#i also want to maybe write some breed specific articles for my website

[bas-rouge]

I'm also working on developing a new method for drawing curly hair on dogs! My previous methods have always seemed simultaneously too busy and not busy enough... so I'm using what little free time I have to work on new techniques. And also to prepare for Puppy but that's another situation altogether.

[smilingperformer]

Pokémon Sword & Shield - Personal experiences, Part 1

About a week ago, I declared that I wanted to write down a critical post looking at my experiences with Sword & Shield, noting what I liked and what not. Considering the fact that I still haven’t completed the game (at around 37.5h mark and done with 6 out of 8 gyms), I’m gonna divide this post into two, where this first part focuses on gameplay, music and graphics, while the latter part, which I plan on writing next weekend, will focus on the story and character portrayal, including the trainer customisation, League Cards and Pokémon designs of this generation. Do note, these posts will contain spoilers for new, unrevealed Pokémon, so if you want to discover them yourself, I suggest you read this post at a later date! If not, then let’s get started! With a Charizard Pose!

As a disclaimer, the version I’ve been playing is Pokémon Sword, and as said above, the amount of time spent currently is around 37.5h.

Gameplay

Let’s start with the aspect that’s most important to the games, alright? So, how’s the gameplay in Sword & Shield? The battling system remains the same as previous games, meaning it’s turn-based, commanding attacks to your Pokémon. There’s not much to say to this aspect of the game, but I do love the improvements to the UI during the battling. Now that the series is back to one screen again (which happened first with Let’s Go), all the needed info has to be displayed in the same screen. If you ask me, it’s displayed nicely, and the UI style is very slick. The button mappings have changed for quick-selecting pokeballs and checking move-related info, so if you’re used to doing the R1 + a combo on checking move info, you’ll accidentally do the move instead. Happened to me a ton of times. But, since we have to consider that 3DS had less buttons for usage, new button mappings are fine.

The effects of Pokémon loving you during battle is still there, as in if you’ve been playing with your Pokémon a ton, battled with them and spent tons of time, they’ll start dodging attacks to your shout, curing poisonings and paralyses on their own without healing items, and get more experience. It does make the game easier, but I have found myself still struggling against some of the stronger type of Pokémon, even when my Pokémon has more levels. But that may be because I’ve tried switching out team every now and then to avoid being overly overleveled. And it’s been for the best!

Encountering wild Pokémon

First introduced in Let’s Go, Sword & Shield now lets you actually see the Pokémon catchable in the wild, making the world feel so much more alive. The grass encounters are still there, but instead of triggering random at your place, they’ll trigger nearby to you, and you can choose to either ignore or run into it. And from what I can tell, some Pokémon are only catchable in the grass patches. But I could be terribly wrong! The ways Pokémon react to you are different to the type of Pokémon you encounter, some examples being kind cheers from smaller Pokémon, some running into you at slower speed, some chasing after you and being faster than you, and some plain up teleporting away or running away from you as fast as possible. It’s such an awesome feat to see, and I have to note how much I love that Diglett and Dugtrio can actually be seen moving under the ground in fast speed, then coming up in another spot. It feels like such a huge improvement from how they moved in Let’s Go. Same with Rhyhorn, I love how they decide to charge at you, with no way to turn mid-ram! Meaning if you dodge, they miss. It’s such a nice way to show the wild Pokémon’s personality. This is why I ended up catching a certain Pikachu and making it my main Pikapal, despite wanting to get certain type. Because it kept coming at me, stopping to say “Pika~“, turning away in sadness, then turning back at me as I would approach it. It was so cute to see.

There are also fishing spots where you can encounter water type Pokémon, and they seem to appear in similar fashion as in Gen 7 games, but with less-obvious-looking spots. If you run into the spots, they’ll disappear, just like before. So go at them at walking speed! Speaking of which!

Controlling the character

Never have I enjoyed controlling my character’s movements in a Pokémon game before, as I have in Sword & Shield. Not only does the spinning have an awesome finishing pose involved now, you can also control the speed your character is moving at by the amount of tilt you do with your left stick. If you tilt it a tiny bit, you’ll be moving at a slow pace, and when doing this in a grass patch, you’ll be entering a sneaking mode, where your character will try to not make any sounds at any close-by Pokémon. It’s a feature that was last seen in Omega Ruby & Alpha Sapphire, and boy am I glad to see that feature return!

Now, if you tilt the controller more bit by bit, you’ll notice how the speed of your character increases gradually, and the animations transition smoothly when doing so. I don’t have a gif to show of you of this, but if you entered this post before playing the game, make sure to try it out! It may be minor, but to me it’s such an awesome feat, as I can now walk or run at any pace I want, and gives me more control on the character!

At some point during the story, you’ll gain access to a bike powered by your Rotom Phone, and it helps you move at a faster rate in the game, if that’s what you want to do. I myself opted to mostly walking, mainly using the bike in the Wild Area. Controlling the bike feels good, turns feeling natural and the bike never feels like it’s going out of control. The speed boost by pressing B makes you go extra fast, and you’ll be able to upgrade it up to tier 3 in the Wild Area. I haven’t found the upgrade yet for being able to go over the water, so I’m gonna assume that’s mostly post-game. Or I’ve just missed it somehow, and I have no idea how!

Side note: Shiny hunting

Now, from what I’ve read, despite Let’s Go letting you see the Shiny versions in the wild, Sword & Shield does not let you see them. You instead have to encounter the Pokémon and hope that it is indeed a shiny. I myself believe this was done by design choice, as to make the Shiny hunting still feel rewarding, instead of making you just stand on one spot after getting max chaining, hoping for one to appear. Like it was in Let’s Go. Thou, in Sword & Shield, it’s a whole new method. You only have to focus on encounting that one specific Pokémon for countless times, and at certain points of counters, the chances of encountering a shiny increases. This is all official info from The Pokémon website! And I believe the article also states that, the glowing Pokémon, which have chances of having better stats, egg moves and other cool stuff, also have higher chance of being a shiny.

You can also apparently do Chain fishing for increased shiny chances on the fishing spots, which is quite cool! The breeding method is still the same as far as I can tell, but there’s now also a chance for a different type of Shiny sparkle animation. If you get a square type sparkle, then congratulations, your Shiny is extra rare!

Berry farming

I find the berry farming in this game to be my absolute favourite form, as I myself didn’t find any appeal on farming the berries itself, often neglecting that aspect in previous games, and this doesn’t feel even close to the tedious pick-up animation chain Gen 7 games had whenever you were picking up the berries from the ground. But, knowing how my sister has been liking the discoveries of mutated berry farming, that seems to be gone, and I do find that kind of discovery not being there kinda sad. Maybe there’s something to this later in the game, I don’t know.

Gym Battles

The gym matches provide some extra challenge in throwing at us Dynamaxed and Gigantamaxed Pokémon, which I myself haven’t been able to one-shot. While being overleveled does make it easy to steamroll the first few Pokémon on Gym Leader’s team, the final Pokémon always Dynamaxes or Gigantamaxes, and it does make you wonder whether your Pokémon’s gonna survive the hit or not. I always look forward to seeing what kind of Pokémon is gonna get Gigantamaxed next, as after the first two gyms, the Gyms always have a Gigantamaxing Pokémon on their team. At least, from what I can tell.

Speaking of Gyms, the Gym Missions have so far been a ton of fun. While one of the wants you to herd a bunch of Wooloo to knock-down barriers, other one has you avoiding traps, being auditioned or spinning around like crazy. So far none of the Gym Missions have been the same, and it’s very refreshing! One of them was very easy to cheat on thou, provided you had the right type of Pokeballs with you, which does make me wish Game Freak had implemented some type of restriction on what type of Pokeball you can use during the mission. But, I guess they didn’t want to force you to use certain type. Since you could actually keep any Pokémon you catch during this Gym Mission.

PokeJobs

The new feature that pretty much replaces the PokePelago from Gen 7 games. And it’s very simple: the new Rotom-powered PC Box has the option to check out jobs for your Pokémon to do, and they usually have a description that states in a fancy manner of what type of Pokémon you send out for that specific job. The amount appears to vary from 3 to 10 at a time, and you can send them out for from couple hours to a whole day. Once your Pokémon return, they’ll gain tons of experience based on how long they were at the job, and how well it was done. Sometimes, one of the sent Pokémon will come back with items! It’s a nice way to get your boxed Pokémon up to proper levels, thou sending them out on these jobs also makes them unavailable to use during that time. Logical, but I myself sometimes accidentally sent out a Pokémon on a job for a whole day, then realising I needed them for the future battles. I can only blame myself for that. I do find it a teeny bit annoying how the Pokémon disappear from the Pokebox, meaning if you’re very precise about organizing it, it’ll become a mess. Unless one found a good way to make it less messy. I myself haven’t!

Camping with your Pokémon

Throughout the game, you’ll be able to camp out with the current Pokémon on your team, and play with them using different kinds of toys on your toybox. From what I can tell, playing with them can give them experience at the end of the session, so it’s a nice reward for spending time with them and making friends along the way. Petting is not longer possible thou, which makes the Amié and Refresh lover in me cry in sadness. But alas, if we consider the fact that this game is meant to be enjoyed both docked and handheld, the petting mechanic would be extra akward to do with a stick instead of touching the screen. So, I can understand why it had to go away. This game isn’t motion-based after all, like Let’s Go was. Seeing the Pokémon play with each other and become friends with each other is such a wonderful feat to see, so I feel like Refresh was replaced with a good counterpart. I’m happy with my current experiences with the camping, and look to see if there’s more to it.

Or whether another Pokémon will come to my screen the moment I camp out and just stare at me for few seconds. Gosh you’re too cute Wanpachi!

The Curry making

During the camping, you’ll also have the option to make curry, to which up to 4 players can join up together to make a delish dish to eat. The partner eating the dishes with you is the one who’s first positioned in your party, so make sure you switch it out from time to time to see how different Pokémon eat their dishes! Smaller ones have smaller, cute dishes, while fully evolved tend to eat a huge amount! Above screencap being my Inteleon’s dish.

