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  • How Visual Content Dominates Social Media And How to Leverage This For Your Brand

    How Visual Content Dominates Social Media And How to Leverage This For Your Brand

    As a marketing professional, it’s part of our blood to notice trends and embrace them with open hands.

    Whether you’re in B2C, B2B or personal marketing, visual communication is quickly becoming a very important way to connect with your audiences.

    The challenge is how to produce great, engaging content that holds traction in a saturated market.

    In order to do this, it’s worth understanding the how and why visual content is the key to the future of online and social marketing. One way to approach this would be looking at the psychology behind visual stimulants.

    From an evolutionary standpoint, visual aids were responsible for identifying threats, finding food and sparking love.

    It comes as now surprise then that only 10% of the information you hear is remembered after three days while an incredible 65% of information that you see is remembered 3 days later.

    The brain is significantly more responsive to visual stimuli than what you hear or read.

    By appealing to people’s sense of visual aid, you can create more powerful and engaged reactions to the content you share on social media. It was found that people who respond to directions with both text and illustrations performed 323% better than people who followed instructions without illustrations.

    By appealing to people’s naturally stronger memory processes, you can create a more engaged response. For instance, BuzzSumo analysed over 1 million articles and found that articles with an image once every 75-100 words was shared double the amount of times than articles with fewer images.

    Likewise, Facebook posts with a picture receive on average 2.3 times as many engagements than ones without. As a marketer your goal is to maximise genuine engagement with your content, so the question is still raised – how do you produce visually compelling content?

    For the sake of appealing to the hallmark tendencies of marketing professionals, we’ll focus on the three ‘low hanging fruits’ of visual content.

    Relevancy, emotions and great design.

    Relevancy

    To achieve the desired result of content, your marketing efforts need to focus less on your goals and more on the goals, wants and needs of your target audience. By providing content that is relevant to your buyer or audience persona, you are providing value.

    Your goal as a marketer is to create value but by then focusing on the value that they expect from you as a company. There’s no point in a clothing company creating infographics of a marketing sales funnel. It’s not relevant.

    By positioning your company within the expectations of the market, and aligning your content strategy to it, you can create highly engaging content.

    Time relevancy is also a defining factor of why content becomes engaging. When there’s hype around a topic, people want to share it with their friends as people want to provide value to their friends or be known as a thought leader in their social circles.

    For instance, if a clothing company plans a slideshow to promote on Facebook, LinkedIn and Google fashion groups, focusing on a fashion relevant event, such as a reputable fashion week gives the audience social currency in the form of relevant information to share and promote.

    When constructing visual content, ask yourself whether this type of content is what your audience expect of you to produce, and what they need or want.

    That ensures that you have their attention once it’s published. Then be sure to ask yourself whether or not it has relevance to the target audience’s interests and social circles. If you achieve that, then there is potential for engagement.

    Once you combine both, you have a piece of content that has powerful potential to be engaging and useful for your brand.

    Emotions

    The great advantage of visual aids is that you can appeal to people’s emotions far more efficiently than written content. There’s a reason cute cat images are some of the most shared content around.

    There’s also a reason memes have found extraordinary success as a medium for sharing small snippets of information. It’s because they can create emotional responses in the form of humor, anger, love, and interests.

    After all, a picture is worth a thousand words.

    As a marketer tasked with creating engaging content for your audiences, identifying your audiences emotional sensitivities can bring personality to your brand and encourage engagement.

    For instance, a surf company can appeal to their audience’s sense of adventure and adrenaline to promote a new line of surfboards.

    By affirming associations between your audience’s emotions and your brand, you create a personal connection, which will increase trust and ultimately help you increase conversions.

    Design

    Great design goes a long way when it comes to visual aids. It secures a sense of professionalism and integrity that most brands overlook when producing visuals. It’s incredible just how many people expect poorly produced visual content to have an impact on social media or beyond.

    Simply, In order to have an impact you need to create stunning visuals. This is a lot easier than most people think.

    Great design is a combination of fonts, colors, structure and graphics that work comfortably together to visualise ideas. If you can’t visualise information properly, it can often be more harmful than you think. A poorly designed graph screams of boredom and unprofessionalism.

    On the other hand, a slideshare presentation with great branding, color scheme, and font scheme streamlines the user’s experience, for instance, and helps retention rates increase. If you’re building a presentation, you could use different color themes as highlighted in this article.

