Erik Qualman's Blog, page 554
March 26, 2015
Social Media Keeping Residents in the Know with Weather Alerts
Weather is a hot topic of conversation, especially with the freezing winters much of the country recently experienced.
Between blizzards and bitterly cold temperatures, plus other natural weather disasters, it’s important to stay up-to-date with what’s happening in your own town and throughout the country.
Social media can help you stay connected and in-the-know for all the latest weather happenings.
Cities with the worst weather
From time to time, bad weather affects nearly every city. Even states that don’t experience extreme cold, such as California and Arizona, have their fair share of uncomfortable weather.
California, for example, has earthquakes and Arizona faces extreme heat during the summer months. While no cities will ever be “perfect,” there are some that have worse weather than others.
Oklahoma City gets hit the most by tornadoes, Tampa and St. Petersburg, Florida are most likely to get hit by hurricanes and Worcester, Massachusetts typically accumulates the most snow.
If you live in a city with severe weather, you have to stay as up-to-date on weather information as possible. Social media is typically one of the fastest ways to stay current on what’s going on.
Using Social Media for Weather
Did you know that you can stay up-to-date with the latest weather news and information on social media?
That’s right, you can follow your favorite weather channels and news stations for live weather information as it’s happening. There’s no faster or easier way to stay informed than with social media.
The National Weather Service (weather.org) is using social media to educate the public to share critical information on weather, water and climate issues. You can connect with them on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
Annoying ‘beeps’ on the television screen are hopefully becoming a thing of the past.
Weather.com uses alerts on social media to pre-warn people of any weather conditions in their area. They are even taking it one step further by showing weather alerts that may affect your family or friends on Facebook. You can then share the alert to their individual page.
As the following article looks at, whether you’re looking for the next blizzard warning or how to deal with flooded basements, social media has you covered.
Popular sites to use for weather updates include:
Facebook – Facebook is currently the largest social media website, with one billion users worldwide. If something severe is happening related to the weather in your home town, logging on to Facebook is a great way to get filled in on the news. Not only can you see weather reports from news sites, but you can also see how your local friends and family members are dealing with the situation. Knowing that your family and friends are safe provides a level of comfort only social media can offer.
Twitter – Perhaps the next best way to get local weather updates is with Twitter. News stations, weather channels and local individuals can Tweet weather updates live and as they are happening. Stay current with that local rain storm and follow the hurricane until it departs back into the ocean. Twitter is known for providing live updates, so don’t leave out this platform when trying to stay current with the weather.
Social media is one of the world’s largest tools for staying connected – whether that’s to friends and family members, the job market or even to the weather.
Photo credit: Image courtesy of foto76 at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
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What You Need To Know About Upcoming Facebook Changes
CNN Money – The social media company announced several new products and features that will launch on its platform soon — all are designed to make it easier for you to communicate with people and businesses.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other executives debuted the slew of platform enhancements during F8, the company’s developer conference, on Wednesday.
Here’s what’s coming:
1. Spherical videos on your News Feed and Oculus VR headset (if you have one). Facebook will soon support videos shot with 360-degree camera technology (the same way Google Maps’ Street View photos are captured). These videos allow you to change the perspective you see by clicking and dragging on the screen.
Google-owned YouTube recently announced support for this format as well. As video content becomes the ubiquitous format for sharing, expect these two companies to launch even more features at a rapid pace.
2. Track your online purchases and communicate with businesses within Messenger.Facebook’s standalone messaging app will soon be integrated into e-commerce sites. In the future, when you make a purchase online, you can choose to connect your Facebook account so that companies can send you notifications about what you bought directly in the Messenger app.
If you hate getting multiple emails that confirm your order, tell you when your order has been shipped, and if your returns have been received, you might be happy with this update.
Image from Facebook
3. Reply to messages using other apps. You can now open third party apps like animated GIF-creator Giphy within the Messenger app to send a message. Previously, you’d have to close the app, open Giphy, create a GIF, and then copy it into a message.
