Adidas Wilson's Blog, page 187
March 6, 2017
My Podcast is Available on Itunes, Google Play, and Soundcloud
My podcast consists of music and snippets of my audiobooks. I definitely plan on getting the entire video and audio setup this year. If you would like to check my podcast out on any platform just search for Adidas Wilson. My new book 33 Strategies of KamaSutra will have a snippet of my audiobook. All of my audiobooks will be under my name on Amazon. Thank you to all who have followed and visited my blog. Remember, never give up on your dreams. #Motivation
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Instagram Rolls Out Stories Ads to All Businesses
Instagram has been testing full screen ads in Stories, one of its most popular extensions, for a couple of months. Now it’s here and all businesses have the ability to advertise in Stories.
As the official release states, “By optimizing for reach, you can show your ads to the maximum number of people in your audience and control how often they see your ads.”
Once you’re creating ads in Facebook’s Ads Manager or Power Editor, select “Reach” as your objective and “Instagram,” and then “Stories” as the placement. Use a photo or a video that is no longer than 15 seconds to pop up between organic Stories. You will be able to get the same insights and statistics as with any other Facebook or Instagram campaign.
So what’s the big buzz about? Why should businesses present on the platform give this new advertising placement a try?
Reach
More than 150 million Instagrammers watch and create Stories daily. This number will only grow considering that the addition to Instagram’s arsenal is relatively new.
Plus, the talk of the town is a rendition of 24-hour ephemeral content now available on most major networks. This is not a passing trend. Stories (on any platform) are here to stay.
Immersive experience
Stories ads will be full screen, meaning nothing can distract viewers from your sponsored content. Besides, users watch Stories to find out something new, exclusive, or intimate. They are in the mood to receive new information — they are seeking it out. If done correctly, your ads (looking as native as possible0 will be viewed by a “warmed-up” audience.
Moreover, because Stories are short snippets, Instagrammers know that they have 10-15 seconds to spend on this content before it changes to the next thing. They are really, truly paying attention to what they are watching. Ten seconds of undivided attention on your product taking up the whole screen without being spammy — now that’s an amazing offer.
Engagement
Because you get their full attention, people are much more likely to engage with your ad. Airbnb, which was part of the original 30 global companies testing Stories ads, “saw a double digit point increase in ad recall.” People were more likely to select Airbnb for their travel needs afterwards. Overall, it seems like the company was very happy with their investment, which has “made a measurable impact.”
Eric Toda, global head of social marketing and content at Airbnb, summarizes it best: “reach the right audience, in the right mindset, with the right story at scale has allowed us to achieve the results we were hoping for.”
It is interesting to note that, historicall, new features on social platforms stay off-the-limits for advertisers for relatively long periods of time. It took Facebook three years to start monetizing Instagram. Here, on the other hand, we can clearly see that Instagram can’t wait to monetize its young Snapchat copycat and strike while the iron is hot. The company is not afraid to drive some users away with advertising, which shows how confident they are in the proposition.
With this level of conviction, the only thing advertisers can do is to start shooting video in vertical format and taking advantage of the new Instagram advertising placement.
Source:
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/290035
‘Get Out’ Director Jordan Peele Developing More “Social Thrillers”
Comedian Jordan Peele make his debut on the horror scene with Get Out, a Blumhouse-produced thriller that uses the genre to tackle pressing race issues that are particularly topical at this present moment. Peele’s fresh vision has been hailed as a masterpiece by most who have seen it, including our own Fred Topel, who wrote in his review that “Get Out gets in right.”
Furthermore, the film currently has a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes!
What’s next from Peele? Speaking with Arrow in the Head, he just expressed a desire to make more thrillers. In fact, he’s developing some more in the vein of Get Out.
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I’ve been developing several different movies in the category I call ‘the social thriller.’ They all bite off of a different human demon. Get Out is about several things but obviously it’s about race… the next one will be about something else.
Peele also noted that he’s open to at some point making a sequel to Get Out.
