When people hear the term “fake news“, their usual first thought is about those social-media posts that contain inconceivable and bizarre stories. While the posts that are shared on different social media channels happens to be an aspect that is most visible, there is a lot more to “fake news” than an exaggerated article title on a social media feed. The Doe is an anonymous newspaper that provides a safe space for honest, straightforward thought-provoking news and is central in the fight against fake news. They discuss the use and abuse of social media in the world of news at the moment.

Cyber Propaganda And Fake News

Fake news often appears to be new. However, it usually just the platform that has been used that is new. Propaganda has been in use and around for hundreds of years, and the Internet has become the most current form of communication that is abused to tell lies and spread misinformation.

A Fire Triangle is a representation of 3 elements that are needed for a fire to burn. This includes fuel, heat, and oxygen. In a similar way, “fake news” needs 3 items in order to succeed. These items combined represent the Fake News Triangle. When one of these factors is missing, the misinformation and lies are not able to reach targeted audiences and spread.

The Fake News Triangle

The initial requirement includes services and tools to spread and manipulate a message across specific social media platforms or networks and many of these are sold across several online communities all over the world. There is a wide range of services and tools available, with some that are somewhat simple (paid followers/likes, etc.), while others are a bit more unusual, with services that promise to overstuff online polls. There are even services that force the owners of websites to remove stories. Regardless of what tactic is used, the services and tools for social media promotions are available from outside and the inside of the underground scenes.

In order for these types of tools to become useful, social channels need to be present as the platforms to spread propaganda. With more and more people spending a lot more of their time on such sites to gather information and to keep up-to-date with the current news, their importance when it comes to spreading fake stories and news should not be underestimated. However, there are differences between just putting up a propaganda post and turning the post into something targeted audiences consume. We give information on the types of techniques that spammers use to attract users into watching or reading their stories.

Analyzing social media provides us with more of an understanding of relationships that occur between bots and recipients of a social media promotion when it comes to platforms such as Twitter. This offers us a good idea of the organization and scope of these campaigns that are attempting to manipulate the opinions of the public.

Finally, propaganda campaigns are also always accompanied by the question: why? We talk about the motivations and goals behind these fake stories and news. In some cases, it is simply the desire to make profits through advertising. While in other situations, the goals may vary from political to criminal. Regardless of what the motive might be, how successful the propaganda campaign will be is based on the way that it has an impact on the “real world”.

Users, companies, and governments, have started to become more aware of the seriousness of manipulating public opinion, which has manifested in the form “fake news”.

Governments have started to realize that propaganda and “fake news” is something that needs to be dealt with. Many different government agencies have now started to set up services that are focused on exposing these stories, that they believe are false. Some government entities have even started to consider imposing regulations along with punishing and fining websites that have published this misinformation.

There is plenty of room for opinion-based reporting without it becoming fake news. Thedoe is a great source for this.

Some of the targets linked to the latest regulations include social-networking services. This will make misinformation and fake news extremely bad for businesses, and this is why they have taken the necessary steps to avoid it. These steps include suspending suspicious accounts/bots, adding in features that allow their users to file a report on fake news, and hiring additional personnel to assist with handling such reports.

However, at the end of the day, users need to become more informed and educated. In our paper, we go over the main signals to look out for when it comes to fake news, which will help readers to determine whether the posts they are reading are real or fake. We also go over the psychology linked to fake news in the way of explaining what makes these types of campaigns work, along with how they convince readers. When readers are aware of these techniques we hope that it will empower them to resist these misleading stories and information.

Social media has become an innate part of everyday life for a lot of people all over the world. Not only is it a universal tool but it is also quite powerful. You can use social media for personal purposes but a lot of businesses have also found social media to be useful when it comes to promoting their products to a wide variety of audiences.

If you don’t have a social media presence as a business, you might find that you lose out on opportunities with potential clients. On that note, you should try and learn how to utilize social media to help power up your business. Here are several ways you can do that.

Ideas To Promote Your Business On Social Media

Partner with Bloggers and Influencers

The great thing about social media is that it gives normal, average people the chance to become noticed and generate a solid following. They can have a variety of interests so if you have a particular niche as a business, you’re bound to find an influencer or blogger that has the following filled with your target customers.

Some businesses can get away with partnering with bloggers and influencers regardless of who their followers mainly are. However, to ensure that you aren’t wasting your money partnering with certain bloggers and influencers you want to do your research and figure out who their main audience is.

Knowing what you want from your influencers and bloggers will ensure that you have a smoother transaction with them. After all, not all of them know how to deal with business transactions so you should take charge.

Create Explainer Videos

There are plenty of ways you can advertise your products online. From online image ads to sponsored content, you will have plenty of avenues to promote your product on social media. For particular products, one content that you should invest in is explainer videos.

