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3 Best Online Summarizing Tools You can Use to Write Valuable Content Summary

on June 14, 2022

Summarizing is one of the key practices in writing. So, how can a tool help you with that? 

From academia to professional landscapes, writing summaries is key in many situations. Often used as a method to shorten long-form texts and capture the key points, summarizing is a necessary factor in many aspects of the world today, such as:

That’s why writing summaries has become one of the key aspects of content creation. It’s not only an ideal way to communicate an idea in a simple way, but it also saves a lot of time. In other facets of life, summaries are a way to lure the reader into reading the entire thing, i.e., academic essays.

This also shows the writer’s prowess and understanding of the topic while giving the reader a glimpse into what they can expect. So, how do you write such summaries? And which are the best tools for doing so? Let’s dive in and find out. 

What Is Text Summarizing?

Text summarizing is a technique used to summarize a text into a concise and understandable summary. There are two major approaches to text summarization: extractive and abstractive. Extractive summarization relies on the source text to provide all the necessary information.

On the other hand, we have abstractive summarization, which requires the machine to generate its own content. Text summarizing has many use cases in our lives, such as when we want to read an article but do not have time for it or when we want to know the main points of a book without reading it entirely.

However, the requirement for a summary is far more imminent in academia and professional settings. Such as:

  • In academia, it poses the writer’s prowess to formulate content
  • In SEO, it’s a creative way to produce an article for the audience 

Furthermore, SEO or search engine optimization requires a good summary of metadata. While social media networks can also use a summary as a glimpse into an article for your audience. 

Where Can Summaries Be Used? 

Text summaries are a great way to understand the main points of any text. They are used in many different ways, from summarizing reading comprehension for students to summarizing scientific articles for the general public.

Let’s take an unconventional example, if you need to summarize a book for a friend who is too busy to read it, you can use a text summary. You can also use them as an overview of research articles or even in your own writing.

Importance of Summarizing

Why do you think the summarizing text is a skill that is becoming more and more important? In this age of information overload, people need to be able to quickly find the most relevant information. That’s one of the reasons, besides the technical requirements of academia and SEO.

However, summarizing text can be used in many different ways. For example, students can use it during their reading to find the main idea of a passage. Most importantly, they can use it during their writing process to ensure that they include all the necessary information in their paper.

A summary writer has two main goals: to summarize the text and provide an analysis of what is written. These analyses push the reader towards understanding the central idea. For instance:

  • Pushing a specific narrative
  • The resolution of the written text
  • What motivated the writer

These three factors are essential in academies. In professional settings, it could vary from metadata such as titles/descriptions or social media captions. 

3 Best Summarizing Tools You Can Use 

Now that we understand the importance of summarizing let’s talk about the tools that could help you get there. When picking the summarizers for you, we prioritized ensuring both sides have what they need, i.e., students and professionals.

These summarizers that we’ve picked are thoroughly vetted and used for various purposes. Therefore, to ease your text summarizing process, here are the three best summarizing tools available today: 

Summarizer.Org is one of the leading summarizing tools. Whenever you look for a tool like this on Google, this one pops up as one of the primary results. So, why did we decide to put it on our list? Here are a few reasons:

  • It has a length intensity bar so you can pick the ideal length of your summary
  • It can summarize in bullets or by the best lines in your text
  • It’s one of the quickest summarizing tools, even for 1000+ words
  • It’s free 

Now, if nothing else lures you, then you get all the benefits for free should be enough to lure you towards it. These factors make it the primary option for any sort of summary writing in 2022.

SummarizingTool.Net is another leading provider of summarizing prowess. This tool has basically the same UI but has additional benefits. Besides the shortening or lengthening of your summary, you can also pick various languages. Making it ideal for:

  • Both long and short summaries
  • Up to 8 languages supported at the moment
  • Ideal for both SEO and academic writers

While the quality of the summary doesn’t wane, the original research and informative prowess also remain constant in any content you summarize through it. Making it one of the premier options for writers today.

  • Sassbook.Com – AI Summarizer 

Sassbook’s AI summarizer might be a little complicated on the UI side, but it’s one of the best tools you can use today. It’s also one of the few tools that offer abstractive or extractive methods of summary writing. 

Moreover, it features options from small to best, verbose, or custom sizes of summaries. 

These factors are some of the main reasons it has made this list and is one of our three choices for astute text summarizers in 2022. 

Conclusion

We hope this article helps you understand the importance of summarizing and its main pillars. Therefore, the tools we’ve mentioned shouldn’t only help you achieve your goals, they shall help you write outstanding summaries. 

