You want to feel excited to go into the office after COVID-19. The office you spend your time in every day plays a huge role in that. Here are five work culture trends that improve employee productivity and satisfaction.

Companies that have a unique and strong culture see a 4x revenue increase on average. Don’t you want results like that?

Here are five work culture trends you need to know, which are shaping the future of offices.

More than ever, offices need to feel like home.

How can you expect to be productive if you don’t feel comfortable? \As a matter of fact, happy employees are 12% more productive at work. As an employee, you want to look forward to getting more done every day. On the flip side, employers will be able to once again hit their KPIs and complete projects faster because of that.

What exactly is a comfortable work culture? Will it be changed forever when we get back to work? Do you want your office to feel like you still haven’t even stepped out of the house?

It may begin with the dress code now. More businesses have allowed employees to wear comfortable clothing during work hours. Sneakers and jeans became the new suit and tie. Do we still want this after COVID?

Imagine a workspace that has the comfort and casualness of a college campus. That’s been the reality. What now?

Offices gradually became less traditional in terms of design, too. They have more open spaces, ergonomic desks and chairs, and decorations which make it feel like your living room at home. Is this trend still what we want? Have you become sick of sitting home in your office or living room? I have.

Nature helps create a soothing environment

It’s been found that spending time outdoors is great for mental health, so it only makes sense to blur the line between the outside world and the office. The open and outside trend is done with the use of glass walls, large windows, and balconies. Look how Supermetrics was able to achieve this one-of-a-kind look with their new office.

The new Helsinki headquarters also uses plenty of natural materials and plants to make it feel like nature has crept indoors. Imagine how amazing you’d feel working in an office like this.

Supermetrics CEO Mikael Thuneburg put it best by saying, “We wanted to have something home-like rather than office-like. We don’t wear shoes in the office to make it feel more like home.” But, I wonder. I want my shoes back on. Some employees in my office wear slippers. Will they want this trend when they get back to the office?

Extra amenities allow for bonding and healthy breaks

Too many offices are rows of cubicles, desks, and include nothing else for employees to enjoy during downtime.

That’s exactly why more office spaces are beginning to include amenities like saunas, game tables, sushi bars, and more. Who would’ve thought we’d see employers and employees playing foosball in the office even a few years ago?

These amenities allow team members to bond while enjoying healthy breaks before resuming work.

Wiley Cerilli, Founder of SinglePlatform, commented on this startup culture trend, asserting that “Employees who believe that management is concerned about them as a whole person — not just an employee — are more productive, more satisfied, more fulfilled. Satisfied employees mean satisfied customers, which leads to profitability.”

If you’re thinking about landing a position at a dream company, research the services and fun things that they have for you to do. You’d be surprised to see that there will be many more reasons for you to come to work every day.

Additionally, employers need to consider adding things like these to make their office culture more interactive and enticing. I think when getting back to the office after all these months — we will have a lot of experimenting to know what will work in a post-COVID-19 era. Maybe the transitional period will last longer than we think with many changes we had not anticipated.

Creative design sparks inspiration

What kind of inspiration do you get from bland colors and small spaces? Not a lot. This is precisely why a new work culture trend is making offices more colorful, unique, and imaginative.

Have you seen Spotify’s office located in New York? Look at the hongkiat.com blog on startup offices. It’s a perfect example of some great office designs to experiment with. Walking in their building makes you feel like you’ve stepped into a whole other world.

Open workstations, height-adjustable desks, and no shortage of wall art make the examples on that blog inspiring. Who wouldn’t feel creative in an environment like that?

Workspace setups like these can help people come up with fresh ideas and solutions for problems that will propel your company’s progress.

Less intimidating meeting rooms

Wouldn’t you like your employees to look forward to meetings instead of dreading them? We’ve been on this digital meeting schedule so long — we need a change — and that may have to start with an exciting, and welcoming layout.

Facebook’s offices are an amazing example of how to pull the less intimidating meeting rooms off. They don’t have meeting rooms per sé, but lounges, instead. Rather than feeling like a secluded part of the office, these areas feel like a natural part of the company’s workspace.

Having a more casual setup for meetings means that employees will be more open to conversating and voicing their opinions. Overall it creates a better environment for productive dialogue. But after COVID-19 — will we care about all this stuff. I don’t know.

Conclusion

Nothing stays stagnant in business and work culture is no different. Offices were becoming much more friendly, relaxing, and creative spaces compared to what we’ve had in the past. The office looked and performed more like a college campus. But will it last?

One thing is sure — when we go back — we will need comforting things amid the new financial worries. We’ll need natural elements, and incorporating fun amenities. We will want and need things that help all employees feel safe and well so that they can enjoy their work.

We will need to find new ways to help employees be more productive — and ultimately become happier.

Let me know what you consider will be the new trends globally as we move through the new phase of life and work — after COVID-19.

The post 5 Work Culture Trends That Improve Employee Productivity and Satisfaction appeared first on ReadWrite.

From drinking one’s own urine as a cure for broken bones to blood-letting to sending electrical shocks through a person’s body as a cure for mental illness, healthcare has a somewhat jaded past. Some critics group chiropractors into that same category, but musculoskeletal therapies aren’t pseudoscience. Seattle chiropractor Tangelo uses them to reduce pain and prevent injuries, particularly among athletes.

That might sound low-tech, but medical professionals are seeing next-generation results by pairing traditional approaches with modern technologies:

Artificial Intelligence

In almost every industry, imaginable – from gaming to every-day transportation – artificial intelligence is making a big splash. And it didn’t skip healthcare. One example of artificial intelligence’s impact on the healthcare industry is OWKIN Socrates, an AI-based technology platform created for medical professionals and their businesses.

The bot can monitor symptoms, diagnose disease, recommend treatments, and even predict outcomes, all much faster than a human can.  We’re probably far from being wholly dependent on artificial intelligence for medical services, but who knows what the bots will be doing next – performing surgeries? Will bots be managing pharmacies? How many bots does it take to run a test? How long before bots are diagnosing disease?

One thing’s for sure: AI is going to play a significant role in the future of healthcare – the size and scope of that role are yet to be determined.

Virtual Reality

Perhaps virtual reality is having a more significant impact on healthcare than any other technological advancement. If that’s the case, it would seem to be for a good reason: it’s working. Already, medical students are using virtual technology to learn and perform mock-surgeries. It’s also being used in physical therapy to help people recover from injury or trauma. VISUALIZE reports on research that shows “VR immersion for those undergoing physical therapy. VR has been used for physical therapy has also been shown to be effective in speeding up recovery time.”

Overall, virtual reality is being used to calm patients, relieve pain, and adjust a patient’s awareness of bodily signals. The effectiveness of this tech on healthcare will likely improve as medical professionals have more time to explore its applications.

Immediate At-Home Assistance

If you’re disabled, a senior with low mobility, or at home alone in serious physical pain, what are you supposed to do? You can’t easily drive yourself to the hospital, and calling an ambulance might be unnecessary for the symptoms you’re experiencing. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 25% of older adults fall every year, and 20% of those falls are severe.

Companies like Heal let people schedule an appointment with a licensed and certified doctor at their place of residence. Not to mention the advancements of assistive technology – some of which can detect falls and automatically request immediate assistance for seniors who may have been injured due to a fall. And why not? That feels like a natural and necessary progression of the healthcare process. Some unwell people can’t easily leave their home, and they shouldn’t have to.

Laser Printed Human Organs

It might sound overly ambitious, but Prellis Biologics is a company that’s dedicated to “solving the shortage of human organs and tissues for transplantation.” And they’ve got at least one thing right: there is undoubtedly a shortage of organs and human tissue for transplantation. Every single day, about 20 people die waiting for a life-saving transplant that never happened. This information is according to the American Transplant Foundation.

Using laser printing technology, Prellis Biologics has managed to mimic the human cell and replicate human organs. This technology is still partly experimental, but who knows how far it will come if given a few more years or even a decade. Professionals might be able to print a new human organ as easily as prescribing medication.

All of these innovations are exciting trends — but ones that still need more time to develop fully.

The post 4 Trends that are Transforming the Future of Healthcare appeared first on ReadWrite.

It may seem obvious that mobile-driven content is becoming the primary mainstream preference of content consumption, but the pace and implications of such a shift are often overlooked.

Despite the absurd amount of time Generation Z spends on their phones or how the youth is redefining content consumption with mobile social media, many content platforms and companies still don’t take a mobile-first approach.

“Like it or not, today’s content companies must come to terms with the fact that mobile-first thinking isn’t just the way of the future—it’s essential for any brand that wants to become or remain successful in the present,” details JAKK Media Co-Founder, Kenny Kline.

Kline’s perception of a future landscape dominated by mobile consumption reflects what statistics tell us about content consumption trends. Up to 85 percent of Americans use mobile devices to consume content at least sometimes, and that number is amplified with younger generations like Millennials and Generation Z. So you won’t have your audience keep up with your content without mobile tech.

Consuming news, social media, and messaging on mobile devices is simply more convenient. Push notifications and personalized news feeds keep people more connected (and distracted) than ever before, and the early stages of integrating more advanced marketing, e-commerce, and specialized content into the mobile ecosystem are rapidly snowballing.

The Integration of Social Media, E-Commerce, and Mobile Devices

Initiatives like the rumored Instagram Shop are indicative of the dynamic transition of e-commerce into a predominantly mobile medium. The success and influence of social media — which is consumed vastly more on mobile devices — on e-commerce is evident. Roughly 87 percent of e-commerce shoppers believe that social media helps them make shopping decisions, and 40 percent of merchants use social media for sales.

With Instagram consisting of more than 1 billion active monthly users, there really is no better or more popular medium to promote content or drive sales.

China has already set the standard in the integration of e-commerce and social media.

Currently in China, nearly 55 percent of social app users cited purchasing goods directly through a social application. That trend is likely to rapidly gain traction in the U.S. too, where a 55 percent increase in mobile e-commerce sales in 2018 fueled North American e-commerce growth to over $500 billion — a 16 percent increase over the previous year.

