Author: Marie

What Makes The Best Business Cards?

13 October,2019 Business Advice No Comment Author: Marie

Entrepreneurs must always have their own business cards as they are extremely important for networking purposes and public relations. If you come across someone who is interested in your work, you can simply hand them your business card and ask them to contact you. Given below are some tips by four entrepreneurs on how to get the best business cards.

Source: https://fitsmallbusiness.com

  • Katie White, founder of re:lax

Katie White is a holistic therapist and she helps her patients deal with stress, anxiety, digestive problems and hormonal imbalances using natural remedies and proper nutrition. She wanted her business cards to reflect her approach to therapy and healing methods. She wanted the “logo and name to be the most eye-catching feature and the reason a potential client picks it up – because they want to relax and feel good.”

This is extremely important because the design of the cards should not only be appropriate for the type of business you are in but should also be appealing to your target audience.

  • Michael, founder of WeCompareCasinos.com

This website allows people to find licensed online casinos that will suit their specific needs. Now, Michael had some really creative business cards (which looked like casino playing cards) printed. According to him, “in most industries there are a lot of expos and events where literally 1000s of traditional, basic business cards are handed out and just end up sitting in someone’s wallet, never to be seen again.”

A creative touch to your business cards will immediately interest potential clients. You can add embossing, foil accents or even go for something like metallic ink or spot UV.

  • Charlie Spokes, founder of My Friend Charlie

Charlie’s company organises dating events for middle aged London residents. Londoners in their 30s and 40s can meet and get to know each other at various fun events like paddle boarding and gin tasting! For their business cards, Charlie wanted a good quality card that had “a classic logo and colour scheme which had to be easy to read but also eye catching”.

Now, if you want a simple, basic business card then you need to make sure to follow some basic rules of designing. These include keeping the key copy about 5mm away from the trim edge, properly sized font and good quality images (for your logo).

  • Tom Bourlet, search and paid media manager for the Spaghetti Traveller

This is a fun blog that combines travelling and marketing. Now, Tom wanted his business cards to represent the vibe that his blog creates. But while the cards are quite quirky and creative, the designs do not overshadow the information provided and as Tom explains it, “the key information is highlighted first, with the email being my main point of contact, followed by my Twitter account.” Therefore, as this suggests, when you have your business cards printed, you will have to prioritize and decide which details are necessary and will be of use to potential clients.

What do you think makes the best business cards?

 

 

Sources: [1] [2] [3] [4]

YouTube Is Making Hard For the Copyright Holders to Make Unfair Claims Against The Creators

18 September,2019 Uncategorized, What's New No Comment Author: Marie
youtube copyright claims

YouTube Company found that most of the copyright holders are using unfair means to take revenue away from the creators. The news appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

For most of the people, YouTube’s copyright system is a mess as it places the burden on the creators to dispute the copyright claims, in turn, the copyright holders use the manual claiming tool to seize revenue arising from the videos often before the YouTuber (creator) takes a chance to respond.

But now YouTube from continuous requests form the content creators is updating this tool so that creators do not face any loss. This shall take place in the mid of September and YouTube will do this by changing its Content ID policy, YouTube mentions this in their blog post that by doing so many of the copyright claims shall be cut down. In other words, the right holders will not be able to size money from the YouTube videos by filing any claim and especially when the video is registered in someone’s name and appears for a small period of time on the channel or appears in the background of certain video.

YouTube has now made it mandatory for the people who are filing copyright infringement claims to provide a timestamp for the exact part of the video or the video’s they are reporting. The company also states that they will revoke user’s access to the manual claims if they continuously fail to provide accurate manual timestamps. An advantage of timestamps is that the manual claim recipient will see the timestamp as indicated by other party/parties that will make it easy to find out which part of the video needs to be edited.

To solve this issue they can either dispute the claim or can alter the video by using YouTube’s updating editing tools. Other than this the creators can shut down or remove all sounds, they can even swap them out easily with one of the platforms free to use songs from their audio library.

YouTube has a database of files on which it scans the video uploads so as to find the audio and video matches through its Content ID technology. Any copyright infringement found automatically leads to automated content ID (it’s a video platform system that detects an upload uses another person’s intellectual property claims, then they can earn from it as well) claims.

YouTube believes that by doing so many of the manual claiming privileges of labels or other right holders that get continuously breached will be stopped.

The changes made by the company will only effect manual claims and will have no impact on music found automatically by YouTube’s Content ID system. The company states that since it was implemented it has cleared many claims and has paid many right holders an amount of dollar 3 billion a very big amount.

The company states that they will continuously design ways to improve the creator’s copyright experience without altering the rights of the copyright owners.