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Legal BrandingSaaS Branding

Back to the Office: How to Accelerate Your Retraining Programs

on March 8, 2022
Businesswoman
A businesswoman is pointing with her pencil while holding the tablet in her left hand

Getting used to post-pandemic changes at the office

A lot has changed since we were all ‘at the office’. As we all return to working at the office (at least some of the time), most of us will return to a new environment, with new ways of working and new policies to follow. This can easily leave staff feeling wrong-footed, and re-training becomes a priority – to ensure that all staff is on the same page.

Re-training is often more challenging than training new recruits because you have ingrained patterns to overcome and re-write. Training sessions also need to require minimal investment, both in terms of budget and time spent. Today we have incredible digital storytelling technologies that can enable faster training programs, with better retention. 

Fully immersive experience rooms are a prime example of these kinds of technologies. Their role in keeping all staff aligned when circumstances change is an important one, and all companies should include these technologies in their training schemes.

How digital storytelling can quickly get new staff up to speed

New recruits today are different. Many of the university graduates entering the workplace today have spent the last few years in virtual lessons and may have never spent time in an office. This is a steep learning curve, and human resources professionals have a duty to help this cohort get comfortable in their new setting as quickly and efficiently as possible. Digital storytelling can help achieve this because it uses the familiar on-screen interaction that the new recruits will know well. 

It also helps the participants to really engage with the training, and it can be personalized to match specific situations. 3D content and virtual training programs can also help to cross ‘the experience gap’ by giving new recruits a more lifelike training experience. This is especially useful when access to those ‘real-life’ training resources or equipment is costly or limited.

Using digital storytelling to re-train existing staff on new methods, safety protocols and policies

The experienced staff brings incredible value to a company, but when circumstances change it can be hard to erase old habits and working methods. Re-training this particular group of employees can be a significant challenge – unless you have a secret weapon up your sleeve. 

Digital storytelling brings something special to training programs because it encapsulates new ideas and methods in a ‘wrapper’ – the story. 

Stories are how our brains process and retrieve complex experiences, and it enables us to pack a lot of data into something that seems entirely natural to us. When we use digital storytelling to re-train existing staff, it helps them to cement their memories better than if they were just told the same information. It’s an experience they can relate to and recall later with incredible clarity.

Experiential learning is the key

What makes digital storytelling especially good for training programs is that it’s a form of experiential learning. Storytellers around the world have known for millennia that stories are compelling because the listener projects themselves into the story, often by resonating with a particular character. As a result, the listener is actually a participant – because they are actively involved with it as an internal experience.

The fact that we experience stories is what makes them so memorable – it’s why mnemonists use narrative structures to memorize large amounts of entirely abstract data (like long strings of numbers, or a series of playing cards). When you deploy your training programs in the form of a digital story, you turn them into a kind of experiential learning. Not only are the participants more involved in the material, they also retain it for longer. In this way, digital storytelling gives people an experience to learn from.

Ways to deploy digital storytelling for (re)training

There are numerous ways that companies can deploy digital storytelling for training programs. It doesn’t take a huge investment – however, a chief value of these storytelling technologies is that they can be used for many different end-purposes. It is quite possible that your company may already have an AV setup that is capable of being used in this way. The key is the digital storytelling software that powers it – if it is powerful enough, it can enable your company to use the same equipment in an infinite number of ways.

The most effective digital storytelling technologies for training are:

Immersive Experiences

These can be fully-immersive rooms that envelop the audience, or a wrap-around screen that fills the visual field (typically 240 – 270°). The effect is that the audience is totally drawn into the experience, and this is further enhanced when these can be interactive. Touch-capable screens mean that participants become architects of their own journey, drawing them in even further.

Individual consoles and interactive signage

Interactive signage can be a versatile way to do training programs. Using an interactive screen, the participant has their own console that they can use to navigate their story. They can make choices that ensure that their training experience is as personalized as possible.

Video walls (interactive)

Without being able to fully enclose the audience in an immersive experience, a large screen or video wall is perhaps the next best thing. Using touch-capable screens will ensure that the training experience is as interactive as it needs to be. Participants can learn from their own choices and actions, as well as vicariously – by watching and learning from the actions of others.

The digital storytelling software that makes it work

Meeting
Coworkers are discussing with each other while taking the notes

Without digital storytelling software, a screen is just a screen. An immersive experience has very limited value if it cannot be regularly updated and customized to meet current needs. To get your AV setup to deliver real value – and keep delivering it – your digital storytelling software needs to be up to snuff. There are several options out there, ranging from relatively limited software up to enterprise-grade solutions like the Hyro platform.