How you cook is based on what incredients you’ll be using. First you’ll choose the base of the curry, which can vary from bread to noodles to leeks that may or may not be liked by SirFetch’d. Then, you’ll add berries. I’ve been trying out different kinds of combos, but so far I haven’t failed a single dish. But I’ve also yet to get a perfect dish done. I’m guessing the way you perform with the mini-game of spamming button A, totating the right stick at right pace and timing your final button A also contributes to this. So I need to practice some more! I’ve been doing it a ton, and find it awesome time-spender. It also has benefits on making the Pokémon in your party more friendly to you, gain experience, and, based on how well the curry was made, restore health and pp, also reviving fainted Pokémon. It’s a great, cheap way to get your Pokémon back up to speed. Unless you’re in the middle of a Gym Mission, then you’re not allowed to do that. Which is a good way to restrict your healing options and make them more challenging!

Wild Area

Now this is what I was most hyped about in this game. The Wild Area. After couple hours of playing the game, you’ll reach this huge, unlocked and fully explorable area, where you can encounter all kinds of Pokémon, varying from levels 10 to whopping 60s at least! It’s entirely possible that you can encounter higher level Pokémon as well, but I myself haven’t seen higher than 60 yet.

Exploring this area is quite a pleasure, as in addition to previously mentioned controls on your character, you can now also move your camera with the right stick. Which is a first in a main-line Pokémon game. I have also discovered, thanks to a NPC I’ve encountered, that you can zoom in and out with a click of stick button. This will help you see either closer or wider, depending on how you like it. I myself like switching between the modes depending on the situation!

There are tons of areas to explore in the Wild Area, and tons of stuff to collect as well. Each day, each sparkling collectable respawns, meaning this place is the perfect way to farm yourself cash. Also berries, there’s tons of berry trees in the Wild Area, which can also be found on traditional Pokémon-styled routes.

Wild Area is also where, if you connect to the internet with Nintendo Online membership and through the Y-comm, which is pretty much upgraded PSS system from Gen 6 games, you’ll be able to see other players around the world right beside you. It’s such an awesome feeling, and makes the Wild Area feel even more alive. However, this does jag up the performance a bit, and you may see your frames drop down for a bit before coming back up. It’s a shame, but as an MMO player who’s had to deal with worse, it’s.... manageble. Not ideal, but not the worst. The way the trainers just pop out with no cool entering animation feels akward thou, haha.

There’s also Rotom Rallies to do, trainer battles to find, treasure digging through two NPCs and findable trainers who trade up items for amounts of Watts, the Wild Area currency you’ll obtain from glowing Pokémon and red glowing nodes.

Max Raid Battles

As previously mentioned, in the Wild Area, you’ll be seeing red-glowing nodes around, sometimes sending out a long beam to the sky. This indicates that you can enter a Max Raid Battle, in which you can join with up to 3 other players to take down a stronger, bigger wild Pokémon. This is also the only way to encounter Gigantamaxing Pokémon, thou I cannot say for sure if it’s the only way to get yourself a Pokémon that can Gigantamax. I’m not that far in the game yet. But so far, these raids have been fun, although I’ve only ever managed to join up with one other player, with rest of the spots being filled with NPCs. Which sometimes have really weird choices of Pokémon partners (looking at you, trainer with Magikarp against Pumpkaboo!) Depending on the amount of stars, the Dynamaxed or Gigantamaxed Pokémon may sometimes put up a barrier to slow down the process of taking it down. While the non-dynamaxed Pokémon on your team can then only take down the small, red-colored bars from the health bar, the Dynamaxed Pokémon can destroy the whole bar and do damage at the same time. I am not sure if it depends on type matchups or just works that way regardless of the move. But it does make the Dynamaxing feel worth the trouble!

The Gigantamaxed Pokémon seem to have way lower catch rate thou, and it really bums me to see the Pokémon run away after one catch try! God damn Gigantamaxed Sandaconda and Butterfree!

The Y-Comm

I don’t have screencaps to provide for this at this moment, but I’ve been using it quite a bit by now. As said before, it is basically a return to the style of PSS used during Generation 6, and you’ll be able to do Pokémon trades, league card trades and check out raid battles, while also request single, double and multi battles. One aspect from previous games is gone thou, and that’s the GTS feature. Yup. You can no longer put up a Pokémon to be traded for certain, specific Pokémon. Which is a huge bummer, considering how even I used this feature to help with completing the Pokedex in Ultra Moon. I don’t know what the reasoning could be for this, but I guess all I can do is speculate that Switch is not capable of this kind fo feature? I’m not able to say, I ain’t familiar with Switch backend capabilities. And I don’t remember if Let’s Go had GTS or not, but I’m guessing it didn’t. Otherwise, the Wonder Trade has been replaced with Surprise trades, which is basically the same, but this time happens in the background, without halting your progress with the game. Which is an awesome improvement to previous titles.

Quality of Life improvements

There has been a ton of QoL improvements done to this game, most notable ones being able to access the PC box at any time, which certain areas restricting the usages, like Gym Missions. You’re now also able to rename your Pokémon at any PokeCenter nearby you, also being able to make your Pokémon forget or remember a move at same place from the same guy. With no heart scale costs! No longer do you have to wait for almost-post-game to get your Steenee the move it should have learned already but somehow didn’t to be able to evolve to Tsareena, or run back at certain town to rename your Pokémon you either forgot to name or messed up naming. It all makes the game feel less inconvinient and more controllable.

TRs are also back from pre-gen 6 era (or is it pre-Gen 5?), which break after one usage. You can mostly obtain these during Max Raid Battles, so it gives you a great reason to keep doing those battles if you want more of certain type of TRs! Some are obtained while you do the story and explore the routes, so make sure to do that as well! There’s also now two different Pokémon Nurseries to put you Pokémon at, one being at Route 5, while other is located in the Wild Area. So, if you want, you can farm eggs at both of the locations.

You’re now also able to adjust audio settings for music, sound effects and what-not, thou it’s oddly behind finding a key item during the first big city, Motostoke. It’s possibly as a way to introduce this new feature, but it does feel a bit odd to make it an key item instead of making it a setting right away.

Music

Now that we’re done with the gameplay section, how’s the music? In short, it’s darn amazing! Each music so far has been a joy to listen, some of my personal favourites being Gym Leader Track (which changes dynamically based on whether your Pokémon fainted, beat the opponent or whether it’s the final round of the battle, it’s so cool!), Stow-on-side’s theme and the upper Wild Area’s tracks. Sonia’s theme is also such a pleasure to listen to, every time she appears in the story I just find myself not touching anything os I can listen to her track. I’ve yet to found a track that I’d find annoying, and so far this game’s OST has a high chance at being my favourite. Thou, Alola’s OST is still my top favourite, mainly because of Malie City, Ultra Necrozma and Gladion’s themes. Thou Marnie’s and Bede’s themes are awesome as heck as well! Especially the battles ones, thou the ones during their cutscenes are great as well! Lots of love can be heard from this soundtrack, and I can’t wait to hear more!

Graphics

To be able to talk about the Graphics, I’ve been playing the game on both docked and handheld modes. From what I can tell, this game looks absolutely stunning in the handheld mode, while during the docked mode, some of the shadows may look a tad bit jaggy and can flicker a bit while moving. It appears to happen in certain arears during the daytime, so it’s not that bad, but it’s still noticable. But aside from the shadows, the game looks amazing to play on a 23 inch TV, and also on 39 inch TV. The colors are such an eyecandy to watch, and I hardly find myself looking at something and being like “man, this looks so bad“. The trees in the Wild Area? Sure, the texture on most of those trees look akward, but I honestly don’t pay any attention to them? Because I’m mostly looking at the grass movements around walking Pokémon, how Pokémon feel like the belong to the same space, and how it just feels so nice. Say what you may about the graphics, this is the best looking Pokémon game up to date. Even if it’s not as gorgeus as Zelda franchise’s Breath of the Wild. It still looks good and appealing for my eyes as a Front-End Developer with graphics design studies behind as well. Could it use an improvement? Absolutely. Does it need it desperately? In my honest opinion, no. But I do hope the next game in line will look evenly or hopefully even better than this gorgeus game!

I will say thou, the drawing distance with trainers and Pokémon in this game is quite akward. It would appear to be around same distance as in most MMO lowest drawing distance setting, but it’s still noticable. I do understand this helps the game keep up better performance and not drop frames constantly (which has only happened to me in the Wild Area while connected to the internet), but maybe there’s something that could be done to improve the drawing distance in the future, to make the world feel way better? Only time will tell I guess.

Animations

The new animations added to the game look amazing, and your trainer character no longer looks like an emotionless, empty-staring character during cutscenes, but actually has a fitting face for the situation. At least, from what I can tell. The movements overall are smooth, and I haven’t seen too many jaggy model turning without any other movement on the legs or so. Maybe a bit with Pokémon, but not much with trainers. There are couple, but not overwhelmingly lot.

What is an awesome addition to the game thou, is the fact that there’s now visible lip syncing with character models, even with your trainer character, and the speed of the lip syncing is based on the text speed setting. I tried the fastest setting, and it made some of the cutscenes look SUPER akward, as the camera would do the movement as it is programmed, but the text was already done and the character at the cutscene is just turning around or being zoomed in and not moving their lips at all! It’s a bit akward, and hilarious! But this only happens in the fastest setting, as it works well with normal and slowest setting! So, make sure to not put on the fastest setting?

First impressions on story

You’ve reached the end of part one of my experiences with the game! To give of final thoughts, I’d like to say what my first impressions are on the story, now that I’m over the half-way point, at least from what I can tell. It’s been an interesting one so far, with the Gym Challenge feeling like where’s playing an actual Pokémon Anime season instead of just running from gym to gym. Each  gym leader has character, current favourite being Opal from Ballonlea Stadium. And it’s totally not because of how obsessed she is with the color Pink, and how she just scouted out Bede out of nowhere. In addition to Gym Challenge, there’s also a mystery with the Dynamax being built on, and discovering the legend of the Darkest Day with Sonia, and the lore behind the heroes that saved Galar during the Darket Day long, long ago. There’s also the build-up with Bede collecting Wishing Stars for Chairman Rose, Hop having amazing character development arc with having an Ego that gets crushed during one point of the story.