In Get Out…
Now that Chris (Daniel Kaluuya, Sicario) and his girlfriend, Rose (Allison Williams, Girls), have reached the meet-the-parents milestone of dating, she invites him for a weekend getaway upstate with Missy (Catherine Keener, Captain Phillips) and Dean (Bradley Whitford, The Cabin in the Woods).
At first, Chris reads the family’s overly accommodating behavior as nervous attempts to deal with their daughter’s interracial relationship, but as the weekend progresses, a series of increasingly disturbing discoveries lead him to a truth that he could have never imagined.
The film also stars Caleb Landry Jones (X-Men series), Milton “Lil Rel” Howery (The Carmichael Show), Betty Gabriel (The Purge: Election Year), Marcus Henderson (Pete’s Dragon) and Keith Stanfield (Straight Outta Compton).
NHS to use Uber and startup Cera for at-home patient care
Healthcare startup Cera is teaming up with Uber to deliver patient care on the NHS’ behalf. The service, launched in November, matches “hundreds” of carers in the UK with the people who need them most. Today, the company is announcing a partnership with the Barts Health NHS Trust — which runs Mile End Hospital, Newham University Hospital and others — so that doctors can effectively prescribe the platform and help their patients receive timely care at home. The hope is that such a service will improve patient care while freeing up hospital beds in London.
Cera has inked similar deals with three clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) in north-west London: Harrow, Brent and Hillingdon. To meet the needs of each community, Cera will be relying on Uber and its fleet of app-hailed drivers. They will help not only carers to make their usual house visits, but also patients as they attend hospital appointments. Cera says its services will also help people to get out of the house and remain independent. They can hail an UberAssist, which will help with walkers and scooters, or an UberWAV, which is fully wheelchair accessible.
To be clear, Uber doesn’t have a direct relationship with the NHS. It’s working with Cera, who holds the contract with the UK health service. “We do not have any contracts with Uber to provide non-emergency patient transport,” a spokesperson for the Barts Health NHS Trust emphasised. “When patients need assistance getting to and from our hospitals we provide ambulances and medi-cars, driven by trained experts.”
Uber has long positioned itself as an infrastructure company. We’ve seen hints of that vision before with services such as UberEats, which delivers restaurant food on demand. The new partnership with Cera, however, shows its potential as a larger transportation business. It can’t do everything — don’t expect Uber ambulances any time soon — but it could help other companies to shuffle their goods and staff around the country. The good publicity is timely too: the last seven days have been horrific for Uber, following CEO Travis Kalanick’s driver outburst, the company’s High Court defeat in London, and the reveal of a secretive tool called ‘Greyball’, which Uber reportedly uses to deceive authorities around the world.
Source:
https://www.engadget.com/2017/03/06/uk-nhs-uber-cera-hospital-patient-care/
3 Simple Ways to Build a Winning SEO Strategy on a Shoestring Budget
Search engine optimization can be overwhelming to many small businesses and startups. This aspect of online marketing can be even more intimidating if you have a small marketing budget and can’t throw money at your marketing strategy like your largest competitors can.
Fear not! I am here today to let you know that you can build a robust SEO strategy even if you work on a shoestring budget.
However, while you can grow your business on a budget SEO plan, I don’t want to give you the illusion that you can compete with the mega-corporations in your market right away. This is because many corporate competitors have spent millions of dollars and have decades of content on their side.
Those companies have a substantial head start that will dilute your SEO strategy if not done the right way. However, there are proven methods that your business can use to build a powerful online presence without needing to break the bank!
Small Budget SEO for Big ROI
Since you want to create an SEO strategy on a shoestring budget, you will need to use your time and resources efficiently. Instead of relying on a monthly budget of thousands of dollars, you will need to use your creativity and hyper-focus your efforts on an SEO strategy that will yield the greatest results.
It’s easy to get overwhelmed with the details and complexities of a large SEO strategy. Blogging, branding, backlinking, local SEO, etc. are all important aspects of a business plan, but they also take a lot of knowledge and experience to run efficiently.
Instead of getting lost in the forest of information, let’s focus on specific actions you can take to grow your online presence with a small SEO budget.
These tips will work for any business in any industry.