It’s easy to look at the software component as a secondary concern, but it actually has a critical impact on the success of your digital storytelling enterprise. With a sufficiently capable, enterprise-grade solution, you should be able to easily adapt content without needing to hire a creative agency or specialist to do it for you. When you have the ability to adapt and create freely, your training programs can be rolled-out faster and have more immediate results. It also means that your AV setup has a higher utilization rate because there is a shorter interval between concept and finished storytelling experience. This ensures you keep attaining the best possible results for your team.

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SaaS Branding

Top Considerations for Selecting Custom E-learning Providers

on January 6, 2022

Business owners are so caught up with work that they don’t have time for class. To become successful in any business, people are advised to learn new skills each day. Custom e-learning solutions have become a lifesaver for various companies, employers, and employees can take their training online. Choosing a custom e-learning firm can be challenging; individuals need to be cautious to get a reliable solution. Below are some practical approaches to choosing the right e-learning company.

Experience level

How long a provider has been in the business matters a lot when selecting, in most cases performance and skills of an individual are determined by the period they have been in that business. It is advisable to always go for a company that has been in business for longer; this way, and you’ll be sure of the skills they possess. Past clients are a great commodity to the company, and people need to get the opinions of previous customers as this will give them a better understanding of the firm.

Latest technology

Due to changes in technology, individuals are advised to check that the company they get always keeps up with the latest technology. It would also be great if the solution providers knew the best tools for your specific business. When selecting a custom elearning development company, always check what they specialize in, as this will help you see if you’re choosing the right one for your specific needs.

Process of implementation

Having a well-organized team with the required skills is essential; this makes work easier and helps one relax knowing that they won’t have anything to worry about since they made the best decision. The team members should be on the same page at all times, and this is an excellent way to be sure that everyone agrees with the end results. There should be a team leader who reports to the top management with any progress, and people also need to know that communication builds a great relationship.

License and reviews

For a business to start operating, the owners need approval from the required body. Having the necessary licenses is fantastic; it is a good way of getting the clients to relax knowing that they are. Going through sites of various custom e-learning solutions is an excellent way to achieve results; this way, someone will be able to study the different solutions available, making your selection easy. Business owners should choose custom e-learning service providers with whom they can work in the long run. Working with different providers can interfere with your business performance; getting the right e-learning providers will give you peace since you won’t have to worry about anything going wrong. Employee training is beneficial to the organization at large, and it is a way of motivating your employees to work better and smarter. With custom e-learning solutions, individuals can take the training anywhere; managing your time is great because most people constantly multitask. A custom e-learning development solution is the solution to all your business needs, and it is a sure process of taking your business to the next level so quickly.

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SaaS Branding

WordPress Vs Shopify: Which Should You Choose?

on November 18, 2021

You’ve been looking for a way to sell your products online, but you don’t know where to start.

You’ve heard of WordPress, but you don’t know if it’s for you or what the benefits are. Shopify is another option you’ve considered, but it seems a little more difficult to use and quite costly than WordPress. What should you do?

In this post, we’ll compare both of these options for you, starting with the benefits of each and then continuing to break down how both work, their pros and cons, and whether or not they are the right choice for you.

WordPress

If you ask any WordPress development agency, they will advise you to go with WordPress. For good reason, of course. WordPress is a content management system (CMS) that can be used as a blog, website, e-commerce store, and more. It’s completely free to install, and you can create a user account from WordPress.org in minutes.

WordPress offers many customization options that make it easier for you to add or remove features depending on your business needs or preferences. You can also add plugins that extend the functionality of your website beyond its standard features. There are over 48,000 plugins available for free on their website that you can download to your WordPress site with just a few clicks.

WordPress is also fully compatible with eCommerce websites, so if you want to sell products online, you have the necessary tools at your disposal. These are called WooCommerce extensions, and there are thousands of them available for free. As long as you have a domain and hosting, which we’ll talk about later in this post, you can add an eCommerce website within minutes.

Pros:

WordPress is completely free to use, and they make it very easy for you to add features to your site. In addition, there are 48,000 plugins available for free on their website, from which you can choose. 

Cons:

WordPress doesn’t have a lot of built-in features, and many templates and plugins are outdated, making them impractical to use. In addition, hosting isn’t free, which will cost you money.

Shopify

Shopify is an online store platform that works very similar to WordPress, but it has more features straight out of the box. For example, you don’t need to use any plugins or customize your website for it to work. It’s also pretty much plug and plays; install the software, connect your domain name, and you’re all set to go.