“We truly feel that, together, we have a shot at reinventing how a billion people communicate every day,” said David Marcus, head of the Messenger team at Facebook. He also added his love for GIFs. “They make the world a little better.”
Messenger also now allows compatible third-parties to prompt people to download their apps directly through the Messenger platform.
4. Videos you post on Facebook can be embedded elsewhere online. Previously, if you uploaded a video to Facebook, you could only share the video by linking to it. This is another attempt to make it more attractive for people to upload their videos on Facebook instead of YouTube.
5. If you comment on a story somewhere else online, it will show up on Facebook too. Next time you want to say something about an article you read, remember that it will soon show up automatically under the story posted to Facebook. This change is intended to make it easier for media companies to gain more engagement with their content.
Facebook connect partners BuzzFeed, EliteDaily, The Huffington Post, and Fox Sports are among the first media companies to test this update.
6. Get ready to control more devices with your Facebook account. The company announced new ways for its developers to build programs that can control everything from your garage door to your self-watering plant. It’s Facebook’s way of getting into the world of IoT, or the Internet of Things.
“We want to be there with you when you start experimenting with these things,” Parse CEO and co-founder Ilya Sukhar told the audience.
It’s not clear yet how Facebook will integrate with IoT devices.
7. Developers will get analytics for their apps. The free dashboard will let developers see who is interacting with their apps and where they’re coming from — across all devices.
Image from Facebook
Article by Hope King from CNN Money
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Selling on Social Media and Why You’re Doing it Wrong
Every week it seems like my shares and likes go down because of some ridiculous Facebook algorithm change. All the social media experts in the world speculate and predict why these changes are made and what it means for businesses who use this platform for making sales.
Sure, other social media sites like Twitter and Instagram are not as notorious for drastic modifications like Facebook is, but whether you sell on social media for your hot new fashion blog or you are trying to manage a blossoming new Etsy business, some sellers do social media right while others miss the target by miles. Let’s see if you’re doing anything wrong.
What You’re Doing Wrong
Asking your customer for shares or likes. This is a surefire way to get Facebook to stop sharing your posts widely, and you just look like a beggar.
An update is nice, but posting an update on your newest product everyday becomes a little overwhelming.
Don’t repeat or post similar posts.
Many companies don’t ever reach out to the customers who are writing comments on their Facebook page. Facebook is the ultimate support medium, so respond to all inquires.
Tips
Post your products being used by people or solving problems as opposed to standalone product images.
Forget about lengthy posts.
Talk to your customers like they are old friends. Salesy posts sound horrible.
Try your hardest to always link back to your own ecommerce or service website to drive traffic.
What You’re Doing Wrong
Selling hard for every single post.
Just using your Twitter page as a feed for your blog posts. This gets obvious and boring.
Running overboard on the length of your posts. Information is fine, but you need to leave room for people to respond to your tweets or retweet them.
Favoriting or retweeting your own posts. There’s no reason for this.
Trying to follow every single person in your industry. Many people see this as a slimy way to drum up followers.
Tips
Focus on your passion and stick to this culture without straying away.
Determine a strategy far before you start tweeting.
Learn how to use Twitter with the hashtags, mentions, messages and retweets. Are you aware of all the differences?
Don’t just save all the wonderful pictures for Instagram and Facebook.
Research hashtags for your industry or market and log them in a spreadsheet so you are always cross tagging your tweets to reach larger markets.
Separate the people you follow into lists so that you can pick out the more valuable tweets that are worth sharing with your own followers.
Use images in your tweets to make the experience more visual. Most people think that Twitter is just filled with text, but you can really grab attention with images.
What You’re Doing Wrong
Using image formats that aren’t square.
Posting images that don’t fit your company culture or previous Instagram themes.
Taking photos wherever you want. (Aka taking photos indoors or when it is dark outside)
Not color treating each one of your photos, regardless of how awesome you think is looks.
Not choosing a color palette, or knowing your color palette and straying away from it.
Putting together tacky looking collage photos.
Sharing similar photos with very few changes.
Tips
Keep all images in a square format, because it makes it easier for people to scroll through the gallery. If you randomly upload a long rectangle it leaves a significant amount of whitespace.
