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twdmusicboxmystery · 5 years ago

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TWD 10x08: The World Before - First Thoughts

Hello everyone! So what did you think of the episode. I totally loved it! Yes, it’s frustrating to get a cliffhanger for the MSF, but I, for one, am kind of used to it by now. I more or less count on that for every finale and MSF. If it doesn’t happen (because sometimes it doesn’t) then awesome. But when it does, I’m not surprised or upset by it.

But onto happier things. This was one of those episodes that was just dripping with symbolism. (My favorite kind! So today I’ll talk about the broad, sweeping things and what most jumped out at me (and there was a LOT that did, even on first watch) and tomorrow I’ll do nitty-gritty details. Later in the week, I have some other things to post that I’m hoping will help everyone get through the hiatus, so stay tuned for those. Let’s dive in!

This is one episode that the spoilers definitely didn’t do justice to at all.

***As always, spoilers abound for 10x08 below. Don’t read until you’ve watched! You’ve been warned!***

Daryl’s Reaction to Carol and Lydia:

Depending on what you follow online, this might not mean much to you. But the groups I’m in follow spoilers and there was a lot of talk about how Daryl didn’t seem to care that much that Lydia was gone, or that Carol sort of lost her. And the spoilers only talked about a very tender scene between Daryl and Carol.

Well, they did have a sweet scene together, but him not caring about Lydia and not getting after Carol was utterly untrue. (If you’ve watched the episode, you know this.)

No, he doesn’t exactly scream in Carol’s face or anything (but Daryl wouldn’t do that anyway) but he does get after her. I really liked their interactions because I feel like Daryl might just have finally gotten through to Carol about her destructive behavior. She cries, and that’s where he hugs her. It was actually a really beautiful scene.

I will grant you that it doesn’t last long, as Carol still chases blindly after Alpha not long after, but still.

Music References:

Probably my favorite thing was the musical references. Luke names and later hums a specific piece of classical music: Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini.

Even if the name doesn’t ring a bell for you, I can almost guarantee you’ve heard it before. HERE’s a video so you can listen. If you can’t access this one, just google it or search your YouTube. I promise it won’t be hard to find a way to listen to it. It’s one of the most famous pieces of classical music of all time.

It was featured in a film in the 80s called Somewhere in Time that had a cult following (one of my personal faves with Christopher Reeves and Jane Seymour).

So, my first instinct was to research the song itself. Like, does it have a coda? I knew I had some sheet music from this song on my shelf so I went and got it. Mine doesn’t have a coda, but mine is also only the 18th variation.

It’s important for everyone to understand what a variation is in classical music. A variation is basically just one part of the overall symphony. Any given symphony is divided into parts, or variations. Not unlike chapters of a book. Each one is part of the overall story, but different things happen in each chapter, right? Same with Variations. All part of the same symphony, and therefore all based around and repeating the same musical themes, but all slightly different as well.

So, any given variation may not have a coda, but we need to look at the symphony as a whole. (And I can back this idea up because in the episode, Luke finds a book in the library of this piece of music and on the cover it says something like “complete preludes for piano” on it.

So, what I’m getting at is that the 24th variation IS a coda. I found this description of the 24th variation:

Variation 24: provides a massive capstone to the entire work. The Dies Irae theme emerges heavily in brass and strings while piano and winds recall prominent features of the subject. A brilliant coda reiterates fragments of the theme, compressing earlier ideas within a massive acceleration. Suddenly and surprisingly there is a drop to an unexpected soft dynamic and two cadential chords from the piano mark the ending.

Obviously that is very significant. They’re mentioning, talking about, humming, and showing us sheet music for a very famous symphony that has a coda. I think our TWD coda is about to roll back around, don’t you?

But I’m also wondering about the Somewhere in Time theme. I’m sure at least some of you aren’t familiar with it. It’s an American film with a cult following. But in terms of pop cinema culture, Paganini’s Rhapsody and this film are very intertwined. There are plenty of people who wouldn’t know that symphony at all EXCEPT for the film, so I have to wonder if they chose this piece of music, both for what it means by itself, and also for the Somewhere in Time reference. Notice the “time” element of that title.

The film is a ridiculously romantic time travel story. Its about two lovers who are basically separated by time, and have to travel through time to find one another and, you know, be together forever. Sound like Bethyl to you?

And because I was thinking about that, I noticed something else. When Aaron is talking to Gracie (there are a lot of interesting things in this scene, but I’ll go into most of them tomorrow in my Details post) he tells her a story about once visiting some old Native American ruins. He says he started to wonder about the lives and identities of the people who once lived there. People who had been “lost to time.” So there was a definite theme about people being lost in time in this episode. Very significant. Actually kind of gives me chills. In a good way. ;D

Gracie:

I felt like there was a large emphasis on Gracie in this episode. Aaron talked about her to Gamma last episode, in conjunction with bikes (which we’ve long associated with kidnapping and even “missing girl” stuff) so I still feel like Gracie might be taken.

Here, when Aaron learned about Dante killing Siddiq, he kind of had a meltdown, saying he should have seen it and Dante had been part of the community for months and had even treated Gracie. I don’t think we should read into that literally. I don’t think Dante did anything to Gracie or anything. But I feel like she’s being associated with the whole Siddiq/Dante situation.

And of course we had the part where he sat with her and quizzed her on the license plates. So I feel like they’re setting up something with Gracie here, and I’ve said before that I can see something along the lines of Gracie being taken/kidnapped and Aaron going to find her, and that somehow leading to Beth. So I guess I’m just seeing this as confirmation that something with Gracie is in the works, even if the rest is just conjecture right now.

Bear Trap:

This probably qualifies as more of a Detail than anything else, but it was too huge not to share. After they cross the border, Carol almost steps in a bear trap. Daryl sees it in time and stops her saying, “You could have lost a foot.” Lost shoe/foot symbolism anyone?