The costs of Shopify are $29/mo for standard plans and $79/mo for the Advanced plan. You can register a domain through them or elsewhere, depending on which hosting option you choose. There is no contract, so you can cancel whenever you want, and they allow you to create 30 products for free without having to pay.

Pros:

Shopify is straightforward to set up and start using, has plenty of great themes & templates, and offers 24/7 support. It’s also much easier than WordPress if you’re not tech-savvy.

Cons:

You have to pay to use Shopify, and the $29/mo plan is pretty expensive for someone who has little to no experience with creating websites.

Who Is This For?

WordPress is the better option two for beginners and experts alike. You can use it very successfully as an eCommerce website without paying $29/mo.

Deciding between these two options depends on how much money you can spare, whether you’re willing to learn WordPress and how comfortable you are with coding. For example, if you had $29/mo to spend, Shopify could be used instead of WordPress because it’s much easier to set up and has excellent support available 24/7.

WordPress is free to use, and their support forums are incredible if you need any help (and you will). Although they don’t offer phone calls or live chat, you can post your questions on the forum and receive detailed answers within hours. They also have very comprehensive documentation available for all of their features, making it easier for you to learn how they work.

If you have no coding or website-building experience, Shopify is the easiest option available to build your eCommerce store. All of their products are plug-and-play, so you don’t need to customize it at all if you don’t want to. The only feature that Shopify doesn’t have is the ability to create your own plugins. However, if you know how to code or are willing to learn, WordPress is much more powerful and allows you to add features that Shopify doesn’t offer.

What Are The Costs?

So now let’s look at what it costs. As we mentioned earlier, starting an online business with eCommerce requires both a domain name and hosting.

Domain Name: A good one will set you back around $10/year. Shopify includes a free .com address with their Standard plan ($29/mo), but if you want to own your domain, it doesn’t cost anything to register one yourself or through GoDaddy, for example.

Hosting: Hostinger is a great tool. According to their website, the cheapest hosting option is $3.92/mo, and it allows up to 10,000 monthly visitors, which is incredible value for the volume of traffic.

WordPress Hosting: If you’re using WordPress, Bluehost offers a great-value hosting plan at $4.95/mo, giving you up to 50,000 monthly visitors and a free domain name (if you register through them).

Shopify Hosting: All Shopify plans come with unlimited bandwidth and storage and allow for unlimited products (which can mean huge numbers). You can choose your plan based on what you think will be best for your business.

The Final Verdict

WordPress is free, flexible, and relatively easy to use once you learn the basics. The themes are beautiful, and there’s a huge community online that’s willing to help if you get stuck or confused at any point. WordPress also gives you the option to customize your site as much as you want and even create custom plugins.

Shopify is easier for beginners and offers a more user-friendly experience, but it can get pricey if you pick their most expensive plan. However, if you’re not an expert at building websites or don’t know how to code, Shopify is by far the simplest option and will save you a lot of time and effort.

WordPress is more powerful, but it takes longer to set up and intimidate people new to coding or online eCommerce. However, if you’re willing to invest the time learning WordPress, we recommend that you choose this over Shopify because of its flexibility and power.

Ultimately, both options will allow you to create a beautiful and successful online business, so choose whichever makes the most sense for your budget and skill level.

SaaS Branding

How to Get More Customers

on June 17, 2021

Every business needs a constant stream of customers. Without plenty of satisfied customers, you won’t have a business, regardless of how well everything else in your business works. 

If you don’t attract enough customers after you launch your business, then your business will flounder, failing to flourish. And if your volume of your customers drops after you’ve established your business, then your business might close when revenues drop below operating costs. 

While the value of getting plenty of customers is obvious to every business, many businesses often lose sight of this goal, distracted by internal business concerns.

Small business owners, in particular, are more likely to lose track of the value of growing their customer list because they are often overwhelmed by so many other aspects of business tugging at their attention.  

Fortunately, customer acquisition is not complex, and here are three simple strategies to ensure your business always has more than enough customers to thrive:

Get Direct Leads 

If you are a contractor, for example, you can pre-buy business leads from a contractor locator service like Networx. Networx leads are available in real time. As soon as they secure a qualified lead, they will then pass the job to you as one of their qualified affiliate contractors. You won’t have to go through endless negotiations with the customer to win the contract.

Improve Conversions 

When your business attracts targeted leads, then your sales will soar. If a high volume of traffic doesn’t trigger a large spike in sales, then review your customer conversion process.  

If you’re not sure how to gauge customer conversion rates, then hire a business consultant who can figure out a better mechanism, strategy, technique, or policy to turn prospects into customers. 

Consider Rebranding

If your business once had a lot of customers but now struggles to attract enough interest in its products or services, your branding may be archaic, no longer relevant.