However, they will look different depending on your audience, goals, and the resources at your disposal. With that said, let’s take a look at how you can build a robust SEO strategy without investing a lot of money!
1. Focus on Long-tail Keywords
Your customers want answers to their questions, and they want to find the best deal without wasting time. This is why your business needs to focus on user intent when building your SEO strategy.
One aspect of this type of strategy for a business with a limited SEO budget is to use long-tail keywords instead of general keywords.
Long-tail keywords are key phrases that are very specific to the needs of your customers. These types of phrases are longer and more accurate than their more commonly searched variations.
Unlike standard keywords, long-tail keywords offer your SEO strategy several benefits, including:
Particular user-intent focus, content production, and publication.
Lower competition compared to general keyword variations.
Due to their specificity, long-tail keywords are highly focused and relevant to online searches.
Long-tail keywords drive higher conversions because they deliver highly qualified traffic and leads through online searches.
Even though long-tail keywords will have much lower traffic compared to generic keyword terms, if you are working on a small SEO budget then you need to focus on user intent and conversions.
It is far easier (and cheaper) to rank for specific keywords that are highly relevant to your audience than to rank for general terms that your large corporate competition is bidding on.
The reason that long-tail keywords work so well for budget-conscious businesses is that Google continues to advance their algorithm to favor content that is relevant to specific search queries.
Gone are the days of sprinkling generic keywords in your content and achieving great online rankings. Google’s business model depends on high-quality third-party data and relevant information for their users.
The first step of a great budget-conscious SEO strategy is to focus on the needs of your customers and produce content with long-tail keywords.
2. Publish Quality Guest Blog Posts
Guest blogging is a powerful way to strengthen your SEO strategy because it allows you to share your knowledge with a new audience and helps you generate backlinks.
There has been a lot of debate on whether guest blogging is still valuable. As long as you don’t spam garbage content on sites with low authority, then there is no reason to think that guest blogging is not a valuable SEO strategy for a business with a limited budget.
Guest blogging is an inexpensive method to build backlinks, establish great relationships, and share your knowledge with a new audience. While guest blogging is a proven strategy to build your online ranking on a budget, it will require a significant amount of time to perform necessary tasks, including:
Research your industry to find relevant sites that accept guest blog posts.
Produce amazing content tailored to the readers of that website.
Reach out to blog editors to build rapport and publish your excellent content.
Follow up and continue your relationship — most websites don’t let you do one-off blog posts.
You should approach guest blogging with the objective to provide value to your readers. When done correctly, your online ranking will increase because search engines will show that your business is an authority in your industry.
3. Local Optimization
So you want to rank nationally on the cheap, huh? Well, let me be the first to tell you that it takes a lot of time, money, and energy to rank nationally for competitive keywords.
Companies have been working for years and spent millions of dollars to achieve a high ranking for keywords. You won’t be able to reach high rankings for general, highly competitive keywords if you don’t have a lot of money to invest.
Instead of looking for widespread attention, you would be better off to focus your limited budget in your local or regional market. Dominating your domestic market will provide the highest ROI and quickest growth opportunity compared to spreading your attention across a larger geographic area.
Local SEO is the answer for your business if you are trying to build a strong online presence on a relatively small SEO budget. Here are three local SEO strategies you can use to dominate your local market and skyrocket your online rankings.
Set up Google My Business and Local SEO Accounts
If you don’t have a Google My Business account yet, stop what you are doing (after you read this article) and go set one up. Google My Business is the directory that Google uses to show local businesses based on the search done by an online user. Along with getting in front of your audience, Google My Business will also boost your local SEO efforts by:
Displaying your business on Google search results, Google Maps, and Google Plus.
Setting up multiple locations. If your business has different locations in a region then you can differentiate between the locations.
Upload videos and pictures. These are crucial if you want to overcome early objections and have a high-quality first impression.
Highlight reviews from past customers. This is a great way to drive sales with social proof.
Google My Business can help you build a loyal fan base and provides quick info about your business like directions, phone number, and hours of operation.
Those are just a few of the benefits your business will see with Google My Business. If nothing else, your business will drive conversions with a local SEO strategy with this great (and free) optimization tool.