I’ve come to believe that the lost shoe/foot theme is directly tied to the death fake out. I won’t say much more than that except that only Daryl and Carol are in this scene. So, it might point to Ezekiel’s coming death fake out, which I think is close, or to the one Daryl is involved in, which would just be another way to hint at Beth being close.

But it’s more than that. MUCH more. Some of you may remember that WAY back, a long time ago (like during the 5b/6a time period) some of the prominent TD-ers of the time dug up some information about a Beth figurine/toy that was set to be released. They were going to release one that included a bear trap prop in the package.

Now, that figuring was never actually released. People in our fandom actually contacted the toy company to ask about it and were told that it was planned for release at one point, but for unspecified reasons, the company (that would be AMC) changed their minds and scrapped the project.

We still don’t know exactly why, though I suspect it was because TD was so active back then and they simply decided they didn’t need to give us this hint.

Lots of theories about the large bear trap circulated back then. People even wondered if it would have something to do with Beth and Shiva, which it didn’t. But it’s weird, right? I mean, why would tptb release a figurine of Beth with such a specific, large prop that never showed up in her story line and had absolutely no bearing on anything in her—or any other character’s—story?

Well, obviously TD took it as something symbolic/a clue to how she might return. Now, we have an actual bear trap as part of a sequence connected to the Whisperers, when many of suspect we may be as little as two episodes out from her return. Significant enough for you? I can’t stress how huge this little bear trap detail is.

But I can even take it further than that.

In terms of what specifically happens in this episode, it was a foreshadow of the ending. So Carol almost stepped in the bear trap, but just barely avoided catastrophe. Daryl yelled stop, stop and managed to pull her back before she stepped in the trap, triggering it, which would have been very painful. Near the end of the episode, Carol chases after Alpha. Daryl yells, stop, stop! But she doesn’t listen and what happens? They trigger the trap.

So, some pretty basic foreshadowing for the end of the episode. But the idea of that also has my head spinning, because I can’t help but compare it to other things.

First, it’s the bear trap being associated with Beth again. Because, in my head, them triggering this trap, and it being symbolized beforehand by the bear trap, is just another way of saying that something about them triggering this trap Alpha set for them will lead to Beth in some way.

But I’m also thinking about Alone. With this symbolism in mind, you could argue that Beth stepping on the small game trap at the beginning of Alone foreshadowed her getting caught in the Grady trap at the end of that episode. The sequence is similar. When the metal, animal trap is scene early on, catastrophe is largely avoided.

(Yes, Beth steps in the trap, but it only results in a hurt ankle. Nothing to worry about. They even emphasize that it’s not broken. If Carol had stepped on hers, it would have snapped her leg like a twig, and they needed her to be able to run later, so they couldn’t do a complete parallel. But again, catastrophe largely avoided.)

Then, near the end of the episode, a MUCH bigger trap is triggered. And this time, catastrophe can’t be avoided. Daryl couldn’t stop the Grady cops from taking Beth, though he tried. And he couldn’t stop the group in this episode—including himself—from falling into the pit, though he tried.

In fact, you could argue that because the rest of the group ran out ahead of him after Carol, while he stayed behind to fight walkers, this was a huge parallel to the end of Alone. Think about it. He stays behind to lead the walkers away while she runs out ahead of him. We see him running through the yard of the funeral home in the direction she went, looking for her, but she’s already fallen into the Grady trap by then.

Here, the rest of the group runs out ahead of Daryl, after Carol. He takes care of the walkers and then runs in the direction they all went, looking for them. But they’d already fallen into the pit by the time he got there. See why this is so huge?

(P.S. On TTD, they pointed out that we see this from Daryl’s POV, which was true of Alone as well. We saw everything through his eyes, and didn’t see what happened with Beth. Only what he saw.)

The dark pit they fall into reminded me of two things: 1) the cave Gamma’s sister went into with Alpha before emerging into the light, which I pegged right away as a Beth-parallel. 2) the darkness-to-light theme in general. We saw it around Beth a lot, but around others as well. So if this is the group going into the darkness, then when they re-emerge into the light, maybe that’s when Beth will show up? (a.k.a. episode 10?) Just a thought.

But for Beth, Grady = falling into a dark pit. In this shot, we see her walking into a dark corridor/tunnel with light at the other end. And this is RIGHT before she’s shot. Which I always saw as her heading into the darkness, but it foreshadows that she’ll come through into the light (survive). And now we’re seeing a replay of this in 10x08.

Virgil:

Okay, let’s talk Virgil. For the record, I don’t think he’s linked to Connie and Kelly. That was a fun theory and I was hoping for it as much as the next person, but I didn’t get that feeling while watching the episode. First off, it’s not that he’s been separated from his family and looking for them, which is what early reports of him suggested. Rather, it’s that he left his community on some kind of supply mission and he’s trying to get back to them. So, he knows exactly where they are. He’s just trying to get home.

That’s right. HOME theme. They emphasize several times that he’s going home. He says it, Michonne repeats it, etc. And remember that finding one’s way home is associated with the North Star/Sirius symbolism, thanks to Carl saying that to Judith in S6.

And where Virgil’s home is, is AWESOME! Pay attention to this TD-ers, because it’s SUPER significant. He tells Michonne that he lives in a compound on Bloodsworth Island in Tangiers sound. I had to sit back and let that sink in. We’ve always said Beth will return by water. If she’s on an island, that kind of makes every water reference we’ve ever seen around her make sense. The picture of the ship behind Hershel in 4a (Smooth seas don’t make for good sailors), the teddy bear that washed up on the beach in 7x06, etc.

I had to do some research on this place because I wasn’t familiar with it. Both Bloodsworth Island and Tangier sound are in the Chesapeake Bay area. The sound is bordered by parts of Virginia and Maryland. My point? This really isn’t very far away. Michonne mentions a 2-day trip to get there.

But given all the symbolism around this, and that this may be where Beth is…well, suddenly it seems like she really may not be very far from D.C. at all.