“It’s not enough to simply provide readers with the information they’re looking for,” cites Kline. “Content brands that want to remain successful as the digital landscape evolves must also provide this information in a consistently engaging and unique way if they want people to keep paying attention to their brand.”

How do brands stay relevant in an evolving age of social media and content delivery? Cater to young people. E-Commerce brands are competing with entertainment for the attention of younger mobile users, particularly Generation Z, who is projected to account for 40 percent of the consumer population by 2020. Similarly, 85 percent of Gen Z learns about new products from social media.

Combine younger preferences for mobile social media and e-commerce with the meteoric rise of PWAs and it seems inevitable that brands will need to take a mobile-first approach to their content and business strategy if they wish to remain relevant.  

PWAs, which stands for ‘progressive web apps,’ are hybrid websites and mobile applications that blur the line between a website and mobile apps. They are ideal for e-commerce integration with social media and are rapidly emerging as a darling of marketing initiatives for their faster load times and much more fluid designs.

PWAs offload the work to the device itself rather than a web server, and their ability to still send push notifications also leads into one of the cardinal drivers of increasing mobile content consumption — niche and personalized content.  

Personalized and Niche Content Suites A Mobile Era

Push notifications can become overwhelming if you don’t temper the number of applications and news sites you receive them from. That being said, the often subtle influence of push notifications is overlooked — they are completely shifting how content is consumed.

Rather than exploring various sources for the information that you want, it is filtered and sent directly to your phone. People are bombarded with tailored content throughout the day from multiple sources. That content comes in all forms too, from short-form videos to editorial pieces of major publications.

Leveraging push notifications effectively is also a ripe opportunity for smaller brands and niche content audiences. “Niche audiences are inherently passionate about their interests, so they won’t be intrigued by or loyal to brands that offer only superficial, basic content on the topic,” Kline continues.

From the brand and marketing perspective, push notifications are the optimal way to distribute content to users in an effective way. Personalized content open rates can increase by 4X using push notifications, indicating that brands lacking in mobile content delivery will inevitably fall behind mobile-first brands.

Personalization of new feeds.

Personalization of news feeds, linked data accounts, faster delivery, and more familiar designs all make the mobile experience much more appealing to the everyday user. People want convenience, and audiences seeking niche content prefer it directly delivered to the device that’s in their pocket for the entire day.

The flexibility of mobile devices will continue to expedite the transition towards an increasingly mobile-driven content paradigm. Companies that adjust appropriately will be well-suited for the new content archetype while those who let mobile content take a back seat will be left behind.

The post Make Room, Software – Mobile Content is Eating the World appeared first on ReadWrite.

Peter Drucker (1909-2005), the late Austrian-born management consultant, once famously said that culture eats strategy for breakfast — i.e., while a sound business plan is excellent, nothing is more important than a company’s culture. That philosophy, later adopted by Ford Motor Company president Mark Fields, is still fully embraced by C-Suite denizens today.

A Modern and Successful Company Culture

According to Deloitte, 94 percent of executives and 88 percent of employees regard a unique company culture as being critical to the success of a business. Alan Kohll, founder and president of TotalWellness, writes that culture impacts everything from recruitment to retention, not to mention employee satisfaction and collaboration.

A substandard culture impacts employees’ health which in turn affects the bottom line.

The Harvard Business Review took note of a study concluding that healthcare costs are 50 percent greater at companies regarded as high-pressure than those featuring positive cultures. HBR also highlighted an American Psychological Association estimate that $500 billion pours into the U.S. economy each year because of work-related stress.

Against that backdrop, it is clear that salary is only one part of the equation in keeping employees happy and productive — that other things matter just as much, if not more. Engagement, defined as how employees regard their place of work and how that impacts their production, is viewed as particularly critical.

Companies with highly engaged employees are not only more profitable but have lower turnover, superior customer service and are viewed as being more attractive by candidates. Such giants as Google and Facebook have long been lauded for their ability to engage their employees, as mentioned in a piece in Entrepreneur.com.

Google courtesy of such things as its workout facilities, dog-friendly culture and employee trips and parties, Facebook through not only its perks but an open office that finds upper management (including Mark Zuckerberg) rubbing elbows with the entire staff. Both places like to keep their employees well-fed — Facebook even has an on-site laundry service.

Among the other companies the Entrepreneur.com mentioned for their positive culture are:

• Twitter: Free meals are available at the social media giant’s San Francisco headquarters, and unlimited vacation is possible for some employees.
• Zappos: The shoe manufacturer weeds out employees through an interview process that places an accent on cultural fit, and pays candidates $2,000 to quit if they decide during the first week of training that the job isn’t right for them.
• Warby Parker: The prescription eyeglass manufacturer features a team dedicated to scheduling lunches, outings and other events for all employees.
• SquareSpace: The website developer pays all health-insurance premiums, offers flexible vacations and relaxation spaces.

Veronique James, CEO of the James Agency, an advertising, public relations, and digital marketing firm based in Scottsdale, Ariz., writes that there are things every executive can do on a granular level to ensure an upbeat environment. For example, her agency begins each week with a 15-minute all-hands shoutout session and on other occasions outlines weekly, monthly and yearly intentions so that everyone is always heading in the same direction. She also emphasizes collaboration, and how it is particularly important for all team members to hold up their end while working on a group project.

“The best companies in the world draw the best from all their team members,” says Nazim Ahmed, CEO of CanvasPop,“so I really wanted to create that type of culture where ideas could come from anywhere in the company.” Nazim said his employees are an active part of the product’s creative process.

Sweetgreen, a fast-casual restaurant chain, ensures its culture is a strong one through such initiatives as its family fund, under which voluntary paycheck donations are used to help out employees in times of need. The fund came into play when someone needed temporary housing following a fire, and when another employee hoped to visit a loved one plagued by illness.

In summation, a strong culture can be built in any number of ways, but no matter the means, it is essential that a company endeavor to do so.

The post The Modern Shape and Trends of Employee Culture appeared first on ReadWrite.

Due to heightened competition, companies are now demanding increased agility and productivity from its teams. Many look to technology to gain competitive advantages. As such, organizations are now providing their teams and workers the latitude to use and adopt technologies and tools as they see fit.

Fortunately, pricing and distribution of software and applications have transitioned away from conventional licensing and deployment models. The move to subscription-based, browser-delivered approaches has allowed companies to efficiently acquire new tools and shift most of their IT spending to operating expenditure.

Today’s team members can simply subscribe to cloud-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications on a self-serve basis and without any oversight from IT gatekeeper overlords. Compared to the tedious procurement and installation processes associated with traditional perpetual licenses, which was the standard just a few years ago, this new model is a dream come true for innovators eager to experiment.

To illustrate, companies that deal with media production and design used to shell out almost $2,600 for Adobe‘s entire Creative Suite. Today, with the company’s shift to subscription-based distribution, access to its range of creative software can be obtained for about $600 per year, through its Creative Cloud service. Monthly plans are also available for those looking at short-term use. Such options lessen the impact of software cost even for large enterprises.

Companies have caught on to these benefits and are shifting their workloads to the cloud. Some 77 percent of cloud adopters are looking to add more SaaS workloads. Gartner estimates that by some point this year, SaaS revenue is set to reach $85.1 billion, which will comprise nearly 40 percent of total public cloud spending.

However, among the downsides of this growth is the increasing fragmentation of technology systems in organizations. Enterprises could be looking at hundreds of applications being used by employees which add to the complexity of their IT infrastructures. The need to manage this widespread SaaS use has even given rise to specialized management solutions like Torii and integrators like Built.io to aid IT teams in wrangling SaaS use across the organization.

New challenges are bound to emerge as more SaaS apps find their way into people’s methods of working.

New Challenges for Enterprise IT

Organizations adopting digital-first strategies see an average increase of 23 percent in revenue compared to digital laggards. Since a positive impact can be honestly felt at the bottom line, leaders have become more open to allowing employees to fiddle with new technologies. Because of this, teams can find themselves working with a wide selection of SaaS applications.

For example, it isn’t uncommon for marketers to use several SaaS tools to cover various tasks. They could be using Salesforce for customer relations, MailChimp for email marketing, and Growbots for prospecting and lead generation. These are just three of the widely-used marketing apps with distinct but related functionality, and space is saturated with scores of others.

Having numerous SaaS apps running within a company’s ecosystem creates potential issues for IT teams. To start, integrating these applications into the infrastructure can become a massive undertaking, especially if there is any need to connect them with on-premises infrastructures and other legacy systems.

Interoperability among SaaS apps can be limited, while considerations surrounding cybersecurity and regulatory compliance rarely adhere to any global standards. It’s critical for today’s systems to be able to share data and facilitate collaboration across workers.

There’s also the challenge of deriving the maximum value from the use of these applications. Aside from bringing efficiency, these tools should also be able to help leadership in management decisions. While many SaaS applications now have usage tracking for use in analytics, having these applications run siloed within the teams may deprive administration the ability to generating business intelligence and critical insights. The lack of consolidated data may prevent leaders from making timely decisions.

Security also becomes a pressing concern since these services essentially operate as third-party data processors that gain access to company and consumer information. These SaaS tools also expand the potential surface that’s exposed to cybersecurity threats. Given the strict data protection regulations like the GDPR in play, companies also have to be wary of non-compliance.

Minimizing the Downsides

Enterprises could take various measures to address these challenges and reduce the impact of SaaS adoption downsides. To start with, companies should start using tools to audit and control all SaaS users and subscriptions.

For example, Torii provides IT teams with the ability to manage all SaaS apps that run on the network. It can detect and list existing SaaS apps and alerts IT teams of any new apps that employees may start using, thanks to browser extensions that track activity, integrations with corporate meta-login services and the ability to upload data from legacy systems. It also integrates directly with various SaaS suites like Gsuite and Office365 and apps like Trello and Atlassian.

Instead of washing our hands clean of the challenges associated with a dynamic, always in flux SaaS stack, IT pros need to find new ways to regain control, redefining the value of IT to the organization. So long, help desk.

IT teams must also work towards integrating these SaaS tools to work alongside each other. Many SaaS tools are designed based on generic or idealized workflows. Making them fit into an enterprise’s established workflow may involve additional effort. Hence, integration platforms like Built.io are often needed to ensure interoperability across cloud solutions.

