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genevivesverses · 11 months ago

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Edward Gorey: History of an Eccentric Creator

While styles of artists like Tim Burton, Laika Studios, and Neil Gaiman are widely known, it's notable to me that the adoration for Edward Gorey's distinctive style doesn't always receive the same level of recognition.

Gorey began drawing at 18 months (!) and taught himself to read by age three. He skipped several grades and engaged in various school activities and publications, he left Francis Parker School with high scores, earning scholarships both to Harvard and Yale. At 17, with pending WWII draft notices, Gorey briefly studied art at the Art Institute of Chicago before joining the U.S. Army during World War II, serving until after the war's end, mainly at the Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah.

In 1946, Edward Gorey enrolled at Harvard, majoring in French Literature, and delved into various artistic pursuits, including publishing stories, poems, designing sets, and directing for the Poets Theatre. Despite somehow ending up on both the Dean's List and under constant threats of expulsion, he excelled. In 1953, upon being offered a position at Doubleday Anchor in New York City, Gorey became a prominent figure in design, illustrating over fifty covers and gaining recognition as a major commercial illustrator. After stints at other publishing houses, he turned freelance in the early 1960s, illustrating well over five hundred books for others while also crafting his own works. His career began with the 1953 book "The Unstrung Harp," a precursor to graphic novels, praised by Graham Greene and recognized as a "minor masterpiece" by The London Times. Edmund Wilson's acclaim in The New Yorker marked the start of Gorey's exceptional fifty-year career, resulting in 116 written and illustrated works.

From displaying art at the Francis Parker School in 1939 to showcasing at the Mandrake Bookshop during his Harvard years and even as far as California, Edward Gorey's artistic journey was expansive. In 1967, Gotham Book Mart invited Gorey to exhibit at its newly opened second-floor art gallery, a collaboration that spanned thirty-two years. This partnership led to occasional publications of new Gorey works by Gotham Book Mart and collaborations with figures like Samuel Beckett and John Updike. Gorey's love for theater blossomed into involvement in off-Broadway productions, summer Cape Cod plays, and the 1973 design of "Dracula" for a Nantucket theater. The Broadway adaptation, "Edward Gorey’s Dracula," opened in 1977, achieving immense success, earning two Tony Awards, running for nearly three years, and touring globally.

Having frequented Cape Cod for years, Gorey's connection to the region deepened in 1979 when he used royalties from the New York Dracula production to acquire a two-century-old sea captain's home in Yarmouth Port. By 1983, he made the decision to bid farewell to New York City and establish his residence on the Cape. Amidst this shift, Gorey intensified his involvement in small experimental plays, maintained an active presence in publishing, art exhibitions, etching creations, and juggled a demanding workload of commercial projects. In 1980, he was commissioned to design animated introductions for Boston Public Television's Mystery! series, a collaborative effort with animator Derek Lamb that remains an enduring testament to Gorey's artistic legacy, encapsulating the essence of several of his works in a concise half-minute.

Gorey, known for maintaining the mystery and refusing to "explain" his books, revealed a glimpse into his philosophical inclinations during a single interview. When pressed about his beliefs, he identified as a Taoist, leaning towards surrealism. Examining his early teen art unveils evident influences from Di Chirico, Dali, and Ernst

Edward Gorey's multifaceted body of work, encompassing humor, complexity, seriousness, and provocation, has solidified his position as a significant American figure in literature, art, and theater that should always be remembered!

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piratefishmama · 1 year ago

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Okay. i'll accept that Eddie would have tumblr.

In fact Tumblr could potentially be what eventually finds him caving, and getting a stupid smart phone, just so he can use tumblr away from his computer, which is also a little dated but IT WORKS DUSTIN FUCK OFF "BUT YOU'RE A MULTI-MILLIONAIRE ROCKSTAR"

"AND????"

Probably still runs Windows Vista or some shit. Steve doesnt use the PC because he maintains the fact that "real letters are better than your fake internet mail, Henderson, pick up a pen and write something before that future shit makes you forget how a pen works."

Dustin hates them both.

But he likes how Steve's letters always have a fancy little custom wax seal on them with a little S and E intertwined in fancy font, the man knows how to make shit look fancy.

So yes. Eddie eventually gets himself a smart phone.

Purely so he can use his Tumblr account while away from home to get fun tour photos that at first he plays as a 'fan with a VIP pass' that only works for so long until people realise Eddie is never in these photos and Steve is in many of them.

So people cotton on to the fact that it's actually Eddie cause only Eddie would take that many photos of Steve and none of Eddie himself.

It's a little cray at first, very Cole Sprouse's 'sociology experiment' where people were a little unhinged in their asks (lots of NSFW questions) but he embraced it, encouraged it.

So they inevitably got bored of how chill he was and his blog interactions evolved into a more Neil Gaiman "he's just here" an "he pops up occasionally, we can never tell when it's gonna happen" kind of vibe.

Much to the actual fans' relief.

He reblogs fanart, he answers nicer asks, shares photos of sound booths during recording sessons and family holidays revealing his family is batshit insane, giggles with fans over that one photoshoot Eddie convinced Steve to do back in the 90's that "somehow" got leaked, it's a nice blog. Almost wholesome.

he also has a bdsm related sideblog that nobody knows is him.

Thats the only thing he uses the phone for though. Doesnt even save numbers to it (except for Wayne's, because Wayne is way ahead of them and got a smart phone when they first came out and has steadily upgraded over the years cause "future's comin boys, might as well embrace her" Eddie has never been much into embracing 'hers' though, but thanks Wayne. He video chats Wayne on weekends to stay in touch and make sure he's still doing okay back in Hawkins.)

The 3310 is still on him at all times.

Steve likes to take photos of him perching on things like some kind of gargoyle, trying to get a new high score on Snake. All on polaroid though for the albums.

Tiktok this, insta that, no. Do you know what Eddie would be obsessed with as time passes?

Snake.

Eddie would be OBSESSED with Snake on a Nokia 3310.

He'd delay getting a smart phone for SO LONG because "this does calls, texts, and it has Snake, it's all i need." Even though Dustin complains about him being from the Stone Age. Snake is his guilty pleasure, only he's not guilty about it.

#Steve is worse #Dustin hates them both #Eddie Munson #Steve appreciates physical letters

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hawkinsschoolcounselor · 4 years ago

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I’d love to see a character analyses on Max Mayfield! Of course, only if you have the time & willingness to do one :)

What sort of monster would I be if I literally begged for requests and then didn’t want to respond? This will purely be based on the show, as I haven’t read any supplementary material around her. I’m not sure that matters though, as the show is the only explicitly canon material. I have to admit that I did not like Max at first. I felt the cast was large enough already, and that adding more central characters risked opportunities for character development (I would have the same thought about Robin in Season 3). I grew to appreciate Max, though. She’s been a great addition to the story, and any lack of character development does not seem to be as a consequence of adding her.

Max is a different look at the effects of trauma on a young person. She comes into the story already an outcast. She has already experienced her own difficulties. She lacks the protective factors that someone like Will has, which help someone cope with difficult life events. Max makes it clear that she would prefer to be living with her dad in California. She does not beatify him, but she seems to feel that he at least accepts her and allows her to be who she is. As a counselor, he comes across more as a friend than a parent, so it’s a hard sell to say she’d be better off with him, but she’d probably be happier, all things being equal.

Her relationship with her custodial family is strained at best, and abusive at worst. She is angry at being forced to move away from California. She seems to have a workable relationship with her mother, but she holds some resentment for her marrying Neil and moving them all away from her home. Neil, for all of his abusive tendencies, does not seem to take them out on Max, at least based on what we see. He does not seem to respect or trust her though, as he expects Billy to be responsible for her and refuses to call her Max. Given what we see about his dominant and controlling personality, Neil is unlikely to be someone Max respects. Combine that with Neil taking her from her home, and you have the recipe for a very damaged relationship. Though with Neil’s lack of respect for women, I highly doubt Max’s dislike of him matters much. Billy seems to have been a big influence on Max, and not in a good way. She seems to have been interested in what would be considered boy things (video games, skateboarding, etc.) for a long time, but her tough exterior, another trait people attribute to tomboys, may be a response to Billy (and perhaps Neil). Billy is shown enjoying instilling fear into Max as a means of establishing dominance. Max holds a great deal of resentment for him, but she is forced to rely on him. She is genuinely afraid of what Billy may do, maybe not to her, but to her friends (especially Lucas).

Max is also afraid of continuing the cycle of abuse. She is aware of her own anger issues, but is adamant that she never allow herself to turn into that sort of person. It must have been hard for her to threaten Billy the way she did, as it required her to mirror back a lot of his own threatening language and posturing. Her self-awareness, and the support of her friends, gives her a good outlook at avoiding a continuation of the cycle.

Speaking of friends, Max is often at odds with the boys. Her toppling the high score on Dig Dug is an early sign that she’s not going to be pushed around. She has no time for their crap, and makes it clear to them that she doesn’t appreciate their behavior. She refers to Lucas as “stalker” even after they become friends. She calls the others out on keeping the Upside Down stuff a secret, as she sees it as not being fully accepted. She sees Lucas’ breakdown of Season 1 as a phony attempt to keep her in the dark. She calls out Mike on his baseless resentment of her. Still, she tries to show that she wants to be a part of the Party, going as far as to try and impress Mike with her skating (which seemed to be working until El caused her to fall). She wants to be accepted, but she feels a need to show the boys she’s not some pushover to be relegated to the sidelines. She shows a desire to get to know El in Season 2 (though she is rebuffed). She sees in El another girl who isn’t passive or weak (like her mother). This suggests that her tomboy nature isn’t necessarily a rejection of traditionally female interests. She just legit likes skateboarding and arcade games, and she doesn’t care that they’re supposed to be for boys. This is supported in Season 3 where she is shown enjoying more traditionally teen girl activities and styles with El. It doesn’t seem to be because she’s maturing and trying to make herself more attractive to boys, as these activities are shown to be purely for her own and El’s enjoyment. She still maintains her assertive personality and doesn’t seem to reject any of her previous interests (she still skateboards). “There’s more to life than stupid boys...” Max has grown her sense of self to include things boys wouldn’t care about, and she did it on her own terms, not because she was supposed to. She tries to instill this same idea onto El, albeit somewhat heavy-handed. She doesn’t seem to realize that El emulates her just as she’s previously emulated others. Still, her heart is in the right place as she genuinely wants El to become her own person, and not the person others want her to be. Max’s relationship with Lucas is a good example of young crushes. They genuinely do like each other, but they’re on such different pages that things just don’t work out. Lucas mentions that they had broken up 5 times (6 if it’s assumed that Lucas is dumped along with Mike after being caught at the mall). They only were dating since the Snowball, meaning they were only together for about 6 months. Lucas seems to have taken her for granted by that point, which isn’t something Max would appreciate. It’s likely that Max was the initiator of the breakups, possibly to show Lucas that she won’t be treated that way. This sort of relationship can be common at this age as young people can lack the emotional awareness and maturity to make a romantic relationship work.