LinkedIn Users Can Now List the Services They Offer On Their LinkedIn Profile

7 September,2019 Uncategorized No Comment Author: Marie
Image Source: http://www.socialsamosa.com

LinkedIn has probably become one of the most trustworthy and popular app/websites in recent years. It is the ultimate stop not only for job seekers but for employers as well.

With more technological advancements, new features have been introduced on LinkedIn. In fact, users can now easily list the services they offer on their LinkedIn profile.

This feature allows various freelancers and small scale businesses to feature their services on their profile.

This means you can spot a new option where you are required to fill a section labeled as- “Services” on your profile now. This is a great tool for thousands of freelancers to showcase their strong points and ability in the form of the services they provide. Along with this, it gives them or the other users to mention that they are ‘open for business’ which matches their profile.

Steps to Add services to your LinkedIn profile

Turn on the Services feature

At first, you need to open the mobile app or website on your desktop. Now, you need to check whether the Services feature is enabled on your profile or not. If not, turn it on.

Once you do that, you will notice a box under your profile photo. This box contains information about the process to showcase the service you want to provide.

Add services

Once you have read the information, you need to click on the ‘Add Services’ tab and a form will be displayed on the screen. Carefully, fill out all the required fields and details about the services you provide in the form.

Now, you can use a very useful tip here- try to be as detailed as possible. This is due to the reason that for the recruiters and other members that is a synopsis of the summary of your field of work, services you are ready to provide, businesses you are ready to do or invest in.

Continue

The final step includes clicking on the ‘Continue’ button and the information gets added on your profile.

You must be wondering how does this help? It will help members who are searching for professionals. The recruiters or the members need to filter their general LinkedIn searches. This will help them to find only those professionals who fit their needs.

The users who have added the required services in their respective profiles, their names will be shown in the search engine. For example- if you have noted that your Service is- website designing and a member searches for the word ‘designing’ then your name will be displayed in their search result.

Now, it’s the choice of the members or recruiters to message a freelance professional directly to inquire about their services and business they provide.

This latest feature has given a great opportunity and platform not only to freelance professionals but recruiters/members as well. It has become very easy for people to find the perfect person or business to get associated with. Above everything, it’s all safe and legal because LinkedIn provides that trust to all its users.

Instagram Starts Removing Posts ‘Like Counts’ In 6 More Countries

17 August,2019 Uncategorized No Comment Author: Marie
Image from: TechCrunch.com

Most of the social networking sites these days have become highly attentive towards introducing the best possible security standards and making the platform more user-friendly. Following the same trend, Instagram is also taking steps to provide more safety, security and making the app more amicable for its millions of users.

Taking a step forward towards these things, Instagram decided to expand its test to hide like counts. It has decided to give more users the options to hide the counts on their posts publicly. Recently it made an official announcement where it decided to expand the test regarding hiding the like count to six more countries- Ireland, Italy, Japan, Brazil, Australia, and New Zealand.

The test initially was started in Canada. At the initial stage of the test, only some people were included and they had their likes hidden by default. They had to choose to opt-out the likes publicly. But, there is another aspect to this, the people who had their likes count hidden can still see the likes on their own content.

Well, this is a known fact that a number of likes have become a de facto way of providing value on user’s posts. But Instagram decided to hide it due to the reason that it wants its audience to focus more on the posts, videos, and content and not on the number of likes. It can be said here that they do not want you to judge the posts by the number of likes it receives.

There is another aspect to this test undertaken by Instagram as to why it has decided to expand it. There are times when a photo of yours might not receive much appreciation or likes. This often lowers the confidence of the respective user and in the future, he/she is attentive about posting similar posts, for example- a selfie in a swimsuit, food photos, etc. This is because more likes signify that the post is more impressive than others and getting lesser likes makes you feel terrible.

But, this latest feature of hiding the public count will give all the users the permission and confidence to post whatever content, photo or video they may like and seem fit to post. The post won’t be based on the basis of a number of likes or hits. This will be fruitful because people would stop caring too much about the likes on the post and will put whatever they feel like to post.

Thus, hiding the likes from feeds, posts, videos but making it visible to the person who posts it, would give people sensibility about what is working. And, they don’t have to worry about what opinions people form regarding their personal feeds. Overall, it boosts their confidence to post whatever their heart says to and not what people want would hit like on.

So, if you live in the countries where this test is been carried out, then your Instagram would only show the name/username of the person who likes your post but not the number of people who hit the like button.

Facebook Found a Major Privacy Flaw in Messenger Kids

8 August,2019 Uncategorized No Comment Author: Marie

In 2017, Facebook launched Messenger Kids which is a child-friendly version of this app. Even at that time, there was a great protest against Messenger Kids and it wasn’t considered to be amicable by various health professionals.

