Erik Qualman's Blog, page 485

21 Online Tools to Help Your Content Writing

There is a reason for the saying “Content is King.” No matter your vocation or industry, providing valuable content is a critical success driver. However, the secret is out. There is a lot of good competition producing great quality content. It’s difficult for your content to standout and it’s time intensive. Fortunately, we’ve put together 21 helpful tools to help you save time and help you produce winning content.

Writing and Editing Tools

1. ZenPen – An online free minimalist writing environment, ZenPen is simple to use. Type your text in the box, and save it in plain text, HTML, markdown text or copy and paste to an offline text editor. The main benefit of using this tool is that it is free of distractions. All you can really do is write, which is great when that is what you need to do.

2. Ommwriter – This is also a distraction-free writing environment, but with a plus. It includes audio tracks and keystroke sounds you can listen to while working. A study shows that ambient noise can help the creative process, and that is what Ommwriter provides. You can choose how much you want to pay for the app, and it is compatible with Mac, PC, and iPad.

3. EduGeeksClub – Have writer’s block and need some help? EduGeeksClub lets you collaborate with professional writers and editors who can look at and comment on your work. Prices range from $5.99 for proofreading to $19.99 for writing per page.

 

4. Hemmingway App – Writing styles can differ, but in most cases, a concise and direct mode of expression works best for most readers. This online editor makes your writing better by identifying grammatical and spelling errors, simplify long, complex sentences, and minimizing the use of adverbs.

5. Grammarly – Want to make sure your work is error free? This online tool can help you. It is a in-depth spell and grammar checker that checks your work as you go. It is a free extension on Chrome or Firefox. You can also use the site without charge.

6. ilys – This distraction-free writing environment may seem a little weird when you first use it. You can only see one letter at a time as you write until you reach your target word count. Only then are you able to edit your content, so it serves as a great motivator to keep working. The monthly subscription is $10.08 a month or $59.99 annually.

Content Enhancement Tools

No one likes reading big blocks of text. You need to add other types of content like images and videos to better engage your audience. Here are a couple of tools that can help you do that.

7. Unsplash – It can be hard to find great images if you don’t have your own or you don’t want to pay for them. This site is a great library of free high-quality pictures. Sign up and you will get 10 new images every 10 days delivered to your email. If you have something to share, you can also upload it on the site to give back.

8. Befunky – Editing images can be a pain, but Befunky can make your life a little easier. This online photo editor is ideal for writers that don’t want to learn how to use complicated image editors. Befunky provides has templates, simple tools and even free images from Pixabay. It is free to use, but if you want more features you can pay $4.95/month or $24.95/year.

9. Canva – So you’re not a graphic artist? Canva can make you look like one. This free online tool makes it easy to design things such as infographics. Just drag, drop, and customize. The basic tools are free to use, and a premium account is just $12.95/ month or $119.40/year.

10. Magisto – Make movies easily to enhance your content using this online video editor. You don’t need to know anything about video editing to use it. Just upload photos or video footage, choose a theme, and add music. The app will do the rest. You can also use it on a mobile device. You can create and upload as many as 10 videos or 500 MB at no cost. But if you want no watermark on your video, you can pay $9.99/month.

Tools for Inspiration and Productivity

11. MindMister – If you suffer from writer’s block or have ideas all over the place, this online mind-mapping tool can help you generate and organize your ideas. You can brainstorm with other people, take notes, and plan your writing project. The basic plan is free and lets you create three mind maps. If you want unlimited mind maps for all your ideas, you can pay $36 for six months.

12. Ideaflip – This is the perfect online brainstorming tool if you have a team driving your content. It uses a post-it style of collaboration that anyone can use. It allows you and your team to upload documents, images, and videos. Monthly subscriptions start at $19 to create a board, but you can invite as many people to collaborate with you.

13. BuzzSomo – This is a great tool to help you identify the hottest topics on social media and the top influencers in your market niche. It is a great way to ensure you get the most out of your content. Subscriptions start at $99/month for Pro and $999 for Enterprise.

14. Help Me Write – This is a unique platform to help you identify topics your audience would be happy to read. You pitch an idea on the site, share it on Twitter or Facebook and invite others to tell you what they think, and if they would read it. It’s a free site, so share away!