After the events of Season 3, Max is considerably shaken. Despite her issues with Billy, it is suggested that she held some level of affection for him, perhaps lamenting that they weren’t able to have a good relationship. Maybe she harbors some survivor’s guilt. She may even be nervous about what Neil may become now that his primary target is gone. The ending of Season 3 is frustrating in how much it leaves unanswered despite taking place four months after the climactic battle in Starcourt Mall. Still, I look forward to seeing what happens with her in Season 4, and I hope she keeps her strength of will.

#stranger things #max mayfield

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booksbeyondimagining · 4 years ago

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Today Tonight Tomorrow, by Rachel Lynn Solomon

Publish Date: July 28, 2020 Published by: Simon Pulse Audiobook Narrated by: Rebekkah Ross Length: 9 hrs (364 pages) Genre: YA Romance My Rating: ★★★★★ (5 out of 5 stars)

Synopsis:

Today, she hates him. It’s the last day of senior year. Rowan Roth and Neil McNair have been bitter rivals for all of high school, clashing on test scores, student council elections, and even gym class pull-up contests. While Rowan, who secretly wants to write romance novels, is anxious about the future, she’d love to beat her infuriating nemesis one last time. Tonight, she puts up with him. When Neil is named valedictorian, Rowan has only one chance at victory: Howl, a senior class game that takes them all over Seattle, a farewell tour of the city she loves. But after learning a group of seniors is out to get them, she and Neil reluctantly decide to team up until they’re the last players left—and then they’ll destroy each other. As Rowan spends more time with Neil, she realizes he’s much more than the awkward linguistics nerd she’s sparred with for the past four years. And, perhaps, this boy she claims to despise might actually be the boy of her dreams. Tomorrow…maybe she’s already fallen for him.

My Review:

This is one of those books that I knew from the start would be one I was going to fall completely in love with. It pulled me in, captured my attention completely and wholly, and didn't let go until the end.

I liked Rowan as a main character. She has drive and ambition, but is also a little oblivious to what's right in front of her. At first, I kind of rolled my eyes at Rowan for thinking she was a failure for not completeing her arbitrary list of success that she made in freshman year - especially considering all that she had done (a helluva lot more than me, for sure). But as the story progressed I grew to realize it wasn't about what was on the list exactly, but just what it represented in general - not living up to some made-up vision of yourself instead of being proud of the person you actually became. Rowan realizes this as well, with a character arc that is both poignant and hard-hitting, as she works to overcome her own self-deprecating behavior. She is also a lover of romance novels, and I absolutely loved the rhetoric in this book about the genre and how people are constantly putting it down and making those who love it feel bad about liking it. I loved how Rowan felt empowered by them, enough to feel comfortable about her own sexuality - about talking about sexuality. It was such a nice feeling to read a book meant for teens that doesn't tiptoe around the subject of sex as if it's taboo - not the first one I've read, but definitely one of only a few. [SPOILER] Also, I loved how that scene at the end focused on the conversation, and the awkwardness, and the imperfection of sex, rather than making it seem like something unachievable. It was about what it meant for them as a couple and I loved that. [END SPOILER] Rowan's dynamic with Neil was everything I could have wanted and more. I loved the two of them sparring together, their innate need to be better because of each other, and I loved watching their relationship grow over the course of one day, one night, into something so much more. It's not a perfect relationship - there were a LOT of ups and downs - but that is to be expected from two people who spent four years as academic rivals. But I adored how they discovered the hidden gems and flaws of each other, and only grew closer because of it. The writing overall was superb - it was exciting, funny, and completely swoon-worthy. It moves at a fast-but-not-to-fast-pace, driving the plot and characters along in a way that makes it almost unbelievable that all of this happens in only one day. It is a wonderful tribute to what it means to say goodbye, to let go of high school and the person you once thought you were, and become the person you actually are and want to be. It's about relationships, both the good and the bad, and the effort that needs to be put in to maintain them, and how not all endings are actually endings - sometimes they are just the beginning of something new. [SPOILER] P.S. When Kirby first put that condom in Rowan's bag I called it Chekov's Condom. I absolutely DIED when Neil called it that in the book. Thank you for that, Rachel Lynn Solomon. It was perfect. [END SPOILER]

#book review #today tonight tomorrow #rachel lynn solomon #ya romance #ya fiction #enemies to lovers #audiobook

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tomfoolsery · 5 years ago

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carry that weight -- an aftg chapter fic

hunger games au pairing: neil / andrew chapter: 1/?

summary: The 75th Annual Hunger Games have arrived. For years, Neil Josten managed to dodge the reaping by being meticulously careful and as invisible as possible. With only one more reaping until he ages out of the process, he makes a plan to escape the Districts (and his father's henchmen) once and for all. But when he realizes he's been plucked from the masses to partake in this year's Quarter Quell, his plans for escape are dashed. Being reaped for the Games only magnifies the target on his back, and District 12 has never had good luck in the arena. It will take every survival instinct Neil has to make it out alive.

trigger warnings for this chapter: past child abuse, torture, suicide mention.

read on ao3 or here!

The first game that Neil remembered watching was the 66th. The potency of the memory seemed to taint everything else that followed in his life, painting it in that shade for better or worse.

The Games were all about survival. A tribute could train for years, as most of the Career Districts did, but still not be guaranteed a victory. It wasn’t the strongest that always won the Games. Oftentimes, it was the most clever. The one who knew the dark places a human could go in order to ensure survival. The one who was willing to sink to those depths before anyone else could reach them.

The 66th Hunger Games was won by a 15 year old named Hugo. He didn’t look like much to begin with, and most of the commentators throughout the game assumed he would be an early victim at the Cornucopia bloodbath. Hugo’s scores hadn’t even been noteworthy prior to arriving at the arena. For all intents and purposes, he was an easy kill that could be taken care of at a later date. It was that oversight that cost the vast majority of the tributes their lives.

Neil could remember watching Hugo on the television broadcast, all but blending into the shadows that the densely populated forest arena afforded him. His footsteps were always silent, allowing him to traverse wherever he pleased without being caught. It meant he could hunt easier and sustain himself physically, and it meant that he could watch his opponents from afar, always a step ahead. The people watching from the Capitol ate it up.

In years past, the Gamemakers would generally speed things along, forcing tributes to encounter one another and spill enough blood to bring the Game to an end. Any wise Gamemaker would want to maintain a captive audience in the Capitol — lest they be punished for an underwhelming Hunger Games.

An avalanche would bring the tributes to one spot together, or an offer of food, water, or medicine would lure in the desperate to the Cornucopia. Everyone knew what an event like that meant, but most still attended. The alternative was certain death. At least if they attempted it, a chance at survival still existed.

In Hugo’s year, the Gamemakers barely had to lift a finger. The tribute was a master at setting traps and snares, using them to catch both his dinner and his opponents. His methods weren’t grotesque or violent, like past tributes had been. He was sneaky and practical.

On the surface, Hugo didn’t look like a killer or a terrifying figure. What made him scary was his behavior when the tributes were narrowed down to two: him and a Career Pack boy named Palus — who, ironically enough, was an initial standout with the Capitol sponsors. The tables turned once Palus injured his left leg, the bone nearly exposed after falling down a steep cliff. With no way to mend it himself, Palus carried on as best as he could, hoping that the elements or stupidity would do Hugo in so he wouldn’t have to attack first.

Instead of earning a simple, perhaps even cheap victory, Hugo opted to stalk Palus throughout the arena. The cover of night was his weapon, as well as mounting dehydration and starvation on Palus’ part. He was able to instill paranoia in the other tribute, lingering close enough to impart terror but far enough not to be noticed. It was a mental hell that even the Gamemakers couldn’t have dreamt up. Worse yet was the knowledge that Hugo was very much enjoying the unfair game of cat and mouse. Watching Palus’ sanity deteriorate was a decadent feast for him. He would draw this out for as long as allowed, ensuring that Palus’ last moments of life were drenched in nearly psychotic terror.

After a full twelve hours of this treatment, Palus took a drastic turn for the worst and, in an attempt to rid himself of the constant feeling of being stalked, wound up taking his own life. He’d already lost too much blood by the time the Gamemakers realized what was happening, too late to intervene. All the while, Hugo waited in the wings and watched the grisly scene play out.

During his victory tour and first interview with Seneca Crane, Hugo would come to admit that he would have happily continued tormenting Palus had he not killed himself. He was unashamed in his insistence that he survived because out of all the tributes, he was the only one with a thick enough mental-skin to endure the challenges of the game.

Hugo’s ruthlessness sent chills down Neil’s spine even when he was just thinking back on it. But he also knew that if he were ever dropped in the arena himself, he would have to embody those same traits. Neil felt admiration and horror toward Hugo in equal parts.

When it came down to it, he would do whatever it took to get out of the arena alive.