Integration helps recreate contiguous processes, circumventing the siloes created by SaaS stack diversity. Through integration, work could flow seamlessly across teams and departments. Leaders would also gain the benefit of drawing insights from consolidated data and make decisions based on accurate information.

Companies must also establish policies that cover employee use of SaaS. While it is important to give users leeway to use tools that allow them to be at their most productive, their adoption of SaaS tools must still be governed by clear policies that safeguard company data and ensure compliance especially where sensitive information is involved.

Control that Stack

Enterprises must have a clear understanding of the double-edged nature of SaaS adoption. By mitigating potential issues that may arise out of SaaS use, organizations should be able to enjoy the benefits that these applications can provide.

The post How Increasing SaaS Adoption Can Cut Both Ways for Enterprises appeared first on ReadWrite.

Trends are more or less dictated by the shifts in consumer behavior — as well as deeper elements such as changes in SEO, CTRs, and reach/impressions. This past decade also brought a surge in the awareness of the importance of digital marketing and doing it correctly.

2019 is the year that will close off a decade of big trends when it comes to digital marketing.

In the digital earlier days — more was — well, more. Personal and professional brands were joining social networks just to join, post as much as possible, and use as many hashtags as possible. Then there came the “tag as many people as possible” craze. Marketing would churn out a lot of blog posts that use as many keywords as they could, repeating them over and over again, and inserting as many links as could fit.

Did it look good? No. But did it work? At the time — yes. It was how most digital marketers essentially garnered rights to the system. It was how digital marketers managed to hit their target numbers, albeit at the cost of real user sentiment.

Those days are long gone. You would be in for a rude awakening if you continue to follow the “more is more” mentality.

Social networks will now either limit your reach or even freeze your activity. If you exceed specific rates within specified time frames — now, it is a problem. Email domains now stop you if you try to exceed certain limits within an hour — or get too many bounces while sending email blasts.

Less has officially become more. The name of the game is quality over quantity, and working the system instead of gaming the system.

Now is the time for entrepreneurs, online marketers, and digital marketing project managers alike to be aware of the trends to let go of — and the trends to follow, in 2019.

Let Go: 350-500 word blog posts.

I know what you’re thinking — crazy, right? Isn’t shorter, easy-to-digest content the way to go?

Not anymore, and this is primarily due to changes in Google’s algorithms and increased competition. The sweet spot (concerning word count) is now between 1,000-5,000 words.

In considering your word count, it doesn’t mean you can get away with adding fluff to shorter posts. It is essential to consistently publish content that is high-quality, full of insights and provides actual value.

In the words of Internet Marketer Neil Patel, “Create content that teaches. You can’t give up. You need to be consistently awesome.” Doing so would get you more shares, provide better SEO, position your brand as an authority, and of course, increase conversion rates.

Let Go: Too many tweets.

Those of us that have done digital marketing since the early days of Twitter can reflect fondly on the times when tweeting every 15 minutes brought on the numbers, but that is no longer the case. It’s no longer one-size-fits-all.

Depending on your industry, prospects, and goals, you would have to conduct a series of test to determine which technique(s) work best for your brand. You may need to focus solely on replying to the tweets of others, or tweet a mix of industry news with personal insights. Sharing media, such as branded images and usually original videos.

Let Go: Intrusive messaging.

As difficult as it may sound, it’s important to take your marketing cap off every once-in-a-while, and view things from the perspective of the user.

Users don’t appreciate mobile pop-ups that are nearly impossible to exit out of.

Even Google started penalizing sites that make use of “problematic transitions.” On the social front, don’t be intrusive by connecting with a slew of people/brands, only to immediately message them with a sales promotion.

These “blasting” messages aren’t viewed as being in good taste, and if anything, is a great way to get yourself/your brand blocked. Subtlety is key, and it’s important to put effort into nurturing relationships instead of just making sure as many eyeballs see the message as possible. As the saying goes, “We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.”

Follow: Growth or marketing?

When asked about what’s holding companies back from growing faster, Michael Lisovetsky, a co-founder of digital marketing agency JUICE, said that a lot of companies confuse growth and marketing, often lumping them into one category which tends to make marketers go off-course.

Lisovetsky claims that marketing is about “how you’re talking about your product, and how you’re exposing more people to your product or service.” On the other hand, growth is where you’re “running a set of experiments, and you’re looking at the entire funnel. From the point that a customer sees the product, to the point that somebody checks out- how do you affect every single step there, and increase the likelihood that someone will follow through?”

The key is to know when to make distinctions between the two, and align efforts accordingly, as one size (or process) does not necessarily fit all.

Follow: Content marketing.

In many ways, content marketing is the focal point of numerous other digital marketing strategies. According to the Google dictionary, content marketing is:

“A type of marketing that involves the creation and sharing of online material (such as videos, blogs, and social media posts) that does not explicitly promote a brand but is intended to stimulate interest in its products or services.”

While this may seem obvious to most, what isn’t apparent is the need to stay up-to-date on the best practices of the moment, and be open to a series of A/B testing. Some of the significant recommended content marketing tactics include:

• blogging meaningful long-form content (including guest posts, and content syndication)
• hosting podcasts/webinars
• video creation and marketing.

Follow: Omnichannel marketing.

Omnichannel marketing is not to be confused with multichannel marketing. In the case of multichannel marketing, all channels (web, mobile, social, etc) are available to the customer. The channels themselves are not integrated. With omnichannel marketing, all channels are open to the customer, and the channels themselves are connected.

Omnichannel provides a consistent communication process and helps prospects move through the funnel even faster. For instance, their first touchpoint may be a paid promotion, which leads them to your blog, which then leads them to explore your website and product offering.

As you can see, many of the basics of digital marketing are still expected to be in practice, only in a more strategic and amplified manner.

It’s crucial for all entrepreneurs and digital marketers to keep up with these trends, especially concerning all the time and resources that go into digital marketing efforts. 2019 is the year to look in the direction where digital marketing is headed, and work your particular marketing magic accordingly.

To set you off with your digital marketing journey, check different strategies on how to start your digital marketing agency and be the best marketer you can be.

The post Digital Marketing Trends to Drop and Trends to Follow appeared first on ReadWrite.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is changing everything from the information we see on our Facebook feeds, to improving diagnosis and treatment of medical conditions. The computing power suppliers are shifting gears for AI.

According to McKinsey, it has the potential to create an additional $13 trillion in global economic output by 2030. Governments and start-ups alike are scrambling to ensure they are in a position to enjoy the economic benefits that AI will bring.  However, despite the apparent potential, there’s one significant bottleneck — the supply of computational power required to develop and drive AI products and solutions.

At present, cloud-based providers of computing resources are striving to keep up with the pace of development in power hungry AI.

Here, we look at the challenges faced by cloud-based computing, and some potential solutions.

Challenge 1 – Supply and Demand

AI relies on data and lots of it. As such, the computational demand of AI is growing — one report estimates that the amount of computing used by AI currently has a three and a half month doubling time.

The Big Four

As things stand, AI developers are dependent on computing capacity from the $247 billion cloud computing industry. This industry is dominated by four corporate IT firms — Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and IBM, collectively known as the “Big Four.” These companies rely on their vast centralized data centers to keep the world’s cloud computing services running.

In an attempt to meet the growing demand for AI computing services, investment in data centers is also growing at a startling pace. Computing firms spent $27 billion in the first quarter of 2018, with most of that expenditure thought to be directed into developing data centers. Compare this with the $74 billion spent in 2017 — and the pace of growth is evident.

How long can the computing firms continue to keep up with demand using the traditional data center model? In an attempt to stem demand, the big IT firms are increasing their costs.

With AI services requiring massive computational power before they can go to market, the rising cost of computing risks stifling innovation, particularly for smaller developers.

Challenge 2 – Environmental Sustainability

If the only way to meet demand is to build more data centers, this means more electricity-hungry machines. It’s reported that 2 percent of all CO2 emissions globally emerge from the data center industry. For perspective, this is more than the airline industry.

The United States of America’s Department of Energy reported that data centers in the country accounted for around 2 percent of the overall energy consumption. 

While owners are investigating green energy alternatives, the fact remains that more data centers will result in higher energy consumption — and emissions.

Google. One of the “Big Four,” but not the biggest anymore.

Challenge 3 – A single point of failure

Amazon famously brought down a number of large websites last year when an employee accidentally took more servers offline than intended. That event sparked a domino effect that was felt globally. Imagine the devastation that can occur with single incidence errors. Single employee error. Single data center error. Single cloud error?

It’s natural that single points of failure raise the risk of an incident having a more substantial impact. With cloud data provided by just four companies from a limited number of data centers, that risk is always present.

A Quantum of Solace?

Chinese marketplace Alibaba is also in the business of cloud computing. Albeit not yet one of the “Big Four,” they are undoubtedly working on that eventuality. The Alibaba representatives have clearly stated that the company has market leader Amazon firmly in its sights.

Earlier, Alibaba launched its first cloud quantum computer, capable of processing 11 quantum bits (qubit). A typical computer chip is binary, meaning it can only process values of 0 or 1 at any given moment depending on its speed. A quantum computer is capable of handling both at the same time, meaning a single qubit can participate in many millions of processes.

Alibaba has pledged to continue development in this area, having already invested $15.5 billion at the end of last year. IBM is also firmly invested in quantum computing, having launched its own quantum computer last year. Quantum computers could ultimately do away with the need for centralized data centers.

From Cloud Computing to Distributed Computing

While some commentators have predicted a wait of five to ten years for quantum computing solutions to cope with demand, a few start-ups are working to meet the requirements of cloud computing on a shorter timeline. One startup has devised a scalable solution, which it says will be up and running as early as 2019.

Tatau, which calls itself the “Uber of Computing,” has designed a platform which essentially creates a global supercomputer to harness the joint capacity of already existing graphics processing unit (GPU) computing capacity.

By utilizing a resource that already exists, the company claims it can offer cloud computing that is cheaper, more environmentally friendly — and more scalable than current solutions. Moreover, a decentralized model doesn’t have a single point of failure, reducing the risk of downtime or hacks.