Plenty of experienced branding agency Auckland based know that you should create explainer videos for your products. The types of products that will most need explainer videos are software if you’re selling them. Having an explainer video will make it simpler for your customers to understand how to use your product.

Even if you have a product that might seem like a no-brainer, like clothes, it might be great to have an “explainer” video. It doesn’t really explain how to use the product. It just shows how it looks on a video.

Share on Social Media

The most important task that you should do for your business’s social media is to share the content in some form on a regular basis. It doesn’t have to be every day. As long as you are consistent and have a schedule for when you post, then you should be able to build a considerable size for your community on social media.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that you should be constantly sharing posts that are promoting your products. It can feel like you’re a always showing ad so people might be irritated. You should share not only content that you produce but also content that other fans of your products have produced. It’s a great way to build a relationship with your community.

Run Social Media Contests

One way to attract attention to your social media accounts is by running a social media contest to give out awards on those who engage with the contest. Before you run any social media contests, you first have to make sure that you aren’t breaking any rules for specific social media platforms that you are running it in.

Use Email Marketing

Many people might think that email is no longer a popular avenue to communicate with your target audience. However, every expert marketer knows that email marketing is still a strong avenue that can attract a lot of attention to your business.

Use email newsletters as a way to share relevant information with your subscribers as well as an avenue to share promotions and sales to them.

Create In-Store Promotions

If you have physical locations then you might as well create promotions online that will persuade anyone who sees it go to your store location. One way to do that is by creating a sale that is only applied inside your physical location. You can also market a specific product that is only available at particular branches.

Offer an Upgrade or Trade-In

If the product that you are offering isn’t a physical product and is instead a service, then you might want to create offers for upgrades or trade-ins. These upgrades are best marketed towards your more loyal customers is so that you can continue to have them with you for a long time.

Loyal customers will be an advocate for your brand without you even asking them to as long as you treat them well consistently.

Share Customer Reviews

Making use of the positive reviews that you get from previous customers will help potential customers that are on the fence about whether they should use your product or not. Sharing these reviews on social media every once in a while can help persuade them to be a customer too.

Over To You

Social media as a powerful tool and it would be a shame as a business owner if you don’t utilize this for the growth of your business. The ways listed above are but a drop in the ocean when it comes to how you can make the most out of your social media presence for your business. Apply them in your next marketing plan and you will surely realize growth in your business.

For web designers, making sure that they are one step ahead in creating the next great web design, they have to think out of the box. But sometimes that is not enough; they need to think about how to use the User Experience (UX) to their advantage. For designers, making users act upon their design can make a design work big time. For this, they need to make the users read the content of the website, follow the directional cues and click on the call to action buttons.

If you are not sure about the directional cues aspect that I mentioned in the last paragraph, don’t worry as this whole blog post is about how directional cues can be important in making a website work. And especially the design aspect can use the directional cues to make a website work. But why does a website have to offer directional cues in the first place? I will try to answer this question and other aspects in detail, so read on.

Directional Cues: The Basics

UX is one of the best ways for designers to make sure that they are on top of their game. By making a visitor get hooked on a website is no mean feat. There are virtually billions of websites out there on the internet, and on average, a user visits thousands of websites in his lifetime, if not more. But we like only a few dozen of them and visit them frequently. So, what can make a website tick? It is the directional cues through UX that can make the difference and is one of the most happening trends in design.

For all the businesses working in Dubai and other regional cities, they need a website so that they can attract the target audience. Thus, the role of the designers is one of the most important ones for the success of a website and, eventually the business it is representing.

A directional cue is not something that we usually don’t come across. Pointers call to action buttons Curves and lines all can be a directional cue as they can offer a cue to the user as to where we must go or use the website accordingly so that the website owners can benefit from it. First of all, let us talk about content and how it influences the choice of a website visitor.

Content to Die for

We all are aware of the famous phrase “content is the king”. The design can surely get the attention of the visitors of a website, but it is the content that can make all the difference. Right from the CTAs to special discount offers, there are many ways in which you can make content work for you big time. The use of directional cues in content is one of the best ways in which a positive result for the business can be achieved.

Let me explain what the directional cue in this context can be of great use.

Think of directional cues as something that will offer your visitors an option so that they can use your website in an easy uncomplicated way. You need to offer visitors the use that they can use to get along with the website without thinking about what will happen if we click on the icon power button. The visitors don’t have to predict what will happen next as you need to use queues so that they know where they are headed.

Everything mentioned above is very important for your future as a business. You are investing much time and money on your website, and so is the visitor on your website. He is also investing is time to find the product that you are selling.  If you want him to become your customer and also offer a positive word of mouth in social circles, you need to use directional cues smartly.