---

On reaping day, the district came alive with the hustle and bustle of business. Though District 12 was far from the most affluent, the heightened presence of Peacekeepers and Capitol attendees stirred up local merchants. The citizens were split down the middle in terms of disposition.

For families, this was a day of dread. Many households had to request tesserae multiple times, making their likelihood of being reaped that much higher. From those families, Neil could see the dread hanging off them like a heavy cloak, shrinking their already slouched shoulders and diminishing their hope. Many were dressed in the best clothes they owned, as was expected for such a day.

For Neil, dressing up meant finding an ill-fitting pair of slacks and a baggy button-down from the local seamstress — an outfit he stole when no one was paying attention. There was no way he could afford even the most tattered of clothes with what little money he had. Neil had perfected the art of pickpocketing and petty theft, a skill created out of necessity. By the time anyone realized their merchandise was missing, he would be long gone.

In some parts of the district where the more unruly folk flocked, bets were taking place regarding who would wind up being reaped. Neil tried to hide his grimace as he overheard an older man estimating how many tesserae one particular family had taken out. He couldn’t help flinching when he heard him say “that kid of theirs is as good as dead.”

As much as Neil wanted to believe that he was above that kind of cruel self-interest, he didn’t have much to say in the way of a defense. He wouldn’t bet on someone’s life, but he himself was hoping that literally anyone in the world would get reaped instead of him. He was on the brink of turning eighteen — after that, he would no longer be in the pool for the Games. Just a month longer and he could follow through with his escape plan. Given the fact that Neil had never taken out tesserae in his life, he figured his odds of getting reaped were extremely slim. Still, they existed at all, and Neil couldn’t shake the enormity of that fact.

He could hear his mom’s words echoing in his ears every time he fought the rising panic.

“What if I get reaped?” he would fret, imagining the countless scenarios that could play out.

Her reply would always be punctuated by a tight yank of his hair or a smack to the back of his head:

“Make sure you don’t.”

---

With the entire District gathered in the square, Neil felt like there were walls closing in on him from every angle. Claustrophobic though it was, he could take comfort in the fact that he blended in easily with the other people in his age group. Neil worked hard to be a mundane, ordinary presence in the world. His survival depended on being invisible.

The tension in the air was thick and uncomfortable, everyone’s fears laid bare and only intensified by the setting. Peacekeepers lined the permitter of the square, stun guns and tasers at their belt, ready to be used. It hadn’t come to drastic measures like that in recent years. The Capitol had beaten District 12 thoroughly into submission.

All of the shaking, fussing, and nervous movement among the crowd stopped at once when the speakers cut on. The Capitol escort onstage was ready to begin.

“District twelve! I’m so happy to be with you all here today,” she began, her voice nauseatingly saccharine.

It was clearly a lie — all Capitol citizens stuck up their noses at the districts and were eager to leave at the first available opportunity. But given the fact that they would be the one benefiting from the games, Neil supposed that perhaps her enthusiasm was real. A bloodbath was guaranteed with each year.

That notion nauseated him even more than her voice had.

Her hair was teased up high into a poof-like style, the color a mixture of orange and pink. Neil wasn’t sure of the last time he’d seen a color so bright within the district. Though he’d only seen a handful of Capitol citizens in propaganda videos and even fewer in Twelve itself, he could tell that they were a flamboyant bunch; not only did the people there don every color of the rainbow, but body modifications weren’t unusual either. He’d heard stories of people who had cat-like ears attached to their skulls, or full-body tattoos that blurred the lines of human and animal.

“As I’m sure you all know, today is Reaping Day. And this is no ordinary one, I might add— ” she paused, effectively lodging a boulder in Neil’s gut, “It is also a Quarter Quell. Every twenty-five years, we add a twist to the game, so to speak.”

It was dawning on him now that this was indeed a Quarter Quell year. He’d gotten so caught up in his hopes for an escape that the whole thing didn’t even occur to him.

There were always different adjustments made to the Hunger Games during the quells. One year, tributes were reaped from the districts by a vote among their own peers. Whichever two citizens had the most votes were sent into the arena. Families were pit against one another, leaving the districts frigid and tense long after the tributes were sent away. There were numerous murders and assaults within the districts that year as well — the Capitol didn’t want the bloodshed to be limited to the arena.

Neil had no idea what the cruel twist would be this year, but his imagination was already leading him to terrifying places. He wouldn’t put anything past the Capitol.

“During this Quarter Quell, the number of tributes will be doubled. Let this serve as a reminder to the districts that two rebels died for every Capitol citizen during the Dark Days. Instead of twenty-four tributes from the twelve districts, forty-eight will be reaped.”

Neil took a moment to do the math in his head, his pragmatism working hard to beat out his terror. Doubling the tributes reaped would mean four individuals being chosen from each district — two girls and two boys.

Even with this alteration to the Games, his likelihood of being picked wasn’t very high; Neil had only been entered in the reaping pool a handful of times, and he never received tesserae. The odds of him being chosen in comparison to the dozens of other kids in the district — namely the poorest ones from the Seam — were very slim. He silently chided his heart for thudding so painfully and his skin for sweating uncontrollably.

This event would be fleeting fear, he told himself. After the tributes were picked and the town square was dispersed, Neil would be able to narrow down his plan for escape. He was roughly half an hour away from the biggest sigh of relief in his entire life.

The Capitol escort onstage went into a lengthy monologue about the history of Panem, which Neil had already heard a thousand times over. The supposed history of their nation was beaten into every citizen’s skull, to ensure that they knew exactly whose boot they would always be trapped under. This was a tired, propaganda-laden tale that Neil had no interest in hearing. He found himself tuning out until a silence fell among the crowd. Neil’s focus turned back to the stage, where the woman was now walking over to the two clear glass bowls with names scattered within them.

As the woman on stage chirped out “Ladies first!”, the entire crowd held still. Neil could see a few girls in his age group beginning to tear up, a sense of fear falling over them at once.

With an exaggerated twirl of her hand, the attendant swiped a name out of the bowl of girl’s names.

His attention was scattered between his own thoughts and the goings-ons around him, but Neil caught the name Laila being spoken. There was a gasp within the crowd and a muffled sob could be heard a few feet from him. Neil watched on as Peacekeepers escorted the girl onstage. She couldn’t have been much older than fourteen. The sight of her tear-stained face and heaving chest only worsened Neil’s dread.

The entire event was inhumane. The Games were carried out for the sadistic pleasure of the Capitol, and there was no conscience to be found in people like that.

After a brief interview with Laila, the young girl was directed to the side of the stage and the escort moved on to the next reaping. This would be the first of two male tributes. Neil’s fingernails bit painfully into his skin as he clenched his fist, watching the escort’s hand swirl daintily into the bowl. Despite his effort to look as composed as possible, Neil couldn’t stop himself from closing his eyes just before the name was called.

“Matthew Boyd!” was the name that rang out in the square. Neil’s eyes instantly shot open and his hands relaxed at their sides, the tension wrung out of them for now. Matthew Boyd wasn’t a name Neil was familiar with

The person who stepped out from the crowd was older than him — probably reaped during his very last year of eligibility. Neil hoped that he wouldn’t suffer a similar fate. He was so close to being done — so close to being free.

There was a slight commotion as Matthew stepped up on stage, but Neil’s focus was ebbing. His hands still shook at his sides, awaiting the second and last choice for a male tribute. Time slipped by without notice and before Neil knew it, Matthew was being ushered to the side of the stage and the second female tribute was being reaped. No one he knew. No reason to care. The only way Neil could cope with the insanity of it all was to remain as pragmatic as possible.

“One last tribute!” the attendant chirped, strolling over to the bowl with ease. This, of course, only spelled the end of her fun for the day. Not potentially the end of her life, as was the trend for District 12. Neil could only remember two winners from their district, and that wasn’t an encouraging average in comparison to the Career districts.

Closing his eyes again, Neil stuffed his hands in his pockets and dug his nails into his palms. They burned as he clenched his fingers tighter, and his whole body felt rigid. If he wasn’t called, he knew it would take everything in his power not to break into a sprint right then and there. Tonight would be his last one in the Seam one way or the other. He just hoped—hoped with painful intensity—that he would be leaving of his own volition.

Not me. Not me. Not me. Not me. Not me.

Once the paper was pulled, the Capitol attendant fumbled with it for a few seconds before coaxing it open. A beat later, the name came. Neil’s breath hitched, soaked in fear from head to toe.

---

The strange thing was, Neil couldn’t recall hearing his own name. He couldn’t recall hearing anything in the few seconds between standing there, paralyzed with fear, and being yanked forcefully from his place.

He struggled against the Peacekeeper’s grasp, attempting to kick out his legs so he could escape. Had he been thinking clearly, Neil would have known that this was as good as futile. They would catch him, hold him down, and make sure he wound up in the arena. They would have their entertainment. His blood would be shed for the sake of cruel tradition.

He was so close. This wasn’t fair.

Neil fought the Peacekeepers all the way up to the stage, shouting every indecent thing that came to mind, his arms and legs still fighting to be free. Once he was pulled on to the wooden stage, a plastic zip tie was secured to his wrists. This wasn’t enough to temper his rage, though. Neil flailed a moment or two longer before he felt a shock at his side. It sent him falling to the floor, the impact shuddering through his whole body.

The one shock was enough to subdue him, but Neil felt three more on different parts of his torso. Electricity coursed through him; it was a mind-numbing pain that began to dull his senses. He could hear the crowd growing uneasy, talking amongst themselves to make sense of this unusually violent retrieval of a tribute.

The last thing he could remember before his vision dimmed was the sound of his name.

“Neil Josten, our fourth and final tribute from District 12!”

#tfc fic #aftg fic #andreil #the foxhole court #tfc #finally posting this after 6+ months of letting it sit #i write everything out of order so it made it difficult for me to actually pin down the beginning #but i finally posted it ok good #fic tag

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teamarcs · 5 years ago

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A short guide for Effective Digital Marketing

Everyone knows How Digital Marketing has vanished all traditional marketing. Digital Marketing is ever-changing trends & technology. Digital Marketing takes you to dig deep and present various demographics set to not only understand what customers want to buy but also understand what customers are concerned with culturally, socially, and politically.