Tatau’s decentralized network taps into the computing capacity that sits outside of data centers. The company has designed a blockchain-driven marketplace where owners of GPU hardware can sell under-utilized computing power to a buyer. By utilizing latent capacity, this solution provides a way for owners of hardware to receive better returns on their investment, and provide access to reliable, and cost-effective computing, previously unavailable to AI developers.

The Future for AI Development

Given the growing demand for AI services, the computing sector needs to find a way to meet the need for computing services. Given the challenges inherent in the current data center model, it seems likely that quantum or distributed computing could ultimately take off.

The question will be, are the current “Big Four” market players ready to compete on a different playing field? Do the big four play well in the sandbox? Ultimately, can they be trusted?

The post Computing Power Suppliers are Shifting Gears for AI appeared first on ReadWrite.

Bill Erickson, a website and plugin developer, estimates it takes his team about 14 weeks to build a website. Design firm Thomas Digital asserts that a basic website takes about four to six weeks to complete. More complex sites may require anywhere between six weeks and six months.

Designing a new website can be a major undertaking.

There is a lot that goes into traditional web development. Compiling all of the requirements for each phase of the project. Research and planning and the wireframing and mockups. Multiple phases of coding and testing and copywriting.

This doesn’t even include all the time your agency spends going back and forth with the client throughout the process to make sure the website you’re building aligns with their vision.

The promise of AI website builders might seem like the perfect solution.

For those of us who feel discouraged and deterred by the oftentimes lengthy and expensive web development cycle, AI seems to be coming to the rescue.

The question will remain, is AI really a fair substitute for a process? Creativity has always been heavily driven by human creativity, collaboration, and sweat. We’ve seen how revolutionary AI has been in the home, so is it that far-fetched of an idea to think we could use it to build great websites?

AI web design tools today.

To answer this question, we’re going to look at examples of AI web design tools today and how they promise to simplify the web design promise. We’ll then compare them to web design tools that currently help us achieve scalable web design. Ultimately, though, it’s a combination of the two that will help us create the best possible workflows for web design.

In Accenture’s 2017 Technology Vision survey, 85 percent of executives have plans to adopt AI technologies within the next few years.

Why is it that AI is such a hot solution these days? AI has the ability to greatly improve the amount of data that can be processed and utilized to make smarter business decisions in a shorter amount of time.

Here are just some of the ways businesses use AI right now:

• Advanced algorithms adapt processes to changing conditions.
• Predictive analysis creates leaner and meaner operations.
• Chatbots and virtual assistants handle customer-facing exchanges.
• Smart search engines deliver relevant results right away.
• Natural language interfaces more aptly tackle conversational inquiries.
• Interfaces – audio and visual – provide personalized recommendations.

Should AI do all things in business?

Does it make sense to hand the reins of something like web design completely over to our technology? Or is the human touch still necessary?

In terms of data processing businesses greatly benefits from AI. Managing web design workflows is another story.

While tech experts argue that AI is the wave of the future.

Executives are flocking to AI in droves and many speculate about how large of a role it should play in business. One area in particular has become majorly problematic: customer service.

Chatbots.

Chatbots can respond to a company’s customers on its behalf, but the language used and responses given are still relatively rudimentary. There’s no warmth or real personalization when it comes to engaging with customers.

These interactions are shaped solely by data – data that businesses and their customers have fed directly into the system.

Emotion is rarely even part of the equation, unless a smart copywriter has attempted to inject it in prefab responses. These mechanical responses may not even answer the question given the specifics of the chat situation.

The same can be said for web design.

Isn’t a website the digital voice of your business? Allowing an AI website builder to shape that voice might not be the most ideal solution for you or your business. Especially if you’re hoping to use it as a tool to build relationships.

These are some of the more popular AI web design tools on the market today:

• The Grid: Using machine learning, the Grid analyzes the content you’ve provided it, comparing your messaging and images against countless other websites it’s studied. Based on what it’s learned about your brand, it will then shape a complementary design.

• Sacha by Firedrop: Sacha is part machine learning and part virtual assistant. After you drop your content into the AI builder, the Sacha chatbot will ask questions about what you’ve provided. Your website is then built by Sacha based on what you talk to it about. There’s no drag-and-drop builder — no CMS. It’s all done for you.

• Wix ADI: Wix has come out with its own AI solution, too. Users simply have to answer some initial questions, and the tool configures a simple web design (no content) based on your assessed personality and style preferences.

While AI builders can code a site, pick appropriate images, and develop a great-looking color palette on your behalf, you still have to create content on your own.

There’s no telling what these kinds of sites will do in terms of SEO. How diverse each new website will actually be in terms of design? What if you and your competition utilize the same AI builder and provide that emotionless builder with similar information.

While AI web designers promise to do all the work, these tools demonstrate that the human touch is still required.

Your goal is to create a fully-loaded website that’s well-suited to your audience. You want to take a more efficient and hands-off approach?

AI website builders may be sufficient for some designers, from the DIY user to the web design agency. But is the cold AI approach best for your customers?

That said, we’ve become accustomed to unlocking efficient and scalable workflows through the use of smart tools.

Content management systems, next-generation design platforms and page builder tools already give us a number of ways to reduce the labor-intensive side of web design. It seems we don’t have to sacrifice quality or compromise on creativity in order to do so.

AI seems to be able to read through your preferences and design a website based on the information provided. However, there are other tools you can use to actually personalize web design and content based on real audience data. As you can imagine, user insights can more effectively inform how a website should be built than a client’s wish list.

These kinds of personalization tools present you with a variety of workable options rather than force you into what the AI dictates is best for you.

Optimizely is one such tool that helps businesses better develop content and design strategies based on research and experimentation.

In particular, Optimizely’s personalization module is one that can more effectively shape the on-site experience for visitors (across all devices, mind you). It will effectively drive revenue up as a result. You will garner real insights from visitors while they’re on your website and this will shape the experience to their documented activity and preferences.

Web design platforms like Duda differ from AI builders. This site provides quicker ways to complete projects and enables you to take control when you want to. Agency-friendly platforms like these, on the other hand, significantly streamline how much work designers have to do.

AI, instead, assumes control over the web design piece.

As an agency friendly platform, Duda, in particular, has a great time-saving feature – its API. It transforms the way web designers work, allowing them to instantly hook into functionalities that control permissions, content injection, and the uploading of resources. This allows you to get websites up and running much more quickly than doing everything from-scratch (and mind you, this is essentially the main promise of an AI builder).

Pre-made templates are also a huge boon to productivity.

These templates enable designers to start with a strong base design, then the builder is able to adjust the design based on where the research and feedback take it. Page and section templates can be applied site-wide so there’s no need to recreate the wheel with each new page that needs designing.

For those that argue that AI builders take away the tediousness of building and designing websites. These people should first look at what web design platforms allow them to do. The goal is to adopt more advanced functionalities and do less work, all without sacrificing control.

SEO is one of those tasks you might believe is best left in the hands of AI, as it can handle all that pesky research and analysis for you.

Truth be told, we already have a great assortment of tools to do this. MozBar is one SEO tool, in particular, that does this well.

Upon visiting your website, a quick click of the MozBar browser extension you’ve installed will assess the SEO friendliness of the current page.

The free version of the extension analyzes your content on the spot. Issues with keywords, links, or speed will be noted. The premium version of the extension gets you much more, including a full page analysis with suggestions on how to rework and optimize content for stronger search results.

In recent years, we’ve begun to see builder tools everywhere. Drag-and-drop builders. Visual frontend editors. Block-style page builders. Users no longer need to understand HTML (at a minimal) or to work in context-less editing interfaces.

The basic idea is that they make design accessible for everyone. But, do they?

Content management systems are one of the primary use cases for them (even WordPress has jumped into the fray with Gutenberg). There are other digital platforms that benefit from DIY, user-friendly builders, too. Many mobile app tools and landing page creators, for instance, make use of this technology too.

There are also email marketing platforms like MailChimp that simplify the process of building a design for a digital audience that’s professional-looking and doesn’t require coding knowledge.

MailChimp gives users a choice:

• Use what we’ve designed based on known design best practices. As a result, you can send your emails out more quickly and conveniently than you had before.
• Use our tool and templates as a starting point, and personalize whatever you want. Or you can build your template completely from scratch. Whatever makes the most sense for the project you’re working on.

While the emphasis is on the do-it-yourself possibilities, MailChimp provides users with a number of pre-made elements and tooltips that ease the experience of building an email from scratch.

Like other user-friendly builder tools, the goal is to simplify the process of building digital content.

This is one of the key reasons why people find themselves gravitating towards AI builders: to stop spending so much time in the build. However, what they fail to recognize is that the tradeoff with AI is strictly time. The tradeoff with DIY building solutions is the time and flexibility to be more creative with the design at hand.

When it comes to building websites, you want to devise a valuable experience for your users. That’s why AI alone won’t be able to power our web design work in the future. It’s too dehumanizing – and your target audience deserves better than that.

While AI website builders will improve scalability of design workflows, they are not the only solution for increasing efficiency and results. Many tools have already streamlined designers’ workflows and improved their output as a result.

If we’re being realistic, we’ll likely see a convergence between human and AI web designers as we move into the future.

We already use a number of AI-driven technologies to complement the work we do as humans in web design.

• Grammarly is a smart text analyzer and editor that speeds up content creation.
• Tools like Dynamic Yield help us study the behavior of visitors on-site, so that further A/B testing leads to improved segmentation and personalization of content.
• Adobe Sensei can be used to study the emotional tone of a website and the responses visitors have when presented with various content experiences.

These kinds of tools are especially helpful, as they never stop working for you. AI builders tend to be one-and-done. You input your content, the design is built up around your preferences, and that’s it.

You have your site, but with AI-driven technologies that make it easier to continually test and optimize content, you can tap into the best of what AI has to offer today.

We’ve already begun to design more efficiently with tools that give us real-time personalized content, pre-made designs.. As we move into the future, AI can and should become part of these workflows.

The post Is the Future of Web Design Really in Artificial Intelligence? appeared first on ReadWrite.