If you have a clothing store and you post photos that are generally more fun-loving and cute, don’t occasionally post models in risque poses. Stick to your cultural image.
Always take photos with light. Try to get outside on a fairly bright day.
Color treat all of your photos, and choose a color palette such as white or blue. Your color palette should look consistent throughout all photos.
Stay away from collages because they hurt the quality of the best images and make it tough to see the detail in any of the photos.
What You’re Doing Wrong
Pinning anything you find interesting on Pinterest. The only time this is acceptable is if you run two businesses and have a separate account for each one. There is no excuse to overlap your personal recipe pins with your t-shirt business pins.
Using Pinterest for direct marketing. A single product image is not only against the Pinterest terms of service, but it looks terrible. Create pins of your blog posts that feature ten cool items, them throw one of your items in there. You’re also better off sharing your product being used by a customer as opposed to just your item in front of a white screen.
Marketing primarily for men or young people. Although this is changing somewhat, the current user base on Pinterest consists heavily of women. It’s not teenagers either.
Only pinning your own content, so that it looks like you only care about yourself. It’s best to create a community so that others see that you are interested in generating conversation.
Tips
Tap into customer emotions with stunning photos of people interacting with the world.
Add a hover Pin It button to the images on your website. This works as a nice integration between your Pinterest and website, and you can quickly push more people to your website.
Use the boards function to separate the various categories that relate to your business. One single board is boring and complicated to navigate.
Follow other businesses that relate to yours. This provides tons of awesome content for you to work out a different angle with.
Talk with all commenters as if they were your friends.
Spy on your competitors to check out what is working for them. Maybe you can find some solid ideas and tweak them to work for your own business.
Drop a line in the comments section if you have any suggestions for other people who are attempting to reinvigorate their social media strategies with some brand new tips.
image sources: Rosaura Ochoa, jason a howie, mkhmarketing, sean macentee, Shutterstock
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Amazon Announces Two Unlimited Storage Plans Competing With Dropbox, Google and Microsoft
Business Insider – Amazon just announced two new unlimited storage plans to encourage users to store all their photos and files in its cloud.
The first plan — just for photos — costs $11.99 per year and the second “everything” plan costs $59.99 per year. Amazon’s offering free three-month trials for both.
Amazon isn’t the first cloud storage company to offer an unlimited plan, but it is the only one making its unlimited plan accessible to anyone.
Dropbox, Microsoft, and Google, for example, only offer their unlimited plans for enterprise users.
For a non-business user, Dropbox sells 1 TB of space for $99 a year, Microsoft sells 1 TB of space and an Office 365 subscription for ~$84 a year, and Google offers 1 TB for $99.99 per year. Amazon’s Unlimited Everything plan, at $59.99, is the cheapest option for the most space.
With these dirt-cheap prices and the promise that you’ll never have to worry about upgrading your plan, Amazon hopes to win over customers who haven’t picked a cloud storage service yet. Amazon Web Services, the company’s cloud computing business that powers the web presences of big players like Netflix, has led the industry for years, but this move is a significant push to use its infrastructure for consumer-facing products.
Image from Business Insider via Amazon
Previously, Amazon was offering unlimited photo storage to anyone who had Amazon Prime or a Kindle Fire device. Those people will still get the service for free, but will have the option to upgrade to the “everything” plan.
Here’s some more information about each plan from Amazon’s press release:
Unlimited Photos Plan (free 3-month trial, then $11.99 per year—equivalent of less than $1 per month): Store an infinite number of photos in Cloud Drive without worrying about taking up space on phones, cameras, or other devices. Customers can upload existing collections and store all future photos taken. This plan also includes 5 GB of additional storage for videos or other documents and files.
Unlimited Everything Plan (free 3-month trial, then $59.99 per year—equivalent of less than $5 per month): Store an infinite number of new and existing photos, videos, files, documents, movies, and music in Cloud Drive.