Once you set up and optimize your Google My Business account, you will have premium exposure in Google search results, and this exposure provides your audience direct access to your business.
Even if your business does not have a brick-and-mortar store, you should still set up this service to gain all the benefits and qualified traffic.
To take your local SEO strategy one step further, you should also consider creating a business account with various local business directories. Some of the local directories I have seen great results from include:
Bing Places
Better Business Bureau
Merchant Circle
Thumbtack
Google My Business will position your company high in search results and local directories usually provide a no-follow backlink that can help your online ranking.
Generate Local Reviews
Customer reviews are the backbone of your local SEO strategy. Not only are these reviews essential for a low-budget SEO strategy, but they are also an easy way to improve your online presence.
Local reviews serve as a form of social proof, and they are quickly becoming the digital version of word-of-mouth marketing. Testimonials also help remove the nervousness of your potential customers from purchasing from you, especially if you offer a relatively unknown product or service because they:
Show that your business is trustworthy and community members use and love your services.
Help you build a positive reputation. This will help you build authority, especially if you are new to the market.
Increase exposure in online searches. Google Local uses reviews to understand your business and displays the reviews in local search results.
If you are operating on a limited SEO budget, then you should focus your marketing efforts and resources on your local community. You can run a simple campaign by asking your customers to provide a review on the spot, include an invitation on your receipts, and run marketing campaigns to get people to give testimonials on your website or online listings.
Get Involved With Local Networking & Meetups
Since a local SEO strategy is the best use of funds for a budget-conscious business (see above points), you should continue to build your authority in your local market by networking. If you are a new business, then you need to increase brand awareness, and you can accomplish this with local networking and building connections.
While this strategy takes a significant amount of time, you can also host a meetup or present at local events to reach new customers or build new partnerships in the community. Forming partnerships with other local businesses can help you generate great content and build a great backlink profile.
These elements will help your SEO strategy for almost no monetary investment. For example, if you are a wedding photographer, you can partner with a local wedding decor store to create a content series to talk about wedding-related issues.
This partnership means that your business gains access to the audience of other companies and this helps generate valuable content for your audience. You can also use these connections to form partnerships to improve your content marketing strategy, and help you build online connections to improve your backlink profile (see previous points).
Ballin’ on a Budget-friendly SEO Strategy
The great thing about SEO is that the best practices are constantly changing. This means you can build a robust SEO strategy even if you lack the big marketing budget of your competition. The only caveat is that you will need to invest time and creativity to improve how you rank online.
Just remember to focus your limited time, money, and resources on highly-focused content through long-tail keywords, optimize your business for local SEO, and publish excellent content through guest blogging to hit your business!
Source:
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/3...
Universal plans to bring Wattpad stories to TV
Social publishing platform Wattpad is making its biggest move into Hollywood yet thanks to a new deal with Universal Cable Productions.
UCP is a TV production company owned by NBCUniversal — it’s produced shows including USA’s Mr. Robot, SyFy’s The Magicians and Bravo’s Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce. As a result of the deal, the company plans to develop new shows based on stories published on Wattpad — stories it says it will identify, in part, by getting access to custom Wattpad data.
“Wattpad data will help spot compelling stories with massive built-in audiences, and fans will influence the development process,” said Wattpad Studios head Aron Levitz in the partnership release. “There’s no place for hunches and guesses when it comes to content development these days. Data- and community-driven entertainment is the future, and Wattpad Studios is leading the way.”
UCP isn’t announcing any specific shows yet. A Wattpad spokesperson told me the company is looking to develop around five projects a year — but of course there’s no guarantee that any of those projects will make it onto TV.
Wattpad says it reaches 45 million people each month, while its community members have published more than 300 million stories. This isn’t actually the company’s first foray into TV. For one thing, the TV5 network in the Philippines already adapted stories for its show Wattpad Presents.
More broadly, Wattpad has signaled an ambition to bring its stories to other media thanks to a partnership with Hollywood agency UTAand the launch of its Wattpad Studios division earlier this year.