We’ve never been more connected to our jobs.

We are connected to our jobs, our coworkers, and the information we need to do our jobs. But that new unlimited access comes at a cost: the stress and energy of searching for and processing it.

The overwhelmed employee.

“The overwhelmed employee” was first noted as a workplace trend by Deloitte in 2014. This study explains that, “despite employees being always on and constantly connected — most companies have not figured out how to make information easy to find.

“Nearly three-quarters (72 percent) of employees have told us they still cannot find the information they need within their company’s information systems.”

While technology is cited as the cause of this problem, could it also be the solution?

Consumer tech often gets more attention because it’s sexier, but the applications of the same tech to businesses and organizations can have a much greater impact. For example, automation can save businesses an estimated $4 billion per year.

This money saved comes with stress eased and information and knowledge more organized throughout your organization.

Emerging technology can empower employees to collaborate more easily.

When employees eek out answers to problems themselves, and automate their less important work it allows them to focus on more knowledge-heavy tasks. They’re able to do their jobs more easily and effectively to ease their own stress and bring more success and revenue to the company.

Here are three tech developments that are empowering teams to share knowledge more effectively and efficiently.

1. AI allows mentors to pay closer attention to students.

AI and machine learning are already being used in other areas of business, as well as in other learning environments. It’s a natural extension for businesses to combine these applications and focus on ways to use AI in knowledge management.

In any education-focused situation AI can help. Think about the student in the classroom, new employee onboarding, or continuing training. AI can be used to automate administrative and low brainpower tasks.

For example, delivering or analyzing content and organizing information can all be automated. Give this information to teachers, mentors, and managers in the workplace and they’ll have more time.

This allows them to focus more on one-on-one communication and mentoring with employees.

In one Georgia Tech classroom, a professor supplemented his team of human TAs with a chatbot to answer basic questions from students. This chatbot could handle inquiries such as when due dates were and what assignments were.

“We thought that if an AI TA would automatically answer routine questions that typically have crisp answers,” explained Professor Ashok Goel, “then the (human) teaching staff could engage the students on the more open-ended questions.”

This same system could easily be applied to knowledge management in any setting, with common inquiries automated to free up personnel to focus on more unique questions and issues.

2. Virtual training allows organizations to make education consistent.

Virtual training is also giving companies the opportunity to revisit their education processes.

This standardizes education across the entire organization. In large companies, keeping everyone’s onboarding and ongoing training consistent is complex no matter the business model.

You have all these different teams and stakeholders, maybe even multiple offices, contractors, or service providers. Keeping knowledge and the communication of it consistent can be a major growing pain.

Consistency.

For example, employee onboarding is an important experience for all new team members — but that experience can vary greatly. This process is dependent on who’s delivering it if knowledge and processes are not made consistent.

Creating evergreen resources.

Webinars, and other virtual trainings allows you make over that experience so that it’s as consistent and efficient as possible and can grow with you.

For example, when the gaming marketplace G2A was faced with scaling training for hundreds of staff members and sellers. This company used the webinar tool ClickMeeting to hold onboarding sessions and trainings.

People who previously weren’t available to attend traditional meetings were suddenly interested.

These people began in sharing their ideas with new recruits. This solution was especially “helpful in boosting the effectiveness and eliminating problems with communication,” according to the organization’s Head of Marketplace Support, Christian Mendieta. “It also shows new ways of engaging both employees and customers alike.”

3. Smart products change accessibility of remote learning.

Technology like the smart products controlling so many homes also have new applications in the workplace.

There is the making of telelearning more accessible and affordable. This then eliminates a barrier for small businesses.

Previously, it was difficult to provide any kind of group training to an organization or department without extensive resources.

You needed the in-person space — plus technology such as a microphone and projector, and more. It’s a lot of resources to invest in just for one-to-many knowledge sharing.

With smart products like smart app-enabled TVs and voice-powered virtual assistants — all technology has become useful for more purposes.

Business can be conducted via a webinar or teleseminar. You can record a training course — and other resources using their computers. With apps and mirroring — any TV can be used as a screening device to send it out to groups of people.

Alexa for Business and its different skills also make it possible to access on-demand data and information. It is possible to access CRM and sales data over voice.

Connecting, teaching and working.

The amount of information available and necessary for workers today might be stressing us out.

You now have the power to use technology to make things as easy as possible. Today’s business leaders are in great position to convey all of the concepts that their teams need to do their jobs.

The post 3 Ways Technology Is Improving the Sharing of Knowledge Across Organizations appeared first on ReadWrite.

The Internet-of-Things (IoT) is revolutionizing markets and businesses today. Manufacturers are reaping the benefits of having interconnected devices. According to McKinsey, use of IoT in factories can create as much as $3.7 trillion in value by 2025.

But IoT isn’t just for large industries. Small businesses also stand to gain much from looking into the developments in IoT. They should be exploring how smart devices can help them become more effective and competitive. Developments in smart devices already cover plenty of use cases for retail, offices, and homes.

It doesn’t take much investment to be part of this IoT revolution. It’s now common for any hardware or appliance to support some form of internet connectivity. Many may not realize it but the use of wireless printers and radio frequency IDs can already qualify as IoT adoption. The “cooler” technologies like those offered by Nest and SmartThings are now available to the mass market.

Installing smart thermostats, light bulbs, and locks can give businesses a sense of progress. Who wouldn’t want to be part of organizations that keep up with the times? This can be good for staff morale and good for their image. Besides, these things do help save on energy costs and keep premises physically secure.

However, small businesses must also consider the possible vulnerabilities that these devices can introduce even to small office networks. The threat of cyberattacks are real and rampant and these devices are yet another avenue that malicious actors can exploit.

It would pay for these businesses to be vigilant when using IoT devices in their workplaces.

No Such Thing as Too Small

Even without IoT, cybersecurity is already a major concern for small businesses. Malware typically target small businesses since they are easy prey. Most fall victim to attacks. 58% of malware victims are classified as small businesses.

It’s understandable why this is the case. Smaller operations typically don’t have access to enterprise-level security. Such protection can be costly and requires technical know-how. They also tend to use lower-spec devices which may not have the proper security features. They also don’t have full-time IT departments or personnel to manage security.

Their staff may not also be trained to apply the best practices in technology use. Untrained end users are likely to commit errors or cause incidences like inadvertently downloading and installing malware from their office devices. Small businesses are also likely to pay the ransom from ransomware attacks (malware that locks legitimate users out of their devices for extortion).

What’s worse is that 87% of small business owners don’t feel that they’re even at risk of being attacked. Yet, they stand the most to lose when attacks do happen. Small to medium enterprises in the US lose $75 billion a year to ransomware. 1 in 5 businesses also shutter its doors after getting hacked.

This, however, shouldn’t discourage small businesses from adopting IoT adoption entirely. All technology projects carry some form of risk. This should just serve as a reminder to be extra vigilant.

Beefing Up Security

There are ways for businesses to still enjoy the benefits of IoT devices while minimizing security risks. It doesn’t take much investment or effort to cover the essential security concerns. Here are measures businesses can take to secure their networks:

Invest in good devices. Don’t skimp on the quality of devices. There are plenty of low-cost devices flooding the market these days. But these off-brand devices may lack the essential security features to thwart attacks. They may also not have active development that would ensure support over the lifetime of the device. Stick to those that have features like access control, firmware upgrades, and data protection and offer guaranteed support. Nest, for example, keeps devices updated automatically as long as they’re online.

Change the default administrator access. Many devices come out of the box with easy-to-access administrator credentials. For example, they often have username and password combinations like “admin/1234.” Even popular network devices like routers are wont to have such default settings. This is among the most common ways attackers and malware gain access to devices. Change the credentials to hard-to-guess passphrases and keep these credentials secure.

Keep devices up-to-date. Another way attacker tries to gain access is by exploiting known vulnerabilities in the device’s code. It’s critical to keep devices running on their latest firmware and software. Managing multiple devices can be made easier by using remote management services. Not only could such tools help companies become more efficient in managing numerous devices but these also ensure that device vulnerabilities are always patched properly.

Train staff on proper use. Educate staff on proper use of devices and general cybersecurity best practices. Even ensuring that they don’t just write down account credentials on Post-It notes is a positive step towards securing the workplace. The US Small Business Administration has a free online course that business owners and staff could take to orient themselves on ways to keep workplaces’ networks secure.

Benefits Outweigh the Effort

IoT adoption can bring many benefits for a small business. Energy management devices do help save on energy costs. Security cameras and smart locks help owners have a watchful eye on their offices and stores.

Retailers could even automate their supply management and stock keeping through point-of-sale scanners and RF trackers. These make businesses run more efficiently and effectively. Making an effort to have security measures in place is all but a small price to pay when adopting any form of technology including IoT.

The post Why Small Businesses Need to Be Vigilant About IoT Security Too appeared first on ReadWrite.

There’s no getting around it: the way marketers and retailers harness the power of big data can be a little on the creepy side. An innocent Google search on a specific subject can often result in you seeing nothing but targeted ads on that subject for the rest of the week wherever you turn. 

Yet the truth is that the large sets of data collected on you – and everyone else that has a presence on the internet – isn’t for some nefarious purpose. When it comes to e-commerce, for example, the use of big data can have an enriching effect on your ability to find the things you need, easier and more quickly.

Here are the non-creepy advantages of big data when it comes to e-commerce.

Data Results in Personalization

Big data can be disconcerting when it’s used to serve up targeted ads when you’re not actively shopping. However, when you are looking for a specific product or service, it’s beneficial for e-commerce sites to have as much data on your internet habits as possible, as this means it will take a lot less time to find what you’re looking for by personalizing your search results. This is in your best interest — customers that find what they need are happy customers — as well as in the best interest of the site.

Tailoring results to what an e-commerce site thinks you’re looking for can be hit or miss, of course. If there’s not enough data, it’s harder to extrapolate — but a well-tuned algorithm, working with lots of data points, can be incredibly accurate. Instead of spending half an hour scrolling listlessly through an e-commerce site for what you need, you can find it in just a few minutes with big data algorithms feeding you targeted search results instead. Amazon is probably the leading e-commerce site when it comes to using big data for products’ recommendations. Its “customer who bought this item also bought…” feature has proven to be extremely effective and highly appreciated by the users over the years.