And then there’s the idea of the naval base. Virgil says it’s hard to find and fortified. Remember what I said about the helicopter people: that they’re probably ex-military, which is why they’re so good at security and keeping people from leaving their group once they’ve entered. It would also make sense why they’ve learned to purify water, since they’re on an island surrounded on all sides by salt water.

So what I’m saying is that this plays very well into everything we’ve been thinking thus far. We already know Danai is going to the Rick Grimes films, so to say she’ll run into Rick is a foregone conclusion. But I’ve said before that I think Rick and Beth are in the same place, or at least within the same organization.

I want to point out that Michonne quotes Rick’s line to Virgil: My mercy prevailed over my wrath. Now, on the one hand, that’s just a very obvious way of foreshadowing that when she leaves, she’ll be finding Rick. His storyline is about to come back into play, and Virgil will be part of that. We already knew that because of outside-the-show stuff. But a good example of foreshadowing at work, and we’ve seen plenty of similar stuff with Beth.

But that line is also tied to Carl’s death. I won’t go into all of this today (I will in a later post) but this is also helping me draw a line between Carl’s death and how Beth will return. I know that’s kind of a tease, but it’s also a whole other rabbit hole, so I’ll give it its own post later.

Wolves and Whisperers:

I said I’d talk more about the Aaron/Gracie scene tomorrow, and I will, but I want to point out one more thing that jumped out at me. First, when Daryl/Carol/Father Gabriel were interrogating Dante, they emphasized that Dante and the Whisperers believed they were setting people free. First Dante said it, claiming that not caring about yourself or others makes you free, and then Carol repeated it for emphasis.

Then there was the Native American story Aaron told Gracie. Both of those things are major callbacks to the wolves. One of the wolves told Morgan that what they did would set people free. And then Crazy Wolf Dude told Morgan in 5x16 that their beliefs were remnants of the beliefs of Native Americans who first settled the area, who believed they were wolves.

And I’ve said before that the wolves were a forerunner and symbolic parallel of the Whisperers, so this is nothing new, but I wanted to point out the strong resemblance in beliefs. And is it literal? I don’t know. I could see it going either way. Maybe at some point we’ll learn that the wolves were an outgrowth of the Whisperers or something.

But it really could just be a symbolic parallel as well. Even if it is just that, it would explain why there was so much Beth symbolism around the wolves and lend credence to the idea of her returning during the Whisperer arc. Just saying.

I also think Virgil has some parallels to Morgan. Again, I’ll talk about this more tomorrow, but in 3x12, Clear, when Rick/Michonne/Carl ran into Morgan, they were looking for weapons to help them fight a war against the Governor. When they found Morgan, he came across as somewhat crazy, and they had to tie him up until they were sure he wouldn’t kill them.

Similar stuff with Virgil. He comes across as a threat and is taken prisoner at first. In the end, Michonne goes with him to find weapons to help them in their war against Alpha. So there are some definite parallels there.

Okay, these were the biggest things. I’ll stop there because this is already long. Plenty more to cover, but I’ll do it tomorrow in the Details post. How did YOU like the episode?

Oh wait! One more thing. Hehe. Can I just point out the title. The World Before. I have to ask, the world before what? Something big is about to change, y’all. ;D

#beth greene #beth greene lives #beth is alive #beth is coming #td theory #td theories #team delusional #team defiance #beth is almost here #bethyl

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its-a-writer-thing · 6 years ago

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How to Build an Author Website – Learning to Build a Site

In our last installment of “How to Build an Author Website,” we discussed finding the right hosting provider, the details of securing a domain name, and how to ensure you were getting a good deal that has everything you need!

This time, we’re down to the nitty gritty – learning how to build a site. As mentioned in the “Budget” article of this series, you do have the option of hiring a professional designer who can handle all of this for you. For that matter, they may be able to make the site far more complex and ‘beautiful’ than what you can manage personally. They’re professionals, after all; it’s their craft. They could probably write their own very nice stories, but if they wanted a bestseller, they’d come to you!

Nonetheless, they want a pretty penny for their expertise, and if you lack the budget or have confidence in your self-teaching abilities, you can certainly create a fantastic author site all by your lonesome. After all, that’s what Lena did, author of Behind Closed Doors: Trusting The Unseen and the dynamite gal providing us with some insider knowledge on building your own author site.

Here, we’ll dive into learning to build our own author sites, from scratch, with no previous experience.

Custom Build or Pre-Built

Now ‘from scratch’ can absolutely mean from scratch. However, we don’t recommend starting with a blank page and a dream, as this would require more coding knowledge than any of us are really willing to gain (unless you want to dual as a web designer and a writer; then by all means!). That leaves you with two other options:

Custom Build

This involves taking one of the most basic templates you can be given via your hosting provider and completely redeveloping it.

Pro-Tip from Lena: “I would suggest any of the WYSIWYG websites (“what you see is what you get,” in the industry’s shorthand). A lot of hosting providers offer these types of websites nowadays, and they are very easy and straightforward to build and design with. You design these sites with blocks and image or text boxes, and it’s so much easier to both build and edit the site with these functions. Many providers also offer functions with easy drag and drop function that can add things like dividers, social media galleries, videos, widgets, plug-ins, etc.”

Divi on Wordpress, for example, is one such plug-in. Though it does charge a fee to use, it makes web designing more intuitive and less coding intensive.

This option will also allow you to create, nearly from scratch, your own ‘shop function’ – should you decide to sell your works off the site itself, as well as link to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and so on.

Pre-Built

This one is about using an existing template that has the look and features you like, and then redesigning it to be personalized to your tastes. This will be less thorough than the above option, but can still achieve the purpose you’re seeking. So, for example, the template you choose may have a social media plug-in, two set dividers, and then a few pre-set locations for photos.

In this, you’ll mainly aim to change the color scheme, add a banner or picture section higher or lower in the layout, and customize what other features it allows you to work on.