Article by Jillian D’Onfro from Business Insider
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Custom Asp.net Application Development for Great Web and Mobile Apps
ASP.NET is a powerful web application development platform and these days most custom ASP.NET application development companies target mainly mobile devices when building websites as it allows leveraging most of the features in the mobile apps also.
Development in .Net is still challenging for most of the developers all around the world. Mobile application development does not differ substantially from the web development. ASP.NET provides System.Web.Mobile namespace to create mobile applications. The only complexity that comes during the mobile development is in terms of device detection and screen size.
The enterprise users rely on the browser, tablet and there will be a considerable increase in the use of mobile devices in the coming future.
Types of apps
Mobile apps have changed the focus of users from the web to the apps on the mobile devices. There are different types of apps: Native apps, Web or HTML5 apps and Hybrid apps.
Native Apps
Native apps are specific to a mobile platform like Android or iOS. The apps are created using the development tools like Xcode and Eclipse for iOS and Android apps respectively.
The native apps provide
Better usability
Features like double taps, UI gestures
Best overall mobile experience
Ease of use
Built-in components
Fast graphics API
The apps are developed using IDE (Integrated Development Environment) that provide various tools for developing, debugging and version control of the code. In order to create native apps, the developers need more experience and it is challenging for them as it is not a copy-paste approach that is possible in languages like Objective-C.
The benefits of native apps include faster performance and consistent look & feel.
Web Apps or HTML Apps
Web apps or HTML5 apps use different technologies to create web apps. HTML5 is being used to create responsive apps. The use of HTML5, CSS and JS follows the approach of writing the code once and using it anywhere. This approach is best for creating cross-platform mobile apps. There is no doubt in the performance of the apps created using this approach, but there are some vital limitations like the security of offline stored data and access to the native functionality of the device.
HTML5 app is basically a web page that runs on a mobile screen. The apps can be opened using any modern browser. The developer is comfortable making web apps as compared to native or hybrid apps.
Hybrid Apps
Hybrid apps are basically developed with the best or worst features of both the native and the web apps. It is a web app that is built using HTML5 and then it is wrapped in a native container that provides direct access to the native platform of the mobile device.
Most of the developers are taking experience in these apps by optimizing JavaScript and using CSS for beautiful layouts that works on any mobile platform. There is no need to compromise on the amazing features for the mobile app.
The hybrid app can be implemented using two ways. The first method is to keep the code inside the mobile binary similar to a native application code. REST APIs are used in this case and the other method implements complete web app from the server.
Why need a mobile engagement platform?
A custom ASP.NET application development company must offer great apps that run cross-platform and connect a set of backend data. The developers must use mobile-optimized APIs and real time mobile analytics to improve user engagement.
An engagement platform is necessary because:
The mobile engagement demands an innovative set of capabilities
The engagement platform improves new design principles
Provides best-of-breed options
Open APIs and ease of integration
Data protection
Challenges of custom application development
Despite the emerging enterprise mobility, there are some significant challenges that are being faced by a number of organizations.
Resource restraint
The corporations usually have the in-house programming talent, but most of the talent is on Windows, not on the mobile platforms like Android and iOS.
Organizational challenge
The link between IT corporations and the LOB is very weak and it becomes difficult to even organize meetings in both the groups.
Client challenge
The biggest challenge in custom application development has been the ever evolving business and technology requirements.
Lack of metrics
Many companies are yet to make standards for measuring the success of mobile apps.
Applications across multiple platforms
Line-of-business applications will be available on mobile platforms in the near future. Fragmentation is the biggest challenge in such applications. Mobile application development also has its own set of challenges.
PhoneGap is one of the latest platforms to create mobile applications that work with JavaScript, HTML and CSS.
Visual Studio is an amazing collection of tools along with services that are used to develop applications for different platforms like desktop, web, cloud and mobile. It provides the best development environment that is required to build applications for these platforms.
Windows desktop applications
Powerful desktop applications can be created using .Net managed code. WPF desktop applications are the most popular ones and can be created using Visual Studio IDE. The .Net framework provides the full windows capabilities to create various desktop technologies.