So how can you do this? Let me explain.

Getting Along with Directional Cues

The use of arrows and single points is one of the easiest ways to offer your visitors an option to choose what he is looking for. For example, if you are offering a flight booking on your website, you need to offer a functional and accessible search button. In this way, you will be able to offer your visitor I cleared optional so that he can book a flight in an easy and hassle-free way.

The art of offering directional cues can be mastered throughout a period. For designers, it isn’t easy because they have to work with different industries and businesses, and they have to find how they can create a design exactly according to the requirements. Observing direct marketing is one way to make things better in this concern.

Let me offer you an example so that you can understand my viewpoint easily.

Direct marketing professionals base their sale campaign so that they have every chance to get the attention of their target market. The use of print media in this concern is what makes them truly effective. The use of brochures and flyers is one effective way in this regard as word of mouth can play an important role. And print advertising for direct marketing is one easy way to get the job done effectively and within their budget.

The use of visual guidelines for tracking the target market is one easy way that works for them.

Use of Colors in Directional Cues

Most of my readers will not understand how directional cues can be mastered with colors, so here it goes. Your color palette is a powerful tool to make your reader aware of what you are offering them. It can improve the user experience far better than any other technique. The use of red color, for example, in a text, can make a visitor stop and notice what’s the message. This is just one of the ways to use colors to your advantage.

If you are nor comfortable with the use of color schemes or color the buttons in a specific way, you can always get the support of a website design dubai firm having the expertise in this concern. In this way, you will be better off in reaching your ultimate goal, that is, good traffic on your website and ultimately good sales.

Over to you

Please offer your valuable feedback for this blog or ask any question by using the comments section below.

Introduction

Ecommerce businesses have been on a successful trend over the past few years. People have started considering them as the ideal option for their shopping purposes. This has been very helpful for the businesses as a whole. While there are amazing benefits to business with increased customer interaction, there are some increased responsibilities too. To be able to cater their customers, businesses often have to expand their courses of operations to different countries. This can be a tricky experience.

Why is expansion difficult for businesses?

Although some people might disagree but expanding to other countries is seen as one of the most critical steps in the business survival. Yes, it is a definite requirement when the customers demand, but it has its downsides too. There are a lot of things that a business has to consider while they are at it.

They need to keep track of the language the clients are willing to communicate in. Furthermore, the time difference also plays a huge role in maintain contact with the customers. The currency factor also comes in to play as the business will need to keep a track of the latest rates at which the currencies are exchanged. So how can the business tackle such scenarios arising?

The new Magento extension

The increasing problems in no way mean that the business should stop considering the idea of expansion. Instead, the business must look for solutions to these issues. The new Magento 2 GeoIP extension helps the admin to assure that they keep their customers satisfied at all times. This new tool will help in redirecting customers in accordance to their preference. It will maintain the switching of currency, language as well as the time as per the customer’s requirements. This will ensure that the business can expand the business with ease.

Functions of the GeoIP extension

The best part about this new GeoIP extension is that it will automatically detect the customer’s location. This way the business does not need to worry about these small issues. Instead they can focus on other matters of strategic importance. The clients will be redirected to the preferred IPs in order to ensure that they receive the best customer experience.

The tool also helps in mentioning the prices in the currency that the client uses. Before going ahead with any given function, the new extension will give a pop up window for the client to consider. The language change will also be done automatically making sure that the customers do not have to go through the hassle of translating. The tool also helps in restricting the noisy customers away from the website. This automatically makes sure that there are no free riders.

Advantage of GeoIP extension

As we have discussed the function of the extension above, it is a real asset for the business if they use it efficiently. This can help them in having the ideal customer service that will increase their customer loyalty overall. The customers will also feel that they are being respected and given attention. The ignorance of social barriers is a real plus for the business and it will help them in making their mark in the market.

Shoes. Cosmetics. Beverages. The chances are a few brands came to your mind instantaneously as you read the categories. Whether it be Nike, Chanel, or Pepsi, there are certain brands that have managed to become synonymous with their categories. That is the power of branding.

According to research conducted by Marketing Profs in 2015, over 77 percent of marketers believe that creating a strong brand is essential for the growth of a company. Furthermore, according to Forbes, consistent branding efforts help raise the revenue of a business by a whopping 23 percent!

One thing is for sure- branding is a must for the success of your business. While generally, marketers tend to focus on the benefits of brand awareness and recognition in revenue generation, there is another critical benefit branding provides. It helps in boosting your online presence!

What is SEO, and why it matters?

Before we delve into how branding can help SEO and vice versa, it is vital to understand why SEO matters to begin with.

Well, it is because in today’s online world, getting your target audience to visit your website is not easy. A few statistics will help you in gaining a perspective.