If we look at the recent cases regarding the privacy and security of Facebook, it won’t be wrong to say that something was bound to go wrong at some point in time. And, it happened recently when Facebook found a major privacy flaw in messenger kids.

Facebook took the responsibility of informing all the parents of the children using Messenger kids about the flaw due to which their children were exposed to some users who were not approved by their parents. The irony of this situation is that- Facebook’s Kids Messenger app was built around a simple premise that children should not be able to talk to those users who were not approved by their parents.

But due to this major privacy flaw the very basic premise of the Kid’s Messenger is outlawed and is being questioned by experts and parents all around the world. In order to correct the flaw and until any further notice, the affected chats were turned off and parents were also provided with additional resources on Messenger Kids and online security. 

The Back-Story of the Bug

According to some experts, the bug was a result of a flaw in the process of applying Messenger Kid’s unique permission in the group chat. The issue in this area led to the major privacy flaw where the chats of users/ kids got exposed to unauthorized users who were not approved by their respective parents.

In normal day-to-day life, children who are using Messenger kids can only start a conversation with other users who have been approved by their respective parents and the unapproved users can’t reach out to the kids and either way, is also not possible. Now, the permission setting process became more complex and hassle-full when it was applied to group chats where many users were involved.

The permission setting feature failed and didn’t work properly. This lead to security issues on the Messenger Kids app. As a result of all this, the person who originally launched the group could invite any user. In fact, he/she could even invite those users who were not authorized by the parents. Thus, thousands of children were left in chats with many unauthorized users. And, above all this was simply a violation of the core promise of Messenger kids.

Well, there is no denying the fact that Facebook’s original intention was to create a safer and secure environment/platform for young children. But, due to this security flaw, their intent and functionality are put to question by experts all around the world. This has also alarmed the parents and has broken their trust regarding the app as well.

Many experts have criticized Facebook and quoted that Messenger kids are nothing but a product to target young children. They find it totally unwanted and absurd.

The Google June 2019 Core Update

26 July,2019 Uncategorized No Comment Author: Marie
The Google June 2019 Core Update

In order to roll out the June 2019 core update, Google took 5 days and in order to diversify the updates, it took about 3 days. The rolling out process started on June 3 and finished on June 8 of this year. This information was confirmed by Google employee Danny Suvilian.

The process of rolling generally takes this much time due to the reason that it has various data services and servers all around the world, and it takes time to update all these data services and servers as well. Thus, the span of 5 days for this massive scale roll-out process is not long enough. There have been incidents in the past when these updates have taken a few weeks of time to get completed. Thus, comparatively, it was quicker this time.

The June 2019 core update did overlap with diversity update because the diversity update was initiated on June 4 and finished on June 8.

There is a very important point to note- The Google headquarters does not release the information on how large the impact of these updates is like. Their work is only to announce these core updates as they are massive and noticeable as well. Also, this time the field of domains that were affected by the core update process are more and wider as compared to the previous updates initiated by Google.

Some major changes and advancements enabled due to June 2019 rollout is as follows:

  1. The processing of noindex and other related directives in robots.txt file was changed by Google.
  2. It also submitted robots.txt file as a real web standard.
  3. Google also opened sourced Googlebot parser so that it is accessible to other users.
  4. One of the major changes initiated by Google via this core update is that it stopped supporting and assisting social profile markup for knowledge panels.
  5. Google also announced to crack down on leased sub-domains on third party sites.
  6. Google Search Console dropped the preferred domain setting this month and with that, it got mobile-first indexing tools.
  7. Google confirmed the fact that Googlebot does not support HTTP pipelining.
  8. It still shows hidden content in Accordians and Tabs. They are featured as Snippets.
  9. Due to the latest update, now the Site migration process can take about a day or two if done correctly.
  10. The dis-allowed URLs via robot.txt does not affect crawl budget.
  11. It has officially launched the new Search Menu Bar with icons.
  12. The Google bug knowledge panel was also updated. The updated version does not have any attribution.
  13. There are speculations that Google may also drop the function of removing features from Google Search Console.

Thus, the above-mentioned points are the major changes that took place due to June 2019 core update. These changes and upgrades are supposed to increase the accessibility of Google users. Most of the people from SEO forum noticed and experienced about 25-30% changes in their traffic and were positive about this June 2019 core update. It has been fruitful for the users across the globe as well.

Google My Business Listings Getting Suspended After Adding Short Names

18 July,2019 What's New No Comment Author: Marie

Recently various SEOs have claimed their Google My Business listings suspended as soon as they added short names to their respective profiles.