Here we are going to show some statistics that will give you a surprise How Digital Marketing is the most crucial strategy of every field and organization.

According to Web Presence Solutions (2017), Google is responsible for 94% of total organic traffic.

According to Wordstream (2016), 72% of consumers who did a local search they visited a store within 8 KM.

According to Search Engine Land (2018), 82 % of smartphone shoppers showed by ‘near me’ searches

According to Shopify Plus (2018) By next 2years means till 2021 global retail E-commerce sales will reach around $4.5 trillion

One of the interviews Neil Patel has mentioned that Product videos can increase purchases by 144% and many more

There’s no question that, in the modern market, the most important part of your marketing strategy is Digital Marketing. Whether businesses or consumers alike are almost always online — they spend the most time on the smartphone. If we look more closely then no doubt mostly time consumer spend on Social Media such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, WhatsApp and other social apps.

If you are an organization and having a business idea it seems like this ever-evolving landscape can quickly become overwhelming. But it is wrong every marketing strategy needs a well-structured plan so that you can earn or get more ROI through Digital Marketing. There’s already enough to do — how are you also supposed to create, structures, and maintain a good Digital Marketing Strategy? If you don’t include an Effective Digital Strategy for your Organization’s Goal, it will leave your organization in the dust.

But don’t worry take a look at Short Guide of Effective Digital Marketing Which will help you with your Digital Marketing plan.

Digital Marketing Includes;

SEO

Content Marketing

Social Media Marketing

Email Marketing

PPC

SEO (Search Engine Optimization):

If you want to see yourself on Google search result then you need to work on your business Keywords on top results so that whenever users search a related query they will visit your site.

Here take some points of SEO for your website;

Analyze your website through LightHouse (Google Product) and list-out improvement factors

Know your customer and their queries

Website Performance optimization

On-page optimization

Mobile optimization

Daily site monitoring

Optimize your content for RankBrain

Blog writing

Local Citation

Business Listing or Product listing

Set up Google My Business

Link building

Competitor benchmarking

Content Marketing:

Do you know according to Hubspot 55% of marketers say blog content creation is the organization’s top inbound marketing priority? It’s no surprise that companies who do Content Marketing regularly get high-value traffic that helps to not only create awareness but also retain customers.

Nowadays the demand for content is huge because it drives more traffic and helps to build Online trusting relationship. But How its to be done that makes your business profitable? Here are some points that help to drive traffic and leads;

Build high-quality Landing Page

Use a long irresistible headline

Use quality images and infographics

Use high-quality content writing

Show some interesting Statistics

Stuff high volume searches Keywords

Use another blog in between particular blog

Set pop-up window to subscribe for News & blog updates

Social Media Marketing:

Now Social Media is not just a social network platform but also it has become one of the best Business Machines. It has become more crucial techniques for businesses. From advertising a product or service, to create awareness, selling it online, social media is used for a variety of marketing purposes.

Here is a list of some of the most effective social media marketing strategies;

Setup all popular social media platform

design social media calendar

Use high-quality graphics image

Use limited content on the image due to reducing image weight

Improve Edge rank

Update stories regularly

Use Repost

Run paid campaign with offers

Join the Fanpage community

Proper use of #Hashtags

Email Marketing:

Email marketing is the best approach to future-proof Digital Marketing technique, it is important to understand the quality of email marketing is going. Especially where these changes impact the day-to-day business.

Here are some tips to help you ramp up your email marketing technique;

Audience segmentation

Dynamic content

Social Media Integration

Visually appealing design

Content testing before sending

Don’t send too much on same email ids

PPC:

According to Blue Corona (2019), 49% of people said they click on text ads. Now you can understand how much PPC is profitable in terms of business growth. Here some tips of effective PPC campaign;

Remark long-tail keywords

A high-quality Landing page that fulfills all condition of Google

Use exciting offers

Improve keyword score

Don’t spend too much on high competitive keywords

Apart from these Digital marketing have lots of techniques such as Video Marketing, Inbound marketing, Podcast, SEM and display ads. If you really need a successful Digital Marketing company in Delhi. We have an expert team of Website Marketing in India. Teamarcs is also a Custom software development agency and best custom web application development in India

#digital marketing #website #seo #tips

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kayla1993-world · 2 years ago

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Teen sensation McIntosh, Canadian women's relay team win silvers on the opening day of aquatics worlds (msn.com)

Summer McIntosh got off to the best possible start at the FINA world aquatics championships, with a medal around her neck.

On Saturday, the 15-year-old from Toronto won silver in the women's 400-meter freestyle event at the Duna Arena in Budapest.

McIntosh swam the face in three minutes, 59.39 seconds, finishing second only to Ledecky. With a time of 4:02.08, Smith of the United States won bronze. As a result of her performance, the Canadian joins a select group of four women who have ever swum the event in under four minutes.

McIntosh made her mark on the world stage last summer when she finished fourth in the 400m freestyle at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games and she has maintained her high level of performance. In March, she swam the third-fastest time ever in the 400m individual medley (IM) during an invitational trials prep event, breaking her Canadian record.

The native of Toronto, Ont. will also compete in the 200m butterfly and 400m individual medley at the world championships.

Maggie Mac Neil, Taylor Ruck, Penny Oleksiak, and Kayla Sanchez swam to a silver medal in the women's 4x100 m relay on the first day of competition in Budapest, finishing 1.2 seconds behind Australia and 1.6 seconds ahead of the Americans.

For much of the race, Canada appeared to be in third place but a strong anchor leg from six-time Olympic medallist Penny Oleksiak propelled the Canadians to second place down the final stretch.

Canada, continuing to be a global force, won the same medal in the event as they did at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, with the same countries finishing ahead of and behind them on the podium.

On Saturday, Harvey swam well in the women's 200m IM heats, finishing with a time of 2:10.38 and earning a spot in the final on Sunday.

The 22-year-old has won four Pan-American Games medals but has yet to win a medal at an Olympic or world championship. Harvey will be in contention for a medal when she competes at 1:27 p.m. ET on Sunday after finishing fourth in the heats.

The Canadian men's 4x100m relay team, led by Josh Liendo, just missed out on a podium finish. However, after a strong start that kept them in contention, Liendo, Yuri Kisil, Ruslan Gaziev and Javier Acevedo slid back in the final lengths, finishing sixth in 3:11.99.

The Americans won gold with a time of 3:09.34, followed by the Australians in second place with a time of 3:10.86, and Italy in third place with a time of 3:10.95.

Audrey Lamothe competed in her first world championships, finishing 10th in the women's solo technical artistic swimming competition in Budapest. The 17-year-old from Montreal came in third place with an 83.1 score.

Yukiko Inui won gold with a score of 92.8662. Marta Fiedna won the silver medal, while Evangelia Platanioto won the bronze.

At the Duna Arena in Budapest, the Canadian team has a lot to look forward to, with Harvey competing in the 200m (IM) final on Sunday and medals awarded in the men's 100m breaststroke, women's 100m butterfly, and men's 50m butterfly.

The FINA World Aquatics Championships will be broadcast live on CBC Sports from June 18-July 3 on cbcsports.ca.

0 notes

joeygattotv · 7 years ago

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Columbia University Essay 2018

Imagine giving a nineteen-year-old the chance to say anything he wants to a sold-out Yankee Stadium crowd. This was my reality as a young internet personality with a large social media following—though while Yankee Stadium only holds 54,000 people, I was able to reach hundreds of thousands of followers every day. As an entertainer, I founded a social media company with a network of collaborators, accumulated 650,000 social media followers, and headlined a ten-city music tour in the span of three years. Two years ago, however, I made the decision to depart my full-time job as an entertainer to pursue a career in academia.

My decision to change career paths baffled my peers: “But you made it! Why do you want to go back to school?” On the surface, being admired by others for one’s work is something many spend their lives trying to achieve. I loved that my work contained elements of creativity, but at its core, I had become a business. I had constructed an algorithm for appealing to internet users and was effectively implementing it.

I found the most success early on in my career as a professional vlogger. The vlogger has recently taken the internet by storm by providing a new form of entertainment which provides the viewer with a lens into his or her own life. It is not the role of the vlogger to produce well-written sketches or beautiful music. Instead, the vlogger’s role is to be a real and accessible person, a virtual friend. This dynamic creates a new and more powerful type of influencer in today’s social media-based society. When I gained a new social media follower, it was not only due to my artistic ability, but also because I had made a personal connection. This connection was a powerful tool from a business prospective—brands like Audible.com, Postmates, and MTV were all very eager to work with me due to the level of influence I had over my audience.

As my follower count grew, so did my dreams. I began to focus on expanding my business by collaborating with other online content creators. My networking skills developed rapidly and I was soon collaborating with creators who had tens of millions of followers. I went on to start my own social media company, The Settle Down Kids, which was a collaborative network of creators who produced video content under a common social media brand. Everyone in the network assisted one another in their own personal brand development while simultaneously producing collaborative content under the Settle Down Kids brand. This provided a route to more rapid business expansion and greater content innovation. The Settle Down Kids went on to produce live shows, merchandise, and web applications.

Sadly, the entertainment industry has a dark side. My relationships with other influencers became purely functional. I would get fantastic opportunities to work with creators with huge online followings, yet the content we produced together was never of the highest quality. We were only collaborating with the intent of promoting ourselves in front of each other’s audiences.

We were abandoning the craft because it made our businesses more profitable. This began to feel unethical as my content became more ingenuine. I had more eyes on me, yet, they were no longer seeing the real me. I was someone young people looked up to, which was a big responsibility that I was no longer taking seriously. I had been given the power to communicate ideas in a way people readily responded to, yet I was no longer using my power for good.