Source:
Universal plans to bring Wattpad stories to TV
Sourcebooks Signs Author of Wattpad’s Most-Read Story of 2016
Sourcebooks has acquired worldwide English rights to Chasing Red, an adult novel by Canadian author Isabelle Ronin, which was the most-read story on Wattpad last year. According to Sourcebooks, Chasing Red had over 126 million reads by the Wattpad community in 2016.
After making some revisions and adding new content, Sourcebooks will publish Chasing Red in two volumes, releasing the first part of the book this September and the conclusion in November.
Sourcebooks cited the continued buildup of interest in the book as the reason it acquired the title. Ronin originally serialized her story, but once it was completed in early 2016 interest in Chasing Red grew even more, Sourcebooks said. “The numbers alone for Chasing Red are extraordinary. This story has touched millions of readers and is attracting new reads every week,” Sourcebooks CEO Dominique Raccah said.
Ashleigh Gardner, head of partnerships for Wattpad Studios, noted that rights to the book have also been acquired by Hachette Livre, HarperCollins Germany, Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial, and Mondadori.
Chasing Red tells the story of “cynical straight-A college student Veronica “Red” Strafford,” who is offered a place to stay by “notorious basketball player Caleb Lockhart” after she gets kicked out of her apartment, Sourcebooks said. After she moves in “their close quarters create a problem when he pursues her, and she is far from ready to open up about her painful past.”
Sourcebooks first partnered with Wattpad in 2013 when it began publishing its authors under the Sourcebooks Fire young adult imprint. Recent books by Wattpad authors released by Sourcebooks include two young adult titles by Natasha Preston. The Cellar and The Cabin have had solid runs on young adult bestsellers lists and have sold hundreds of thousands of copies.
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Now casting: Marvel’s ‘Black Panther’ seeking African children | Atlanta film jobs
Are you ready to make your mark on Atlanta’s film and TV industry? Are you the next Tyler Perry? ATL is in need of young stars. Check out the Peach City’s latest casting call for your chance at fame.
Black Panther’
Joining the growing list of Marvel movies that have filmed or will film in Atlanta, “Black Panther” showcases T’Challa (aka Black Panther), who premiered in “Captain America: Civil War.” It stars Chadwick Boseman in the title role, and the cast includes Angela Bassett, Michael B. Jordan, Forest Whitaker, Lupita Nyong’o, “The Walking Dead” cast member Danai Gurira, Daniel Kaluuya, Winston Duke and Florence Kasumba. The movie will be directed by Ryan Coogler, who’s known for “Fruitvale Station” and “Creed,” and is set to be released in February 2018.
What are they looking for?
African/African-American boys and girls, ages 6-8 only, are needed to be featured tribal kids. Boys must be willing to have their heads shaven bald, but girls can have any hair length.
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When are they filming?
Filming will be in Atlanta on March 10 and 13.
How much does it pay?
Pay is $100 for eight hours, with overtime after that. For boys that need their head shaved by casting, a $50 bump will be added.
How do I submit?
Send an email to BlackPantherextras@tscasting.com, and put KINGDOM in the subject line. If you’re submitting for more than one of your children, include their information in the same email.
Include two current, clear photos – one from the shoulders up and one from the knees up. Non-professional, basic photos with a neutral background are preferred. Don’t smile in the photo, and you should be wearing a neutral outfit.
Include the following information: First and last name of the child and parent, phone number(s), city and state where you live, email address, age, height, weight and sizes for the child (pants, shirt, shoes). If you’re submitting for a boy, be sure to include the phrase BALD OK.
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Yona Harvey: First Black Woman to pen ‘Storm’ for Marvel
Poet Yona Harvey’s first foray into writing comics went so well, she’s at it again.
Harvey’s friend Ta-Nehisi Coates tapped her and writer Roxane Gay to pen last year’s Black Panther spinoff, World of Wakanda, with him. The experience challenged Harvey, but she found getting lost in the Marvel universe “addictive.” So when the opportunity arose to work with Coates again on Black Panther & The Crew, a Marvel series revival, she jumped at the chance. And this time, she’s making history as the first Black woman to write Marvel’s Storm character.