Google My Business Listings Getting Suspended After Adding Short Names

But what are short names? Well, it was introduced in April this year with the purpose of allowing businesses to create custom URLs for their My Business listings. But, recently various cases were reported where adding short names to their profiles has become dangerous for various businesses having an online presence.

It is costing them a lot, as many legitimate business listings got suspended as well as removed from SERPs. A very important point to note here is that not all businesses are getting suspended for adding short names. It is observed that there is a series of random suspensions. Thus, one cannot really point out the rules or basis for random suspensions which are taking at this speed.

Due to this sudden process, various business and SEO giants took the help of social media to spread awareness about this issue. Eg- Joe Young blood twitted several tweets addressing this problem.  He tried to explain the possible reason for this issue, which according to him is an apparent bug.

Another important point to note here is that various businesses and their owners should stay calm in this situation, as most of the business listings aren’t really experiencing any issues. The ratio is 1:5 and the number of complaints received are not much. At the same time, one should keep in mind that short names are a recurring theme among a string of recent suspensions. In recent times, if you have considered a short name for your Google My Business listings, you might end up being on watch for a new bug, which is leading to the suspension. The issues are expected to spread further. So, it is recommended for various agencies to be alarmed and alert.

Even after such random chaos created due to this suspension thing, Google is yet to make any official announcement. Many people have also claimed that they were able to get their listings re-instated successfully by notifying the respected search engine.

Keeping all the factors in mind, you actually might consider going with the flow or present scenario. This means you might consider holding off on adding a short name to any of your Google My Business listings. This is recommended until there is no permanent solution found to this bug and until it is fixed. In case you already have a listing with a short name, it would be good to check whether it is suspended or still properly showing in search results.

As far as the problem of those businesses is concerned, whose Google My Business listings have been suspended, they can try to find posts and articles about it on the Google support forum as well as other certified websites. Or you may also opt for a direct solution that simply removes the short name which has added.

Experts claim that the best course of action under this situation is the removal of short names by concerned business, so you might consider following it.

Worldwide Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram Outage – What Caused It?

11 July,2019 What's New No Comment Author: Marie

Image Source: 9to5mac.com

The recent outage effecting Facebook and other social media platforms such as WhatsApp and Instagram has definitely caused a worldwide stir among its users. Well, nothing to worry as the following content will help you to understand the cause of this Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram outage.

Facebook’s Recent Outage Shows How the Platform’s AI Tags Photos

First of all, let’s start with the explanation of what happens during an outage situation. Consider a situation where you decide to browse through your old uploaded photos on Facebook, unfortunately instead of seeing the actual photos or snaps from the various occasions, holidays, gatherings etc., you will be shown or prompted with texts like- “image may contain: cat”, “image may contain: people dancing, drinking” etc. Well, let me tell you this is how the computer interprets your uploaded photos. This is how Facebook’s Artificial Intelligence judges you.

Similar tags are showing up on Instagram as well. The only difference is that on Instagram there are details of the photo and it also prompts suggestion on who is in the concerned photo. This suggestion is based on Facebook’s facial recognition. Facebook has been doing this process of using machine learning to read images in the same manner since April 2016. In fact, this project is a huge part of company’s accessibility efforts, as well as the tags, are used to describe photos or videos to users who are visually impaired.

As per DownDetector, a website which monitors website and app issues, various users all around the world reports of the outage incident, but it was Europe and North America where maximum cases were reported. No one was spared, from individuals, businesses to organizations working locally or internationally.

A similar situation was experienced earlier this year when an outage lasted for as long as 24 hours. It was believed to be the worst ever outage for Facebook, which connected about 2.7 million people worldwide with its core social network, message applications and Instagram as well.

The biggest question which arises among its users who have to face this outage is that whether Facebook uses this information to target ads or there is some other reason behind it, for example, the one quoted by Facebook during these outages- that “it occurred due to an error triggered during the routine maintenance operation.” Whatever may be the reason, there is no denying of the fact that there is a lot of personal data contained in our photos that are uploaded on various social networking sites, and it can be extracted easily by AI this way.

Is there another agenda behind this outage?

Obviously, there are various details of one’s personal life which he/she would want to protect or shield from Facebook and other social networking platforms (which are often contained in the images, videos, posts present on timeline or user account). This information can range from hobbies to user’s favorite holiday destination, anything and everything can be spotted. There are efforts made to reach out to Facebook in order confirm the cause of this outage and to address the main question that whether they are using this data for as targeting or not.