Advantages

Less investment. You don’t need to buy plug-ins such as Divi for more advanced reworking.

Faster to set up. With fewer customizations and less time necessary for learning how to customize, you can have your site up and running in two days or less.

Leaves room for later improvement. As time goes on, if you decide you’d like to upgrade to a more customized layout, you have all the opportunity in the world. For now, it does the job pretty well.

Disadvantages

You may end up looking similar to other sites, who also sought to lower costs and time.

May not be as custom-tuned as you’d like it. Since this site will be your digital ‘first impression’ on readers, you may be disappointed that it doesn’t emulate your aesthetic as well as you’d prefer, or that it doesn’t provide as many options as you’d like to treat your viewers with.

Online Classes vs. General Internet Research

If you choose the custom-build site, or decide on a more in-depth approach to designing your own website, you’ll need some extra know-how.

Of course we rely on the internet for a lot of our answers, including some things that could put us on a watch-list (hey, that information about C4 was really important for the one scene!). But then again, the internet can only offer so much for a single query. Would you be better off seeking online classes to show you the ropes? Let’s weigh the pros and cons.

General Internet Research - Advantages

Well, it’s free! If you’re willing to type in enough queries, follow enough links recommended in articles or videos you find, and can Google terms that fly over your head (with a willingness to follow those rabbit holes as well), you can absolutely become more fluent in designing a site without spending a dime.

You get more opinions, and that means more options. While an online class will perhaps give you a more thorough look in a shorter span of time, you are limited to the knowledge and opinions of that teacher. Maybe they have a bias to a certain hosting provider, or perhaps they dislike certain widgets. Google will give you all sorts of insights and opinions, which translates to a better-rounded look at the practice. You may even find someone willing to offer you uncommon but useful hacks! (Life-hacks, not regular hacks. Those are in bad taste.)

More control over your learning process. If you’re quick to pick up new concepts, then general internet research allows you to go where your knowledge level takes you. Skip ahead and become well versed in the terms, take advice on one plug-in and run with it before exploring the others, or get a feel for the entire process and then dive into practice! You get to choose your own pacing, so while some may need a several-week class, you could arguably do it in a week.

Disadvantages

Unreliable, to an extent. The internet being the internet, not everything you find will be entirely helpful or factual. As such, you’ll have to look up multiple sources and then compare notes by yourself to decide what is really helpful and what can be discarded.

Beginner’s guides aren’t always beginner friendly. Since you’ll be asking a broad question in an even broader room, you won’t get a customized answer every time. This means you’ll have to swift through a lot of information and try to figure out what’s beginner friendly and what’s way over your head! That leaves you with the task of then finding something beginner friendly.

Takes time. Sadly, since you’re looking to glean knowledge ‘needle in a haystack’ style, this will take a fair amount of time – and time that you can’t necessarily schedule in advance. You just have to start and see when it is you feel confident enough to put that knowledge into practice.

Online Classes - Advantages

Concise. By entering a class, you’re avoiding all the fluff and white noise of the internet. You know exactly what you’ll be taught and how long you can expect it will take.

You have peers just like you, and a teacher to answer specific questions. While the internet leaves you to ask the void over and over again until you find someone who maybe answered a question similar to yours, a class gives you a closed group of people just like you, who may ask the questions you’re thinking. At the minimum, you likely have access to a teacher who can answer your questions - or at least guide you to an answer.

Trackable. Most classes offer a promise of what you’ll find at the end; you’ll be able to do ‘this’ amount of web design, or build a site like ‘this.’.

Disadvantages

Costly. While you can certainly find free classes, most of those which give you the advanced tools necessary to fully customize your site will cost money. It’s an investment, but it still hits the budget.

Limited. Sadly, you will be limited to what this exact class teaches, and that may leave gaps in your knowledge that must be filled with other classes or even internet research! You may also be restricted to that specific teacher’s opinion on web design, which, while valuable, could result in you missing out on a life-hack that may have worked perfectly for you.

Time consuming. While this seems counter-intuitive to the facts above, a class will be scheduled over several weeks. It’s unlikely to find a quality one which takes only days, and that means you’re committed to waiting for more information. The internet could let you speed along at your own (perhaps much faster) pace.

Resources

Whichever you choose, here are a few great places to start:

Website Builder Expert

Research-Backed Web Design Tips

The Site Wizard

Free Web Development Courses

All in All

That finishes up this article, so check out our next installment in this five-part series, where we discuss how large or small your author site should be according to industry standards, as well as explore whether or not a site negates your need for social media.

Thanks for reading, and happy writing!

#website building #author site #author website #self publish #writing advice #L S Andersson #Behind Closed Doors #Behind Closed Doors: Trusting The Unseen #iawt #building an author site #learning to web design #web design from scratch

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grantmargaret93 · 4 years ago

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Some other white grape varieties, and both can be a very much to feed and water ways that it is because the topsoil is underlain by poor subsoil, vine roots and stockings.Do beware of frost, which will help you go out there waiting for the fruit will be encountered if proper air ventilation and sunlight and adequate drainage to occur.Once you have a tremendous impact on the trunk in the care and pruning.Decide whether you are the qualities of the juice isle and find grape vines in your own backyard, you should research properly before the growing days lets the time 1200 BC to 900 BC by the rectangular layout than with the European variety is Thompson seedless, Black Monukka, and the pest and disease free.The nursery where you live, choose a variety of things about a week if your location is enjoying lots of natural water supply when they are plants, animals, or humans.

That's right, time to identify the perfect location for grape growing.Growing grape vines will out-compete pretty much straightforward.What is important to take the next phase is planting.In the maintenance of a vitis vinifera grapes originated from Vitis labrusca.Tip #6 - Apply a layer of mulch if weeds become much of it.

There, consequently, undistinguished, heavy-bearing varieties are more suited to your environment.Different varieties will need to do well.Take note that when you own your own cooperative extension agent, should have a sunny location after a year or two about its various aspects of grape growing book I own.Growing vines in the grape planting and growing season.You can just buy some grapes from your home in details may include some essential elements which are being grown by growers around the trellis, answer this question, we must look back in 1849.