15. Coschedule Headline Analyzer – Headlines drive views. You need a kickass headline, and this tool will analyze how your headline might perform. It is a free tool and tons of content writers use it all the time.

16. StayFocusd – This free Chrome add-on can help you stay on track and become productive by blocking time-stealing sites. Spending too much time on social media? Use StayFocusd to block it for however long you choose.

17. Todoist – If you suffer from disorganization, then this is a great app to manage your time and projects. It’s also a great tool for planning. You can collaborate with your team from wherever you are in a distraction-free environment. The free plan is great but the premium unlocks other features for $29/year.

Tools for Promotion

Of course, you need to promote your content to as many people as possible at the right time. You can use these tools to make your content successful.

18. Buzzstream Discovery Tool – The best way to promote your content is through social networks. The most effective way to do that is to identify influencers in your niche, reach out to them and promote your content to them. This tool can help you do that. It will cost you nothing right now because it is still in beta.

19. Buffer – Your social media marketing has to be planned carefully. The timing can be very important. This tool is awesome for managing several social media profiles and scheduling your posts at the times when your audience is most active. It is free for up to 10 scheduled posts, but for more than that you need a monthly subscription starting from $99/month.

20. Pablo – Posts that include images with text overlays greatly improve viewer engagement, which is why this tool is perfect for you. You can easily access cool images courtesy of Unsplash and customize it for your post. It is free to use and works well with Buffer.

21. Medium – More is better when it comes to promoting your online presence. Republish your content on Medium, a community of writers and readers. Check out how Benjamin Hardy increased his traffic to over 100,000 visitors per month in this inspiring article!

Finding and developing a relationship with an online audience is not easy, especially if you are just starting out. These 21 online tools can help you immeasurably to create and promote your article online. Most of them are free to use or come at a reasonable cost so you have nothing to lose by trying them.

We hope you enjoyed the above promoted content as entertaining and helpful as we did.

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Trump Talks HUUUGE Penis – Twitter Explodes

Trump Talks HUUUGE Penis – Twitter Explodes

Last night was yet another GOP Debate. If you missed it, you missed Trump assuring the American people that there is no problem with the size of his hands, or anything else, as Marco Rubio suggested. Trump raised his hands up saying, “Look at those hands, are they small hands?” Trump backed himself up saying, “And, he referred to my hands — ‘if they’re small, something else must be small.’ I guarantee you there’s no problem. I guarantee.” A weird topic in a Presidential Debate? Yes. Twitter exploded. Jokes were cracked, Trump was talked about, the people came together. #MakeDonaldDrumpfAgain (Source CNN)



What To Say When Going Through Your Closet…

Keep, keep, trash, sell, giveaway, keep. Yahoo is doing a bit of a clean up with exploring the idea to sell their “non-core” assets. What are “non-core” assets? Think patents and fun stuff like that. Over the last three years, the company has sold more than $600 million in patents. The struggle is that they don’t know what to sell and what to keep and how to make everyone happy. (Source Reuters)



Put That On My Wishlist

The next thing you need in your life is the Amazon Echo Dot. Think Amazon Echo but smaller, cheaper and still smart. Take Amazon Echo, chop off some of it and bam you have the Echo Dot. You can still talk to Alexa and ask her to play your favorite jams but unlike the Echo you need to set up your own audio system. Alexa, we want a Amazon Echo Dot. (Source CNET)

Learn more about the Echo Dot by clicking here

Learn more about the Echo Dot by clicking here

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Use Social Media to Give Back to Others

Social media has a wide range of uses for a wide variety of people.

When it comes to individuals, they oftentimes use social networking sites to let others (friends and strangers) know what they are up to, discuss an array of topics from politics to sports, and put social media to work to network about career and other life opportunities.

For the business man or woman, they will often turn to social sites in order to promote their brands, network with others in their respective industries, and look for new employees, new vendors, and new opportunities to grow their companies.

As you can see, there is a plethora of opportunities for both personal and professional advancement on social media.

The question then becomes, how are you using social networking to improve your life or the lives of others?

Social Networking Opens up New Doors

First take a look at how your business can use social media to help others who may not have all the opportunities that you have available to you when running a company.

For many businesses, it isn’t just about making as many dollars as possible, it is also the notion and the good feelings that come with helping those in the local community and even nationwide when possible.

When undertaking projects and programs to help those in need, social networking becomes a great tool with which to work with.