Windows phone
Windows phone apps can be created using Visual Studio and languages like C++, XAML, etc. Games can also be developed using the IDE. Portable class libraries are available that allows to build cross platform apps.
Websites
ASP.NET is the most powerful framework to create web applications and services. Dynamic web apps can be created using ASP.NET MVC. RESTful web services are available to create web APIs. The powerful design of ASP.NET framework allows the rapid development of the websites using an event-driven model.
SharePoint development
SharePoint apps can be created by using ASP.NET as the backend technology. The apps can then be hosted in Windows Azure or in the datacenter.
The SharePoint apps can be published in the corporate app catalog and distributed at the Office store.
Windows Azure
Windows Azure services can be created, debugged and managed in the Visual Studio itself. Web applications can also be developed that shows the broad range of Windows Azure hosting.
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March 25, 2015
How Many Fans Have I Lost Because of Facebook Likes Update?
As we reported in this blog a few days ago, Facebook will no longer factor in Likes from users who have voluntarily deactivated their accounts or users who have passed away, so it’s possible that Page admins had seen a small dip in their number of Page likes between 9th and 12thMarch as a result of this update. The question, therefore, is how many fans have been lost due to unlike and how many have disappeared with the Facebook update.
Although this update has positive side effects, such as more accurate data on your audience and a slight increase of the organic reach and engagement (because a Facebook page can never show their updates to inactive and deactivated profiles); it’s possible that you want to solve that question. So here’s the answer:
First, you can see the Average of Fans Lost according to the total Fan Page Likes in this table:
These average percentages has been published by Cool Tabs. This platform has used its own free service Page Performance to analyze all the fan pages managed with Cool Tabs to get the loss averages.
Second, you can know your own loss using Page Performance. If you try it, you will see how many “Likes” have been removed from the total looking at the first two charts between 9th and 12thMarch. If you realize that there’s a drop on the “Total Likes” chart that is not reflected in the “History of Your Fans” chart next to it, those are the “Likes” that have been removed from your company’s page due to the update. This is because Page Performance does not show removed fans as fans lost, only unlikes are fans lost.
I hope that your loss is not too large and your page is offset by new active fans!
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Tips for Using Social Media Marketing For A “Non-Sexy” Business
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Social media interaction and promotion is a great way to get people excited about your company and your brand. This form of marketing can especially be helpful if you have a “boring brand”, although that may seem counter-intuitive. Social isn’t just for businesses or brands that have sexy products or trending services. Here are some tips for using social media marketing for companies who may feel discouraged by this tactic because their company isn’t “sexy” enough.
Give Your Followers Useful Information
If you don’t feel like your product or service will naturally draw a lot of interest or followers, considering trying a more educational approach as opposed to a promotional approach. According to Fast Company, there are six common ratios floating out there to help you find a balance of promotional and non-promotional content that works for you. Regardless of how aggressive you want to be in your social interactions or how much manpower you have to allocate to social, one of these strategies should fit your business’s idea of successful social contribution. And by sharing other people’s content in conjunction with your own, you will begin to appear as a thought leader in your industry, creating a sense of trust with your customers.
Humanize Your Brand
One of the reasons why people love social media so much is because it can give you fantastic information about very intimate parts of people and businesses, without having to divulge too much about yourself in return. That’s how so many YouTube stars got their millions of followers—by being open, honest, and showing their human side. And a business can do this too. Even if you don’t think your products or services are interesting, the people who work with them probably are or your company culture may be. Broaden your mind when deciphering what is social-worthy and what isn’t by focusing on the human aspects. Moz.com shares 4 ways companies can humanize their brands, especially if you are in a “boring” niche. If you’re struggling to find ways to accomplish this goal on your own, check out some of their tips.
Ask For Expert Advice
If you still aren’t seeing the results you want after trying the two tips above, consider getting some help on this front. You may need to find someone who has experience in social media to give you more detailed pointers about what could work specifically for your company, your brand, and your industry. Another option you may look in to is someone from your industry to help you find a way to break in further with your target market. If your business has to do with biology, find someone with a degree in biology and ask them what they would be interested in seeing on social media from a business in the field. Getting some first-hand insight into your audience could be just what you need to find a way to penetrate your market better.