That could happen for many possible reasons:

  • corporate reputation issues,
  • change in market conditions,
  • a surge of fierce new competitors who are offering better quality products or services at a lower cost, or
  • change in the needs or wants of your target audience.  

If you suspect that you’ve lost your market share because your brand has lost some of its appeal, then consider rebranding.

Rebranding isn’t as simple as designing a new logo, coming up with a snappier slogan, or building a trendier website. Rebranding goes deeper. It’s a sea change. Rebranding goes beyond a new look and feel. It reflects your company’s new approach to market conditions. 

You can decide exactly how to rebrand by monitoring audience preferences to understand what change in direction to make.  

Upgrade Customer Service  

There’s no point in spending time and energy acquiring new customers if you lose existing customers at a steady rate. It’s not enough to just acquire new customers, you also need return business from loyal customers.

Since the cost of acquiring a new customer is so high, you are wasting money if you have no strategies in place to build customer loyalty. Your revenues will take a hit if you don’t address the issue of a high turnover in customers.

You can improve customer service by reviewing customer touchpoints. 

Make a list of things to test and tweak:

  • enhance customer interactions,
  • update dysfunctional customer service policies, or
  • get your staff more engaged in customer satisfaction. 

If you don’t have a clue about the quality of your customer service, ask your customers directly. Use the best survey tools to get customer feedback.

Troubleshoot Your Customer Acquisition Process

If your business is not doing well, troubleshoot why you don’t have enough customers. Review how you acquire customers and try new marketing strategies to get customers.

SaaS Branding

5 Subscription Services and Why They’re So Successful

on June 10, 2021

These days you can get a subscription service for just about anything. But, not all of them stand the test of time or are worth the consumer’s money, and they’re quick to realize it. There are, however, many that are not only successful, but they’re also positively exploding. Let’s take a look at what they are and why they’re doing so well. 

Beauty and Grooming Subscriptions

If you’re into beauty products, you may not be into actually shopping in-store for these items. Whether you’ve been matched so off-color that you walked out looking like a clown, or you just can’t stomach the strong perfume smells of these types of stores, services like Ipsy or Birchbox are godsent. If you’re more particular about your products like you only use vegan cruelty-free – you guessed it, there’s a box for that. These types of services have even upped their game in some instances and branched out to include health & wellness, apparel, and home decor in their subscriptions like FabFitFun. With a reasonable sign-on price and often promotions for first-time subscribers, these brands’ sales are soaring. Bonus, they all make cancellation a breeze. 

Coffee and Drink Subscriptions 

Maybe you’re the type that wants the perfect pour over coffee every time. Or you need your coffee to be of a single origin. There are subscriptions for that. If you’re a wannabe wine aficionado, there are subscriptions that not only introduce you but educate you on what you’re drinking. Once you figure out your favorites, your subscriptions can be easily tailored to your interests. There are even subscriptions for single-serve bottles of wine, as the subscription Usual. You can customize your monthly shipments from as little as six bottles to as many as 24. One such subscription that’s a splurge but so worth it is the Fat Cork. At $199 a month, the party never stops with a quarterly shipment of Champagne.

Book Subscriptions

Even though a book to read the next day is just a click away nowadays, or the fact that you can read so much of what you want for free online anyway, book subscriptions not only exist, but they’re thriving. If you wish to go the route of The Book of the Month or you’re shopping for children who can’t even read yet, there are subscriptions for them. Books are an appealing subscription for so many people because it does the filtering for you. You tell these subscriptions what interests you and what doesn’t, then voila! You get arrivals that keep you well-read, have things to contribute conversationally, and it’s all worry-free—saving you even more time to curl up with a good book. 

Toy & Game Subscriptions

Maybe you picked up a puzzle addiction during a lockdown or perhaps you just want to make sure your children are getting more time away from their screens, especially since they’ve been schooling virtually all year. Either way, there are subscriptions for those too. The best part is, like most things nowadays, they’re so easy to customize. You can control if the child’s subscription will be more Montessori style or if you want them building things from kits. As far as your more adult toys, you can customize that too. And if you’re looking for a subscription to actual “adult” toys from an adult toy store, those exist too. These are successful for a myriad of reasons, the least of which isn’t the fact that even though we’re all constantly connected to technology, it feels rewarded to be offline and just enjoy games as we did in our youth.