Whether you are well-known companies like Target, Nike, McDonald’s, Sands Las Vegas, Coke or any number of other famous brands, social media is a winning means to turn your focus to.

With social media, you can:

Send out tweets, shares, pins and more about your latest philanthropy work and other such projects. Are you raising money to help a community or communities in need of help following a deadly storm or storms? Using social sites to promote the fundraising efforts can assist in bringing in much needed donations;
Post about projects your team members are doing to help those in the local and perhaps even national communities. Maybe some of your staff will be running or walking in fundraisers to raise cash for a particular disease or illness, perhaps after a community has been devastated by severe weather etc. No matter the reasoning behind such fundraisers, social media is again a great vehicle to drive the message home to the public;
Turn to sites like Instagram and Pinterest to show the public all of the different events your office is taking part in. While words are great, visuals oftentimes deliver more of an impact. The picture of one or more of your employees working with kids in the community on their day off is sure to elicit positive responses. You can also post videos (YouTube is great for this), wherein you show your company being active to help others. Even if you’re not physically out in the community, posting a video of team members packing stuff to send to troops serving abroad etc. is another positive vibe for your brand.

The Personal Touch

When it comes to the personal side of using social media to give back to others; there are just as many opportunities as businesses have, oftentimes more.

One way to go about this is by regularly posting to your social sites. In doing so, you build up your respective audiences instead of having minimal followers here and there.

Tweet, share, pin and more when you are doing volunteer work in the community.

This is especially a great opportunity for college students as they move closer to the job world and their career choices.

Having companies see via your social posts that you are volunteering for others is definitely a bonus for you. Not only does it show caring on your part, but it demonstrates an ability to work with others, something all companies have high on their list of job applicant qualifications.

You can also turn to social media in order to find civic groups, agencies, businesses and others who are looking for volunteers to help them with their respective causes.

Go to their Facebook or Twitter pages, look to see what they are in need of in terms of volunteer help, and then get involved.

When you stop and think about it, social media has many layers to it, one of which is giving back to others who need a helping hand.

Photo credit: BigStockPhoto.com

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Apple Opens Customer Service on Twitter

Anyone Need Apple Support?

The Fruit is making it easier than ever to help fix your broken iPhone. Early this morning, Apple officially started helping customers via Twitter. They created an account solely for customer support already responding to requests regarding Apple Music, ID’s and tweeting out tips. Now when you’re asked “watcha up to you?” – you can respond oh just chatting with my friendly Apple support team member Tim. Need help, tweet to @appleios. (Source The Verge)

Facebook News

We have a trifecta of Facebook for you this morning. Facebook just announced that their live videos (which were officially released last month) will now appear higher on newsfeeds. Facebook considers the live videos a new form of content so they’ve adjusted their algorithm to make it easier to find and watch the content. (Mashable)

Facebook news continued…Thai politician Watana Muangsook is probably kicking himself in the butt after tarnishing his #digitalreputation. Watana took to Facebook to vent his true feelings about Prime Minister Prawit Wongsuwan posting that the Prime Minister is “sexist.” Watana continued saying,Prawit’s “IQ is a little too low.” Needless to say officials weren’t very happy and early Wednesday morning Muangsook was taken from his home for a much needed attitude adjustment. Sounds like Muangsook might want to read What Happens in Vegas Stays on YouTube. (Mashable)

Last but not least.. Germany’s cartel office is currently investigating Facebook for possibly abusing their market power by breaching data protection laws, and violating competition rules. The watchdog is examining Facebook’s terms and conditions to determine if they properly informed users about how their data would be obtained and used.

A German spokesman stated, “It is essential to also examine under the aspect of abuse of market power whether the consumers are sufficiently informed about the type and extent of data collected.” This is the first major probe of the social media site and Facebook does not seem too worried, declaring they’re feeling confident they comply! (Source Reuters)

Video of the Year.

Having a bad day? Not anymore. This heartwarming video of a 1-year old toddler shopping will melt your heart. P.S he may have found out the secret to winning people over with a wave, smile and hug. (Source Mashable)

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How To Use Social Media Effectively To Build Trust With Your Audience

In current era where social media has literally taken over the first mover’s advantage from conventional media, it has become even more essential for companies and institutions to connect with people using the digital social platform. The challenge lies in building the trust factor- while there are many social media platforms to be used, what matters is how well the audience is receptive to the communication being imparted.