    Alternatively, if you’re looking to share a simple message, perhaps use a block font such as Arial in bold over an emotionally related image that has had a slight dark transparency applied to it.

    A simple font is crisp, contrasting and easy-to-read. If you’re looking for free stock photography, try out Pexels.

    If you’re a larger company, you could always look at outsourcing design work. Companies such as 24slides provide professional design and presentation services for very affordable prices. If you have a limited budget, you could always look towards tutorials on Youtube. For inspiration, Pinterest is a great place to start.

    If there’s one thing we learned from 2019, it’s that content is still king. 2020 is going to see a massive increase in visual content and in order to compete in a social sphere saturated by content and information, you need to appeal to the customer and prioritise their needs, wants and expectations.

    You need to do this while positioning yourself as a professional and reputable leader with well designed visual content that evokes emotional responses.

    Relevancy ensures your audience is interested and provides a foundation for engagement.

  • A Guide To Understanding A Mechanic’s Language

    A Guide To Understanding A Mechanic’s Language

    There comes a time in every car owner’s life when your car needs a service or repair. While there are some maintenance items you may be able to take care of yourself, more often than not a licensed mechanic will be required to handle more complex car repairs.

    When choosing a car repairer you should look for a mechanic who is trusted by other vehicle owners and has the required skills and experience for the job. Once you’ve found your mechanic, however, you might find they use industry jargon that doesn’t make much sense.

    By learning some of the basic terms a mechanic may use, you can have a better understanding of what information they’re providing and what it means for you.

    Common technical terms used by mechanics

    One of the first steps to understanding your mechanic is to understand your car. By knowing the various parts of your car, you’ll already be a step ahead of the game. Knowing your car make and model, its features and different parts will help you to understand what your mechanic is discussing with you.

    One way to do this is to read the owner’s manual of your vehicle. This will help you learn the location of different parts, the functionality of different buttons, and much more.

    Here are some key terms which your mechanic will commonly use to describe any repair work which may be required.

    Misfire

    A misfire is what happens to a car engine if one or more of the cylinders inside the engine fails to fire correctly. There are three components to fire a cylinder, including the fuel to ignite, oxygen, and a spark to ignite the engine. A misfire results in a loss of power and fuel efficiency, and an increase in CO2 emissions.

    Camshaft, crankshaft and timing belt

    An engine’s camshaft controls the operation of pistons in the cylinder – so without the camshaft, the engine wouldn’t work. The camshaft is connected to the crankshaft by the timing belt.

    A crankshaft converts vertical movements of the car’s pistons into a rotation – to be transferred through to the flywheel and the transmission. What happens is the camshaft spins once, and the crankshaft (controlling the valves) rotates twice in the four-stroke cycle. This relationship is known as ‘mechanical timing’.

    The timing belt is a rubber belt which controls the mechanical timing. Without the timing belt, the pistons and valves fall out of sync and collide. If this were to happen, it would be extremely costly for you.

    As a rule of thumb, the timing belt will need to be replaced every 100,000 kms or after 5 years.

    But, check the service guidelines in your manufacturer’s logbook, as there are no warning signs that the timing belt is worn out.

    What you should look out for

    As well as knowing common mechanical language, it’s also important that you know what to look out for in your car, so you know when to get it looked at by a professional. Here are some common hazards to be aware of.

    Is the tread on your tyres worn out?

    Did you know that it’s illegal to have a tread depth of below 1.5mm on your tyres? But, for optimal safety, it’s recommended to never let your tyre tread fall below 3mm.

    To check the tread depth on your tyres, you can check the tread wear indicators on the tyre. But, if the tread has fallen below 3mm, you may not be able to visibly see this indicator. So, you’ll need some additional tools. You can try the coin test. Get a 20 cent coin and place it in the main tread groove of your tyre. If the tread doesn’t reach the bill of the platypus, there’s less than 3mm of tread left on your tyres and you should replace them.

    Do you need new brake discs?

    A brake disc removes kinetic energy from the car in order to stop it. Here are 5 warning signs that you’ll need to replace your brake discs:

    • You hear a high-pitched or grinding noise when you brake
    • There’s an unusual vibration when you brake
    • The brake pedal feels softer to press than normal
    • The stopping distance has increased
    • The vehicle pulls to one side when braking

    Are your brake pads worn out?