Food Subscriptions

Everyone’s a foodie these days, am I right? Seriously, joking aside – what’s the one thing that brings us all together? The love of food! Not only do food subscriptions make a fabulous gift for nearly every adult in your life, but they’re an excellent present for yourself as well. You can literally get any type of food subscription too. Whether you’re shopping for someone who eats Whole Foods Plant-Based to a straight-up monthly cheese box for yourself (no judgment here), they exist. This market exploded and will continue to do so because, let’s face it, we all need it, and the more options, the better. Having it delivered straight to your door? The best.

SaaS Branding

Content Writing: Are You Ready To Grow Your Business?

on June 5, 2021

Is content writing something that can help your business grow? Are you considering writing blog posts, guides, and magazine articles? 

If you’re thinking about using content writing to grow your business, start with the end in mind. 

You’ll want to focus on the best places to publish, connect with your target audience, provide valuable insights, and be ready to adapt, adjust and pivot.  

Get Seen

Even with the best content, you’ll need to find the best places to publish. You can write for authority sites with guest posts – and link these back to your website.

You can publish articles for Medium, the popular publishing platform funded by The Chernin Group (TCG). Medium has transformed how small businesses get noticed because of one simple reason: they receive heavy traffic. Medium has between 85 and 100 million monthly active users. With this massive audience it’s easy to see that you’ll get a lot of visibility. 

If you want to publish great content – do it where you’ll get the most visibility.

Connect With Your Target Audience

Do you have the right publicity and media plan to connect with your target audience? Do you have your finger on the pulse of what they care most about? 

Are they senior women, searching for tips on healthy living? Are they gadget lovers, looking for the latest cool gadget they don’t want to live without? Are they avid travelers, in search of the next awesome spot on the globe that hasn’t been found out by their neighbors?

When you know who your target audience really is, you’ll also need to understand what they are passionate about. This may come from your own experience – for instance, if you are a senior woman, gadget lover, or digital nomad. Or, it may come from a deep dive into customer data. 

Perhaps you have a quiz or survey to help you deepen your understanding of what your target audience truly needs. 

Of course, the better you know your audience, the closer you can come to providing them with exactly the content they are seeking. When you do this, they’ll search out your posts, read your Medium articles, follow your tweets, and ultimately buy what you’re offering.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Give Valuable Insights

Content writing is all about value. It’s not just what you consider ‘valuable’ that counts. It’s what your audience is looking for, needing, and wanting.

There are always long discussions about value in boardrooms, think tanks, and business meetings. It’s the kind of conversation that usually gets heated, with strong opinions from every expert. However, the only true value is what the target audience wants.

It’s not, as the scientific expert is pushing: more data. It’s not, as the finance authority insists: more numbers. It’s not, as you might believe, more of what matters to you.

While these elements may be significant for your audience, there is only one true answer on value. It’s what your target audience is craving. 

This may fall into two buckets: hopes and fears. Some businesses market, write about and sell hope. They often are painting pictures of the dream life, the ideal solution, and the ultimate luxury you can’t live without. 

Other businesses market, write about, and sell fear. They often are highlighting potential problems, looming threats, and how to promote safety and security. They may be selling solutions for problems you’ve not even visualized – until you read their copy.

Either way, connect with your audience. Find out what they are seeking. Orient your writing to reflect their priorities. Consider content, digital advertising, print advertising, and the best ways to reach your tribe. 

Iterate, Iterate, Iterate

In product design as well as in content marketing, there is a single slogan to remember. It is: “iterate, iterate, iterate.”

While you might dream of waving a magic wand and getting everything perfect the first time, this is not realistic. You will try out one style, and wait for feedback. You’ll explore one type of content, and analyze results. 

When you get feedback, listen. This doesn’t mean that just because your next-door neighbor has an opinion, you’ll shift your entire strategy. Not at all. Listen to the feedback from your target audience. Your neighbor may just be having a quirky day. 

In summary, content marketing is a powerful way to share your insights, get your company known, connect with your target audience—and grow your business. It may take some experimenting in placement, topic, tone, and content – but you will see definite results. 

SaaS Branding

5 Ways for Companies to Appeal to Younger Customers

on May 27, 2021

Businesses worked hard to appeal to baby boomers because they were the biggest block of consumers for a long time. That’s no longer the case. Millennials and younger are some of the biggest blocks of consumers now. The following are five ways to appeal to younger customers so that your business has a chance to grow.

  1. Social Media Platforms Make a Difference

If you want to reach younger customers and drive them to your website, it’s essential to get on social media platforms. Everyone is online, including older folks, but none are more active than younger customers. You want to get on every social media platform you can get on and be active. It’s important to show some care with these platforms. You have to invest in the pictures and videos you post because quality matters. Be sure to share meaningful posts. All of this matters to the younger consumer, and it will help you in the long run.