Well, whatever may be the real agenda behind this Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram outage, or regardless of how the information is being used, it makes us realize a very important fact that visual world has definitely become machine readable and accessible.

Sources: [1] [2] [3] [4]

Best PPC Practices in 2019

6 July,2019 Business Advice No Comment Author: Marie
PPC or pay-per- click has emerged to be one of the most popular advertising models in the recent years. It draws traffic to your website and whenever an ad is clicked by any user, the advertiser has to pay the person who published the ad.

PPC practice was opted by many website owners last year so that they could improve the performance of their website. Well, with a new year you need to upgrade your game.

Following are some of the latest and the best PPC practices which will rule 2019 and can help you to excel on the performance bar-

  • There will be more focus on audience rather than the keywords

Digital marketing has been a champion of keywords since forever. But, in the 2019 this is supposed to take a back seat, and strategies targeting audience will be adopted. This will enable you to get your ads in front of the right audience and while they are actively searching a product which you are selling.

  • Incorporation of new features in ads

All the PPC marketers from around the world will be establishing some extra-ordinary advertisements. These ads will definitely attract more clients and audience. So, take clue from these ads and apply same concept for your website.

  • Automation rate will increase

In 2018, Google already started to display ads suitable for all kinds of audience, thanks to automation. This phenomena will take a hike in 2019 as well. Be smart, and adopt some great automation strategies for your website. For this, you can start with implementing the accurate conversion tracking, identifying your loyal audience, figure your keywords, and write great ads as well.

  • Try to know your whole funnel of marketing

Invest time in building a meaningful attribution model for your website. This will help you to focus on the marketing strategy on the channels which really matter for you. Once you have a good multi-touch attribution model, only low-funnel based marketing channels will deliver the result.

  • If possible, invest as much as you can in video marketing

Videos are supposed to take the center stage in PPC advertising model in 2019. Video is a very powerful tool which you can use to draw a massive traffic for your website. Creating ads using video takes up a lot more time and creativity than in putting up a text-based ad or depending on Google to auto-create ads, for you to display. But, all the hard work is worth it. It will be worth because, if you look at the statistics, the rate of video ad completion reached to 60-70% last year. So, investing in video advertising is must and this feature will rule the PPC practices in 2019.

Lastly, one of the latest PPC practices, whose usage started last year only is re-running similar ads, content again and again. This helps to convert the visitors of your website to potential customers. So, 2019 will be about revamping the re-marketing tactic.

Thus, you can be sure on one thing that above mentioned 6 practices are going to rule the PPC field in digital world this year

WordPress Rank Math SEO Plugin Gets an Update

24 June,2019 Wordpress No Comment Author: Marie
SEO is one the most important parts in making your website visible to the search engines. Over the years it has played a very important role in marketing and lead generation.

Most people who owns small businesses or startups often opt to install an SEO plugin in their WordPress rather than hire SEO professionals.

These plugins often do the job of improving the website’s SEO as well as attracting more visitors to the website.

 

Rank Math Dashboard (Source: Rankmath.com)

 

One of the most popular WordPress SEO plugin is Rank Math. Just recently, the developer has updated and fixed several vulnerabilities of this plugin which include allowing users to reset settings of the plugin, cross site scripting vulnerability and a security update.

1. Authenticated Settings Reset – Allows any authenticated user (with a role as low as subscriber) to reset Settings of the plugin. (Source: WPVULNDB)

2. Cross Site Scripting vulnerability

According to Post Wigger, a cross-site scripting (also known as XSS) is a web security vulnerability that allows an attacker to compromise the interactions that users have with a vulnerable application. This update was publicly published a week ago.

3. Improved sanitization throughout the plugin

According to Search Engine Journal, sanitization means an extra layer of coding that will stop an unexpected input from breaking a script and allowing an exploit.

4. Fixed an error in the contact Shortcode when the time was added in a string format

5. Fixed ‘500 error’ appearing on some installations after updating the plugin settings

More of the most recent Rank Math updates can be seen on Rank Math’s changelog.

A changelog is a record of all notable changes made to a project. Whenever there’s changes to the plugin, the Rank Math changelog will be updated as well. This is a great way to inform users of the plugin’s vulnerabilities and this promotes transparency which is very rare nowadays. Some developers just tend to hide their product’s vulnerabilities.

Why is it important to update your WordPress plugin?

Updates can seen as intimidating or like a waste of time for some people. However, it is very important to get all your plugins updated in order to get access to new features and security and bug fixes that are very important in this time where hackers and cyber criminals are more active than ever.

By not updating your plugin, it could mean a security loophole for a cyber criminal to access.

New updates can also mean increase of speed for some plug-ins and maintaining backward compatibility.