Harvey is the author of a poetry collection, Hemming the Water, winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award from Claremont Graduate University and finalist for the Hurston-Wright Award. Her work has been anthologized widely, and she is an assistant professor in the Writing Program at the University of Pittsburgh.
In this EBONY interview, Harvey talks about transitioning from poetry and prose to comics, what she hopes to bring to Storm in The Crew, and what her kids think about her new gig.
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EBONY: What’s The Crew about? How does writing The Crew compare to your experience writing World of Wakanda? Are you more comfortable now writing in this genre?
Yona Harvey: Black Panther and The Crew is set in Harlem and is essentially about getting conscious. The Black Panther, Misty Knight, Storm, Luke Cage, and Manifold each have unique connections to Harlem. Those connections put them a little at odds with their superhero roles in the Marvel universe. This experience feels more expansive than the World of Wakanda experience. My story in World of Wakanda was only 10 pages long–not nearly enough to explore Zenzi, the character I was writing. But Black Panther and The Crew is a much larger story that explores a murder mystery, friendships, and romantic love. I become more comfortable writing with each issue.
EBONY: You’re the first Black woman to ever write the Storm character. What do you aim to bring to the character that’s unique? Unexpected?
Harvey: It’s hard to answer that while I’m still in the midst of writing Storm. Obviously, I want to write her very well. But I’d love to bring glimmers of Black women poets to Storm’s voice. It’s fun thinking about the poetry of her diction and voice–and the fact that she’s a Black woman in addition to being a mutant.
Read more at EBONY http://www.ebony.com/entertainment-culture/yona-harvey-marvel-storm#ixzz4aYYGv0Ev
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Wattpad debuts Tap, an app for reading chat-style short stories
A new mobile app called Tap, launching today, introduces a different way to read stories on your phone: as text message-like chats. The app is the latest from Wattpad, a social publishing platform for authors whose community now includes over 45 million readers worldwide, who visit its site or its flagship mobile app to read its nearly 250 million stories.
With Tap, Wattpad is stepping away from the traditional storytelling format to experiment with a unique style of entertainment
The app lets users discover “chat-style” stories – that is, those that unfold as you tap to reveal the next part. The stories are designed to feel like you’re reading someone else’s chat conversations, the company explains, and they are even visually presented in a text messaging-style format.
At launch, there are hundreds of stories available across categories like horror, romances, drama and more.
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Tap will also allow Wattpad users to write stories of their own, though this is initially available only to a subset of writers on the platform. The company says that the writing and publishing functionality will roll out more broadly in the weeks ahead.
In addition to reading the chat-style stories, users can also share the stories to social networks.
The launch represents another means for Wattpad to generate revenue for its social storytelling platform, as Tap is a freemium service. While the app itself is free, as are a select number of stories, it also includes the option to upgrade to a premium service. Here, users will gain access to an unlimited number of stories, including exclusive ones available only to subscribers. The service costs $2.99 per week, $7.99 per month, or $39.99 per year.
In more recent months, Wattpad has been expanding its relationship with Hollywood and the entertainment industry, thanks to deal with Universal, Turner, comics publishers and more. But Tap’s subscription service could infuse the company with another more straightforward and immediate revenue stream.
Tap is hardly the only app operating in this niche these days. It competes with others like fiction app Hooked, which offers chat stories and a means of writing them. Amazon also launched a subscription service for chat-style stories called Amazon Rapids, which targets kids. More broadly, Tap goes up against other mobile reading apps like Serial Box, Hardbound, or even social apps like Snapchat, which has its own short-form content available.
However, Tap’s angle is its voyeuristic take on the chat-style format. Instead of just getting snippets of the story with each tap, it feels like you’ve gotten ahold of someone else’s phone and are reading through their personal texts. That could appeal to teenaged or young adult users, who spend a lot of time interacting with content on mobile devices – a place that’s also where much of their social lives today unfold.
Tap is a free download on iTunes and Google Play.
Source:
Wattpad debuts Tap, an app for reading chat-style short stories