  1. Eco-Consciousness Matters

Another way to appeal to younger consumers is to focus on sustainability. Millennials and younger care about the environment and want the companies they visit to care about it, too. Do everything you can to show that you care. For example, you can install an EV charging station in the customer parking lot as a way to welcome young consumers who are driving electric cars. Even if they aren’t your customers yet, they might become interested if they need the charger. Make other changes to your business, like going paperless to be green.

  1. Socio-Consciousness is Important

Being eco-conscious is one thing, but your business should also be socio-conscious. Being a good corporate citizen is a good thing because it shows that you care about what’s going on in your community. The way you do this is up to you. For example, you can show your support for LGBTQ+ rights, or you can simply make sure everyone in your community knows that your business sponsors the local football team. Both of these make you look good, but one of them is a little more controversial than the other. You should honest about what you support, and make sure you do so because people do care.

  1. Being Authentic Really Wins

The next thing you want to consider doing is working on your transparency. Younger generations want to feel like they know you and what your company stands for. They want to feel like they can find out everything about you and that you’re always going to be honest with them. You’re going to have to work on transparency, and there’s a lot of ways to show transparency. For example, you can introduce a traceability feature. This feature allows customers to trace back the products you offer to their origin to make sure your products were made fairly and everyone was paid well. Authenticity also means owning up to mistakes before you’re exposed.

  1. Start Hiring Them and Listen

It’s important to hire some of these young folks. The more young people you have working for you, the more you’ll learn about them. Be open-minded about what they have to teach you even if you’re used to doing things in a certain way. Try to hire some of them to help you reach younger generations. The reality is older generations usually have a hard time connecting with younger ones. They have trouble speaking their language, often coming off as fake, and that’s not what you want. Do your best to be open to their suggestions. The more diverse your workplace is, the better things will be for you.

These are some things you could do to try to reach that young block, but there’s always more you can do. Consider hiring a marketing team that’s had some success reaching younger customers if you want this to work.

SaaS Branding

Best Practices to Drive Productivity

on May 21, 2021

Nothing is more important to a small business than its people. Thus, employees’ productivity will rise if they are happy, which is just what business owners need to drive their company towards growth and development.

Minor modifications in the workplace can dramatically boost a company’s production and efficiency. With this, companies can complete more high-quality work in less time and spend less time on non-essential tasks, a win-win situation for both business owners and their stakeholders. 

With that, here are the best ways to boost business productivity:

Focus on Employee Satisfaction

While increasing employee satisfaction is not a cure-all pill, it can have some remarkable effects on a company. Specifically, a happy, engaged, and motivated employee contributes to the company’s success, positively impacting the rest of your team.

The most important advantage of ensuring high employee morale and overall satisfaction is that people rarely consider quitting their current positions. Veritably, employee satisfaction is critical for employee retention. For long-term growth and guaranteed success, companies must drive to retain deserving and skilled personnel, that is, by upholding employee satisfaction.

Communication is Key

Communication is essential in every aspect of a business. It is also critical that an organization’s internal communication and their employees’ communication skills are effective, particularly now that the economy has driven a rising number of people to work from the comfort of their homes.

Furthermore, a united company attempts to build strong communication among its employees. When everyone understands what their coworkers are working on, they may better assist one another, achieving a common, shared goal of increasing productivity.

Get the Right Equipment  

Nothing is more inefficient and frustrating than wasting time waiting for important documents to print because a company lacks quick printing technology. Thus, it is critical to provide employees with the appropriate tools and equipment to do their tasks efficiently and on schedule. 

Not only do high-quality, current programs and equipment benefit employees, but they also improve how a company gets perceived across different lenses. Companies should seriously consider investing in the correct equipment.

Examples of this are a production printer or an upgrade to the payroll software. Ultimately, you do this by getting equipment that will save employees time and effort.

Become as Efficient As Possible

The best possible utilization of resources is what efficiency is all about. Efficient businesses optimize outputs from limited inputs while lowering expenses. Furthermore, you can reduce a company’s costs and its competitiveness improved by increasing efficiency.

For one, automation minimizes the amount of paper that passes through a company and allows employees to be more strategic in their job. As employees get rid of mundane, tedious tasks, they become freed to devote themselves to higher-value duties essential in company growth.

Positive Reinforcement Goes a Long Way

Every day, small business owners get challenged with their employees’ actions. Thus, it may be time to join the legions of behavioral experts who believe that creating a pleasant workplace — one that encourages positive reinforcement — is just as important as writing a business plan in terms of business success.

Positive reinforcement is an effective, evidence-based method for increasing workplace productivity and morale. Moreover, positive reinforcement always leads to better behavioral results. Bosses must deliver positive reinforcement correctly and immediately to be effective.