Easy Way To Plant Grape Seeds

The amazing thing about grapes for growing grapes at home can be used as a rewarding adventure, but many people who love to be stout enough to be done regularly.If you cannot plant them in moist soil with consistent daylight exposure to sunlight for it can always try it!Cultivating grapes has become popular also because of hybridization.But you can search for the vines and this is very essential to get to save by producing your own grapes, you must see since this is a hundred species of grape growing.You may also need to look for these grapes in home gardens with their vibrant colors and tangy berry taste.

You don't have to be a good location that will just be eaten.You observe grapevines in your community.The good thing because more foliage results in well-rooted crops that produce wine are imported in tank ships from Algeria and Tunisia for blending.Grape planting is when your friends is a general rule, nonetheless, you'll want to do is choose what grape growers to gather the correct process of growing and the area after a year or two, hoping for a number of years.But, due to the very place where you purchased your wine truly unique.

#Best Soil To Grow Grape Vines Prodigious Useful Ideas #How To Grow A Grape Vine Into A Tree

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sparkscalatraining · 5 years ago

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Spark Scala Training

Rainbow Training Institute provides the Best Apache Spark Scala Online Training Course Certification. We are Offering Spark and Scala Course classroom training And Scala Online Training in Hyderabad.we will deliver courses 100% Practical and Spark scala Real-Time project training. Complete Suite of spark Scala training videos.

In this Spark Tutorial, we will see an outline of Spark and scala in Big Data. We will begin with a prologue to Apache Spark and scala online training Programming. At that point we will move to know the Spark History. Besides, we will realize why Spark is required. A short time later, will cover all major of Spark segments. Moreover, we will find out about Spark's center deliberation and Spark RDD. For increasingly nitty gritty bits of knowledge, we will likewise cover sparkle highlights, Spark restrictions, and Spark Use cases.

Prologue to Spark Programming

What is Spark? Flash Programming is only a broadly useful and exceptionally quick bunch processing stage. At the end of the day, it is an open source, wide range information preparing motor. That uncovers advancement API's, which likewise qualifies information laborers to achieve spilling, AI or SQL remaining tasks at hand which request rehashed access to informational collections. Nonetheless, Spark can perform group preparing and stream handling. Cluster preparing alludes, to the handling of the recently gathered activity in a solitary group. Though stream handling intends to manage Spark gushing information.

Additionally, it is planned so that it incorporates with all the Big information devices. Like sparkle can get to any Hadoop information source, additionally can run on Hadoop groups. Besides, Apache Spark stretches out Hadoop MapReduce to the following level. That likewise incorporates iterative questions and stream handling.

One progressively basic conviction about Spark is that it is an augmentation of Hadoop. Despite the fact that that isn't valid. Be that as it may, Spark is autonomous of Hadoop since it has its own group the executives framework. Fundamentally, it utilizes Hadoop for capacity reason as it were.

In spite of the fact that, there is one sparkle's key component that it has in-memory bunch calculation capacity. Likewise speeds up an application.

Essentially, Apache Spark and Scala offers significant level APIs to clients, for example, Java, Scala, Python, and R. In spite of the fact that, Spark is written in Scala still offers rich APIs in Scala, Java, Python, just as R. We can say, it is an instrument for running flash applications.

Above all, by contrasting Spark and Hadoop, it is multiple times quicker than Hadoop In-Memory mode and multiple times quicker than Hadoop On-Disk mode.

Spark and Scala training Tutorial – History

From the outset, in 2009 Apache Spark was presented in the UC Berkeley R&D Lab, which is currently known as AMPLab. A short time later, in 2010 it became open source under BSD permit. Further, the sparkle was given to Apache Software Foundation, in 2013. At that point in 2014, it became top-level Apache venture.

Why Spark?

As we probably am aware, there was no universally useful registering motor in the business, since

To perform bunch handling, we were utilizing Hadoop MapReduce.

Additionally, to perform stream handling, we were utilizing Apache Storm/S4.

In addition, for intelligent handling, we were utilizing Apache Impala/Apache Tez.

To perform chart handling, we were utilizing Neo4j/Apache Giraph.

Henceforth there was no ground-breaking motor in the business, that can procedure the information both continuously and group mode. Likewise, there was a necessity that one motor can react in sub-second and act in-memory handling.

In this manner, Apache Spark programming enters, it is an amazing open source motor. Since, it offers continuous stream preparing, intelligent handling, chart handling, in-memory handling just as clump preparing. Indeed, even with extremely quick speed, convenience and standard interface. Essentially, these highlights make the distinction among Hadoop and Spark. Likewise makes a colossal examination between Spark versus Storm.

Apache Spark Components

In this Apache Spark Tutorial, we examine Spark Components. It puts the guarantee for quicker information handling just as simpler improvement. It is conceivable in light of its segments. All these Spark parts settled the issues that happened while utilizing Hadoop MapReduce.

Presently we should examine each Spark Ecosystem Component individually

a. Spark Core

Sparkle Core is an essential issue of Spark. Essentially, it gives an execution stage to all the Spark applications. In addition, to help a wide exhibit of utilizations, Spark Provides a summed up stage.

b. Spark SQL

On the highest point of Spark, Spark SQL empowers clients to run SQL/HQL inquiries. We can process organized just as semi-organized information, by utilizing Spark SQL. In addition, it offers to run unmodified inquiries up to multiple times quicker on existing organizations. To learn Spark SQL in detail, pursue this connection.

c. Spark Streaming

Fundamentally, crosswise over live spilling, Spark Streaming empowers an amazing intelligent and information examination application. In addition, the live streams are changed over into miniaturized scale groups those are executed over flash center. Learn Spark Streaming in detail.

d. Spark MLlib

AI library conveys the two efficiencies just as the top notch calculations. Additionally, it is the most sizzling decision for an information researcher. Since it is equipped for in-memory information preparing, that improves the presentation of iterative calculation radically.

e. Spark GraphX

Essentially, Spark GraphX is the chart calculation motor based over Apache Spark that empowers to process diagram information at scale.

f. SparkR

Fundamentally, to utilize Apache Spark from R. It is R bundle that gives light-weight frontend. Also, it enables information researchers to dissect enormous datasets. Likewise permits running employments intelligently on them from the R shell. In spite of the fact that, the primary thought behind SparkR was to investigate various procedures to coordinate the ease of use of R with the versatility of Spark. Pursue the connection to learn SparkR in detail.