    Brake pads use the part of the brake which contracts and applies pressure to a vehicle’s brake rotors. So, they are the part which slows and stops the wheels. Brake dust is the most obvious sign of pad wear – the heavier the car, the more brake dust you’ll see on the wheels of the car. Also, if you hear a screeching noise when you brake, this can be another indicator of wear.

    Why learn mechanical language?

    Learning technical jargon is important for understanding how your vehicle works and knowing how to maintain it. By understanding some basic mechanic issues, parts and technical jargon, you will ensure your vehicle is maintained correctly and that only essential repairs are completed.

    When talking with your mechanic, there’s a fine line between speaking their language and getting in over your head. You may want to learn about the car issues you’re having and feel confident in telling the mechanic what you think the problem may be, but remember that at the end of the day, they’re the expert.

    Your mechanic will likely have a lot of experience in fixing cars, so don’t take their knowledge for granted. When there’s an issue with your car, let the experts take a look and analyse the situation for themselves.

    If you need to, offer to take the mechanic for a drive to show them what issue you’re having or allow them to listen to any problems you’ve been experiencing. Chances are, having hands-on experience of your issue can help them to narrow down the problem quicker and easier.

    Arm yourself with knowledge and confidence

    Learning more about your car and what is required to keep it running can leave you feeling confident to take your car to your local mechanic knowing that you have a better understanding of what is going to be fixed and how.

    At the same time, you’ll be able to make sure you’re not breaking your budget by being overcharged for services that aren’t required.

  • 10 Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make And How To Avoid Them

    10 Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make And How To Avoid Them

    I know the rollercoaster ride entrepreneurs face when first starting out, I know how tough it is to get started and how easily you can become dejected and lose focus.

    Sadly, there is no foolproof guide to creating a successful business – it takes hard work, dedication and a serious commitment and belief in your business.

    As the old saying goes though, you have to be in it to win it!

    You will make mistakes throughout your business journey – it’s inevitable that somewhere along the way you’ll say ‘yes’ to something you should have said ‘no’ to, focus on an idea that doesn’t have legs or try to run before you can walk.

    While you can never prepare for every eventuality, I wanted to share the top 10 mistakes startups make during the first 12 months and. more importantly, how you can avoid them!

    1. Not actually talking to potential customers!

    I can’t explain how many times I’ve spoken to entrepreneurs who swear they’ve talked to potential customers about their business, only to have it transpire that in actual fact they’ve merely spoken to a handful of people.

    Why would you go through the effort, stress and workload of starting your own business if you don’t know that there are customers out there willing to pay for your product or service? It’s daft!

    You need to know the structure of your business and be able to show this to investors and be confident that it encapsulates every vital piece of information they’ll be looking for.

    Before you even think about speaking to investors or spending money on employees or assets, make sure you speak to people.

    Go out into the city and stop people on the street to ask them about your business, hold focus groups, talk to people on social media, grasp every opportunity available so you can prove to yourself and future investors that the demand is out there.

    2. Having little structure to your business

    When you start a business you need to properly and thoroughly define the responsibilities of the directors, the kind of business which will be undertaken and the means by which your shareholders will exercise control over the board of directors to establish your company.

    No one will pay any attention to you if you can only give them a wishy-washy idea with no substance behind it.

    You need to know the structure of your business and be able to show this to investors and be confident that it encapsulates every vital piece of information they’ll be looking for, otherwise you’ll be seen as a risk and never get investment.

    3. Hatching a business over a glass of wine and go 50:50 without thinking about the consequences

    After a few glasses of alcohol you might think you and your pal have the best business idea ever and already be spending the millions, you’ll make in your head.

    But in the cold light of day you need to ask yourself is it really a good business idea?

    And, if it is, is the person you enjoy having a glass of wine with really the ideal business partner?

    We all have friends we got on well with, but would never want to work alongside, so make sure you really think it through before setting up a business with someone. Especially if you’re going to go 50:50.

    There’s always going to be a leader, there has to be, so really think through how your friendship dynamic will affect your business before signing anything.

    4. Over-egging what the sales will be in year one

    Creating a successful business takes time. Some entrepreneurs, like me, are optimistic, which is great when faced with difficult situations. But, in order to be a successful entrepreneur you need to be realistic.

    There’s no point in over-estimating what your sales figures will be in the first year because you’re just setting yourself up to fail, and you’ll then have to explain to stakeholders and potential investors why you under-delivered. Set yourself goals and aim high, but keep it real.