Two years ago, I rebranded myself and began encouraging my followers to pursue higher education. With the vast amount of anti-science rhetoric in the United States today, I felt I could make the greatest impact by making school “cool” again. From anti-vaxxers to climate change denialists, the mass open disregard for scientific facts has become too difficult for me to ignore. As an influencer, I felt uniquely positioned to combat this fraction of this epidemic impacting our youth. Alongside my general pursuit of knowledge and hunger for a greater challenge, I felt the world was missing a major social media influencer who was also an ambitious academic. Therefore, I enrolled in my local community college as a computer science major in the spring of 2016. It was here that I fell in love with science.

An elite scientist must find a union between logic and creativity to answer complex problems. From programming to mathematics, I found that the same skills that I used to produce content could also be used to solve technical problems. I could be producing a review of the Grammys or proving the cosine reduction formula, both have many different solutions yet some are more elegant than others. Finding the most creative way to get from point A to B is really at the core of both art and science. My studies helped me develop not only scientific skills, but also a scientific perspective which allowed me to comfortably engage my followers in discussions on climate change, artificial intelligence, and social policy. I greatly admired scholars like Andrew Ng, Neil Degrasse Tyson and Geoffrey Hinton who not only progressed their scientific fields, but also effectively communicated their ideas to the public. As my academic career progressed, I found that my desire to do good would be best fulfilled by devoting my life to science and pursuing a career in scientific research.

My dream became a reality this past summer when I was accepted into the National Science Foundation’s “Research Experience for Undergraduates in Data Science for Advancing Human Services” program. It was here that I spent ten weeks alongside Professor Usman Roshan and his graduate student Girish Sukhwani from the New Jersey Institute of Technology conducting research in data science. Together, we worked on optimizing the efficiency of image classification algorithms used in the field of computer vision. While Professor Roshan and his graduate student worked on the production of his new computer vision algorithm, I was in charge of developing artificial neural networks for image classification tasks. Our team was able to successfully reduce the vast computational expense typically required by computer vision algorithms while maintaining a high quality performance level. I also lead the authorship of our project’s abstract, which was published in the NJIT 2017 Book of Abstracts and presented our research at the NJIT Summer Research Symposium. I left the program with advanced knowledge of data science and have been invited to stay at NJIT as a part time research assistant.

In the future, I hope to continue research in computer vision, which I believe is the most important topic within the field of artificial intelligence. While humans can learn a lot by touching, hearing, tasting, and smelling, we gather the most significant information through sight. In order for a computer to become truly intelligent, it must be able to see like a human. Computer vision research will be the key to unlocking the true potential of artificial intelligence and I am very excited to be a part of the most cutting-edge developments in the discipline.

I currently have a second place submission in the ASSISTments 2017 Educational Data Mining competition. This competition is based off of data collected from a 2013 study co- authored by two Columbia researchers that searches for correlations between a student’s affect estimates and their raw state tests scores. The task at hand is to use this data to predict if students will go on to obtain jobs in STEM fields. As someone who has spent the past two years focusing on artificial intelligence and educational awareness, I felt an immediate connection with this project. It not only challenged me intellectually, but also sparked my desire to attend Columbia University. My ideal university not only delivers a great education but shares my desire to use data science to revolutionize the educational system.

Before I participated in the research program this past summer, I had no real interest in Columbia’s School of General Studies. As an aspiring scientist, I was skeptical of the liberal arts degree. The engineers at my college scoffed at those not pursuing a Bachelor’s of Science. Upon gaining real research experience, however, I now see the great value a liberal arts education will bring me. As a researcher, technical proficiency is a must, but equally as important are verbal and written communication skills such as conducting captivating research presentations and writing eloquent papers. The diverse range of courses in the liberal arts degree train one to think critically and provide a wide breadth of knowledge that is particularly important in the realm of data science. The most impressive part about the Columbia School of General Studies is the structure of their Data Science program. As Data Science and Artificial Intelligence are relatively new fields of study, most schools do not have a program that properly prepares students for graduate-level work in these fields. Data Science is truly a cross-disciplinary study of Computer Science and Statistics, and Columbia is one of the only universities offering such a program to undergraduates.

To most, being a machine learning researcher may not be as cool as being a vlogger. I think it’s time for that attitude to change, however. The online community needs a passionate and educated voice willing to show everyone how amazing providing public service through science can be. Columbia will prepare me not only to be a researcher, but to be a leader. My goals require so much more than a traditional education—they require a Columbia education.

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mitchbeck · 5 years ago

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CANTLON: BATTLE OF HUSKIES GOES NORTHEASTERN'S WAY

BY: Gerry Cantlon, Howlings HARTFORD, CT - The UCONN Huskies had their first major Hockey East test and it came against the 12th ranked Northeastern Huskies who blew past their hosts 5-2 at the XL Center on Saturday. Northeastern ups their record to 12-5-2 overall (7-4-1 HEA). UCONN's record slips to 7-8-4 overall (4-5-2 HEA). UCONN takes the ice again on Tuesday night against the Merrimack Warriors. “I haven’t been this disappointed like this since the BC weekend. We had stuck together and played a good stretch of hockey there for eleven games. It started right from the beginning. We came out late to the ice for the game. I think we weren’t into the game right from the get go, and spotted them three goals. We didn’t make a real push till it was 5-0. We played a strong third period, but it was too little, too late,” a dejected UCONN head coach, Mike Cavanaugh, said. To be into a Hockey East conference game, with a truncated college schedule the way it works out, turns points into gold so a team can make the playoffs. A game like this could comeback could come back to haunt the Huskies in March. But the question needs to be answered in how a team could be late in it's own building? Cavanaugh didn’t exclude himself or his coaching staff from criticism on this woeful night of hockey. “Our team just didn’t have it tonight. We have to coach better, play better, our special teams have to be better. It’s just a complete poor effort from the entire UCONN hockey program. It needed to be better tonight.” UCONN had a late game chance to sweep away their earlier poor play when they were granted a five-on-three power play for the final 4:23. They were unable to score a goal despite spending the entire man-advantage in the Northeastern end of the ice. On the UCONN side of the ice, a goalie interference call was made on Northeastern’s Aidan McDonough on the UConn side of the ice. Meanwhile, down at the other end, Michael Kesselring was assessed a major penalty for a blatant crosscheck to UConn's Ruslan Iskharov in front of his own net. Kesselring was also assessed a game misconduct which makes it reviewable for a potential suspension by Hockey East. The UCONN team got seven of their 14 shots for the period, but were too deliberate. At one point UCONN had three players at the blue line when they should have had them in front of the net. In the seven shots they took, none of them were serious threats to score. In the second period, Northeastern maintained the pressure they had in the first period aided by solid forechecking and bodychecking coupled with UCONN’s poor puck management. Northeastern scored a beautifully executed power play goal on the back-end of a five-on-three power play. McDonough was on the right-wing and fired a cross-ice pass through the box to Tyler Madden brilliantly put the puck in front to Zach Solow who beautifully redirected the puck into the net at 11:46. Northeastern made it 5-0 when Neil Shea was able to freely skate down the left-wing and get off a shot that was stopped by UCONN netminder, Tomas Vomacka, but he left a rebound that Matt Demelis put behind him with both d-men, Yan Kuznetsov and Adam Kraschik, out of the picture. It was Demelis' his fourth goal of the season. UCONN broke the shutout when Carter Turnbull grabbed a loose puck and made a quick cross ice thought the crease pass to Vladimir Firstov. He pulled the puck back, off the tape-to-tape pass and flipped his sixth of the season into the net with 1:04 left in the period. After the goal, Northeastern pressed and had a two-on-one with defenseman Ryan Shea stopped twice on the right-wing by Vomacka. Then two more bids by Madden and Julian Kislin before the period ended. For the first three minutes of the game, UCONN dug themselves a hole. Northeastern scored on the game’s first shot when Matt Filipe motored past Karaschik (Ridgefield) and swept in on Vomacka slipping a backhander into the net for his fourth goal. Jachym Kondelik then took a penalty 57 seconds later that the Huskies would have to kill. The Huskies clipped Jayden Struble, a Montreal Canadiens draft pick, on the left wing side of the neutral zone, It looked like it could have been a minor for kneeing, but after a video review by the referees, no penalty was called. It would be the only break the Huskies would get. Northeastern had an effective forecheck the entire game. Filip crunched UCONN’s Harrison Rees in the right-wing corner. Then, at the blue line, Jake Flynn handed the puck right to Solow, who zipped lined down the left wing side on a solo dash and put his seventh of the season past Vomacka at 10:40. “I’m not sure it was their forwards so much as us," Cavanaugh said. "We turned over two pucks we had full possession of, and we weren’t under any pressure. The first goal, we turned it over a bit high (in the zone). The second goal we had full control of it and passed it right to their guy. I think it was more us, being lackadaisical, we weren’t ready to play a hockey game.” Northeastern’s coach, Jim Madigan, was very happy with the start. “We did a real job on the forecheck and we pressured their defense and got the turnovers and scored early and that was a key to our play in the first two periods.” On Northeastern's third goal, Madden put on a puck control clinic fifteen feet from the net. Madden got the puck off a pass from Biagio Lerario. The right-handed center slipped the puck through the legs of Iskharov, then past Kuznetsoc and fought off Turnbull’s backcheck and put a forehand past Vomacka at 15:57. That was an NHL play. “He is one of those guys you say, 'Uh-oh,' wow. He’s that type of player. People don’t realize how well he handles the puck and he has more room to grow and get there (the NHL). We'll have him ready for the NHL in four years.” The shots at the end of the period were only 7-3 with Northeastern holding the edge, but it felt like far more since UCONN had so little offensive zone time. NOTES: Northeastern has played just two games since winning the Friendship Tourney in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Northeastern had a slew of sons of former players. Tyler Spott's father, Steve Spott, is the assistant coach for the San Jose Sharks. Tyler Madden is the son of former NHL’er John Madden. Kasselring is the son of former Merrimack star from the 1990’s Casey Kasselring, and Brendan Van Riemsdyk is the youngest of the Van Riemsdyk’s. Brother James is back in Philly and Trevor is in Carolina. Read the full article

#HockeyEast #JachymKondelik #MikeCavanaugh #MontrealCanadiens #NortheasternHuskies #RuslanIskharov #SanJoseSharks #TomasVomacka #UConn #UCONNHuskies #XLCenter

0 notes

teamarcs · 5 years ago

Text

A short guide for Effective Digital Marketing

Here we are going to show some statistics that will give you a surprise How Digital Marketing is the most crucial strategy of every field and organization.