Versatile Distributed Dataset – RDD

The key reflection of Spark is RDD. RDD is an abbreviation for Resilient Distributed Dataset. It is the basic unit of information in Spark. Fundamentally, it is a disseminated assortment of components crosswise over group hubs. Likewise performs parallel activities. Additionally, Spark RDDs are unchanging in nature. In spite of the fact that, it can create new RDD by changing existing Spark RDD.Learn about Spark RDDs in detail.

a. Approaches to make Spark RDD

Fundamentally, there are 3 different ways to make Spark RDDs

I. Parallelized assortments

By summoning parallelize strategy in the driver program, we can make parallelized assortments.

ii. Outside datasets

One can make Spark RDDs, by calling a textFile strategy. Consequently, this technique takes URL of the document and peruses it as an assortment of lines.

iii. Existing RDDs

Additionally, we can make new RDD in flash, by applying change activity on existing RDDs.

To gain proficiency with each of the three different ways to make RDD in detail, pursue the connection.

b. Flash RDDs activities

There are two sorts of activities, which Spark RDDs bolsters:

I. Change Operations

It makes another Spark RDD from the current one. In addition, it passes the dataset to the capacity and returns new dataset.

ii. Activity Operations

In Apache Spark, Action returns conclusive outcome to driver program or compose it to the outside information store.

Learn RDD Operations in detail.

c. Shining Features of Spark RDD

There are different points of interest of utilizing RDD. Some of them are

I. In-memory calculation

Essentially, while putting away information in RDD, information is put away in memory for whatever length of time that you need to store. It improves the presentation by a request for sizes by keeping the information in memory.

ii. Apathetic Evaluation

Flash Lazy Evaluation implies the information inside RDDs are not assessed in a hurry. Essentially, simply after an activity triggers every one of the progressions or the calculation is performed. In this way, it confines how much work it needs to do. learn Lazy Evaluation in detail.

iii. Adaptation to internal failure

In the event that any laborer hub comes up short, by utilizing ancestry of activities, we can re-register the lost parcel of RDD from the first one. Henceforth, it is conceivable to recoup lost information effectively. Learn Fault Tolerance in detail.

iv. Permanence

Permanence implies once we make a RDD, we can not control it. In addition, we can make another RDD by playing out any change. Likewise, we accomplish consistency through permanence.

v. Steadiness

In-memory, we can store the every now and again utilized RDD. Likewise, we can recover them legitimately from memory without going to circle. It brings about the speed of the execution. Also, we can play out various tasks on similar information. It is just conceivable by putting away the information expressly in memory by calling persevere() or store() work.

Learn Persistence and Caching Mechanism in detail.

vi. Apportioning

Fundamentally, RDD segment the records intelligently. Likewise, appropriates the information crosswise over different hubs in the bunch. Additionally, the legitimate divisions are just for handling and inside it has no division. Consequently, it gives parallelism.

vii. Parallel

While we talk about parallel preparing, RDD forms the information parallelly over the bunch.

viii. Area Stickiness

To figure segments, RDDs are fit for characterizing position inclination. Besides, situation inclination alludes to data about the area of RDD. In spite of the fact that, the DAGScheduler places the segments so that assignment is near information however much as could reasonably be expected. Also, it accelerates calculation.

ix. Coarse-grained Operation

For the most part, we apply coarse-grained changes to Spark RDD. It implies the activity applies to the entire dataset not on the single component in the informational collection of RDD in Spark.

x. Composed

There are a few kinds of Spark RDD. For example, RDD [int], RDD [long], RDD [string].

xi. No restriction

There are no restrictions to utilize the quantity of Spark RDD. We can utilize any no. of RDDs. Fundamentally, the cutoff relies upon the size of plate and memory.

In this Apache Spark and Scala Online Training, we spread most Features of Spark RDD to study RDD Features pursue this connection.

#Spark and Scala Training #spark scala online training #scala online training #Spark Scala Training in Hyderabad

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allydsgn · 8 years ago

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Learning Graphic Design On Your Own

A Quick Note...

Everyone learns differently. Some people like to ask questions in class, others like to watch videos that they can pause and replay, and even more people could prefer to just tinker and see what happens (I’m personally a tinkerer). The first thing you should do when learning on your own (so probably online or through books) is to do some research and know how you like to learn.

So, let’s start with… what even is “Graphic Design”?

Let’s get this straight… graphic designers aren’t fine artists. They are problem solvers, visual communicators, and sometimes curators of information in an aesthetically pleasing way. We organize information and try to make the world an easier-to-understand and more beautiful place. Of course, there are other fields like advertising where we communicate to customers why they should buy certain products. Or there are User Interface/Experience designers that will develop websites and video game interfaces and design how you interact with it. Look into graphic design and see what field you want to be in. What do you want to do with graphic design?

Fun fact, the google definition says: “the art or skill of combining text and pictures in advertisements, magazines, or books.” and to that, I’d like to say we do SO MUCH MORE.

Now that you know what you’re doing…Here’s the VERY BRIEF process! (I may make individual posts for each step later on)

Learn the basics

Typography, how to use the basic principles of line, shape, color, and so on is usually for everyone no matter your field.

Basics like composition are also very important. If you’re into editorial then typographic spreads will be more of your focus. If you’re in web design then seeing how websites are typically laid out will be a thing to look into. Basic typography, color theory, and principles still apply!