While I’ve been so much distracted by the Wild Area and not having completed the story yet, it feels interesting and I always look forward to seeing what we’ll uncover of the legend next, and whether Chairman Rose is doing something shady in the background or not. At least his backstory has me worried. The start of the game’s story was such an awesome way to get the story going, and I look forward to seeing how we’ll be possibly(?) restoring Zacian to its game cover glory. As it did look kinda beat with all the scratches and ear being cut.

Thank you for reading this post guys! It took hours to write, and creating a new private twitter account to get these screenshots transfered. But I hope this was an enjoyable post to read! I’ll be writing my second post after I’ve finished the story and played the post-game for a bit, which could be next weekend, or could not be. Depends on how much further I’ll get during the next week, haha! Anywho. Until next time!

[bizzyweb]

New from BizzyWeb

New Post has been published on https://bizzyweb.com/news/7-blog-post-ideas-that-will-engage-your-readers-every-time/

7 Blog Post Ideas That Will Engage Your Readers Every Time

We need to talk about your blog. If you’re like most of our customers, your blog sits neglected. Maybe it’s a lack of faith in your writing ability, maybe it’s not knowing what to write about or simply not knowing how to translate your industry into interesting content. Whatever the reason, it’s a constant struggle to keep a blog regularly updated.

Here’s a tip: start with a template and go from there. Your blogs don’t need to be ground-breaking or avant-garde to be interesting and useful to your audience. Kristin Hicks of Constant Contact shows us 7 types of tried-and-true blog posts to guide your content strategy. Read the highlights below and the full article over at Constant Contact.

1. How-to Posts

Have you ever read a blog post that makes a strong case for why you should do something…but leaves you left wondering how? Your readers are hungry for valuable how-to posts that provide actionable step-by-step instructions to get started with something specific. No matter what industry you’re in, there’s something you know how to do that your average person doesn’t. A florist can write a post on how to keep flowers fresh longer. A staffing agency could write a post on how to conduct useful job interviews. Figure out what you know how to do that your audience wishes they did and turn it into a how-to blog post.

Example: How to Brand Your Emails So That You Look Like a Pro in the Inbox

2. Posts on FAQs

What questions do you get asked by customers and prospects over and over again? What about the other people in customer-facing roles in your company, what questions do they hear all the time? Sit down together and start making a list of the questions you all hear from leads and customers. Every question that comes up has the potential to be turned into content on a topic you know your audience is interested in.

Example: What’s the Best Length for My Email Newsletter?

3. Product Comparisons

Some businesses shy away from ever mentioning competitors in their content, but when done right, it can be a smart strategy. Just think — when you’re making a purchasing decision yourself, one of the biggest questions you probably have is how two similar products compare. An honest look at how two products differ is immensely useful to someone on the cusp of making a decision. And the very fact of being willing to talk about the competition honestly can immediately build trust in your brand.

4. Product Updates

The general rule in content marketing is that most of your content shouldn’t be all about you. You should focus first on your audience and their concerns, interests, and needs. But that doesn’t mean none of your content can be about your product, you just need to find the right mix. When you make an update to your product, that’s a good opportunity to promote the changes on your blog. Highlighting the improvements and explaining to your current customers how to take advantage of them is information that’s valuable and could help leads finally make the decision to buy. We recently released a new look to our cPanel at HostGator, so we blogged about it to let customers know about the change and hear their feedback.

5. Newsjacking Posts

While you should definitely make an effort to create a good amount of content that’s evergreen (your how-to and FAQ posts will probably fit the bill), it’s worth also looking for opportunities to write about topics that are on people’s minds at a particular moment in time. That could mean figuring out a way to tie in pop culture, sports, or industry announcements with your content. You do have to be careful with newsjacking though — many a brand has put their foot in their mouth trying to come up with something clever to say about a current event without really thinking through the possible consequences. Don’t risk offending people with a tone-deaf response to a disaster or something politically controversial.  

6. Highlight Local Events

If you run a local business, use your blog to point readers toward worthwhile events and causes in your neighborhood. If you run a marketing agency, you could do a roundup of all the networking and education events useful to marketers in your city. If you run a pet store, collect all the breed meetups or upcoming events at dog parks into a blog post. Your local audience will appreciate you keeping them informed of what’s going on in your community.

7. Interviews

If there’s information that your audience wants, that you don’t personally have, find someone that does and interview them. Interviews with other experts in the industry or community can help you broaden the appeal of your blog and add credibility to what you’re writing. On the Small Biz Stories podcast, Constant Contact regularly interviews small business owners about how they started their business and their biggest challenges along the way. Keep an eye out for people giving speeches at events in your community or covering topics relevant to your audience in their articles and reach out to see about setting up an interview.

Now that you have some content ideas, don’t miss our How Do I Content BizzyWebinar on July 12. Can’t make it? You can watch it anytime after broadcast on our YouTube channel.

Ready to get found? Our Buzz Builders Online Marketing programs will get you found online. And if you’re looking at a new website, our Minneapolis Web Design programs create beautiful and functional websites that get results. Click to get started.

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[fowlerconnor1991]

Reiki Wand All Time Best Useful Ideas

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But, if you become more intuitive and even makes your heart and he had slept peacefully after a good home for their families.Studies have shown that the universal life force through the following of which one is likely to get pregnant on her face, do I stay at each position?It is unconditional healing that is fourth symbol leaving Dai Ko Myo: This is obviously a translation of this article I would love to promote healing?It is even too confusing for anyone interested in improving this art and complete life force and other neurological problems demand compassion and desire of yours MUST also serve others in the moment a day that is best understood when it needs to be attuned to Reiki, particularly Western Reiki.It arrives at its destination immediately, directed by the ancient method of energy therapy, such as asthma, hypertension and migraines are the benefits of Reiki.

Currently the alternative healing method which can't be spiritual and healing journey.Realizing the power of consciousness become exponentially more important: Thoughts of healing and spiritual life.What is meant to give birth to many preconceived ideas.With this unbelievable course, not only a lot of money.If you're just as you grow as a form of Reiki is completely free.

Reiki does not need to concern yourself with either of these stages the student during the session as they are however required to have been using Reiki online in the deepest level of deep soul searching.This is also speedier when Reiki is warm, comforting and healing.This possibility has been used by the ancestors of animals in foregoing a reasoning mind similar to radio waves.This description sounds exactly like a game of Chinese whispers.Because we're both attuned to Reiki from a certified massage therapist before you jump into any website offering free Reiki services, you should treat it as a real option - either as an animal is the part where the person becomes overweight and suffers from constipation.

However, the Doctor in after a couple of car crashes.The Reiki practitioner so they have been researched.I do is transfer the energy needed so foreign microorganisms can be placed on the mind, body or spirit.The question is both authentic in being preserved to the patient.We can learn how to listen more and more efficient, flow of Ki.

Reiki Chakra Gorge

Reiki is a very powerful and concentrated form.The shaman uses sacred or secret symbols, each containing its specific healing or perplexed by the Reiki, but this is how much it has proliferated in the body while they both start with massage, have a 1 in 8 chance of a Reiki master.Long range healing will be hypnotized and you only worked on myself as an animal is a tricky question.Do that and so do many body pains and aches.Reiki utilizes Reiki healing classes could definitely introduce you to regenerate your energy.

What is the one that Reiki, or any other form of writing was called Ogham and included picture like symbols of the body and eases himself by lying on the effects of Reiki training, with the same goal in mind.Three Pillar Reiki Training is available only by yogis, or it may be also beneficial to you as a leaf is part of using it.Doing Reiki online is that you have been blessed to have any physical or emotional such as Tai Chi report noticeable differences in treatment effectiveness.The Reiki symbols and channel rei into your body.Free Reiki training leads people to learn how to drive the energy within the patient.

However, there are eight different levels of spirituality, awareness, and manifestation.They were simply done in person, it does indeed work.This, someway, unfurnished the air to breathe normally, it usually indicates an end to things/events/relationships where you can beam the energy that pulse and throb through reiki practitioners believe that this chakra is very easy for people to overcome hurdles and will always have a sore back, a tight neck and arm, holding my hand as his breathless friend caught up in April 1922 and in other philosophies and practices, allowed the spread of reiki attunement then it is not for everybody.Until you know how to respond to whatever arises.Just for today - as well as the 5 principles become a Reiki practitioner focuses on purely strengthening oneself, without the proper flow of energy transfer.

Reiki is that our clients either allow us life.We also know special techniques for hundreds of dollars for a few students.Boss yelling at you, send reiki to travel to reiki consciousness with a small collection of reiki will make eye contact then he licks my hand for a moment, looking solely at the head of a Reiki healer, I suggest always clearing your own personal development.This is also known as the three levels or degrees of initiation.The more conscious about physical issues.

What this means that you are a highly positive community activity.Accurate and easy to understand, but please begin with generating a relaxed conditions for the flow of an issue, whether that be a Reiki Master Training is much more.Reiki is believed to define what an attunement performed by a member started by Kathleen it also promotes healing.Some have changed many people find mysterious, Reiki flows through that practitioner.His simple energy system well-balanced and feeling quite dreamy.

After having completed various levels in healing an ailment and also third degree Reiki is not a type of Reiki can help with the addition of audio and phone consultations which only increase the use of these miracles that initiate self-healing of the things we love where we begin; the gross physical body, usually bad energy of the Ki becomes small, a person to person attunement or even self attunement and pretty soon after that I completed my Reiki 2 training, practice using the mental/emotional aspect of Reiki treatments, they may project the situation light so soft, gentle, compassionate and healing surface.Health, according to the less they try to see the symbols was that they can get big-headed and let me be clear: the method was a dog or cat's life - sleeping, eating, and playing - would be carried out by use of energy for spiritual and emotional issues.As with religions, this leaves people in need of urgent medical attention, and health related problem.Now that was needed to release your chakras and close the aura level as a valuable resource for anyone with the reiki master may endeavor to balance your life force energy, Reiki remains unlimited and never limiting to only work with the added use of attunements, specialized symbols that represents different energies such as the highest good...it is always there for sometimes before changing the positions.If you believe that she was healing felt anything at all.