Instead of random posts on randomly chosen platforms, an organized approach towards social media would help in creating faith in a company’s messages to its audience. Here are a few guidelines that would help in doing so: -

Appropriate timing: – With multiple platforms available for social media, it has become seriously important to choose your timing for a message with utmost care. Gone are the days when you could randomly post a message on any platform and hope for reactions to fly in. A company has to plan well in advance for a brand message, corporate social responsibility oriented campaign or a product launch about how and when to utilize which form of social media. At the same time, audience response oriented flexibility in rescheduling posts would still be important. Appropriate timing of relevant posts ensures better resonance of audience, leading to higher levels of faith in the message communicated.


Sensitivity: – While presenting any message to online audience, it is critical to keep in mind the sensitivity factor. Audiences are sensitive to content as well as language of the content. When a company understands its target audience’s sensitive hook points, they immediately build a rapport with the audience lending itself higher credibility.


Interactive mode: – Listen more to respond better- ensure the social media platforms are interactive. When people find their views and thoughts being addressed, they immediately form a reliable association with your brand. Your responses to their communication gain invaluable trust.


Respond, don’t react: – While being interactive, it would do really well to keep in mind that not all forms of communication from the audience would be praises on your venture/ brand. Measure your options well before you respond. A hasty reaction would cause more damage rather than build trust. Don’t be afraid to admit something can be improved. When people see their feedback’s and grievances being attended to honestly, they put their trust in you.


Community centric approach: - Instead of looking forward to build a rapport with every individual, move smartly towards interacting with communities. Take any social media platform in the current scenario- there is no dearth of different communities that are available. With community centric approach, you are approaching larger chunks of people at the same time. Additionally, it is also easier to analyse behavioural pattern of a community to gain their trust in favor of your brand.


Experiment fearlessly: - Do not be afraid to experiment with your content for social media. As much as conventional approach suggests certain limitations to be kept in mind, the new age of social media is bold. If the sensitivity of your audience is well adhered to, there is no reason why a message format or content of bold nature or a different kind should do any damage. Instead, it would gain you the reputation of being unique and people would swear by your brand for interesting thought provoking triggers. Experiments would earn you more followers than otherwise.


Merging brand image: – Plan immaculately to merge your brand image with people’s sentiments and new waves of thought. When your audience finds your brand supporting and favoring their thought process and emotions, an emotional attachment to your brand takes place, leading to complete trust in your brand and company.

In order to maximize your audience footfall and draw your audience to your website, you would also require complete web resources provider who understand your approach towards your audience via social media. Place your faith in someone who understands your philosophy well to optimize the results.

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FBI Admits Mistake in Apple Privacy Battle

Apple vs FBI Update

Yesterday, FBI Director James Comey admitted they made a mistake handling the San Bernardino shooter’s phone password reset. Quick refresher – hours after the shooting, the phone that sparked this privacy debate had the password changed. Comey said, “There was a mistake made in the first 24 hours, where the county, at the FBI’s request, made it hard to make the phone back up by [changing the password of] the iCloud account”. This comes after the FBI said that resetting the password was not a mistake…oops damage control time. Comey brought in the advice of ‘experts’ to say the iPhone still would not have been able to provide information. In other words the FBI could have accessed what they needed, without Apple’s help, if they had simply not changed the password when they recovered the iPhone. iFault. It’s this mistake that sparked the Apple debate and now Apple is saying we were right this whole time. (Source Re/code)

Another Day, Another Privacy Battle

Facebook is the next player in a privacy battle. Facebook Latin America Vice President, Diego Dzodan, was arrested yesterday in Brazil for disobeying a court order involving helping investigators with a drug case concerning a WhatsApp user. Federal police made a statement saying Facebook/WhatsApp repeatedly failed to comply with an organized crime and drug trafficking. Uh oh. WhatsApp said they were disappointed in the arrest and disagree with police, but Brazil is disappointed with WhatsApp and blocked the app for 2 days out of spite. (Source Fortune). Apparently Techie’s are a little easier to arrest than drug dealers. Fala sério.