According to Web Presence Solutions (2017), Google is responsible for 94% of total organic traffic.

According to Wordstream (2016), 72% of consumers who did a local search they visited a store within 8 KM.

According to Search Engine Land (2018), 82 % of smartphone shoppers showed by ‘near me’ searches

According to Shopify Plus (2018) By next 2years means till 2021 global retail E-commerce sales will reach around $4.5 trillion

One of the interviews Neil Patel has mentioned that Product videos can increase purchases by 144% and many more

But don’t worry take a look at Short Guide of Effective Digital Marketing Which will help you with your Digital Marketing plan.

Digital Marketing Includes;

SEO

Content Marketing

Social Media Marketing

Email Marketing

PPC

SEO (Search Engine Optimization):

If you want to see yourself on Google search result then you need to work on your business Keywords on top results so that whenever users search a related query they will visit your site.

Here take some points of SEO for your website;

Analyze your website through LightHouse (Google Product) and list-out improvement factors

Know your customer and their queries

Website Performance optimization

On-page optimization

Mobile optimization

Daily site monitoring

Optimize your content for RankBrain

Blog writing

Local Citation

Business Listing or Product listing

Set up Google My Business

Link building

Competitor benchmarking

Content Marketing:

Build high-quality Landing Page

Use a long irresistible headline

Use quality images and infographics

Use high-quality content writing

Show some interesting Statistics

Stuff high volume searches Keywords

Use another blog in between particular blog

Set pop-up window to subscribe for News & blog updates

Social Media Marketing:

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and Snapchat, etc gives you Targeted audience selection. Through a user-friendly dashboard, these platforms give you customized audience data with a special focus on the strategies you can use to run your campaign online.

Here is a list of some of the most effective social media marketing strategies;

Setup all popular social media platform

design social media calendar

Use high-quality graphics image

Use limited content on the image due to reducing image weight

Improve Edge rank

Update stories regularly

Use Repost

Run paid campaign with offers

Join the Fanpage community

Proper use of #Hashtags

Email Marketing:

Here are some tips to help you ramp up your email marketing technique;

Audience segmentation

Dynamic content

Social Media Integration

Visually appealing design

Content testing before sending

Don’t send too much on same email ids

PPC:

According to Blue Corona (2019), 49% of people said they click on text ads. Now you can understand how much PPC is profitable in terms of business growth. Here some tips of effective PPC campaign;

Remark long-tail keywords

A high-quality Landing page that fulfills all condition of Google

Use exciting offers

Improve keyword score

Don’t spend too much on high competitive keywords

Apart from these Digital marketing have lots of techniques such as Video Marketing, Inbound marketing, Podcast, SEM and display ads. If you really need a successful Digital Marketing company in Delhi. We have an expert team of Website Marketing in India. Apart from these Teamarcs is also a Custom software development agency and best custom web application development in India

#digital marketing #seo #social media marketing

0 notes

techyblogger · 5 years ago

Photo

Advance Blogger SEO https://www.reddit.com/r/SEO/comments/bywqz8/advance_blogger_seo/

Advance Blogger SEO

Blogger is a free blogging platform provided by Google.If you want to start your blogging career, you can go with Google Blogger. We all know that before starting a website we have to buy a domain name and a hosting but you don’t have to buy any domain and hosting if you are using Blogger YES! you don’t have to buy a domain and hosting, Google Blogger provide you a free subdomain like domain.blogspot.com and free hosting for life time with unlimited bandwidth means it can easily handle unlimited traffic, it also has unlimited disk space with a free SSL certificate. If you don’t want a subdomain, you can use a custom domain name also. You just have to buy a domain name from any domain name registrar like Godaddy then change the name server of the domain and use the name server provided by Blogger. And you are all set to go8-) .

On-Page SEO

Topic Selection

For a successful article, you need to select a good topic and to find a good topic you have to do keyword research. There are some free tools that will help you in your successful keyword research like Google Keyword Planner, Ubersuggest, Keywords Every Where,KeywordTool.io, Kwfinder.In this blog I am using keywordseverywhere and ubersuggest but you can so with any of them mentioned above.They are all free to use, some of them are partially free.

Keywords Everywhere

This is a browser extension which can be downloaded from a chrome web store or Firefox add on. After installing the extension create a free account on keyword everywhere then its fully ready to run. Then you just have to search a keyword on your search engine it will automatically suggest the search volume, competition & CPC ( cost per click)and at the right side, it will also provide you some suggested keyword. And at the bottom of the result page where google suggest keyword shows it also shows search volume, CPC and Competition.

Ubersuggest

It is a free tool, it is not only a keyword research tool but also a full SEO tool. This tool is made by Neil Patel he is a Digital Marketer, Entrepreneur. In this tool you just have to put your desire keyword and select your region where you want to rank, Then click the search button, it will suggest you relevant keyword with search volume, CPC, Competition. And at the right side, it will show you the SERP view of google with Monthly view, Domain score,, Social share& Number of backlinks.

After finding the right keyword then you have to check whether the keyword you are looking to rank is in trend or not, you can check that using a free tool Google Trends. And you also have to find some LSI (Latent semantic indexing)for your body of the article & subheading of the article, you can use Google search for LSI or use a free tool name LSI Graph.

You have your Focus Keyword, LSI now, you just have to write an in-depth article on your topic. Because Google loves long in-depth content and in-depth content ranks higher than an ordinary article on Google.

Content Analysis

You have your content ready. Now you have to check your spelling mistake, Google doesn’t rank article which has spelling mistake or grammatical error. Because Google thinks that the article is not written by an expert that’s why its a key ranking factor that’s many people ignore. Fortunately, there is a free tool which can do both of them check spellings and grammatical mistake. This free tool is Grammarly. You just have to install Grammarly extension on your browser then sign-up with your Facebook or Google account, then copy your content and paste it on Grammarly, it will automatically detect the problems and suggest you the solution.

Structure Analysis

If you want to rank higher on google then you must have a good Dwell time.

What is dwell time?

⇒Dwell time is the duration between when a user clicks on a search engine result, and when the user returns from that result or is otherwise seen to have left the result.

To maintain a good dwell time you have to optimize your article structure like Headline, Title, Media, and Body.

Title

Title of an article is the window to an article, so you have to make your title more appealing so that people click on them and your CTR (Click Through Rate) increases. Put your main keyword at the beginning of the title for better user experience.

Headline

The headline is one of the most important factors in the SEO checklist. You have to put your Focus keyword at the beginning of your headline then make the headline colorful, use different fonts to make good eye-catching headline then set the alignment of the headline.

Media

If you want to rank then you have to add good quality media in your posts. Like Pictures, GIFs, Info-graphics or even Videos. Creating infographics is a good way to convey your message. Not just adding the media in your blog post will do the work for you, you also have to optimize them. Firstly, you have to compress the images and info-graphics to increase your site speed. you can use image compressor to compress the images. Then you have to add the image title and image alt tag. Use keyword on image title and alt tag. Now your media files are fully optimized.

Body

Body of a blog is the main part, it contains the real content. So to optimize this body section you have to put LSI keywords in your body, put focus keywords on your article’s sub-headings and bold the related keyword(few once). Remember maintain a good keyword: content ratio, don’t use more than 10 keywords if your article has less than 1000 words because Google penalizes the websites that perform keyword stuffing. Google prefers user experience than any other thing, so to increase your UX you have to use the right font size that suits your article and use correct fonts size with appropriate colors to make your article more beautiful.

Off Page SEO

Back Links

Content

Search for shutdown and renamed businesses (no longer available) replace the off-link to your link that is a backlink to other sites, replace those backlinks.Look for popular content and try to create some thing better than it and then promote it. Use tools like ahref , or use free tools like Ubersuggest to find the website who already li8nk back to your competitors, try to contact them and tell them that you have a better content like the content they already had link to their site, tell them to check your one also if they like it then then they can link back to your site.

Media

Media is a good way to get high-quality backlinks.You can create good quality info-graphics and send them to different site owners if they like the info-graphic they can also use that on their site, just add a link at the credit section. Use PDF and upload them to a different website or create good quality GIFs and send them to different site owners you will get high-quality backlinks.

WEB 2.0

Social Book Markings

There is an easy way to get high-quality backlinks from different popular website like Quora, Reddit. Use these sites, create an account then answer the question asked by different users, if want wants you can add a link to your answers. You will also get a good amount of traffic also.

SEO Settings

Post SEO

There are some useful settings that you should perform before publishing any post.

1.Set lebels

2.set up a permalink, use keyword in your permalink

3.Write a eye catching search description and use keywords to rank on google.

submitted by /u/jitchak [link] [comments] June 10, 2019 at 05:03PM

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xhostcom · 6 years ago

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Website Analytics Tools Pros Actually Use

I personally love data and analytics tools. But here’s the straight truth: you need a lot less than the analytics industry wants you to believe. Most experts will try to convince you that you need an analytics tool for everything. More data is always a good thing, right? I used to believe that myself. Over the last few years, I’ve changed my stance on the entire analytics category. These days, I prefer to keep things as simple as possible. One or two tools is about all I need. Less infrastructure to worry about, fewer complexities to manage, and an easier system for teams to use and act on.