Having a good social media following can be a great asset for your business—one that you shouldn’t shy away from, even if you don’t think you have anything worth sharing. You may be surprised just how many different types of people with different interests use various social media platforms, and they’re just waiting for you to cater your content and posts to them.
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Expand Your Reach with Visual Social Media Marketing
Using social media as a marketing technique enables you to build a following; that is a proven fact and a fact that no one disputes. However, using visuals within your social media marketing campaign increases your odds of success by a hundredfold, if not more! Why? In order to answer that you first need to understand how pictures impact an ad campaign. Then, once you’ve understood why images are so important, you can learn how to employ graphics to enhance visual social media marketing.
Life is Traveling at the Speed of Light
In today’s world, everything progresses at the speed of light – literally as well as figuratively. All the information we need is at our fingertips with the click of a mouse button. Few people take the time to read anything unless something immediately strikes their fancy. Here is where visuals come into play in social media marketing. A captivating image will get more clicks than content that no-one has the time to read!
Every Picture Tells a Story
In the words of a song by the famed British rocker, Rod Stewart, every picture tells a story. Just one image can speak volumes if the right image is used. For example, think about all the words it would take to describe the Duchess of Cambridge’s wedding gown. If you were a fashion designer trying to sell that ‘Kate Middleton look’ it would be so much easier to put one simple, but lovely picture of that gown on your social media pages. The object of social media is to build a following to promote your brand. Is anyone really going to understand the beauty of your wedding dresses with mere words? It’s highly doubtful!
“But I’m Not into Graphic Design”
This is perhaps the number one objection amongst online merchants and bloggers trying to set up their own websites. With no background in graphic design they are afraid to dabble with visuals. Unless they can find a freely available standard image, they refuse to add depth to their social media marketing. The good news is that there are a number of programs that are user-friendly and can walk you through the steps of creating amazing graphics from stills through to animated product demos. Web-based utilities like Visme have multi-tool functionality that is easy to use so that even a novice can create amazing visuals in just moments.
Failure Is Not an Option
Over the years so many people have tried (and failed!) to use standard computer software to dabble with graphics. The cost is through the roof and without a background in graphic design, it can be an exercise in futility. Having recognised the importance of visual social media marketing, it’s time to get on the bandwagon. Whether you are an entrepreneur setting up that very first website or a web development start-up, it’s time to expand reach with visual social media marketing. There’s no reason not to with user-friendly web-based utilities available.
Say it all with a single image and then, when they’ve clicked through, tell them your story in words. That’s what social media visuals can do. Entice them with an image, get them to your site, then talk them into staying.
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March 24, 2015
Instagram Introduces Collage App
Wired – Instagram’s last standalone app, Hyperlapse, made it possible to take striking steadicam-style videos on your smartphone. It was an awesome creative tool and an impressive technical achievement. So it would be understandable to be a little bit, well, underwhelmed to hear that the latest creation to emerge from the Instagram laboratory is… an app for making photo collages. Thankfully, it’s cooler than it sounds.
Layout, available today for the iPhone, lets you painlessly arrange smartphone shots in all sorts of configurations. It’s far from the first app to do this, but a handful of thoughtful details make it especially easy to use. Beyond those, it has some novel features, like the ability to flip images within compositions to create surreal mirrored shots, that make it an interesting creative tool in its own right.
Image from Instagram
Why build a collage app in the first place? For one thing, they’re popular. According to Instagram, one in five users already stitch photos together with some application of the sort. There’s something satisfying about packing small things snugly into boxes, something any fan of the Container Store knows well.
As Instagram’s designers saw it, though, existing collage apps left room for improvement. For example, upon launching these apps typically give you a slew of grids to choose from. Layout displays your pictures right away instead. This decision was based on a simple insight: People want to pick photos and experiment with different ways to combine them, rather than being forced to pick a grid and and then shoehorn pictures into it. The app further facilitates quick experimentation with a split-screen design, which lets you you swap photos, resize them, and adjust your composition without jumping through a bunch of different menus.