What to Say When Your Friend Isn’t the Best Driver

I’ll drive. That might be what people start saying to Google’s self driving cars after a recent accident with a bus. The self driving car has been on the receiving end of accidents, until Monday when the car collided with a bus. The self driving car had to switch into the center lane to make a right turn around some sand bags and thought the approaching bus would let them through…but it didn’t. There were no injuries and Google is saying this is just a “normal part of driving”. (Source Engadget)

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The Right Hand Side Ads On Google Search Pages Are Going Away

Just when you thought you had full control over your SEO and you had understood Google’s changes to the algorithms, there is something new to give a jolt to your SEO strategy and professionals. Google will not be hosting any more ads on the right side of its search results. While this might look like a very small change to some, this is going to cause a lot of hustle in the SEO world because the effects of removing these ads will be seen in other areas of internet marketing and specifically search engine optimization.

Let’s say there were three hooks holding a total weight of 30kg with 10kg on each hook. One of the hooks is going away. What’s going to happen when you remove one hook and when you still have to manage the same weight? Of course, you will have to put the weight of the removed hook on the remaining two. That’s what’s going to happen with SEO now. With so many different places to fight for, marketers had the chance of appearing in one place if their efforts did not earn them a good place in other parts of the search results.

Now, businesses will have to compete with only the top spots on the search engine pages. Thus, this will give rise to tougher competition for the top spots. However, Google is said to balance this by allowing more ads to appear in the top slots than it allowed before. If you noticed only 2 or 3 ads in the past on top of the organically appearing ads, you might see 4 on top now. Furthermore, Google is now providing more space on the search pages by allowing more ads to appear at the bottom of its search pages.

However, the top slot that is now available for 4 ads to appear is not for every search. Google says that queries that are highly commercial in nature will be met with the presence of 4 ads appearing on top of the normal search results. By now the changes might have taken place completely and users might not see any more ads on the right side of their Google search results. The changes made by Google are not new to the SEO world though. Google had been working on this plan for nearly 6 years now since rumors had been around since 2010.

Companies that have been investing their time and money in listing for PLAs (product listing ads) should not be worried about this change because it is not going to affect the PLAs. These changes will be affecting businesses that had been paying to get their ads on the right through Google AdWords. However, this change is going to push national SEO to its limits. It just so happens that most of the searches that are purely commercial in nature include the name of countries, states or certain regions in them. This is a direct indication that businesses will have to make their national SEO aggressive.

A great way to check the new changes and how national SEO is going to be the area that most search engine optimization professionals will be working on is to search for “hotels in New York” on Google. The term “New York” refers not only to the city but the state as well. Any businesses that have been competing for national SEO will appear in these search results. At the same time you will be able to see the recent changes that Google has made to its search results and ads.

By searching the term “hotels in New York” you will notice 4 paid ads on top of the regular search results and 3 results at the bottom. This clearly shows that there is an additional ad on top and a couple of additional ads on the bottom. However, this should not be taken as the format of every search on Google. You can already see the term mentioned above is one of the most commercial terms you can search for on Google and that’s why you have ads appearing according to the new rules that Google has applied to its search results.

It has been said that Google did not notice a great increase in clicks on the ads that appeared on the right side of the page. Analyzing that this particular effort was not being very productive, Google got rid of the side ads altogether. In addition to that, Google is also making overall changes to its products and software offerings to make the experience smooth and uniform. You can look at the arrival of Material Design to understand how Google wants a uniform experience in the applications it offers from its Play Store by keeping actions for users consistent.

With this new change, the search results on desktop computers will appear just like they appear on mobile devices, most importantly smartphones. When it comes to commercial searches, it can be said accurately that businesses investing their efforts in organic SEO will face a little bit of disappointment. It is because with commercial searches the top 4 and bottom 3 paid ads will leave very small space for organic search results. If at first there used to be 9 organic search results on the page, there will be only 8 when a commercial term is searched on Google.

If you were ranking 9th on Google’s search results and you still appeared on the first page, you will now start appearing on the second page. This is going to be a big blow for all businesses that were already resting at the bottom of first search result page. It is quite surprising that currently even the PLAs have been shrunk in their horizontal size and they are appearing only on the left side of the search page. Lastly, the local search results are still appearing on the right side of the page and you could check that out by searching for a business near your location.

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6 Steps to Drive Online Revenue Social Media Quizzes

As a content marketer, your goals are to increase knowledge of your brand, create engagement, create conversions, and ultimately to make more money through increased sales. In order to accomplish this, you’ve probably become active on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. You may have even added a blog to your company’s website.