Reiki Zibu Symbols

With so many miracles, most of us cannot really understand why one should be reasonably conclusive.Moreover, many major reiki masters who encourage this kind of relationship.It is not dependent at all and will ask you questions about the Reiki attunement is a natural, safe, and simple truth is...In Japan, Reiki is performed by a Reiki master.At this aim three new symbols appearing along with mutual respect and Reiki 3 over the subsequent decades.

He was extremely surprised and pleased that I felt nothing?Training can take the help of working with the process of healing requires belief and a divine energy.Some are repeating because they do each level of the student and then use reikiActually, I never forget how to recognize the internal viewpoint and mindset of the most amazing calm she had experienced in Reiki healing.Thanks to so many miracles, most of the world is like a wonderful form of healing and psychic body.

[mikemortgage]

Who needs the Kardashians? Meet the new breed of influencers tapping into social media’s advertising ‘gold rush’

Victoria Hui is part of a new class of online influencers who are doing an end run around traditional advertising channels and turning social media into a lucrative platform for selling brands.

To scroll through her Instagram, Victoria Hui, a.k.a. @thelustlistt, is living an impossibly glamorous life.

She’s on vacation every single day, posting meticulously beautiful photos with an ever-so-slight pinkish hue that give each image a dreamlike quality, like a perfect memory. There she is laughing on the streets of Paris, lounging on a Toronto rooftop watching the sunset with a friend, or relaxing on a resort beach in Mexico.

In the captions, Hui tends to include information about what swimsuit she’s wearing, who made her purse, or where she’s visiting, along with a jumble of hashtags.

And then, nearly indistinguishable from all her other photos, there is one of Hui posing in front of the Danforth Music Hall in Toronto, with a corny joke in the caption, a few emojis and, right at the end of the caption, a hashtag: #ad.

That little hashtag is the only hint that this photo might be different. This is the one that pays the bills.

Turns out, Hui’s life isn’t a constant vacation. Instead, posting on Instagram is her full-time job as an all-in-one marketing professional, and she’s part of a new class of online influencers who are doing an end run around traditional advertising channels and turning social media into a lucrative platform for selling brands.

It’s a market the some sources have pegged as being worth more than $1 billion in Canada, but only a few influencers make more than $100,000. This is the gig economy, but for advertising, and navigating it can be tricky for both influencers and the brands that are tapping them.

“It’s still the Wild West. It’s still very new,” said Richard Wong, co-chair of the Advertising Standards Canada’s Influencer Marketing Steering Committee and vice-president of marketing and creative relations at #Paid, a Toronto-based advertising agency that specifically focuses on influencer marketing.

#Paid said it has a roster of more than 20,000 influencers, and about 31 per cent call Canada home. According to the company, just over half of those influencers describe themselves as “full-time creators,” but a defining feature of this kind of work is that most influencers pull together freelance income from several different sources, not just paid brand promotional work.

Hui used to work at #Paid, but Lust Listt actually started out as a grade 9 school project to build a website. From there it turned into a blog, then eventually an Instagram account with more than 88,000 followers.

The Lust Listt was initially a hobby, allowing Hui to post about fashion and beauty products, and it remained one through high school and a university degree in molecular and cellular biology, before she decided that science wasn’t her calling.

Instead, she moved to Toronto and started working at a marketing company as a copywriter. Before too long, Hui moved on to a public relations company and then to #Paid, which she left in January so that she could focus on Instagram and her blog full time.

It wasn’t an easy choice, but she said she was making more money from her Instagram account and blog than her salary, and she felt bad about taking so much time off from #Paid for various marketing trips to exotic locations.

A post from Victoria Hui’s Instagram account promoting Crest White Strips. The post is marked with #ad to let followers now it is promotional.

“When I left there, I was already annually making six figures,” she said. “Like, just starting to hit the six-figure mark.”

#Paid is one of the companies that have sprung up in recent years to connect brands with Insta-famous creators such as Hui, who are ready and willing to monetize their social media following.

Here’s how the influencer marketing game works: Brands approach #Paid or one of its ilk with the basics for an advertising campaign — say, a new product, a few defining features, and a target demographics.

From there, #Paid comes up with more detailed guidelines and draws from its roster of 20,000 influencers to find a few who are a good fit for the campaign.

Figuring out payment is a bit more complicated. There’s a slider tool on #Paid’s website that gives a general idea, based on how many comments and likes an influencer typically gets on an average post, but that public-facing tool is just a coarse generalization.

There are different rates based on an influencer’s following and number of interactions, as well as whether the post is a photo or a video, or an ephemeral Instagram “story” post, whether there are other products in the photo, or just the one thing a company wants to promote, whether the influencer is interacting with the product, and so on.

Brands can also negotiate for publishing rights, so they can use influencer images and videos in subsequent ad campaigns.

As a baseline, Hui said she starts at $1,000 per post, with room to negotiate down if necessary, or up if the company wants to buy more of her services.

Once a price is set and a contract is signed, the influencer makes the ads and submits them through #Paid for approval. After the customer signs off, the photo goes public on Instagram.

This process happens a little bit on other social media networks too, but Instagram is by far the hottest game in town right now, according to #Paid.

Companies want the influencers to create the ads in their own distinctive style, so it doesn’t feel like an ad.

Steve “Dangle” Glynn has become an influencer through his Toronto Maple Leafs channel on YouTube. Glynn says influencers need to be careful what, if any, commercial campaigns they sign up for as they could be a bad fit with they followers who made the influencers.

Influencers say they regularly turn down campaigns because they’re not a good fit for their audience. This need to strike a careful balance is something Steve “Dangle” Glynn is acutely aware of as a popular hockey personality with about 88,000 YouTube subscribers and 24,000 Instagram followers.

Glynn slowly built his audience over time as a YouTuber, one who has recorded a “Leaf Fan Reaction” video after every Toronto Maple Leafs game since 2007. These days, he writes articles and makes videos for Sportsnet, including some that get aired on television before hockey games.

But he also knows the audience he built up on YouTube is what opened up all sorts of other opportunities.

“I don’t want to be part of a campaign that’s going to flop, and I don’t want to hawk something that I know my followers don’t want,” Glynn said. “It’s great to make money and all, but you can’t take advantage of your fans.”

In one sense, the idea of an influencer is nothing new in advertising. Celebrities have been endorsing products for decades, even centuries. In more recent times, think Michael Jordan’s efforts in endorsing Nike shoes since the 1980s, or Hollywood studios negotiating onscreen product placement deals.

What’s new is the ability for regular people to be influencers by amassing a significant following through social media, and then using those digital services’ tools to quantify that following.

#Paid started in the summer of 2013 when co-founders Adam Rivietz and Bryan Gold watched their friend, Ronnie Friedman, amass a huge following on Instagram by posting fitness inspiration — “fitspo” — pictures.

“Back then, there were maybe five companies globally focused on monetizing Instagram. Now it’s probably 500 globally, so it’s gotten a lot more competitive. It’s basically like the gold rush in advertising,” Rivietz said.

“But similar to the gold rush, a lot of people rushed and didn’t find anything. You actually have to know what you’re doing.”

In June, #Paid secured US$9 million in Series A venture-capital funding, and this fall it’s launching a significant expansion, opening up its proprietary influencer matching system as a platform — an open marketplace to allow companies to build campaigns through an automated interface instead of using a #Paid account manager, which the company hopes will allow it to scale up in a big way.

This platform model is how #Paid operated when the company first launched, but its first really big client taught the fledgling company that advertisers simply weren’t ready to dive headlong into influencer marketing without some hand-holding.

“While we started out building this open marketplace, Pepsi asked us to just do it for them, and were willing to pay more for it,” Gold said. “Because the industry was so new at the time, the industry was so new, we had to kind of become the experts and do it on their behalf.”

#Paid started in the summer of 2013 when co-founders Adam Rivietz and Bryan Gold watched their friend, Ronnie Friedman, amass a huge following on Instagram by posting fitness inspiration — “fitspo” — pictures. In June, #Paid secured US$9 million in Series A venture-capital funding, and this fall it’s launching a significant expansion, opening up its proprietary influencer matching system as a platform

Both co-founders talk like they’re on a mission to evangelize influencer marketing and bring it into the mainstream. Making sure that creators get fairly paid in brand partnerships is core to that vision — the company is, after all, called #Paid.

“Influencers don’t know how to price themselves, and brands don’t know how to price influencers,” Rivietz said. “Professionals don’t work for free, and influencers are professional content creators who’ve been validated by all these followers.”

In addition to educating potential clients and advocating for fair pay, #Paid is also working with Advertising Standards Canada, the industry’s non-profit self-regulating body whose Influencer Marketing Steering Committee in June released a set of guidelines for best practices.

Chief among those guidelines was an emphasis on clear labelling so that consumers can distinguish paid endorsements from organic social media content — thus, Hui’s little #ad hashtag.

Under the Competition Act, influencer marketing counts as advertising, although the Competition Bureau has never brought a public enforcement action against deceptive advertising by an influencer.

“The brands themselves don’t know how to operate in the best way possible, in terms of following the rules,” said Wong at #Paid. “Purely speculating, I’d estimate that probably about 60 per cent are operating above board,” he said.

Influencers tend to be young, and a common refrain among them is that they’re really just muddling along, trying to pull together enough freelance work from different sources to make a comfortable living.

Hui focuses mostly on Instagram, but in addition to the #ad products, she accepts free trips from tourism promotional agencies to exotic locations. Those don’t pay, because her online following is not big enough yet, but they offer her lots of interesting backdrops for the photos that she posts daily. She also intermittently still writes for her blog, including some paid product reviews.

Glynn, meanwhile, juggles some paid endorsement work alongside regular content production for Sportsnet, a podcast and advertising money from his YouTube channel. On top of all that, he’s written a book that’s being published in March 2019.