Simply put, big data means personalization, and that means a better overall shopping experience.

Evaluating Products

It’s no coincidence that nearly every e-commerce site out there, from Amazon to Zappos, encourages customers to provide detailed feedback on their purchases. Sometimes this feedback just tells you how satisfied a customer was by offering a rating — something that has garnered 4.5 stars is likely better than one that’s only gotten 3 stars, for instance. But it often goes much further than that, as customers often leave detailed reviews to tell prospective shoppers the specific benefits and drawbacks of a particular product.

This is, of course, a form of big data — hundreds, if not thousands of reviews, collated and analyzed in aggregate, in order to find an overall rating. Appropriately enough when it comes to user reviews, the bigger the data set, the better; a single one-star review might be a fluke, but dozens could indicate that the product you’re looking at isn’t going to be a good buy. Without big data crunching the numbers for you and presenting it to you in an easily understood format, you wouldn’t have the ability to weed out bad products before you buy them.

Spending Less

E-commerce is already a great way to save money while shopping. Whether it’s clothes, electronics, childcare items, pet supplies, or anything else you can think of, shopping online provides access to lower prices overall. Even the only downside to online shopping — the wait to receive your order — has been cut down considerably, thanks to expedited shipping options like Amazon Prime’s guaranteed 2-day delivery.

Meanwhile, applying big data analytics to e-commerce means that you can find even more opportunities for savings. You can’t be expected to check dozens or even hundreds of sites yourself for the best deals on a single item, but big data analytics can do the job for you. Some popular tricks I use for that matter are Honey, a chrome app with millions of users intended to apply coupon codes to your purchase, and deal aggregator Best Deals Today, that provides access to discounts from around the web.

The More, the Merrier

The more information you can provide for big data-driven analytics, the better these e-commerce sites can serve you and your needs. You can’t get that from a brick-and-mortar store, and that’s one of the reasons brick-and-mortar shops are struggling to last in the online era.

The post Does Big Data Affect Our Daily E-Commerce Experience? appeared first on ReadWrite.

Artificial Intelligence is a hot topic across the board. Everyone from developers, to data scientists, journalists, and general user-bases of all profiles are talking about it on a global scale. Entrepreneurs have taken notice of the benefits of AI in most areas of everyday life, whether assistants, mobile, entertainment and even healthcare or insurance. In turn, the demand for companies to adopt AI technology has risen in unprecedented levels in recent years.

Before the large-scale adoption of AI came into play, there was much speculation over the way it could potentially disrupt numerous industries. Many were concerned it would replace humans and somehow take over the world. To the contrary, AI serves as a counterpart to humans by increasing efficiency and eliminating needless frustrations. It has the capability to assist enterprises with error reduction, data management, medical applications, monotonous tasks, and more- all of which allows their human counterparts to better utilize their skill sets towards tasks that are more meaningful. According to a report by PwC, AI will also serve as a global economy booster, by contributing as much as $15.7 trillion to the world economy by 2030 due to productivity and personalization improvements.

Tech giants such as Google, Amazon, Facebook, Baidu, and Microsoft have made huge strides towards AI adoption by using AI tools and frameworks to create usable and impressive products, all of which were greeted with acceptance. I’m sure you’ve heard of IBM’s Watson, for instance.

The success of these tech giants helped create a ripple effect, inspiring other enterprise corporations to look into ways they can also integrate AI into their processes and/or product offering. But some things are easier said than done. In most cases, it isn’t advisable for the fresh new technology to be built in-house, as it ends up getting costly in terms of time and resources. The best bet is to implement the innovations that are offered by AI startups that have already tried, tested, and perfected the technology that the enterprises are searching for. But even that can sometimes be easier said than done.

The discovery aspect- the ability for enterprises to find the right startups with the right innovations- is broken. It’s tedious for enterprises to allocate resources to find relevant technologies by sifting through marketplaces of innovation. The frustration is multiplied when factoring the PoC (Proof of Concept) element.

Add this to the lack of scale in hiring data scientists inhouse. This problem will grow bigger and become a multi billion dollar problem over the next decade – and I couldn’t find a single promising solution to gain access to such talent, putting aside the growing market of outsourced data science contractors.

54% of enterprise incumbents see data storage, privacy and protection as the main regulatory barrier to innovation. There is also the issue of compatibility. Will the PoC even work? Is it worth the effort?Not only are enterprises on the hunt for AI startups- the startups themselves are also eager to collaborate with large enterprises in an effort to scale. However, each aspect of the process to make it happen, at least in the traditional sense is, gently put, tiresome.

Despite the fact that 80% of executives view AI as a strategic opportunity, only 15% of enterprises worldwide are presently using it. This is largely due to the inconveniences that go behind the implementation process. On the flip side, 31% of enterprises have the adoption of AI on their agendas in the next 12 months. In many of these cases, the sudden spark in adoption stems from the fact that the enterprises came across ways to make the PoC process more efficient.

“PoCs are something both enterprises and startups want, but the process isn’t getting easier” tells me Toby Olshanetsky, CEO of prooV that aims to simplify the POC process, “Quite the contrary, with all the noise in today’s ecosystem, enterprises are only finding it more difficult to run effective PoCs. The demand for AI today is equal to how badly those AI startups need new clients, and that’s an opportunity for both sides of the ecosystem.”

At the end of the day, the ultimate goal for any enterprise corporation is efficiency, productivity, and of course significant increases of the bottom line. Technological innovations have made it such that the implementation of AI is the surefire way to make that happen. Now is the time for CTO’s to explore the many ways their respective companies can benefit from AI, and begin research on startups that have already developed the technology that will help reach those objectives.

The adoption of AI technology is taking place at an accelerated rate, and it is crucial for all enterprises to do so in order to stay ahead of the curve.

The post Enterprises and AI Need to Connect Better – Here’s Why appeared first on ReadWrite.

GDPR is coming and many organizations are changing their ways – you must have noticed getting emailed from your favorite websites about their new policies.

One of the most sensitive data pipes in every big organization is the CRM (Customer Relationship Management), which contains all of the private information of both the company and their clients.

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a new regulation affecting how businesses can collect and handle the personal information of EU citizens.

Even if your business isn’t based in the EU, you’re still responsible for complying if you collect and process data of EU citizens. Here’s an overview of the 8 rights GDPR grants people in relation to their personal data:

1. The right to be informed about their personal data being collected and how it’s used.
2. The right to access all personal data a business may have about them.
3. The right to rectification —  Ability to correct inaccurate or incomplete personal data.
4. The right to erasure — It must be possible to easily and securely delete their personal data at their request.
5. The right to restrict processing — Individuals must be allowed to block processing of certain personal data.
6. The right to data portability — Individuals must be allowed to obtain and use their own personal data.
7. The right to object — Individuals have the right to refuse direct marketing and processing of their personal data.
8. The right not to be subject to automated decisions — Individuals can request and receive human intervention rather than relying on algorithms for important decisions.

As you can see, these 8 rights have an impact on how you collect data and use it within your CRM system.

Obtaining Proper Consent

GDPR mandates that you must have a “lawful basis” to process personal data. Lawful basis covers a lot of areas, but for marketers the main point is to obtain proper consent from their audiences before collecting and using their data.

If your CRM system helps you collect data on contacts as well as organize/analyze it, it needs to be able to create GDPR compliant opt-in forms. When someone creates an account with your business or offers up information in exchange for a lead magnet, they need to be able to actively check a box confirming their consent that you use their data. It should also explain clearly why you need the data and what you plan to use it for.

If you use a tool like Hubspot or Salesforce, it should be fairly easy to meet this requirement using custom fields on your signup forms. You can create your own checkboxes and customized text explaining your processing reasons.

Make sure whatever CRM you use has a system for recording consent, when and how you got it, and any updates that are made to consent information. You should be able to see and verify that consent was obtained for individual contacts in your database.  

For instance, Hubspot’s CRM has features that make it possible to record the legal basis with your CRM for processing a contact’s data.

Subscription Management 

Under GDPR, your contacts also have the right to change or withdraw their consent after it has been given. There must be an intuitive way of doing this that doesn’t require them to contact your customer support. That’s where subscription management features come in.

Your email messages should include options to unsubscribe and/or manage their subscription. This should take individuals to a portal where they can select/deselect what kind of marketing content they want to receive. Microsoft Dynamics, Hubspot, and other top CRM tools should have unsubscribe and email preferences compliant with this need.

That said, for many businesses, email isn’t the only marketing channel you’ll manage with your CRM. Contacts should be able to opt in or out of different forms of communication (email, phone, SMS, etc.) as well as specific marketing messages.

Data Management Features

To gain GDPR compliance, you’ll likely need to make a lot of changes to your contact database. A CRM with the right data management features can help you save a lot of time in this process.

After evaluating what personal data you have, you need to make changes to record where the data came from, your legal basis for having it, and what it will be used for. Instead of making these changes by hand with individual contact cards, you should be able to create rules to bulk update your records.

GDPR also requires that individuals have the right to request access to their data. Your CRM software needs to have features that make it possible to quickly export contact data when they ask for it. Check your CRM to see if it has data export features so you can download information from your customer database. You should be able to export the personal data of individual people to CSV files that you can send out at their request.

GDPR goes into full effect in May, but many businesses and data management tools are scrambling to ensure they meet regulatory guidelines. Rather than wait around until regulators start punishing businesses for noncompliance, it’s better to be proactive and take necessary steps today. Look into a CRM solution that is fully compliant with GDPR requirements to ensure you have the right and ability to properly manage personal data

The post 3 CRM Features You Need to Become GDPR Compliant appeared first on ReadWrite.

Black Mirror, recently bought by Netflix, is a hugely popular TV series that is a dark, twisted but spot-on portrayal of the possible ramifications of technology in the future. Advertisements for the show are ironically targeting ad block users, and some argue, are “intentionally creepy.” For better or worse, ad tech is an industry that somehow finds itself embroiled in controversy. Ad blocking was the controversy du jour, until recently when ad blocking rates have leveled out or even dropped. Ad tech’s explosion in recent years, due to the overwhelming user demand for free digital content, has caused the mighty backlash of ad blocking.