Set Realistic Goals

Setting realistic goals will provide companies a firm, clear direction. Business goals provide a tight framework for business owners, preventing them from straying and keeping them focused on a specific path. Moreover, it is common among successful businesses to have started from setting realistic goals that are:

  • Specific: The objectives should be specific, clear, and devoid of ambiguity. You must define the goals in a concise and detailed manner.
  • Measurable: The objectives should be quantifiable. Setting a goal such as “greater revenues” or “better quality” is not a good practice and may not help companies. Rather, goals should be measurable and scalable to allow for progress assessments toward them.
  • Timely: Efficient goals are time-bound, having a clear start and finish date. Company objectives may become redundant if there are no time constraints, and their achievement may never even come to a realization.
  • Simple: There should be no jargon in the goals. They should be simple enough for everyone working in a company to understand, allowing unity to work on a shared goal.

Undoubtedly, it is pleasant – although sometimes ignored – to show employees how much a company appreciates, respects, and values them on a personal level. Thus, if employers want their employees to work to their full potential, they may consider and use a couple of these suggestions and prepare to reap a wealth of benefits.

SaaS Branding

Employee-Directed Branding

on May 19, 2021

We all know how important customer directed branding is, but few businesses pay enough attention to internal brandings. Employee-directed branding, or “employer branding,” is becoming more necessary than ever. This is because it is becoming more and more difficult to hire talented workers, and this, in turn, also makes it hard to retain the talent you have. It is now a business necessity to build a strong culture and great atmosphere in which to work. Here we will explore some of the ways that successful corporations are branding themselves to their employees.

What you can learn from successful corporations

If a company is highly successful, it makes sense to analyze what it has done to contribute to that success. With that in mind, there is a lot to learn from the ways that large corporations brand themselves to current and future employees. One way to do this is to examine a successful advertising campaign. While a large-scale advertising campaign is off limits to all but the largest corporations, it is worth taking a look at what large corporations are trying to accomplish when they launch such campaigns. For instance, in GE’s famous “Owen” campaign, the company is sending a simple, clear, positive, and repeated message: Owen is changing the world just as you are changing the world by working at GE. This campaign shows the importance of having a clear and repeated theme to your internal marketing. Ideas such as specific ways your company helps others or the ways employees are supported are good because they are a clear and simple message that can easily take root. Whatever that message is, it needs to be reflected in reality in order to succeed, and some of these examples below should help get you thinking along the right lines.

Updating the work environment: Given that most people will spend nearly half their waking hours at work, it makes sense that people would be greatly impacted by the nature of their work environment. A drab, cramped, and old office will not only increase turnover, but it will also decrease the quality and efficiency of the work being done. Happier employees stay longer and are more productive, so it is a worthwhile investment to update your offices. There are a number of simple changes you can make right now:

  • Add a water cooler system: Water coolers make employees feel cared about, increase employee health, and provide a good place for natural team-building to occur. Ideally, you can even step it up with a more advanced system such as a reverse osmosis system – this will multiply these benefits.
  • Re-decorate: This can be something as simple as changing the furniture, all the way up to a complete overhaul with new paint, light fixtures, and art. Given the enormous impact changes like these can make, they are usually well-worth the comparatively small investment it takes to implement them.
  • Add fun areas: Some of the classic communal areas such as break rooms and water coolers can be easily turned into a point of pride if you replace them with activities that encourage team-building. Even something as simple as a foosball table can help make work a far more pleasant place to be. If you really want to make an impression, many of the most dynamic companies have gone so far as to install entire game rooms and coffee shops.

Conduct an employer brand audit: You cannot craft an employer brand if you do not know what your brand currently is. To accomplish this, it is vital to use an employer brand audit. You are trying to find out the answers to two questions: how does my company present itself to employees and candidates? And how do employees and candidates actually perceive the company? To do an audit, first gather up everything that an employee or prospective employee might come across: internal communications, job postings, onboarding materials, social media profiles, etc. You can use these materials to determine how you currently present yourself to employees and applicants. Next, interview current employees to ask how they perceive the company and provide applicants with exit surveys. This information will give you information about how your message is received.

Attracting and retaining talented employees has never been more important than it is today. Unfortunately, it has also never been more difficult. Most businesses are used to cultivating a brand image when dealing with customers; however, it is now a business necessity to also cultivate a positive brand image within a company itself. The future of every business that has ever existed depends upon the employees that conduct business on a day to day basis. Take the time to review some of these ideas and develop an employee directed branding plan that will help take your business to the next level.

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