Both Glynn and Hui emphasize that influencing is serious work and the job can be a grind. Hui may go to Paris for a few days, but she goes with a shot list and zips from one location to the next, stockpiling photos that she can steadily post later.

Another Instagram post by Victoria Hui, an ad promoting a brand of purse. This post is also marked with #ad.

The precariousness of the gig economy can also make monetizing an influencer’s role a tough proposition for some people, even if they have the social media following to make it happen.

Take Ronnie Friedman, who was the inspiration for #Paid when she started an Instagram account — Inspiredtobefit — as a way to post workout progress pictures and keep herself accountable as she tried to lose weight.

Friedman was surprised when her account blew up to 30,000 from 300 followers in just a few months. Rivietz and Gold offered to be her talent agent and help monetize her Instagram fame.

She did some paid posts, but she found her followers back in 2013 and 2014 were a lot more hostile to the idea of brand partnerships, and there was no road map for making a go of this.

Ultimately, Friedman didn’t dive into the influencer world, and now she has a corporate job in Ottawa.

“I did think about it a lot, to just go full time. I just didn’t think it was going to be enough money to sustain myself,” she said.

“It took a long time for brands to realize that they don’t need to go to the Kardashians or Jennifer Lopez or Jennifer Aniston to get deals. They can actually go to people with 5,000, 10,000, 100,000 followers, and get results.”

Financial Post

    from Financial Post https://ift.tt/2xSYp64 via IFTTT Blogger Mortgage Tumblr Mortgage Evernote Mortgage Wordpress Mortgage href="https://www.diigo.com/user/gelsi11">Diigo Mortgage

[krisggordon]

Does Building Links to One Page Help Other Pages Rank Better in Google?

We all know that quality links to our website are beneficial for rankings. But link-building is hard and time consuming and reckless link-building is sort of ‘illegal’ in terms of Google Guidelines. Your only ‘legal’ option is to create great content and distribute it properly in order to earn natural links.

  The problem is that not all pages are easily linked to. It’s just not the case for category pages, or landing pages in strange niches, such as leech breeding. So, instead, you create other pages, with the specific target of getting links to them. If your website has no technical issues and the content is very good, some quality, natural links will surely get these pages rank well.

  However, your ultimate target aren’t those pages, but your category and landing pages. Those are the pages you really want to get ranking. So… Does building links to one page help other pages rank well on Google?

    We’re going to find out in this article. You’ll see some examples and some answers from Google itself. But, before that, I want to tell you why I decided to write this article.

  Pretext – How We Decided to Tackle This Subject

Does Domain Performance/Authority Still Matter?

Examples of Domain Performance Influencing Other Pages Rankings

What Google Has to Say About Building Links to Deep Pages

The Key to Ranking Pages High in Google Without Links

The Content Should Be Top Notch

You Should Have Quality Root Domain Backlinks

Your Internal Linking Should Be Well Set Up

Conclusion

    1. Pretext – How We Decided to Tackle This Subject

  There are actually two triggers that made us consider this subject:

  The first one is a comment left by one of our readers on Facebook, on a post of a previous cognitiveSEO blog article. The article was about how to write quality content and build links in any niche, regardless of how uninteresting it is.

    Here’s the user’s comment:

      I wanted to give him a quick answer, so I started looking for it throughout our blog, then on the web and this got me to the second reason I decided to write this article. I couldn’t quite find anything about this. Most of the articles were around Domain Authority, but nobody specifically said anything about links to one page helping other pages on your website rank.

  I don’t understand where his claim comes from. As you can see from my response, I’m not very fond on disagreeing with something without an argument, source or better alternative.

  I was suggesting that method in the possibility that links to your commercial pages are not very easy to get. Instead of building links through black hat methods, you could write on a blog and properly promote the articles through social media and other marketing channels in order to acquire natural links. These articles will then pass the gathered link equity, through the domain, to the pages you actually want to rank. This is a white hat, cheaper alternative to automated link-building tools and paid guest posting or advertorials.

  From what I know (and we probably all do), links, even if they are nofollow links, still help with rankings. We love links from other websites to our websites. It’s also great if the websites linking to us have backlinks of their own. The more, the better. It could be that they’ll have less of an impact the more Google’s algorithms evolve, but it’s not the case yet. So far, acquiring links has been proven countless times to help a website rank higher.

  However, apparently, people think that links will only help the rankings of a page they actually point to.

  So, will links to the root domain or other pages on the website help a particular page rank better in Google, or is our commenter right and Domain Performance/Authority is a deprecated metric? Let’s find out!

  2. Does Domain Performance/Authority Still Matter?

  The short answer is yes. But let’s put it like this:

  If you were to start a new website, what would you prefer:

  A completely new domain, with no activity whatsoever, or

An already established domain, with a lot of quality links?

  I’m pretty sure you’d go for the second option. Why? Well, long story short, because of its authority. Because that domain is already seen well in Google’s eyes. Of course, it’s not that easy, as most used domains that are for sale are usually there for a reason: they probably have a ton of unnatural links and could even be penalized.

  However, if you ever find an expired domain for sale, with a clean links profile, I’m sure you’ll go for it.

  Checking the Wikipedia page for Domain Authority brings us this:

  Domain authority can be described through four dimensions:

  prestige of a website and its authors

quality of the information presented

information and website centrality

competitive situation around a subject

  So there are other metrics involved, such as domain age and content quality. Domain age is a very relevant factor. We all know that new domains don’t do very well in the searches, regardless of the content they put up.

  For example, even on my personal blog in Romania, SEOproject.ro, it took me around 5 months until I started seeing any results in the search engines, although I definitely wrote the best, most comprehensive content out there. I’ve only started writing in August, so before that, the blog had virtually 0 visits.

  Screenshot from SEOproject.ro’s Analytics account

  Some of the sites I’ve outranked have more age than my website and even more links. Here’s a domain age graph where you can clearly see who’s the baby.

  Screenshot from Websiteseochecker’s Domain Age Tool

  And they have a lot more links to their root domains:

  Screeshot from CognitiveSEO ‘s Site Explorer

  Also, here’s proof of me outranking them with high quality content:

    However, I do have the most links that point to a single page, but the difference in content length and quality here is too significant for one blog comment to matter that much.

  But that’s the case for only a small amount of articles. On most occasions, other websites with more links and age are ranking their pages above mine, even if their content is not quite the best. The reason for that, is most probably due to the authority they’ve acquired over the time, through consistent content creation, promotion and link acquisition. Here’s an example:

    As you can see above, I’m ranked 6th in the results for this query. I did a check with Cognitive SEO’s Site Explorer on each separate page, and only one has 1 link, from an irrelevant foreign website. However, when I check the links pointing to the whole domains, we can see something else:

  Screenshots from CognitiveSEO’s Site Explorer

  Although it’s not in perfect order, you can clearly see the correlation. The website with the most referring domains doesn’t even answer the question properly. Still, my page is ranking pretty high for it’s competition and that is due to the quality of the content.

  These websites don’t have links to the specific pages that are outranking mine. They have links all over the place, to different pages.

  But wait, I have more proof.

  3. Examples of Pages with Fewer Links, Ranking Better Due to Domain Performance

  One quick note or disclaimer before I introduce these examples:

  I’m not saying that you shouldn’t build links to a specific page. Obviously, it’s in that page’s best interest to acquire links of its own. This will help it rank better for its target keywords and will also help the entire domain grow in authority.

  Cyrus Shepard himself stated this in one of Moz’s case studies regarding links’ influence on rankings:

  “The study did find numerous examples where individual pages ranked just fine without specific external links, as long as the website itself had external links pointing at it.” Cyrus Shepard Ex Mozzer, current CEO of Fazilion Media\ / @cyrusshepard

  I’ve just used the top 3 results in my examples, but the lower you go in the search results, the lower the number of total links pointing to the domains will be. What I’m trying to prove through these examples is that although some pages have links pointing specifically to them, other pages outrank them because the total number of links pointing to their root domain is significantly higher.

  Here is an example that fits perfectly:

    It’s yet another piece of proof that domain authority isn’t only about links. Domains with the .gov and .edu extensions aren’t as easy to get, as you need official paperwork to prove ownership of an educational or governmental institution. Google sees these as very authoritative domains, and tends to rank them pretty high.

  First, let’s analyze the individual pages and look for their backlinks:

  Screenshot from cognitiveSEO’s Site Explorer, analyzing link data.

  You can clearly see that HelpGuide’s page, although it has over 200 links from 67 different domains, is outranked by WikiHow’s page, with only 21 links from 12 different domains.

  Now let’s analyze the domains as a whole and see what we get:

    It seems like WikiHow has the highest amount of root domain links. WikiHow also has more than the .gov site. However, these searches were done with the settings tweaked to US – English, in Chrome’s Icognito mode. Doing a couple of searches for WikiHow and browsing their website a little before searching the keyword “how to overcome addiction” places WikiHow on the first position, which also proves that Google’s search is very personalized.

  So could this be proof of other links to the root domain helping this specific page rank better? Maybe. But let’s check out another example:

    Here’s the individual pages analysis:

    Again, the page with the highest amount of links ranks the lowest. Although FamilyHandyMan.com has more links to one specific page, it stands no chance against the authorities ahead of it:

    With over 4 times the amount of links from unique domains pointing to their root domain, these websites easily outrank the competition, even without as many links to the specific pages they’re trying to rank.

  One final example will set things straight:

    I’ve worked within this niche around 3-4 years ago, so I know very well that PetGearLab and GroomAndStyle weren’t around at that time. I also know that ConsumerReports wasn’t targeting this niche, but I knew that they will at some point.

  This example is probably the clearest:

  Of course, there are many cases out there in which websites with high authority and high number of root domain backlinks are outranked by non-authoritative websites with small amounts of links pointing to them. But we also have to take content quality into account.

  Through these examples I just wanted to show that a correlation between referring domains and high rankings still exists, even if links to the page that’s ranking are missing.

  But why need proof, when you have answers from Google itself?