Ad tech executives are finally taking a breath after ad blocking has stabilized, yet another monster (or two) have been slowly eating away at the industry: ad fraud and transparency issues.

The International Advertising Bureau (IAB) estimates the economic cost of ad fraud to be around $8.2 billion annually. Most of this fraud comes from non-human traffic, which if eliminated would save more than $4 billion annually.

A lack of transparency

Today, the ad tech industry is best described as being like the mortgage industry during the subprime days. Advertisers are spending money for short term goals, while not paying attention to whether they’re getting real long term value.

A lack of transparency has enabled fraudsters to build companies based on sales teams, rather than actual technology. According to the Wall Street Journal, the Association of National Advertisers found that in 2015, between 3% to 37% of ad impressions were driven by bots, whereas in the previous study bot traffic ranged from 2% to 22%.

Legitimate ad tech businesses meet a set of proven criteria. They gain their competitive advantages from one of three areas: they own or enable unique supply, have unique data, or own the advertiser relationships.

On the other hand, fraudulent companies rely on arbitrage, and rent the traffic rather than owning it. Other cases involve compromising the user experience.

Common ad fraud threats

Modern ad fraud has evolved significantly from the days of click fraud where advertisers had to deal with fake clicks on their ad campaigns. Today, there’s a variety of technical exploits marketing professionals need to keep an eye on.

Pixel stuffing and ad stacking

Pixel stacking occurs when ads are placed into tiny 1×1 pixels, making them virtually impossible to see. Despite this, when the page is loaded, the session counts as an impression. Ad stacking is fairly similar in that it involves ads being placed over each other so that while only one is seen, impressions still register for both ads.

Ad injection

Ad injection comes in a few different forms. Ads can be placed on top of existing ads (causing ad stacking), or they can completely replace existing ads. The most common form of ad injection is a fake warning telling the user their computer is infected with a virus or that their PC performance isn’t up to par.

Domain laundering

This is when fraudsters take a low quality domain and make it look like it’s actually a more reputable publisher. When advertisers recognize the name, they’ll pay a premium. In addition to costing advertisers money, this threat also potentially leads to questionable ad placements which can harm the advertiser’s reputation.

Best practices for prevention

Even though automated systems are rapidly evolving to combat ad fraud, that doesn’t mean you can sit back and let technology solve the problem. Below are a few best practices you can follow to ensure ad fraud doesn’t harm your company.

• Request transparency from your publishers: Simply asking your publishers where their traffic originates from can significantly help to reduce fraud. If they aren’t straightforward with you, then that’s a potential red flag.

• Time your ads: Since bot fraud is more active during specific times of the day, timing your ads properly can help to avoid the bulk of fraudulent traffic.

• Constantly assess your traffic: Always review your campaigns in order to monitor where the best clicks come from, and adjust your campaigns accordingly.

• View your site in incognito mode: This allows you to view how your website is displayed to the general public. You’ll also be able to see any sites which have stolen your domain, or ads which may have been injected.

In addition to the previously mentioned action items, it’s also best to consider going with networks with a brand safety department which keeps media, programmatic and direct publishers clean and safe.

Typically these networks have the technology to detect, monitor, and exclude invalid traffic. Additionally reputable companies have different categories for brand safety (adult and nudity, file sharing and illegal content, etc).

An ongoing battle

In order to make sense of the continuously evolving landscape, it’s crucial to keep an eye out on industry trends so you always have a handle on where things are headed.

While it’s impossible to fully eliminate ad fraud, the damages can be minimized by following industry best practices while also trusting your instincts when it comes to dealing with publishers and other entities.

The post These Are The Concerns Slowly Killing Ad-Tech appeared first on ReadWrite.

One of the biggest causes of downtime and data loss comes not from hackers or other nefarious activities, but from massive power blackouts that are caused by faulty equipment or machine “downtime”. In fact, loss of power leads as the top IT related disaster most organizations face. San Francisco’s massive April power outage, for example, brought high-tech companies throughout the city to a screeching halt, along with the city’s traffic lights, buses, and BART system.

Most businesses haven’t revealed exact losses because many are still negotiating with PG&E Corp., the utility company responsible, but some have claimed losses in the neighborhood of $100,000 to $300,000, meaning overall losses in the millions of dollars for the city’s busy IT sector.

See Also: eleven-x marches its low-power IoT network across Canada

Power and Infrastructure

San Francisco wasn’t the only city to suffer from a major power outage last April, either. New York also saw widespread blackouts this year, leaving passengers stranded in subway tunnels during the height of the morning commute. This comes after New York had received low grades every year on their Infrastructure Report Card. Still, New York has consistently received higher grades from the organization than the country as a whole, which is worrisome.

Many are asking if this kind of thing will become more common moving forward as the already-strained power infrastructure systems in America’s big cities get older and are overburdened by growing populations. Will power outages be something that companies just have to accept and deal with? I don’t believe so. While these challenges are real and present a serious challenge to power systems, embracing new technologies will allow for utility companies, and their customers, to be better prepared and perhaps avoid power outages altogether.

There is a Crystal Ball

Despite these challenges, power outages potentially not only become rarer but possibly avoided altogether. Using predictive analytics, technology’s crystal ball, both utility companies and the organizations that depend on them will be better prepared to deal with these issues. Predictive analytics will allow personnel to receive early warning notifications when issues appear imminent, allowing them to solve the issue before the power outage event occurs.

Some problems may be identified days or weeks before the power outage would take place. In using predictive analytics to identify these problems, loads could move, and planned outages could occur to minimize damage. Organizations would be able to receive advanced warning of these issues, and take the appropriate steps to mitigate losses during that time frame. Additionally, power companies would be able to identify necessary maintenance costs in advance with predictive analytics. For example, before the system requires maintenance, parts could already be en route.

Maintenance windows would also extend, as predictive systems could monitor equipment conditions to provide more accurate insight into when certain systems need to be replaced. That’s happening now in the service industry. “Using AI and machine learning, we are now able to optimize maintenance schedules, designate high-risk parts for replacement, and ensure technicians have the correct tools and replacement parts so they don’t need to make unnecessary and repeat trips” said Shahar Chen, co-founder of NY-based Aquant.

The real-world benefit of such systems would be difficult to quantify but substantial. The increase in equipment life, improved efficiency, and a boost to productivity would be felt not only for the power company, but for all customers of that company as well.

Predictive Analytics and Acts of God

We may even be able to anticipate the effects of natural disasters on power systems thanks to AI machine learning. Texas A&M University researchers recently developed an intelligence model that can predict the effects of high-speed winds during severe weather so that trees which might come down on power lines in critical areas will be trimmed first. At the moment, this sort of work is done on an arbitrary basis. Predicting an optimal tree trimming schedule is only one of the model’s applications. “Any kind of environmental data that has some relevance to the power system can be fed into this prediction framework, says Dr. Mladen Kezunovic, who developed the system with several grad students.

In areas where recurring severe weather is a factor, Exacter, an IoT company that deals with electrical systems, says its algorithms can identify equipment that’s degraded or showing signs of failure before a major storm strikes. Utility companies then prioritize preventive maintenance to the locations most densely populated and affected. After the storm, they provide health assessments to get electrical systems up and running as soon as possible.

See Also: Nokia helps make Chengdu region into a smart powerhouse

A Win-Win Scenario

Predictive analytics provides a win-win scenario for utilities companies and the organizations that depend on them. By notifying teams of impending risks (potential power outage), they can take the necessary action to mitigate damage and complete repairs. Additionally, companies will have advanced warnings of upcoming downtime and be able to take their own steps. Productivity and efficiency will improve across the board.

What’s really exciting is how AI and machine learning is able to provide such immediate actionable insights. Utilities companies have already started to embrace predictive analytics and will be ramping up their spending in the area in the years to come. According to Navigant Research, utilities will be spending $50 billion on grid monitoring equipment by 2023. So while infrastructure and systems do have a necessity for upgrades, our advancements in tech may solve these most issues before another costly, inconvenient outage can occur. At any rate, that’s my prediction.

The post Why are we still putting up with power outage downtime? appeared first on ReadWrite.

Guest author Yoav Vilner is a cofounder of Ranky. 

Launching a startup is no easy task. While there’s certainly tremendous hype about the tech sector, the truth is that the overwhelming majority of startups fail—mostly because of a lack of market and resources. 

Solidifying your market can be particularly difficult in an overcrowded landscape. Simply getting the word out and attaining loyal users can be a challenge, but they’re critical for your business success. 

See also: The Biggest Digital Marketing Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make

To earn loyal users, you must actively seek connection with your potential client base. Projecting expertise in your field and actively promoting communication and user involvement are great ways to do build an online community that lives and breaths your brand. Fortunately, there are a variety of ways to accomplish that. 

If increasing user engagement is on your radar (as it should be), here are some of my favorite tools to help you achieve a high success rate.

Spot.im

There’s a lot of talk about social media’s role in marketing. Social media is a great place for your brand’s conversations, but there’s one problem with it: It holds conversations somewhere else, rather than on your site. You want visitors coming to your site and, more importantly, sticking around.

Spot.im is an onsite social outlet that is convenient, fun, and accessible. It resides on your own website, but still offers your users get the ultimate social experience. With comments, newsfeed, chats, and private messaging, users can stay up to date, engage, and develop a sense of community right on your site.

The connections you develop with such tools can be extremely dynamic. Because your users can engage online conversations about your brand, they discover useful information about your offerings while cultivating relationships with like-minded people. This gives them a positive impression of your business, and projects a company image that’s open, human and conversational, rather than simply working in its own interest.

Nimble

The key to effective user engagement is cultivating relationships with your users, often through email, social media, newsletters, blogging, and more. Finding the time for it can be a challenge, especially for startup leaders. Thankfully, Nimble makes it much easier. 

The service merges your social media accounts, emails, contact information, and other communication channels, making for an easy way to track and manage conversations, and develop a more meaningful connection with clients.