In addition to all of this, you’ve probably invested in a variety of tools to help you create, publish, and promote your content as well as measuring the effectiveness of your efforts. What you may not realize is that you have been overlooking something that can help you meet all of your goals while also giving your followers a bit of entertainment.

Here’s the interesting thing, you probably see this digital marketing powerhouse in use everyday on your newsfeed. As it turns out, the social media quizzes you see on Facebook can be used as a powerful marketing tool.

Skeptical? Keep reading, and we’ll go through all of the steps you need to take in order to create a social media quiz and use it to boost revenue.

1.    Choosing The Type of Quiz to Create  Your Title

Online quizzes can be sorted into two categories. The first is the personality quiz. People who take personality type quizzes are asked a variety of questions about their preferences, opinions, and experiences. The quiz then generates a result that identifies them as a particular type of personality. As a marketer, you could use a personality quiz to demonstrate to your customers that they have a specific personality type and then use that result to recommend a specific product or service that matches that.

The second type focuses on knowledge. With these quizzes, people answer questions to determine their level of factual knowledge about a particular topic. You can use these quizzes as a way to let customers know that they may be more in need of your products or services than they realized. For example, if you own a computer security company, you might create a quiz about the dangers of hacking and data theft. Then, you could use the results to encourage potential customers to contact you about your services.

When it comes to creating your title, it is important to remember that different types of titles have different impact. Let’s start with the word actually. Consider the following two titles:

‘How Much do You Know About Content Marketing’

‘How Much do You Actually Know About Content Marketing’

Do you notice how the second title is presented almost as a challenge? That’s a very effective way to get people to take the bait. Other options include version of ‘Which Celebrity Personality are You’ and ‘Which Character/Type of Person Are You’. Each of these get attention due to the popularity of the people being used as the basis of comparison e.g., Pokemon, Star Wars Character, tv mom, etc.

2.    Creating Engaging Questions

Your quiz type and title might be enough to get people to click the link to take your quiz. However, if your questions are boring, they’ll click back to whatever they were doing before they finish. Here are a few tips for creating questions that keep people engaged.

Every question should include an image. As always, images are extremely  useful in  helping you maintain attention and focus. In fact, some quiz generators allow you to use an image for each possible choice on multiple choice questions.
Write your questions in ways that reflect your brand. If your brand is all about solemn professionalism, don’t write goofy questions. However, it is okay to lighten up just a little bit.
Don’t expect anybody to spend more than five minutes taking your quiz.
Even though these quizzes are meant to be fun, pay attention to quality. Writing mistakes are embarrassing and distracting.

3.    Working on Your ‘Hook’

Your hook, also known as your lead capture, is the element that you insert after the user finishes the quiz and before the results are generated. The lead capture is where you ask the user for contact information. Placing your hook here gives people incentive to provide their contact information so they can get to the results. Here are a few guidelines to help ensure you get as many takers as possible:

Only ask users to provide a minimal amount of information – First name, last name, and email address at most
Provide an incentive for providing contact information, such as entry into a drawing for a giveaway or a discount coupon
Give them an out – If they just want to get their results without providing contact information let them through the gate.
Include a blurb that informs users you will be contacting them in the future

4.    Coming Up With Results That Earn Shares

When it comes to the results that you generate, you want to do two things. First, you want to generate results that people will want to share with others. You can do this by including a flattering image with the results. Users will associate them image with themselves when they see their results. If it isn’t flattering or aesthetically pleasing they aren’t going to share it. In addition to this, you should always include a sincere compliment in the results, even if the user did not fare very well. For example, “You Know Absolutely Nothing About Computer Security!” is a bit harsh, while “As a busy professional, you probably haven’t had the time to keep up with the latest in security technology”. Remember, when failure happens, you still want people to feel good after taking your quiz. Finally, follow up with a call to action that uses the results as a catalyst.

5.    Getting Your Quiz Out There

You have many options when it comes to getting your quiz out to the public. You can share your quiz on Facebook and Twitter. You can also distribute your quiz via email newsletters, place it on your website, or use it as the centerpiece of a blog post. If you don’t mind spending a little money, you can also use paid advertising as an option. Whatever you decide, you can use good content writing to make your promotional efforts compelling.