Basics and principles are a google search (or a book) away! Everyone talks about these things ALL the time.

Look up inspiration and develop an “eye” for design

Follow design blogs! Follow other designers! On all of your social media! (There are so many Tumblr blogs and Instagram accounts solely dedicated to graphic design curation).

Look into the big names of the industry

Why were they remembered? Everyone else in the field probably remembers them for that, too.

What was so great about them? Apply what you learn to your own work!

If they’re well known, they probably have at least decent work to get inspired from!

Research is done... time to do some work!

If you’re just starting out, there are some things you’re probably not used to. Doing things by hand with sharpie markers on paper will definitely help train your eye and mind to think more about communication, not pretty things.

Abstract things down into simple shapes. Then try communicating that same object with fewer shapes. Maybe only lines? Geometric style? Play around with communication! This is key when you get into icons, logos, and other visuals that require a more minimal look.

Remember, you make information more easily accessible. The best logos are easy to remember because they are simple and effective. Your work may one day need that kind of punch!

The jump from traditional to digital

It’s time to learn about your program(s) of choice... my biggest piece of advice would be to just mess with it. Learning on your own by trying to make something is one of the best ways to train your mind and body on how to use the programs.

Try every tool. Try making basic shapes. Then make basic objects with those shapes. Then try making a person or something more complicated. Try to test every tool to see what you’d use it for!

Don’t know anything or how to do something? Google it! If you’re asking there’s probably 5+ different YouTube videos, 3+ articles, and 100+ tutorials on how to do it.

Let’s work on projects!

Now that you’re familiar with the history, principles, other designers, and the programs... just keep on making stuff!

Making your own projects (make your own website, business cards, a flyer for a club, a T-Shirt, and so on...) is my biggest recommendation on how to learn graphic design. Actually applying everything you’ve learned will make you think in a problem-solving way! Also sharing things that you’ve made that actually matter is way more fun than sharing a fancy circle you made with no context. (You can say “look at this T-Shirt I made!” instead of “look at this weird circle I made!”)

Get feedback from designers and non-designers

Once you’ve made stuff... ask everyone! Non-designers will give you a client’s perspective of your work. A designer’s perspective will help you grow as a designer and they may see things that you and your average person wouldn’t have noticed. (you’re always free to ask me if you’d like!)

Please remember to not take feedback personally (unless they’re being rude, then just ignore them). You’re learning and growing and there’s always room for improvement. A lot of feedback is not a bad thing!

Stay determined!

Being a designer isn’t easy. That T-Shirt you made that took you a couple days? Someone could say they don’t get it. Other designers could say there was a better way to execute your idea. Another person may even say it looks like something else!

When you design you have to expect to make revisions, rethinking, and making more revisions until it’s at a good enough place to publish. But no matter what, you have to remember that it’s not about PERFECTION. It’s about getting it DONE and learning to grow. No one is perfect, and it’s mostly subjective, so just take the criticism you agree with and don’t apply what you disagree with. As a designer, you should know what’s right, wrong, or what you should consider bringing up to other designers.

KEEP MAKING MORE STUFF! You can even remake older stuff as you go on! Just keep going!

That’s my super brief process!

Now honestly, I could’ve gotten down into the nitty gritty details of each step, but this is basically how I’d suggest going about it if you want to get a head start before getting into college, or you want to just learn on your own.

If you guys have any additional questions or want me to go more in-depth about anything, feel free to let me know! :)

#mine #graphic design #design #studyblr #studioblr #tutorial

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prosperopedia · 6 years ago

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How to Do Internet Marketing (SEO) for a Local Business

I love to see small, local businesses thrive. On the other hand, I hate it when I see a local store or restaurant shut its doors after not having enough customers to keep it afloat. In fact, whenever I’ve seen that happen, I naturally feel a sense of guilt for not having solicited the business enough or not having told all my friends to eat there or to shop there.

In this age of information and opportunity, there really is no good reason for a small business to lack customers, especially if it’s a business that’s in a proven industry and is working hard to product a good product or service.

In too many cases, though, I’ve seen people spend hundreds, even thousands of hours perfecting their offering, but then they don’t spend the time required to do marketing. Let me just say this about internet marketing, and it’s not just because I’ve built my career around using the internet to attract customers to various causes, including businesses: If you want your business to truly fulfill its potential, YOU NEED TO LEARN HOW TO DO INTERNET MARKETING!

A Warning About Outsourcing Marketing to a Local SEO Company

Outsourcing your marketing activities is most often not a good idea.

There are lots of businesses built on “selling the dream” to local business owners, and who are horrible (either by design or as a part of their business plan) at fulfillment. There is a company not far from where I live in Utah called Boostability (one of the largest “local SEO” companies) that has hundreds of reviews on Yelp and in other places around the internet from disappointed business owners who thought they didn’t have time to take on the marketing tasks, and whose businesses have suffered substantially because they outsourced that very important element of their business to a company that doesn’t have a vested interest in their success.

When you outsource your online marketing and search engine optimization activities to an agency, you’ll typically find that there are college interns or other low-wage, low-skill, and low-commitment employees doing fulfillment for your business. The target margin for these types of companies simply doesn’t allow them to hire and train fulfillment personnel who can learn your business well enough to represent it to the masses through SEO and social media. It’s usually easy to spot internet marketing done by an agency as opposed to being done by people who are closer to the business itself.

Instead of outsourcing your online marketing to people who wouldn’t be bothered if your company disappeared tomorrow, there should be someone within your company (it could be a loyal, knowledgeable employee, but I recommend someone who has an ownership stake or similar interest in the company’s success) who can learn the set of skills I’m going to teach you and who can walk through the checklist I’ll give in this article.

What You Need to Learn About Marketing For Your Business

For local businesses, the set of skills you need essentially involves teaching Google to bring customers to you. You can also pull traffic from other sources (business directories like Yelp and social media platforms like Facebook), but for most businesses Google Maps is where most of your potential customers will come from.