    There’s time yet to reach for the stars!

    5. Thinking it’s easy to bring in investment

    The harsh truth of being an entrepreneur is that you aren’t guaranteed to get investment. Not everyone who starts their own business will be able to successfully court an investor and as those who have done, it will know it’s no easy or quick, task.

    It takes time to get investment – you need to think about what you want, what your business needs, how you will use the investment, how you will convince investors your business is the right one for them to spend time and money on, and you need to forecast what this money will mean for your business.

    Yes, you might get lucky and have a chance of meeting with someone who decides to invest in your startup.

    But realistically it’s a hard slog and you might need to speak to several people before you find the right one for your business.

    6. Thinking that you can do it all yourself

    Look at me – I’m a super entrepreneur! I started my business all on my own and am going to develop and scale it on my own, too. Wrong! You can’t do everything yourself.

    If nothing else, no one person is incredibly skilled at every single aspect of a business. You might be great at marketing and speaking to potential investors and customers, but do you know enough about forecasts and banking, and the legal checklist you need to tick along your entrepreneurial journey? My bet is you don’t.

    Set yourself goals and aim high, but keep it real. There’s time yet to reach for the stars!

    That’s why you need to hire smart. Look for people who fill the gaps in your skillset and build a dedicated, hard-working team who have bought into your vision.

    You’ll see much more success this way than trying to be a super entrepreneur all on your own – and it’s less lonely too.

    7. Getting fooled by consultants who charge a small fortune for useless stuff

    A lot of first-time entrepreneurs are approached by consultants across various fields who offer their services in return for a fee and an often hefty one at that.

    While it might seem like a great idea when they’re giving you their marketing spiel, make sure you take some time out before agreeing to anything.

    It’s easy to get caught up in the moment and say yes to things you don’t need for far too much money, but don’t let yourself fall into the trap and take some quiet time on your own to review things before you decide anything.

    8. Neglecting networking

    You’ll never get anywhere if you don’t get yourself out there and meet people. I can’t stress enough the importance of building a relevant network. Whatever you do and wherever you go you should always be speaking to people, whether it’s online or offline – you never know who you could meet by making the first move and saying hi!

    9. Spending time with a laptop rather than human beings

    If you’re searching online to see if your business is viable then you’ll likely always be able to find some piece of research which says it is.

    But no investor is ever going to give you money based on some research project done in the west end of nowhere back in 1999.

    As I said earlier – get out there and speak to people! Have a human conversation and ask people what they think about your business.

    Find out if there’s a market for your product or service and ask questions to determine what shape this product or service should take. You’ll get far more value out of a day spent speaking to people than you would a day stuck behind a computer.

    10. Overthinking your business plan

    Yes, your business plan is important and it is vital that you get it right. But don’t overthink it or you’ll just complicate things.

    Your business plan isn’t something you write when first starting out that then remains static, you’ll have to revisit it time and time again and make some changes depending on the focus of your business.

    Your market isn’t stagnant; so your business shouldn’t be either. You have to move with the times and be flexible to change, so there’s no point in spending weeks stressing over making your business plan perfect, just make sure it reflects the key points of your business as it is now and is easy to understand.

    No one is perfect and no one is able to simply wake up one day with a successful business – you have to ride out the highs and lows along the way.

    But, if you can avoid these 10 mistakes, or remedy them and make sure you don’t repeat them it will go a long way to helping your business!

  • Top 5 Changes in Asp.Net 5 and MVC 6

    Top 5 Changes in Asp.Net 5 and MVC 6

    large variety of changes have been incorporated in Asp.Net 5 and MVC 6. Asp.Net 5 is rebuilt from scratch for the support of modern services and Web applications.

    It is cross-platform; open-source and works both on the cloud as well as on-premises. Asp.net 5 is considered as the most significant release of Asp.Net over the history of .Net framework.

    Following are the top 5 most changes made in Asp.net 5 and MVC 6.

    1. Asp.Net on Linux and OSX:

    The applications of Asp.Net 5 can be executed on Linux as well as OSX along with Windows. It opens Asp.net to an entirely new audience of designers and developers.

    Traditional Asp.net had professional developers and designers working in a cooperative manner in the Windows machines. However, startups make use of Linux/OSX.

