionally intelligent person have remained constant for far longer. As it turns out, studies show that between IQ and emotional intelligence , or EQ, the latter is the much bigger indicator of success every time.  Emotional intelligence is basically the ability to understand one’s own emotions, not let them control your responses, and to understand other people’s emotions as well. Emotionally intelligent people have 5 basic characteristics that gear them for success, both personally and professionally.  These five characteristics are self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy, social skills, and motivation. Emotionally intelligent people take accountability for their mistakes and they understand their limits; they don’t let heavy emotions control their responses, they understand and predict how others will feel; they’re well liked by others; and they are also seeki...

Believe it or not, 5 of the world’s top growing nations are all located within Africa. While Africa currently makes up 16% of the world’s population and just 3% of the global GDP this is a stat that is quickly changing. Africa is projected to achieve double-digit economic growth within the next decade and is continuing on its path to grow faster than any other region in the world. The time for investing in Africa is now. There are lots of large corporations that have been taking a serious look at expanding their operations in Africa. Google has placed an AI lab in Ghana that will work to apply AI solutions to help with local challenges and improve google translate for African languages. There are also plans for Facebook to build tech hubs for startup development in Nigeria as well. These companies are looking at the future of Africa and investing now knowing it will pay off. By 2025 Africa will have a GDP growth reaching $4.5 trillion.  Many startups are flourishing in Africa, ev...

Are you a real estate agent or property manager ? If so, you may understand the fact that social media can help you advertise properties more effectively. However, you also might not know exactly how. Don’t worry if this is the case! Advertising a property on social media can be quite easy. To leverage social media to its full potential, keep the following tips in mind: Run Facebook Ads Unless you’re advertising properties to attract investors instead of buyers or tenants, odds are good your target audience will generally consist of people who live in the area you serve. For example, if you’re advertising a property that’s based in Houston, you won’t necessarily need to market it to people who live in New York City. That would simply be a waste of your time and budget. This is one reason to consider running ads on social media platforms when advertising properties. Although ads are not a substitute for an active social media presence, they can be a helpful means of optimizing your ...

As businesses continue to store more data on computers and the internet, there continue to be cybercriminals who see opportunities to exploit security flaws.  In 2020, daily ransomware attacks increased by 50%.  Some of the biggest cyber attacks occurred just this year; Colonial Pipeline was the target of the largest attack on a US energy system and Acer reported the largest known ransom demand from a cyberattack, at $50 million.  From 2015 to 2020, ransomware damages increased 7,000-fold, from $24 million to $170 billion. Let’s examine the role of cyber insurance. A Growing Issue Why is this problem growing?  Simply put, the opportunities for cybercriminals are everywhere.  By 2023, 5.3 billion people worldwide will have internet access. World data will more than triple by 2022, with half that data stored in the cloud.  When data is shared across apps and between cloud services, it is made more vulnerable to attack. In the most famous cyber attack cases...

Social media has been arguably the biggest innovation of the 21st Century to date, and if not the biggest, certainly the most impactful. The rise of Facebook, Instagram and latterly TikTok has changed the way we communicate and interact with one another in both a social and business sense. Now, as social media is adapting to welcome the emergence of augmented reality technology, we’re getting our first glimpses into how marketing may change forever as a result.  (Image: eMarketer ) As we can see from the data above, the number of US social network augmented reality users is expected to climb to over 48 million by 2022, with the rise of platforms like TikTok attributed as a driving force for such change.  The emergence of AR as a key trend in the future of social media holds significant potential for marketers looking for new ways to engage with users at a time when more traditional marketing techniques are struggling to adapt to a post-Covid-19 pandemic business landscape...

Despite its advantages as a communication tool, most emails people receive are useless and unnecessary.  85% of all emails are considered spam.  Some spam is merely annoying, but other spam messages are dangerous.  At least 3 billion phishing emails show up in inboxes every day.  Phishing emails are fraudulent messages meant to steal people’s personal information.  They often act as the first step of a sophisticated cyberattack. How safe are your emails? Not very. Private individuals are common victims of cybercrime, but large companies are not exempt from the problem either.  When a ransomware cyberattack locked down Colonial Pipeline’s digital equipment, the criminals crippled the supply line and triggered a massive gas panic.  Integrated ransomware once halted a 5th of JBS’s meat production, disrupting the market. Small Business is a Big Target If even large corporations are susceptible to cybercrime, what chances do small businesses have of avoi...

It’s no secret that social media is a huge part of the lives of millions, if not billions, of people. Social media is a way to connect with, communicate, and share with others, but it’s also incredibly beneficial for businesses. Social media is good for advertising, it can help build a brand, create and distribute content, and help a business grow. Let’s dig deeper into exactly how. Advertising Today, social media sites are full of content, with ads being a big portion of that content. While it may seem like social media is flooded with advertisements, almost all of these ads are targeted , meaning that they are directed to a particular audience. Not everyone on social media needs a contractor, but there are some people that do, and there are even some people that do and don’t even know it. This is why it’s important to know and understand your target audience. This not only refers to who they are demographically  (gender, age, etc.) but also which social media platforms they ar...