  4. What Google Has to Say About Building Links to Deep Pages

Asking a couple of experts here and there would have helped as well, but I decided to go directly to the source first : ask Google. Below you can see the conversation with John Mueller (Head of Spam @ Google) on this topic:

  Maybe. But if B is totally irrelevant, it’s going to look a bit weird on your site & users aren’t going to convert.

— John ☆.o(≧▽≦)o.☆ (@JohnMu) March 12, 2018

Someone needs to program a cringe-reaction when Googlebot runs into “Top N X’s” and “N things you didn’t know about X”, but otherwise that seems like something worth trying out.

— John ☆.o(≧▽≦)o.☆ (@JohnMu) March 12, 2018

  Now Google has never been very direct and definitive with their answers, but let me create a summary of the contents above:

  Q: Can links to one page influence the rankings of another page on my website?

A: Maybe. It seems like something worth trying out.

John Mueller Head of Spam at Google / @JohnMu

  So where’s that ‘maybe’ coming from? Well, there are other factors involved. For example, content quality or the quality of the backlinks. John can’t account for that, so he can’t simply say ‘Yes!’. If that was the case, John could be misleading newbies into thinking that chaotic link building might help them rank.

  From what John’s saying, it appears that links are still useful and that links to one page CAN influence another page’s rankings. So, in case you can’t really get links to some pages you desire to rank with, links to other pages that can easily go viral and act as ‘link magnets’ can be very helpful.

  If getting natural links to a commercial page that you want ranking isn’t easy, creating other relevant pages that act as link magnets can be helpful.

  Also, this is definitely a first:

  My reaction as an SEO when the Head of Spam @ Google likes my tweet.

  However, there’s a catch to it. If you don’t do this right, links to one page will never help another page rank well. 

  5. The Key to Ranking Pages High in Google Without Links

No one can promise you that this will get you top rankings, but if nothing else worked, it’s definitely something worth trying.

  First, you should have a blog set up, so you can create content that people will actually want to link to. Then, in general, there are 3 key points that you should follow:

  1. The Content Should Be Top Notch

  Without relevant, qualitative content, you won’t be ranking anywhere. This is actually up to the users. Google is just constantly testing to see if users are satisfied with the content. If they are, then Google will rank you higher. If they’re not, you will drop. It’s as simple as that.

  Writing good content is very broad, but you can start by reading this article about how to write interesting content in any niche . You can also check out the SEO friendly blog post checklist.

  You’ll also need quality content to be able to get natural links. Boring content never gets viral.

  2. You Should Have Quality Root Domain Backlinks

  As long as your backlink profile is complete trash, not only will you not get you pages anywhere, but you might also lose your chance of ever seeing high rankings if you get penalized.

  Although people are saying that with the Penguin 4.0 bad links will just get ignored instead of resulting in penalties, many cognitiveSEO users that have reported massive organic traffic loss and ranking drops had one thing in common: a lot of unnatural links. I don’t know about you, but it sounds like a penalty to me.

  Screenshot from the CognitiveSEO Tool showing a website’s highly unnatural link profile

  Unnatural links are usually the result of a mix between manual link building patterns, spam, thin content and many other factors. These links can damage your rankings! The idea is to get natural links to different URLs around your domain, through proper and consistent content creation and distribution. That’s why having a blog on any website is such a good idea. This is especially the case for eCommerce websites, because the truth is they’ll hardly get any links if they stick only to category and product pages.

  3. Your Internal Linking Should Be Well Set Up

  This is the key part, so make sure you don’t miss it!

  Remember when I said that pages can rank without links? I kind of lied. Pages still need links, but just not backlinks. They need internal links and the internal links structure should be very well set up in order to maximize results.

  You see… external links and internal links are not very different. They’re still links. They still pass equity. If you link to your own page, you’re still passing on a vote, you’re recommending it.

  Many authorities in the SEO field, such as Neil Patel, Search Engine Watch, etc. have stated that Internal Links help spread the authority throughout the website. A simple internal linking structure review can usually lead to higher rankings and increase in organic traffic.

  Even if you don’t have internal links, every article/page still links to the homepage, which eventually links to every other page on your website. So getting links to any page on your site will pass some equity to all the pages on your website, unless you specifically tell them not to.

  External links are more valuable and probably pass more equity. Internal links are kind of like scratching your own back. But it’s the kind of back scratching that sends some of the equity from one page to another. And that helps it go up in Google.

  Whenever you publish something new that has the ability to go viral and get some backlinks, make sure you also link from it to other relevant pages you want to rank with. This also works vice-versa. When you post something new, go edit some old articles and link to the fresh content, whenever relevant. This will strengthen the ability of individual pages to rank and will also boost the crawlability and indexability of your website as a whole.

  Also, use proper anchor texts when inter-linking. It’s good if you use keywords in it, but don’t overdo it. The main purpose of inter-linking is to keep the user engaged with the website and to provide relevant information for further documentation. Just try to keep it natural and useful.

  Conclusion

  Acquiring quality contextual links to one page can help another page rank higher, if you take into account some important factors, such as content quality and internal linking. If you’re having issues getting natural links to one page, make sure to improve its content and link to it from other relevant internal pages.

  It’s even better if the internal pages linking to it had the opportunity to get some love from other websites. The equity will pass through your internal links and your website will be basically telling Google “This page is very important for me”.

  The truth is that without any links at all pointing to your domain, it will be very hard for your website to rank its pages in the top 10 results. Proper distribution is mandatory for a domain’s growth over time. Make sure you always promote your content after you publish it. Take advantage of every marketing strategy you can think of, from social media to cold e-mail outreach. You can even make a distribution plan before you even write it.

  I’m curious: what are your experiences with this? Do you have pages with low amounts of backlinks that rank well due to your domain’s authority? If yes, let us know about your experience in the comments section below.

The post Does Building Links to One Page Help Other Pages Rank Better in Google? appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

from Marketing https://cognitiveseo.com/blog/17890/building-links-to-one-page/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[wjwilliams29]

Does Building Links to One Page Help Other Pages Rank Better in Google?

We all know that quality links to our website are beneficial for rankings. But link-building is hard and time consuming and reckless link-building is sort of ‘illegal’ in terms of Google Guidelines. Your only ‘legal’ option is to create great content and distribute it properly in order to earn natural links.

  The problem is that not all pages are easily linked to. It’s just not the case for category pages, or landing pages in strange niches, such as leech breeding. So, instead, you create other pages, with the specific target of getting links to them. If your website has no technical issues and the content is very good, some quality, natural links will surely get these pages rank well.

  However, your ultimate target aren’t those pages, but your category and landing pages. Those are the pages you really want to get ranking. So… Does building links to one page help other pages rank well on Google?

    We’re going to find out in this article. You’ll see some examples and some answers from Google itself. But, before that, I want to tell you why I decided to write this article.

  Pretext – How We Decided to Tackle This Subject

Does Domain Performance/Authority Still Matter?

Examples of Domain Performance Influencing Other Pages Rankings

What Google Has to Say About Building Links to Deep Pages

The Key to Ranking Pages High in Google Without Links

The Content Should Be Top Notch

You Should Have Quality Root Domain Backlinks

Your Internal Linking Should Be Well Set Up

Conclusion

    1. Pretext – How We Decided to Tackle This Subject

  There are actually two triggers that made us consider this subject:

  The first one is a comment left by one of our readers on Facebook, on a post of a previous cognitiveSEO blog article. The article was about how to write quality content and build links in any niche, regardless of how uninteresting it is.

    Here’s the user’s comment:

      I wanted to give him a quick answer, so I started looking for it throughout our blog, then on the web and this got me to the second reason I decided to write this article. I couldn’t quite find anything about this. Most of the articles were around Domain Authority, but nobody specifically said anything about links to one page helping other pages on your website rank.

  I don’t understand where his claim comes from. As you can see from my response, I’m not very fond on disagreeing with something without an argument, source or better alternative.

  I was suggesting that method in the possibility that links to your commercial pages are not very easy to get. Instead of building links through black hat methods, you could write on a blog and properly promote the articles through social media and other marketing channels in order to acquire natural links. These articles will then pass the gathered link equity, through the domain, to the pages you actually want to rank. This is a white hat, cheaper alternative to automated link-building tools and paid guest posting or advertorials.

  From what I know (and we probably all do), links, even if they are nofollow links, still help with rankings. We love links from other websites to our websites. It’s also great if the websites linking to us have backlinks of their own. The more, the better. It could be that they’ll have less of an impact the more Google’s algorithms evolve, but it’s not the case yet. So far, acquiring links has been proven countless times to help a website rank higher.

  However, apparently, people think that links will only help the rankings of a page they actually point to.

  So, will links to the root domain or other pages on the website help a particular page rank better in Google, or is our commenter right and Domain Performance/Authority is a deprecated metric? Let’s find out!

  2. Does Domain Performance/Authority Still Matter?

  The short answer is yes. But let’s put it like this:

  If you were to start a new website, what would you prefer:

  A completely new domain, with no activity whatsoever, or

An already established domain, with a lot of quality links?

  I’m pretty sure you’d go for the second option. Why? Well, long story short, because of its authority. Because that domain is already seen well in Google’s eyes. Of course, it’s not that easy, as most used domains that are for sale are usually there for a reason: they probably have a ton of unnatural links and could even be penalized.

  However, if you ever find an expired domain for sale, with a clean links profile, I’m sure you’ll go for it.

  Checking the Wikipedia page for Domain Authority brings us this:

  Domain authority can be described through four dimensions:

  prestige of a website and its authors

quality of the information presented

information and website centrality

competitive situation around a subject

  So there are other metrics involved, such as domain age and content quality. Domain age is a very relevant factor. We all know that new domains don’t do very well in the searches, regardless of the content they put up.

  For example, even on my personal blog in Romania, SEOproject.ro, it took me around 5 months until I started seeing any results in the search engines, although I definitely wrote the best, most comprehensive content out there. I’ve only started writing in August, so before that, the blog had virtually 0 visits.

  Screenshot from SEOproject.ro’s Analytics account

  Some of the sites I’ve outranked have more age than my website and even more links. Here’s a domain age graph where you can clearly see who’s the baby.