The Analytics Tools We Use

First, I get my main tool in place, which is almost always Google Analytics I avoid installing any user analytics tools to start — too much effort required for too little value. Thats it! A few extra tools I may use for specific projects If you have a lot of user flows to improve, get a heatmap tool. The best is Crazy Egg. If you’re making SEO a priority, get an SEO tool. I use SEMrush. If you do a lot of conversion optimization and A/B testing, get an A/B testing tool. I recommend Optimizely. Once you’re large enough that it makes sense to consolidate all your data into a single source of truth, get a real business intelligence function built out along with the infrastructure to support it. Now let’s get to the straight truth on these tools.

Overall Best Website Analytics Tool: Google Analytics

Without a doubt, Google Analytics is the best analytics tool out there. While working at KISSmetrics, I did a bunch of competitive research on Google Analytics. I’ve also done plenty of Google Analytics consulting over the years. There are few counter-intuitive insights I’ve learned about Google Analytics along the way. First, people love Google Analytics. The user satisfaction scores are always sky high. When I saw how happy users were for the first time, it seemed like an insurmountable challenge. Remember, I was working at a competitor. Here’s the weird part though. Very few people actually use Google Analytics for anything other than checking the total traffic on their site. In other words, most people log into Google Analytics, look at one of the basic reports, check to see how many total people visited their site recently, and then log out. That’s it. For a long time, I didn’t understand how to reconcile these two facts: People barely use Google Analytics, but they also love it. How can both of these things be true at the same time? It dawned on me that seeing total site traffic is a huge ego boost. It validates our work. It feels great to see people visiting our sites. It feels so good that we’d be furious if Google Analytics ever shut down. That feeling is so powerful that people don’t need much else from Google Analytics. I used to think this was a problem. Look at all that other data! Think of all the other insights that will grow your business! It’s all right there in the other reports! Now I have a more nuanced understanding. Realistically, you’ll install Google Analytics and you’ll only use it to check your total traffic. And that’s totally okay. It’s still a major data point for you to run your site and business. Plus, you’ll get the motivational boost that comes from seeing how many people visit your site. If that’s as far as you ever take it, don’t feel guilty — you’re still getting a ton of value from Google Analytics. If you’re ever in the mood to check a couple of extra reports in Google Analytics, here are two of my favorites that are also easy to understand: You can see which traffic sources send you traffic. I prefer the Source/Medium report that’s under Acquisition > All Traffic from the sidebar. I like seeing the exact sources that send traffic instead of broad channels, since it’s a bit easier to come up with insights that are worth acting on. You can see which pages on your site bring you traffic with the Landing Page report. It’s under Behavior > Site Content in the sidebar. Look for patterns in the pages that seem to keep bringing in traffic over time, then ask yourself how you can do more of that. Those two reports alone will keep me busy for years on end. They’re also easy enough for anyone to use without getting overwhelmed. You can also install a Google Analytics add-on to Google Sheets and manipulate the data there. When you’re ready for more, try out these six advanced moves. Analytics Tool Alternatives Clicky Matomo (used to be called Piwik)

Best Free Analytics Tool: Also Google Analytics

Not only is Google Analytics the best analytics tool out there, it’s also 100% free. It’s an amazing deal. Google has a reputation for having the best engineering team on the planet and it’s ridiculous that all of us get to take advantage of that expertise with a free tool. Whenever I build a new site, the first thing I do is install Google Analytics. It’s an ingrained habit. The only downside to the free Google Analytics plan is its data limit. Once your site gets to a certain size, you’ll notice that Google Analytics will start sampling your reporting. This means the data isn’t 100% accurate because Google Analytics is only reviewing a percentage of your real data, say 75% for example, and is making a prediction on the last 25%. The more data you have, the less “real” data is included in each report. You won’t start to see this until you have hundreds of thousands of visitors per month. Some folks deeply hate data sampling and consider it a huge problem. These days, I don’t worry about it. It’s a small cost to get access to an analytics tool as high quality as Google Analytics without having to pay a dime. I only get concerned once a site is generating many millions of visits per month and the majority of data starts getting sampled.

Best Enterprise Analytics Tool: Adobe Analytics

At the enterprise level, Adobe Analytics is the de facto winner. Over the years, it’s gone by several names including Adobe SiteCatalyst and Omniture. It has a very strong reputation in the space and can support the truly enterprise needs like deep customization, implementation support, uptime requirements, and so forth. In the last few years, Google has pushed into the enterprise space with its Google Analytics 360. If you have a site with serious volume and are already bumping against the free limits of Google Analytics, it might be worth looking at Google Analytics 360. To decide between Adobe Analytics and Google Analytics 360, I’d ask myself if I simply need more of what I already have with Google Analytics. If I were already getting everything that I wanted and just needed the “enterprise” packaging to unlock higher data volume, more support, service agreements, etc., then I’d go with Google Analytics 360. But if my goal were to seriously uplevel my analytics capabilities beyond Google Analytics, I’d go with Adobe Analytics. It’s a more complete analytics package that extends beyond the website-only focus of Google Analytics. In most cases, I’d go with Adobe Analytics. Enterprise Analytics Tool Alternative Google Analytics 360

Best User Analytics Tool: Amplitude

In the last decade, a new set of user analytics tools have cropped up. The previous generation of tools, like Google Analytics, focused really heavily on websites and traffic. Those tools were designed solely to get insights on your website. As the internet evolved, lots of tech businesses needed data focused on users instead of on websites. They needed things like persistent user identities to track users over the long term, funnel reports to see how people moved through their apps, and cohort reports to see how user behavior changed over the long-term. Recently, Amplitude jumped into the category and pushed a very generous free plan that includes plenty of tracking volume and lots of the main reports you’d want to use. Most of the competitors now offer substantial freemium plans, largely because Amplitude set the freemium bar so high and they were forced to match it. Because of its generous freemium plan and the quality of its reporting, we recommend Amplitude if you’re looking for a user analytics tool. What Happened to KISSmetrics? This is the analytics company that I worked for and led its marketing team for a period. If you go to the website today, it points to Neil Patel’s website, one of the original co-founders. Needless to say, KISSmetrics is not really considered a competitor these days. A Word of Caution on User Analytics Tools User analytics tools are not cheap. Even if you’re on a freemium or modestly priced subscription with one of these tools, that’s only a fraction of what you’ll spend. First, you’ll spend a ton of time on the install. You will need an engineer and someone else on your team who knows your business, the user flows, and analytics tools pretty well. The implementation support from the tools themselves tends to be poor. Then there’s the maintenance to keep the tracking up to date. User flows change, products evolve, new organization goals are set. All of that impacts your tracking, which has to be updated regularly in order to keep your data accurate. And finally, in my experience, very few people in the organization are comfortable using analytics tools. They either stick to one or two basic reports, or avoid the tool entirely. So if you want to get the full value of the tool, you’ll need someone with real talent and skill for pulling reports. This ends up being an analyst or a product/marketing manager who can dedicate a decent amount of their time to reporting. That’s time that could be used elsewhere. In contrast, tools like Google Analytics are relatively easy to set up. Add the Google Analytics tracking script on every page of your site and you’ll get 80% of the data that you need right away. User analytics tools aren’t nearly as easy to set up and maintain. This is why I recommend most folks skip the user analytics category entirely — too much effort for too little gain. User Analytics Alternatives Mixpanel Heap

Best Heatmap Tool: Crazy Egg

Analytics tools give us a ton of information on what’s happening to our websites. But sometimes… It’s too much information. Rows and rows of data, hundreds of reports, more metrics than we can every possible understand. Heatmaps do an amazing job simplifying everything, making it really easy to understand what people are doing. Heatmap reports take one of the pages on your website and show you visually where people are clicking on that page. Within a few seconds, you’ll see exactly what what people click on and what they don’t. In my experience, everyone on the team instantly understands the major insights from a heatmap tool.

Acting on those insights is pretty easy too. Two simple rules will take you pretty far: For the stuff that people click on the most, do more of that. For stuff that people don’t click on, get rid of it. A heatmap tool is the easiest and most beginner friendly way to start using analytics to make your sites better. Run a heatmap on the top three more important pages of you site (like your homepage, product page, pricing pages, or sales page) and go through several design iterations using the two rules above. That’ll give you a drastically improved website without a more complicated website analytics setup or analysis. Heatmaps are also really powerful when you’re trying to improve a bunch of user flows, like an online or mobile app. You can glean tons of valuable insights on what users are trying to do, allowing you to iterate on your user flows and drastically improve them. We recommend Crazy Egg because the quality of its tool stands out in the category. They have several variations of the heatmap report like confetti, clickmaps, and scroll maps to give you even more insights. The quality of its data and reporting is also top-notch. It was one of the first heatmap tools on the market, and it has added more functionality in the past few years like user recordings and A/B testing. Heatmap Tool Alternative Hotjar

Best A/B Testing Tool: Optimizely

Before we get into Optimizely itself, a quick sidenote. I love love love A/B testing. You could call it my first career passion. That said, most companies shouldn’t be running A/B tests. That’s right. For the vast majority of companies, A/B testing can be completely ignored. While A/B testing is a reliable way to improve conversion rates on a website, it requires a ton of data, a lot more than most industry experts recommend. Otherwise, it takes too much time, too much money, and the impact on the business is too minor for it to be worth it. If you have lots of data to work with and are ready to take the plunge into A/B testing, I recommend Optimizely. It’s got all the A/B testing features you’ll need, tracks data the most accurately, and is pretty easy to use. The biggest downside: the price. Over the last few years, Optimizely has aggressively pursued larger companies as its customers and has largely left small businesses behind. Pricing is no longer listed on the website, a sign that the focus is on enterprise businesses at higher price points. A few years ago, we spent more than $10,000 per year to use the tool. Optimizely is my go-to choice if you’re at a large company. If you’re smaller, you’ll need to go another route.