The app doesn’t let you put borders around individual photos within a composition—a choice made in the name of a cleaner-looking final product. As one of the app’s designers explained, they wanted to avoid the “scrapbook-y” look that some kitschier collage apps embrace. You can post your compositions to Instagram or Facebook, or just save them to your camera roll; you don’t need an Instagram account to use the app.
Layout’s workflow is nice and speedy, but more interesting are the new types of collages it encourages users to explore. The coolest is the mirrored shot. By placing two copies of the same image in the frame and flipping one of them, you can create seamless psychedelic portraits, dreamlike landscapes, and all manner of other kaleidoscopic compositions.
The app’s other neat feature is called photo booth. It takes four pictures in rapid succession and automatically stitches them together. The result is a different type of collage than we’re used to seeing, one that’s more about condensing time than simply reorganizing space. It hints at a story within a single frame.
The photo booth feature is also noteworthy in that it asks users to think of Layout as a place you go to create new images, not just an app you use to process ones you’ve already taken. The mirror effect, too, will likely produce its best results when shots are planned ahead of time. It amounts to something a little more ambitious than a typical photo collage app. While its main utility may be packing pictures into tidy little boxes, Layout also brings a few new prompts for thinking about mobile photography, and that’s never a bad thing.
Article by Kyle Vanhemert for Wired
Thumbnail from Shutterstock
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Social Media’s Role in Expanding Cultures
Social media has quickly become a digital melting pot by bringing cultures from all across the world together.
This is a major benefit for society as well as businesses trying to learn about their target markets.
With customer connectivity in mind, here are just a few ways social media is helping businesses like yours expand their worldwide cultural outreach:
Social Media: The Universal Language
When it comes to making a connection to your consumers, social media gives you a direct line of communication. Such is the case when trying to expand your business’s marketing campaigns to other cultures.
More than 500 million people across the world use social sites like Twitter and Facebook every day to share everything from their likes to their opinions on trending topics.
This gives your business marketing insight into hundreds of different cultures, thus making social media a universal language.
Speaking of universal languages, many social sites like Facebook and Twitter feature translation tools that can automatically translate your business’s posts into another language.
Likewise, you can also translate posts that are in other languages in order to quickly learn social and cultural cues.
Finding a Cultural Identity
Just like your business has a brand, different cultures have their own identities. Discovering these identities early on in the marketing process can help your business better promote its goods and services on a worldwide level.
By going the social media route with your marketing endeavors, your business can also expand its cultural outreach.
Although your brand might relate to numerous cultures, social media allows you to hone your branding to specific cultures.
By following other cultural brands, you can see how they relate to their audiences and create your own business identity within the culture.
Adapting to Etiquette
Etiquette is a huge part of expanding your business’s marketing campaigns to other cultures.
Why? Because something that’s appropriate in your culture might not be appropriate in other cultures.
The article “How Etiquette is the New Bling for Wealthy Elites in Emerging Markets“, describes the importance of etiquette awareness for consumers from one culture to the next. Well, cultural awareness is just as important for your business.
Social media can help your business stay ahead of the cultural etiquette curve.
By studying posts, business pages, and comments from other cultures, your business can gain a better understanding of cultural etiquette. This type of knowledge is a crucial step when expanding your business’s marketing to other cultures.
Cultural Outreach Tips
When using social media to expand your business’s marketing efforts; there are some important pointers to remember.
Missing the mark in terms of marketing to specific cultures is not only a waste of time; it can also end up offending the customs of certain audiences.
Before branching out with your multi-nationality marketing campaigns, make sure you use proper cultural language throughout your content. A common phrase or metaphor may come off as abstract in another culture. This may include your brand’s slogan.
Likewise, if you’re unsure of how a phrase will translate to another culture, either ask a native speaker or don’t include the phrase to begin with. Keeping your campaigns clear and simple is the best approach when expanding your content to other cultures.
If you’re ready to take your business from stateside to worldwide, then let social media help bridge the gap.
Photo Credit: Image courtesy of Shutterstock
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