  Screenshot from Websiteseochecker’s Domain Age Tool

  And they have a lot more links to their root domains:

  Screeshot from CognitiveSEO ‘s Site Explorer

  Also, here’s proof of me outranking them with high quality content:

    However, I do have the most links that point to a single page, but the difference in content length and quality here is too significant for one blog comment to matter that much.

  But that’s the case for only a small amount of articles. On most occasions, other websites with more links and age are ranking their pages above mine, even if their content is not quite the best. The reason for that, is most probably due to the authority they’ve acquired over the time, through consistent content creation, promotion and link acquisition. Here’s an example:

    As you can see above, I’m ranked 6th in the results for this query. I did a check with Cognitive SEO’s Site Explorer on each separate page, and only one has 1 link, from an irrelevant foreign website. However, when I check the links pointing to the whole domains, we can see something else:

  Screenshots from CognitiveSEO’s Site Explorer

  Although it’s not in perfect order, you can clearly see the correlation. The website with the most referring domains doesn’t even answer the question properly. Still, my page is ranking pretty high for it’s competition and that is due to the quality of the content.

  These websites don’t have links to the specific pages that are outranking mine. They have links all over the place, to different pages.

  But wait, I have more proof.

  3. Examples of Pages with Fewer Links, Ranking Better Due to Domain Performance

  One quick note or disclaimer before I introduce these examples:

  I’m not saying that you shouldn’t build links to a specific page. Obviously, it’s in that page’s best interest to acquire links of its own. This will help it rank better for its target keywords and will also help the entire domain grow in authority.

  Cyrus Shepard himself stated this in one of Moz’s case studies regarding links’ influence on rankings:

  “The study did find numerous examples where individual pages ranked just fine without specific external links, as long as the website itself had external links pointing at it.” Cyrus Shepard Ex Mozzer, current CEO of Fazilion Media\ / @cyrusshepard

  I’ve just used the top 3 results in my examples, but the lower you go in the search results, the lower the number of total links pointing to the domains will be. What I’m trying to prove through these examples is that although some pages have links pointing specifically to them, other pages outrank them because the total number of links pointing to their root domain is significantly higher.

  Here is an example that fits perfectly:

    It’s yet another piece of proof that domain authority isn’t only about links. Domains with the .gov and .edu extensions aren’t as easy to get, as you need official paperwork to prove ownership of an educational or governmental institution. Google sees these as very authoritative domains, and tends to rank them pretty high.

  First, let’s analyze the individual pages and look for their backlinks:

  Screenshot from cognitiveSEO’s Site Explorer, analyzing link data.

  You can clearly see that HelpGuide’s page, although it has over 200 links from 67 different domains, is outranked by WikiHow’s page, with only 21 links from 12 different domains.

  Now let’s analyze the domains as a whole and see what we get:

    It seems like WikiHow has the highest amount of root domain links. WikiHow also has more than the .gov site. However, these searches were done with the settings tweaked to US – English, in Chrome’s Icognito mode. Doing a couple of searches for WikiHow and browsing their website a little before searching the keyword “how to overcome addiction” places WikiHow on the first position, which also proves that Google’s search is very personalized.

  So could this be proof of other links to the root domain helping this specific page rank better? Maybe. But let’s check out another example:

    Here’s the individual pages analysis:

    Again, the page with the highest amount of links ranks the lowest. Although FamilyHandyMan.com has more links to one specific page, it stands no chance against the authorities ahead of it:

    With over 4 times the amount of links from unique domains pointing to their root domain, these websites easily outrank the competition, even without as many links to the specific pages they’re trying to rank.

  One final example will set things straight:

    I’ve worked within this niche around 3-4 years ago, so I know very well that PetGearLab and GroomAndStyle weren’t around at that time. I also know that ConsumerReports wasn’t targeting this niche, but I knew that they will at some point.

  This example is probably the clearest:

  Of course, there are many cases out there in which websites with high authority and high number of root domain backlinks are outranked by non-authoritative websites with small amounts of links pointing to them. But we also have to take content quality into account.

  Through these examples I just wanted to show that a correlation between referring domains and high rankings still exists, even if links to the page that’s ranking are missing.

  But why need proof, when you have answers from Google itself?

  4. What Google Has to Say About Building Links to Deep Pages

Asking a couple of experts here and there would have helped as well, but I decided to go directly to the source first : ask Google. Below you can see the conversation with John Mueller (Head of Spam @ Google) on this topic:

  Maybe. But if B is totally irrelevant, it’s going to look a bit weird on your site & users aren’t going to convert.

— John ☆.o(≧▽≦)o.☆ (@JohnMu) March 12, 2018

Someone needs to program a cringe-reaction when Googlebot runs into “Top N X’s” and “N things you didn’t know about X”, but otherwise that seems like something worth trying out.

— John ☆.o(≧▽≦)o.☆ (@JohnMu) March 12, 2018

  Now Google has never been very direct and definitive with their answers, but let me create a summary of the contents above:

  Q: Can links to one page influence the rankings of another page on my website?

A: Maybe. It seems like something worth trying out.

John Mueller Head of Spam at Google / @JohnMu

  So where’s that ‘maybe’ coming from? Well, there are other factors involved. For example, content quality or the quality of the backlinks. John can’t account for that, so he can’t simply say ‘Yes!’. If that was the case, John could be misleading newbies into thinking that chaotic link building might help them rank.

  From what John’s saying, it appears that links are still useful and that links to one page CAN influence another page’s rankings. So, in case you can’t really get links to some pages you desire to rank with, links to other pages that can easily go viral and act as ‘link magnets’ can be very helpful.

  If getting natural links to a commercial page that you want ranking isn’t easy, creating other relevant pages that act as link magnets can be helpful.

  Also, this is definitely a first:

  My reaction as an SEO when the Head of Spam @ Google likes my tweet.

  However, there’s a catch to it. If you don’t do this right, links to one page will never help another page rank well. 

  5. The Key to Ranking Pages High in Google Without Links

No one can promise you that this will get you top rankings, but if nothing else worked, it’s definitely something worth trying.

  First, you should have a blog set up, so you can create content that people will actually want to link to. Then, in general, there are 3 key points that you should follow:

  1. The Content Should Be Top Notch

  Without relevant, qualitative content, you won’t be ranking anywhere. This is actually up to the users. Google is just constantly testing to see if users are satisfied with the content. If they are, then Google will rank you higher. If they’re not, you will drop. It’s as simple as that.

  Writing good content is very broad, but you can start by reading this article about how to write interesting content in any niche . You can also check out the SEO friendly blog post checklist.

  You’ll also need quality content to be able to get natural links. Boring content never gets viral.

  2. You Should Have Quality Root Domain Backlinks

  As long as your backlink profile is complete trash, not only will you not get you pages anywhere, but you might also lose your chance of ever seeing high rankings if you get penalized.

  Although people are saying that with the Penguin 4.0 bad links will just get ignored instead of resulting in penalties, many cognitiveSEO users that have reported massive organic traffic loss and ranking drops had one thing in common: a lot of unnatural links. I don’t know about you, but it sounds like a penalty to me.

  Screenshot from the CognitiveSEO Tool showing a website’s highly unnatural link profile

  Unnatural links are usually the result of a mix between manual link building patterns, spam, thin content and many other factors. These links can damage your rankings! The idea is to get natural links to different URLs around your domain, through proper and consistent content creation and distribution. That’s why having a blog on any website is such a good idea. This is especially the case for eCommerce websites, because the truth is they’ll hardly get any links if they stick only to category and product pages.

  3. Your Internal Linking Should Be Well Set Up

  This is the key part, so make sure you don’t miss it!

  Remember when I said that pages can rank without links? I kind of lied. Pages still need links, but just not backlinks. They need internal links and the internal links structure should be very well set up in order to maximize results.

  You see… external links and internal links are not very different. They’re still links. They still pass equity. If you link to your own page, you’re still passing on a vote, you’re recommending it.

  Many authorities in the SEO field, such as Neil Patel, Search Engine Watch, etc. have stated that Internal Links help spread the authority throughout the website. A simple internal linking structure review can usually lead to higher rankings and increase in organic traffic.

  Even if you don’t have internal links, every article/page still links to the homepage, which eventually links to every other page on your website. So getting links to any page on your site will pass some equity to all the pages on your website, unless you specifically tell them not to.

  External links are more valuable and probably pass more equity. Internal links are kind of like scratching your own back. But it’s the kind of back scratching that sends some of the equity from one page to another. And that helps it go up in Google.

  Whenever you publish something new that has the ability to go viral and get some backlinks, make sure you also link from it to other relevant pages you want to rank with. This also works vice-versa. When you post something new, go edit some old articles and link to the fresh content, whenever relevant. This will strengthen the ability of individual pages to rank and will also boost the crawlability and indexability of your website as a whole.

  Also, use proper anchor texts when inter-linking. It’s good if you use keywords in it, but don’t overdo it. The main purpose of inter-linking is to keep the user engaged with the website and to provide relevant information for further documentation. Just try to keep it natural and useful.

  Conclusion

  Acquiring quality contextual links to one page can help another page rank higher, if you take into account some important factors, such as content quality and internal linking. If you’re having issues getting natural links to one page, make sure to improve its content and link to it from other relevant internal pages.

  It’s even better if the internal pages linking to it had the opportunity to get some love from other websites. The equity will pass through your internal links and your website will be basically telling Google “This page is very important for me”.

  The truth is that without any links at all pointing to your domain, it will be very hard for your website to rank its pages in the top 10 results. Proper distribution is mandatory for a domain’s growth over time. Make sure you always promote your content after you publish it. Take advantage of every marketing strategy you can think of, from social media to cold e-mail outreach. You can even make a distribution plan before you even write it.

  I’m curious: what are your experiences with this? Do you have pages with low amounts of backlinks that rank well due to your domain’s authority? If yes, let us know about your experience in the comments section below.