    Enabling application development on Linux/OSX will change everything. Designers and developers can build their apps with Asp.net 5 in their favourite environments like WebStorm and Sublime Text without any difficulty.

    2. No Web Forms and Visual Basic:

    The Asp.Net WebForms are no longer the part of Asp.net 5.  However, it is possible to create apps of Web Forms in Visual Studio by targeting .Net framework 4.6. But these apps cannot take any benefit of the new features in Asp.net 5.

    Asp.Net 5 supports only C#. There is no support for Visual Basic.

    3. Support for Client-Side development-AngularJS, Grunt, Bower, Tag helpers:

    AngularJS is considered as the most significant client-side framework for creating Single Page Applications (SPAs). The templates of Visual Studio version 2015 contain the controllers, directives, modules and factories of AngularJS.

    Another important feature in Asp.Net 5 is the tag helpers. These have greatest impact on creating views in Asp.Net MVC application. Tag helpers can be used in much better way as compared to the MVC helpers used traditionally.

    The new form element in Asp.net MVC 6 has only the HTML elements. As an example, instead of the Html.TextBoxFor () tag helper, it uses the INPUT element. A new attribute asp-for has been added in Asp.Net MVC 6. The main use of these elements is to extend elements with the server side functionality of Asp.Net MVC.

    Moreover, Asp.net 5 gets lots of love from front-end developers because it supports Grunt (Gulp). GruntJS is a kind of task runner that allows developers to create resources such as CSS and JavaScript files.

    As an example, GruntJS can be used for concatenation and minification of JavaScript files while performing a build.

    Many GruntJS plugins are available for performing different tasks.

    Two package managers beyond Nuget need to be supported for supporting GruntJS. Since the plugins of GruntJS are distributed in the form of NPM packages, Microsoft has added support for the same.

    Also, Microsoft has added support for the Bower multiple client-side resources are distributed via Bower.

    4. Unified Web API and MVC Controllers And View Components:

    The Web API controllers were different than the MVC controllers in other versions of MVC. The MVC controller makes use of the System.Web.MVC.Controller class while the controller of Web API uses the System.Web.Http.ApiController class.

    In case of MVC 6, only a single controller class is used for both the Web API and the MVC controllers. The only class available in MVC6 is Microsoft.Asp.Net.MVC.Controller.

    An IActionResult is returned by controllers of MVC6. It may be used as a view when an MVC controller is used. IActionResult may be used as data in case a controller of Web API is used. Moreover, both the Web API and the MVC controllers use same routes in MVC6. Developers can make use of both attribute routes and the routes based and convention and can apply them all controllers of the project.

    MVC 6 no longer contains the subcontrollers. Instead, view components have been added in MVC6.  Previous releases of Asp.Net MVC make use Html.Action () method for invoking a subcontroller. However, the Html. Action helper method is not contained in MVC6 version.

    Rather, an alternative technology termed as View Components is used for the same. View Components are similar to the subcontrollers which have always been odd. They presented as they were actions of controllers but actually they were not. View components seem to be more natural.

    5. Asp.Net Dependency injection and xUnit.net:

    Asp.net 5 has support for the pattern of Service Locator as well as the dependency injection. That is, now there is no need to depend on third party frameworks of dependency injection such as AutoFac and Ninject.

    With the help of dependency injection, the developers just need to declare the required dependency in constructor and it will be passed in with the help of Asp.Net 5 framework.

    However, before it is implemented, one extra step needs to be performed. It is needed to register dependencies in the startup object to inform Asp.net about the same. As soon as a FooService, BazService and BarService is registered, the framework will realize the need to create a BazService and BarService for constructing FooService before it is passed to the controller.

    Moreover, the Visual studio testing framework no longer exists in Asp.Net 5. Rather, it contains the xUnit.net framework for testing purpose.  Two attributes known as [TestMethod] and [TestClass] were used for describing a unit test in unit testing framework.
    However, the xUnit.net framework in Asp.Net 5 makes use of the [Fact] attribute rather than [TestMethod] attribute. No [TestClass] attribute exists in this framework.

    An example of code snippet using xUnit.net framework is shown below.

    public class Tests
    {
    [Fact]
    public void SumofNumbers ()
    {
    // Arrange
    var testcalculator = new Calculator ();
    // Act
    var result = testcalculator. SumofNumbers (1, 1);
    // Assert
    Assert. Equal (result, 13);
    }