Best A/B Testing Tool for Small Businesses: Crazy Egg

In the past, I would have recommended VWO (formerly Visual Website Optimizer). Like Optimizely, it’s one of the primary A/B testing tools on the market. Unfortunately, it looks like VWO has begun to pursue an enterprise strategy too. Prices are no longer listed on the site — not a good sign for small businesses. It’s been longer since I’ve used them, so I don’t know what the current pricing is, but it’s safe to assume that it’s too high for a small business. Crazy Egg has released an A/B testing tool alongside its heatmap reports that’s focused on beginners and businesses that don’t have the resources for an entire team dedicated to A/B testing. Pick a page on your site, make a few edits with Crazy Egg, then get simple data on which version you should keep.

Best SEO Tool: SEMrush

As SEO has evolved, it’s gotten increasingly competitive and data driven. There’s also a host of metrics that are completely unique to search, like keyword rankings, monthly search volume, and backlink volume. It’s possible to get some of these metrics from Google Analytics but to get everything, you need to sign up for an SEO tool. My favorite SEO tool is SEMrush.

X En The biggest reason is SEMrush has the easiest reporting compared to the other SEO tools. It’s perfect for beginning or intermediate SEO marketers.

What About Analytics for Paid Marketing Channels?

Google Ads (formerly AdWords), Facebook, and other paid marketing channels need a ton of data to run effective campaigns. Since companies like Google and Facebook have extreme incentives to give you the highest quality data possible, they’ve invested in their own data and reporting. The analytics in Google Ads and Facebook Ads are world-class — you’ll get everything you need. All you need to do is install a JavaScript snippet on the page of your website that signifies a conversion took place. The page that means you acquired a lead, a sale, or a new user. The JavaScript snippet will tell the ads platform that a conversion occurred, helping you optimize the campaigns for your business. There are other ways to set up conversion tracking, but this is the easiest. Other paid marketing platforms follow this same format. Reporting and data is built into the ad platform and tracking is handled by installing a JavaScript snippet that logs conversions.

What’s the Difference Between Website Analytics and Business Intelligence?

Website analytics is the online marketing and website data for a business. Business intelligence includes all of the data for a business. As more and more business data moves into the cloud, the line between these two categories has gotten blurred. CRMs (like Salesforce) now include a lot of marketing and campaign data. The marketing automation tools (like Marketo, HubSpot, Pardot, etc.) that have become a standard part of the marketing infrastructure at many companies produce marketing data too. Once you get large enough, you’ll want to combine all of these sources into a single database and source of truth for your customers. That’s where business intelligence comes in. It typically involves putting together a data warehouse (Amazon Redshift is a popular choice) with a reporting tool that sits on top of it like Tableau. This approach is very expense, pretty complicated, and difficult to maintain, so only go this route once your business is large enough to truly get value out of it. In the meantime, integrate your tools with one another whenever you can while keeping things as simple as possible.

My Analytics Tools Recommendations

So here are my two core recommendations: Use Google Analytics for your website analytics Avoid user analytics tools. “Extra” tools for specific use cases: If you have a lot of user flows to improve, get a heatmap tool like Crazy Egg. If you’re making SEO a priority, get an SEO tool like SEMrush. If you do a lot of conversion optimization and A/B testing, get an A/B testing tool like Optimizely. When you’re large enough, build a real business intelligence function. Read the full article

#searchstrategy #webanalytics

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cliftonsteen · 4 years ago

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How Do We Increase Coffee Consumption In Producing Countries?

It’s widely acknowledged that increasing coffee consumption in coffee producing countries is positive. This is because it creates a more stable coffee industry that is not completely reliant on external demand.

Despite this, people don’t always have a great understanding of how and why we should increase internal consumption. To get some more insight and to learn more about this, I spoke to two experts: Vera Espíndola and Carlos Brando.

You may also like Why Greater Coffee Consumption May Not Mean More Beans Sold

Internal Coffee Consumption In Producing Countries

It’s well known that most producing countries – with the notable exception of Brazil – don’t really consume their own coffee. Most of the coffee grown in producing countries is exported to overseas markets, such as Europe and the US.

Consumption levels are measured per capita – which is the total amount of coffee consumed in a year divided by the country’s population. Many of the countries with the highest level of per capita coffee consumption are found in Europe, including Finland (around 12kg), Norway (10kg), and Iceland (9kg).

In comparison, Brazil – which produces the most coffee in the world – currently has a per capita consumption level of around 6kg. On average, this figure increases by around 3% year-on-year.

When compared to Brazil, however, consumption levels in other producing countries like Vietnam (1.6kg), Ethiopia (2kg), Indonesia (1.1kg), and Colombia (2.1kg) are considerably lower.

This is because Brazil’s coffee industry has been directly focusing on increasing internal consumption for years. Both the public and especially the private sector in Brazil have invested heavily in increasing and maintaining coffee consumption levels.

Carlos Brando is chairman of the Global Coffee Platform, a membership organisation that focuses on improving outcomes for producers. He says that Brazil’s higher internal consumption level was first driven by a 15-year ABIC programme that addressed coffee consumption at all income levels.

The programme, Carlos says, initially involved surveying consumers and non-consumers, examining coffee “purity” and quality labels and campaigns, and educating people on the health benefits of coffee drinking.

After that, the program became more competitive. It was soon driven by companies’ own campaigns to target certain market segments. ABIC started to assume a supporting role. Companies began promoting lower-priced “traditional” coffee, which was often made with robusta; it was only later that this was complemented by specialty coffee.

Most other producing countries focus on delivering quality coffee for export. In these countries, the coffee that’s drunk is either the “leftover” coffee that doesn’t meet export quality standards, or imported. And while some other producing countries, including Colombia or Costa Rica, have launched initiatives to increase internal consumption, many have made little to no progress.

Why Is Increasing Internal Consumption Important?

Increasing internal consumption benefits the entire supply chain. Vera Espíndola is a part of the Specialty Coffee Association‘s board of directors, and the Director of Strategic Alliances at Azahar Coffee. She says that higher internal consumption levels improve producers’ confidence in their farming ability as well as their coffee’s quality.

Vera says: “Communication is different when [producers] can talk in their own language. Their confidence is different, as are the relationships they develop with the buyers or roasters.”

Greater internal consumption will also lead to more direct buyer-producer relationships. This allows the producer to take on and integrate feedback more easily. It also helps them grow their coffee with more input from buyers, and effectively communicate their challenges to buyers.

“It’s not the same to visit a country and to live there. [By living there], you can know what producers are going through,” Vera says. When buyers in the same country interact more easily and directly with producers, coffee quality will naturally increase.

Increased consumption can also improve income and outcomes for producers. “All coffee growers have lower, mid and good quality coffee. That low quality coffee may have a market domestically… this is an extra outlet for the growers,” Carlos explains. This domestic market then provides the producer with an additional income stream, which could allow them to invest in their farm and grow.

Having access to both internal and overseas markets also gives producers more financial stability. For example, if producers’ export sales decrease for whatever reason, good internal demand for coffee provides them with another option.

It’s Not All About Specialty Coffee

In order to encourage people to drink more coffee, coffee itself needs to be both affordable and accessible. As well as promoting the health benefits and creating awareness about the importance of increasing internal consumption, access is key.

A lot of initiatives focused on increasing internal consumption have focused on specialty coffee. Carlos explains that we need to look beyond that to get people drinking all kinds of coffee. “To increase consumption in [producing] countries, you have to work with mass consumption,” he says.

Vera agrees: “I’d love for everyone to drink amazing coffee, [and] have access to and drink an 83 point scoring coffee, but that’s not the reality. These coffees have a higher cost.

“[In Mexico], we have the biggest soluble coffee industry in Latin America. We need to understand that people drink coffee this way, and that they probably don’t know another way to do it. We can’t judge people’s consumption habits.”

Carlos says that “we need to be radical”. This means looking beyond the scope of specialty coffee. “You can serve good quality coffee to the middle class and to low-income people and it’s going to be good, but different, to what you serve in a specialty coffee shop.

“It’s similar to wine in France. There’s very expensive wine, but most of the wine that [accounts for the] high per capita consumption in France is table wine.”

Vera adds: “We can try to promote better coffee, and create strategies around this, but we can’t forget the current consumption habits in these countries.” She believes that we need to “build a plan” based on the consumption habits of each country. This means recognising soluble and commercial coffee as well as specialty.

So, How Do You Do It?

Before countries incentivise people to drink more coffee or better coffee, Carlos says that they should examine how and why people consume coffee.

He recommends using surveys based on the templates found in the International Coffee Organization’s guide on increasing consumption in producing countries. He explains that this needs to be adapted to each country, and that “without a survey, you can’t have a strategy”.

Carlos says that surveys should ask coffee abstainers why they don’t drink coffee and existing drinkers why they don’t drink more of it. By looking at how responses differ according to income, you can create a clearer image of consumption and target your audience.

This will also help countries to develop strategies and launch programmes in the right way. For instance, while some audiences respond better to social media messaging, others may be more receptive to influence from industry players like baristas and roasters.

Both of these groups “have a responsibility to educate consumers”, according to Carlos. Vera agrees, saying that “every consumer needs a different message”. For example, older demographics may respond more positively to TV and radio campaigns than those on social media.

It’s common for younger audiences to be the most receptive to trying specialty coffee, as Vera says “they are interested in new trends in coffee, and understand it better than older generations”.

“Millennials are a strong group who can really push consumption,” she says.

Carlos suggests that this group could be targeted at a stage when they start drinking coffee more heavily – such as when starting university, or looking for their first job. “We need to associate [coffee] with lifestyle or wellbeing,” he adds.

Increasing internal consumption is a big challenge in producing countries. It takes a significant amount of time, energy, and money to make it happen.

Producing countries who want to increase consumption levels, in the same way that Brazil has, need to be led by research. Before starting a campaign, it’s important that you understand target audiences and how certain demographics and groups’ coffee habits differ.

Enjoyed this? Then read Coffee Wars: Should You Drink Instant or Whole Bean?

Photo credits: Neil Soque, Fernando Pocasangre, Ana Valencia

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