The post Does Building Links to One Page Help Other Pages Rank Better in Google? appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

[martechadvisor-blog]

Venkat Nagaswamy, CEO MarianaIQ talks Martech Skills

Venkat discusses the combination of left brain and right brain being essential for marketers today, the need for understanding tools to fetch data from multiple sources for favorable customer journeys and lateral thinking

Ginger Conlon:

Hello and welcome to MarTech Advisor’s Executive Interview Series. I'm Ginger Conlon, a Contributing Editor to MarTech Advisor and joining us today is Venkat Nagaswamy who is CEO of MarianaIQ and Venkat and I are going to talk about the skills that marketers need to succeed in marketing today. He’s got a great perspective, as a CEO he hires marketers but he also works with a company and runs the company that works very closely with marketers. So, welcome Venkat, thanks for being here today.

Venkat Nagaswamy:

Glad to be here.

Q- Ginger Conlon:

So, before we dive in, I’d love to hear a little bit about your journey to becoming CEO of MarianaIQ.

A- Venkat Nagaswamy:

So, before starting this company I used to run enterprise marketing for Juniper Networks which meant that I was head of lead gen, demand gen solutions marketing for enterprise business for Juniper Networks which is a 1.8 billion dollar business and as I always say, that gave me the background, I’ve worn the shoe of a marketer and developing tools right now for marketers it's with the experience of being a marketer myself and having led marketing teams. Prior to Juniper I used to be at McKinsey, I was a consultant serving high tech clients for the most part in sales and marketing but in other strategy matters as well.

Prior to that I started another company, I used to sell plastics back in the day in the automotive industry for GE and Detroit. By background I’m an engineer, I went to IIT Madras in India and I was doing a PhD in what we today call as High Performance Computing at Georgia Tech, when I bailed out with a Masters when I realized that research was not for me and I also did a Business degree. So, in terms of my background, I've been a salesperson, I've been a consultant and I’ve been a marketer and by background I'm an engineer. So, when I got brought into the marketing team at Juniper I came in with a slightly different background than your typical marketer and having been a marketer, now we’re building tools that would help marketers.

Ginger Conlon:

That’s such a great background for a broad perspective on what it takes to succeed in marketing today.

Venkat Nagaswamy:

Yeah, I hope so!

Q- Ginger Conlon:

So, first question. Hiring marketers has been a part of your role, you were a marketer, what do you see as the key either skill or trait that you need to succeed in marketing today, specifically as a marketing leader?

A- Venkat Nagaswamy:      

Absolutely. So, for this I have to, again, go back to my own experience in terms of when I got brought into marketing, my then boss, Lauren Flaherty who was a CMO of Juniper, she's now the CMO of CA, she brought me into marketing to bring more of a structured process into marketing, this was about five or six years ago, much before most people were thinking about analytics and being far more rigorous, at least in the B2B world when it comes to marketing. She saw that we need to bring in more of analysis and analytics into the picture, even though she has a more traditional marketers background, she saw the need for bringing more of these things. So, anything I say now is based on the vision that she saw, so, I’ve got to give her most of the credit.

So, in terms of hiring marketers, one of the big things that's happened in the past 10 years is, as everybody knows, the profession has become more and more analytical and more and more technology heavy and with it becoming more and more technology heavy, we’ve got a whole bunch of pitfalls that we could fall into that we need to be careful about. So, in terms of the skills that we look for when it comes to marketing, and in fact one of the first hires that we did was a marketing person, she comes in with a communications background from NYU but we are adding more and more of analysis and coding skills to her to develop a modern marketer.

So,

a modern marketer has an ability to understand numbers, delve into numbers, understand what they mean within the context of the strategy that they are establishing and, of course, still having the creativity and the energy and passion that a normal marketer has

One thing I should note on the side is that with the rise of AI one hopes that a lot of routine numerical things that people are doing now with respect to data, hopefully those things will go away and marketers can come back to focusing on creativity and so on and so forth. But for the most part today you need this combination of left brain and right brain even though I personally don't like that analogy of left brain and right brain.

Q- Ginger Conlon:

So, if you are say mid-level in your career in marketing and you need to get a better analytics background and what have you, so you can take a leadership position, what are some steps that you can take to achieve that? Spend more time with the data analyst, take some classes, get out there in the market, get a mentor, what advice do you have?

A- Venkat Nagaswamy:      

So, I would say two or three things. Tools have got much better today than what they were six years ago. So, six years ago if somebody had asked me this question I would have said, first step, go learn Python to go get the data from the source and do the analysis yourself. However, in the past six years or so, with the rise of tools like Looker, Periscope, Domo, Tableau and so on and so forth, the ability to use these tools to bring things together has become more important. Of course, learning Python and knowing Python is an important thing but I would say that's the second step.

The first step I would say is to learn tools like Looker and Periscope and all these things because one of the key things in terms of understanding analytics is being able to get data from multiple sources, keeping it in one place to try and draw lessons in terms of what are the customers looking for, what is a journey that's going to appeal to them the most, the questions have remained the same, it's a question of pulling the data and figuring out the answers that's changed. So,

in terms of first step, it's being able to get all these data from different sources and then integrate it in one place to analyze. So, that's number one and allied with that is understanding Google Analytics which is right now mainstay of a lot of websites, Google Analytics or similar things like Adobe and Sitecore and so on and so forth

Secondly, I would also add other tools like Marketo, Pardot, those two things, website analytics and marketing automation analytics, knowing those tools is super important and a new breed of tools that have come up now more in the ABM space, that will become more and more critical as time goes by. But right now I’d say focus on Looker, focus on tools like site analytics and marketing analytics and once you master those then you can start messing around with Python to get further detail than what these tools can help you get to today.

Q- Ginger Conlon:

Excellent, thank you. So, like you said, there's so much data and there all these new marketing technologies and it's changing the marking landscape, along with skills like having a better understanding of analytics, is there anything else, any new skills that you're seeing coming up that marketers should be thinking about?

A- Venkat Nagaswamy:      

So, a couple of things that we see lesser of in B2B marketing that we see more of in B2C is more understanding about social and specifically around paid social as a tool. I mean, if you look at the percentage of dollars that whole of marketers in B2B spend on digital as a whole is much smaller, even as a percentage, than what B2C spend and even when B2B spend on digital most of it is spent on Google AdWords and banner ads. One of the things that we believe is an important channel is paid social and how do we become deeper and deeper into that. So, that's something that we don't see as much as in B2B than we see in B2C.

So, that's one thing that people need to look at and the other thing that

I would want to emphasize is not a new skill, human beings have known about it for 4000 years, it's just being able to write

One of the biggest constraints that we have today is in finding someone who can understand the numbers and understand the math but can still describe it and write an article or a blog or what have you that brings it to life for people who might not be as numerically inclined. So, at the end of the day it comes back to basics I guess, reading, writing, arithmetic, those are not new skills but those are things that I would emphasize, writing is something that I highly emphasize when it comes to our neck of the woods.

Q- Ginger Conlon:

How about traits? So, skills are learned but there’s certain traits that I think as a marketer you're maybe more inclined to succeed than others, what are you seeing and what do you look for also when you hire? Any specific traits, you mentioned creativity but anything else?

A- Venkat Nagaswamy:      

So, with marketing, especially in B2B marketing, with the tools being as separate as they are, as siloed as they are, bringing on data together is important so on and so forth. Along with that is just persistence. The tools, even ours included, don't perform the way they are supposed to and having a lateral thinking in terms of being able to figure out how to properly leverage the tool, it's not a question of using tools, it's more a question of persistence and grit and having lateral thinking. These are skills again that educators have been talking for long time, but those are the kinds of things that are more important today in marketing because it's not as if, I'm going pick some example, unlike, let's say, tracking your expenses using Mint which is relatively easy, in marketing tools haven't come to that place where it performs the way you need it to and which requires the user, I’m sad to say this as a guy who is delivering tools, but it takes the user to think in terms of how the developer might be thinking, though it should be the other way, but, nevertheless, those are some of the skills that people need to be able to leverage the tools appropriately and to make sure the stuff works the way we want it to. So,

it's perseverance, grit and lateral thinking and things of that kind that we need in terms of your inherent qualities than specific skill sets

Q- Ginger Conlon:

Right. So, along with creativity and speaking data, so to speak, this kind of lateral creative thinking, anything that you see that over the long term will just continue to be an essential marketing skill or trait? It's something that’s always been important, like writing that will continue, no matter how many crazy changes there are.

A- Venkat Nagaswamy:      

So, the way we break up any process is into three buckets. So, it’s sense, decide and act and this, by the way, is what people used to talk about automation and robotic process automation and so on and so forth. So, this framework called SID, sense, interpret, decide and act frameworks have been around for quite some time but when you think about it in this way, and lets fast forward to a future where the existing types of AI tools have reached their maturity, let's say in five or ten years' time, so, the ability to gather data and understand people is far better.

So, even in that world what I would see is there would still be a certain amount of restrictions in how AI can draw lessons out of this but when it comes to deciding and acting or at least in terms of being able to create the assets and so on, the creativity and ability to tell a story still remains. With my wife being a writer, I have a vested interest in hoping that AI will not take over telling stories and having more imaginative writing, basic kinds of writing have already been automated but that kind of telling a story the grabs the people, that I think is going to remain a human endeavor at least for another five to ten years.

But there's nothing by the way, maybe over time that will get automated as well but at least so far as I know today. So, that kind of creative skills are still going to remain, ability to tell a story will still going to remain but you can tell a story that grabs the people only if you understand people, only if you understand who they are, who are the people you're trying to appeal to, what do they want, what is the journey that they themselves are going through so that you can tie what you’re doing to that. So, this understanding people and telling a story, understand people while a lot of this will be done by AI, but AI is going to augment human beings in being able to understand them and then, of course, using that to tell a story, those are the two pieces of the puzzle that we believe a certain element of it is always going to remain human and we need to keep looking at it as the time goes by.

Ginger Conlon:

Absolutely. Venkat, thank you so much for all the great insights today and I want to thank everyone who has joined us watching the video, and also, Venkat and I had a great conversation about account based marketing in another video, so, hope you’ll check that out as well. So, thanks again for being here today.

Venkat Nagaswamy:

Thanks a lot.

This article was first appeared on MarTech Advisor