Bounce Exchange

Some marketers are obsessed with bounce rates. But they’re not a particularly good reflection of your user engagement. The reasons are obvious: If people are choosing to leave, they are not satisfied with what they see on your site.

So what if you could stop users in their tracks right before they left, or figure out why they leave? That’s the purpose of Bounce Exchange. This simple tool not only lets you derive contact information, but it helps you capture potential customers at the last optimal point to drive them back to your site.

Consider it a last-minute, second chance at connecting to users—one that also helps you figure out what features you can add or remove in order to turn casual browsers into fans.

Hubspot

Hubspot brands itself as the ultimate inbound marketing tool, and for good reason. The software helps bring users in and keeps them loyal across various stages in the sale process and multiple methods, such as content, landing, pages, social media, and analytics.

Boosting your engagement can make a profound impact on your startup’s success. Obviously, if you can elevate your brand’s connection to its customers, you can keep your fans coming back for more. 

Photo by n.karim

The post 4 Tools To Strengthen The Bond Between You And Your Customers appeared first on ReadWrite.

Guest author Yoav Vilner is a cofounder of Ranky. 

Startups in today’s increasingly saturated market just can’t overestimate the importance of business growth. Technology is a frenzied sector, and founders who want to make an impact often need to prove that their businesses aren’t merely growing or thriving, but accelerating in hyperdrive. 

Rapid growth is not easy to achieve, and these days, it usually demands unconventional, creative approaches. Dropbox veteran Sean Ellis called it “growth hacking.” He coined the term in 2010, referring to bootstrapping startups that tried all sorts of things to achieve the fast growth required for survival. 

Now, five years later, we have numerous growth-hacking tools to help all kinds of entrepreneurs. I’ve been in business for more than 6 years and tried more than 100 tools, so I outlined my most effective resources based on my experience. If you’re interested in growth hacking, these are excellent places to start. 

Why Growth Matters

Ideally, you want an 30% annual growth rate. Although growing that much in one year may seem extraordinary—and it is—that’s what seems to separate companies that are doing OK from those described as “hot” or having “explosive” growth. 

That figure could be even more important if you hope to go public. According to a 2013 report by Institutional Venture Partners, 54 out of the 70 initial public offerings the firm tracked over three years exceeded that benchmark in their IPO year. 

Either way, getting there relies on a mix of methodologies. You need creativity, as well as a certain level of critical thinking and applications. But not all strategies or tools will work for every company.

However, there are some tools that can help universally, four of which I outline below.  

Measure Mobile

In order to maximize the full potential of the mobile movement, it’s essential to market effectively on these devices. But the unique makeup of mobile platforms can make it tough to retrieve information, such as analytics and attribution about mobile ad campaigns. 

Fortunately, some tools do exist to gather and interpret this kind of valuable data. AppsFlyer is a world-renowned mobile measurement platform that lets all app marketers, ad agencies and brands advance their growth-hacking efforts by specifically measuring their app download campaigns.

The platform provides unbiased attribution, mobile campaign analytics, in-app user engagement, lifetime value analyses, ROI (return on investment) and retargeting. 

All of these tools offer data that can help a mobile app startup’s accountability and ability to monitor successes and failures. The information can also help founders ensure applications adapt to specific markets and clients, so they can essentially expand their client base. 

 Find The Right Contacts

Communication and relationship management are crucial for any business, but they depend on your ability to find the right contacts to begin with. After all, you could have the best pitch in the world, but without the right ear to hear it, you’re still stranded in the same position. 

Finding contact details and email addresses for key players can seem impossible sometimes, but I’ve found that the Email Hunter Chrome extension can help a great deal. 

The browser add-on can call up known email addresses associated with a given domain, making it much easier to find and select the most relevant contact within a prospective client company. 

Zero In On Content Marketing And SEO

If your growth strategy involves content marketing and SEO (search engine optimization) campaigns, then Buzzsumo is a must-have online tool. 

Quickly and easily, the website can pinpoint which of your online content is working well, as well as identify who the major influencers are in your field. Users just type a keyword into the search bar, and Buzzsumo redirects you to all the relevant articles or blogs that are trending. 

The site can be very handy for online marketers—whether you’re trying to recognize the largest influencers to help promote your content, generate new ideas for trending topics, or gain insights from your competitors. 

Boost Your Online Presence

Brand visibility is a crucial part of a startup’s growth and expansion. One of the best ways to stay visible is by getting involved with existing communities, and offering support or guidance to potential customers. 

Colibri allows you to find relevant articles and forums, so you can put yourself and your startup right into the online action. The site even bills its services as “Growth Hacking Tools.” They monitor sites such as Twitter, Quora, Growth Hackers.com and other bloggers in your industry, so you can respond and comment on the most relevant conversations. 

In the past, marketers simply placed ads and crossed their fingers that their businesses would grow. Now it takes a deeper understanding of what works (as well as what doesn’t), smarter tools to find the right prospects and two-way conversations that shine a light on your startup. 

Call it savvy marketing or growth hacking—but either way, it’s just good business that can help take you from small startup to market leader. 

Lead photo by United Soybean Board; all others courtesy of respective companies

The post 4 Tools To Help Startups Hack Their Growth appeared first on ReadWrite.

Guest author Yoav Vilner is a co-founder of Ranky.

It’s almost 2015, and it’s time everyone realized that users matter more than anything. Yes, more than the actual product and far more than the short-term revenue that app developers and social networks can earn off them.

Yet not everyone gets that. Certainly not Facebook, which—as this recent Time piece illustrates—is still busy aiming to expand across the globe. Facebook isn’t asking for money upfront but rather selling all of our personal data and spanking us with advertisements in order to earn their dough.

It’s a strategy Todd Berger, co-founder of the “anti-Facebook” social network Ello, calls its “world domination approach.” Ello is taking  a different path—one based on a “freemium” business plan for users that gives them basic access for free, promises not to sell their data to advertisers, and allows them to pay for additional features such as upgraded profile designs.

As Berger told BetaBeat:

“Freemium is working the world over,” Mr. Berger said, “Versus: ‘No, no, it’s free, it’s free! But we’re selling all your data to god knows who at exorbitant rates in order to create new scams for people who didn’t ask for it.’”

Ello offers more than feel-good principles, a potentially ad-free model, and a possible threat to the Facebook throne. Although the social network has taken its share of arrows for an elusive business model, a glitchy site design, and difficulty living up to the enormous wave of interest it started drawing earlier this year, it still offers a key insight for businesses of all stripes.

See also: What The Ell Is Ello? The Ad-Free Social Social Network Everyone Is Talking About

In short, today’s users may prefer to settle for less rather than be exploited and ignored. 

How Ello Is Like Occupy Wall Street

Like the Occupy movement a few years back, Ello is a case of frustrated citizens reclaiming their authority to speak up against giants. Internet users are making it clear they want autonomy: We want to feel that the Internet is ours. We get irked when news leaks of companies abusing our information or privacy because we inherently believe the Internet is a service by the people and for the people. 

No matter what area you work in, the Ello phenomenon serves as a strong reminder that users matter more than profit margin or marketing campaigns. Too often companies behave in a way that shows they seem to believe they are the ones in charge. In fact, though, your business is nothing without customers. 

Ello gained so much traction because its public launch as an ad-free social network timed perfectly with the growing concerns over user privacy and advertisements on Facebook. Online advertisements have become inevitable and inescapable, but there’s a way to advertise while still prioritizing the experience of your customers.

Putting Users First

Today, your customers are huge influencers over the course of your business. This is why we keep hearing about engagement and the importance of creating personal bonds with your online community.

It’s no wonder that successful entrepreneurs are launching new platforms designed to do just that. That would explain Eric Schmidt’s investment in Commerce Sciences, which aims for new levels of website personalization and engagement, or the new venture by Soluto co-founder Ishay Green, Spot.IM, which helps websites transform their existing traffic into an on-page social community. 

Treating customers as numbers to collect data, failing to take users’ complaints seriously, and not demonstrating that you care about their needs is a surefire way to lose your customers’ faith and put your entire business at risk. 

“Companies are hunting cookies and IDs, but does that makes the customer happy?” Ivan Guzenko, VP of UK-Based SmartyAds, says. “The customer should return as the king, not as the target audience.”

Guzenko adds: 

The technology used right now to target people is working unfairly. I believe the user should actually get money for viewing ads and disclose only the information he sees right.

Why This All Matters

The Internet marketplace is a nation, and its citizens want a voice. Whether sharing user experiences about local stores online, rating a company on Yelp, or choosing where to spend money, the voices of users matter. 

Take a look at the death of the black market website Silk Road. Users didn’t simply take the FBI’s raid of the hidden site as the inevitable end of the Internet black market. Instead, they sought new ways to re-create it. Much the way Ello’s functionality remains a pale shadow of what Facebook offers, the bot-ridden Silk Road imitators, replacements may not be up to par with the old model.

Still, users often value authority over quality. Stay at the top of the rat race by giving users a sense of power, control, and voice. 

While Facebook is busy trying to dominate the world by selling the information of their billions of users, Ello is learning from the serious backlash of Facebook’s privacy actions. 

What This Means For Your Business

Think of your competition. Identify the leaders in your niche and figure out their weaknesses. What aren’t they giving their customers? How can you provide customers with those missing elements and possibly convert them to your product or service? How can you improve your advertising and data collecting strategies in a way that genuinely puts customer concerns first?

Because Ello picked up so much steam so fast, it faces a risk of burning out. So avoid following in Ello’s footsteps, and be sure that you can follow up on the promises you make possible clients—or risk even more wrath if your service fails to meet expectations.

Users migrate all the time, so getting them to feel your service is impossible to leave is key. What’s important to learn from Ello is the importance of retaining the customers you already have and strengthening their bond to you. Facebook’s pull is strong—right now, arguably the strongest of all social media sites—but if Facebook doesn’t begin to pay more attention to its users’ concerns, it may be standing on a rickety platform. 

Don’t find yourself in this position—prepare to weather storms with your loyal customers by your side.

Lead photo by Thomas Hawk

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