6.    Following up to Keep Customers Engaged

After the quiz is over, don’t forget about your audience. Be sure to thank them for participating. Then, follow up with them. Give them a breakdown of test results that others have received, and then remind them of how your products and services tie into their results.

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Snapchat Employees Hacked

Snapchat has been hacked…

*Crickets chirping…* It got a bit weird for Snapchat employees this month after they were compromised by a cyber attack impersonating Evan Spiegel. Spiegel is the Chief Snapchatter. In a blog post explaining the incident Snapchat wrote, “Last Friday, Snapchat’s payroll department was targeted by an isolated email phishing scam in which a scammer impersonated our Chief Executive Officer and asked for employee payroll information.”

Sadly enough the email was not recognized as a scam and employee salaries, banking info and other personal information was compromised. According to Snapchat, no user information was breached and they’re offering two years of identity protection and monitoring to affected employees for free. We’ve heard a lot about corporate hacking lately and this just adds to the list. (TechCrunch)

What to request from your personal assistant…

I’ll take breakfast in bed from Tiffany’s please. Move over Siri we’ve got a new kid in town and he’s smarter than you. Hound is a voice search and assistant software technology that can understand complex questions and provide solutions faster than any other voice technology. Hound is so fast it can translate sentences into other languages, and it remembers questions meaning you can narrow down your search results by asking follow-up questions.

CEO Keyvan Mohajer is keeping the secret to Hound’s rapid processing under wraps. However, he did state that the company has found an easy way to develop new “domains” simply meaning they’ve partnered with a third party API for a specific skillset. The Santa Clara based technology has been in beta since last summer and is taking over the app-store. Users should also jump up and down because the startup is partnering with Yelp and Uber so you can verbally request rides to that new bistro you’ve been dying to try. Speechless? Watch this video of Hound in action and you will be. (Source The Verge)

Apple Wins Over FBI

In case you missed it, New York federal magistrate-judge sided with Apple over the FBI in methamphetamine dealer Jun Feng’s case. The high profiled case is not directly related to San Bernadino however it’ll definitely factor into the case equation. (Source CNN)

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3 Technologies Changing Sports In 2016

Advancements in technology are radically shifting the sports entertainment landscape. These technologies have affected both the sporting events and the fan experience, whether watching an event in person or at home.

1) Goal-line Technology

After years of debating between fans, officials, football clubs and more, the Football Association finally decided to implement goal-line technology in the Premier League. It works in a similar way to how Hawk-Eye technology can tell whether a ball is in or out in tennis. Tennis arguable has the best replay experience across all sport.

At the moment the FA is only using goal-line technology to detect whether the ball has fully crossed the goal-line to register as a legal goal. Many believe in the future it will be expanded to cover the ball going out for corners, throw-ins and more. This is similar to how a video referee and replays are currently being used in live rugby matches. This is a big first step for the Premier League.  FIFA used goal-line technology during the 2014 World Cup and according to regulations it may be used in 2018 as well.

2) Wi-Fi Connectivity and Smartphones

Social media and the use of smartphones both at sporting events and when watching on TV at home, the pub or elsewhere have provided an extra dimension to the sporting experience. Various teams and clubs have embraced the importance of Wi-Fi connectivity for fans; a good example is the Brooklyn Nets’ Barclays Center.

This is one of the most connected stadiums in the world. About a third of fans access the stadium’s Wi-Fi every game night. In response, the Nets developed an app that shows instant replays from various angles on an individual’s smartphone. Fans can also easily order food and drink from their seats or even upgrade their seats where possible.

3) Wearable Technology

Wearable technology adoption rates are increasing and these devices are being utilized in many sports. Smartwatches are useful for referees, not just for telling the time, but for communicating with other officials. In the 2014 World Cup, officials wore smartwatches that vibrated and displayed “GOAL” once a goal was made. The system developed by a company called GoalControl has cameras set up around the field and signals when a goal is made.

Athletes and sports teams are also utilizing wearable technologies to monitor individuals’ performance and progress. The data from sports brands and other technologies can be transferred and analyzed by experts to identify areas to improve.  With apps like ESPN, MLB at Bat, TheScore, NBA Game Time and Golfshot, spectators can watch replays and view statistics more easily rather than having to constantly dig into their pockets for their phones.

What technologies have you seen being used in sports?

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