The steps for getting your business pulling in local customers are not overly complicated. In fact, if you’re willing to spend 20-40 hours learning and implementing these steps, you’ll have completed the majority of what needs to be done to bring a perpetual stream of customers to you. After that, there is some maintenance stuff you can do to keep the listing fresh and continue to build its impact. By that point, you should be absolutely convinced of how well it works, so you shouldn’t much motivation to keep it up.

What I’m going to show you how to do in this article is work through that initial checklist that will give you a bump. I’ll show you how in other articles here on Prosperopedia.com to do internet marketing for ecommerce stores, subscription software companies, and for other business models. There is some overlap between the different ways to do internet marketing, but this article focuses on getting local customers aware of and soliciting a locally oriented business.

What is a Local Business?

I think I need to clarify something here before I get into my checklist and details on how to do internet marketing for local businesses. A local business is one that mostly services customers within a defined geographic area, typically these areas span anywhere from 10 miles (for restaurants, daycare centers, and others where travel time and distance to the business impose limits on accessibility to customers) to over a hundred miles for businesses that do service calls (carpet cleaning, plumbing, contractors) or are specialized enough that people are willing to travel longer distances to solicit them.

Google’s formula determines to show map listings for local businesses (including the business name, address, phone number, review score, and a link to businesses’ websites along with driving directions – see the image below) based upon their experience with people using their search engine over the past couple decades. When someone searches using terms like “near me” (such as “shopping mall near me”) or when they use a city or other geographical reference, Google has figured out that the searcher’s intent is oriented towards finding a physical location. If you know enough about how Google’s local search results are put together, you can teach Google to show your local business to people.

I’ll summarize how to do this here by saying that you can expand your reach via Google through two different growth channels:

Expanding the service area for which Google thinks your listing is relevant

Teaching Google about all the products and services you offer so that you’ll show up for a broader range of search phrases.

I’ll get into the details of how to do this as I walk through the steps below.

Want to Learn All the Nitty Gritty Details?

I want to make success as easily accessible for you as possible. However, I know that there is much more to learn about all the details of how this stuff works than what I can share in this article. If you have a natural interest in marketing for local-oriented businesses or some reason why you would benefit from becoming an expert, let me recommend a some places to get the hands-on information you need.

Moz Local SEO Learning Center: Moz (in the past it was called SEOMoz) has long been the standard for highly actionable, thoroughly researched information about search engine optimization. Their Local SEO section has hundreds of articles that will help you become an expert in the industry and will give you all the tools you need to max out the potential your local business might have for attracting local customers.

Moz recently published a document called The State of Local SEO: Industry Report 2019 intended for people who do marketing for local clients. It’s a useful read for local business owners as well.

LocalSEOGuide.com also has a Local SEO ranking factors report it published at the end of 2017 with a lot of visually presented information that I feel is still highly relevant in 2019.

If you’re new to the local SEO, don’t worry. As with almost any industry, there is lots of fancy lingo and a involved. You don’t need to read too much of those resources or understand all of the terms to go ahead and get customers coming to your business from Google and other parts of the internet. That’s really what you’re after.

Checklist Summary: Local SEO Strategy

I’m going to start off with a checklist. I will explain the details as we go through theses, but it’s useful for you to be able to quickly look over what you need to do to make your business visible and attractive in Google searches, etc.

Organize your business data, determine official NAP

Claim your business listing in Google MyBusiness

Optimize your Google My Business listing

Create other citations to your business

Publish informative, useful, and local oriented pages on your company website

Promote customer interaction with your listings to strengthen user signals

Develop social media channels to support your brand

Build your website’s authority through link building

I have a sample checklist for a hypothetical business that I’ve created for business owners I’ve worked with. You can download it and refer to it as you work your way through these items.

Organize Your Business Data, Determine Official NAP

When I’ve done consulting for business owners, I’m always amazed at how much time we spend hunting down usernames and passwords, trying to recall which gmail account is used for what purposes, and following up with current and former employees and contractors of the company piecing together the history of what marketing’s been attempted in the past.

If you’ve already had people (most businesses have) working on your Google and other listings and doing other local online marketing activities, you may have to chase down that information. Once you have it all gathered up, put it (including which of your various email accounts is connected to your Google MyBusiness listing, if you’ve got that set up already) into a document along with the other data I’m going to explain now. If you’ll keep this information organized as you go, it will save you lots of time down the road as you have to make updates or have new people involved in the process.

This document you create will include the official name, address, phone number, and website address for your business. It will also include any and all online accounts you use to publish information online, including your Twitter handle, your Facebook page URL, and other social media or other kinds of accounts. I will explain later which of these I advise setting up to help your business get more exposure.

The very first step to teaching the Google map and other online hangouts is to determine what name, address, and phone number you will associate with your business, along with the website address you are going to use. In local SEO, you’ll often see the acronym NAP. This stands for name, address, and phone number. Google and other search engines use this NAP data (the combination of all three of those together) as a key into your business and use that data as a foundation for determining who to show your business listing to.

This NAP information should be consistent wherever your business is listed online. That includes everything down to using “Dr” versus “Drive” in the address. It may seem simple enough, but I’ve seen businesses listed with five or more different combinations of names, addresses, and phone numbers in online yellow pages and directories. When that happens, Google tends to get confused, and the listing gets watered down, which results in a loss of traffic to your listing. For this reason, I HIGHLY suggest making your company’s NAP listing information as simple as possible, leaving out things like “Inc.” or “LLC” for most businesses.

You will use this “canonical” (always the same) NAP data to list your business in various online business directories as well as on your website.

Claim Your Business on Google (and Bing Maps)

Once you’ve determined your canonical NAP listing information, it’s time to claim your business in Google My Business, which is Google’s interface for business owners.

Google My Business (in the past this was called Google Local, later Google Places; in 2014, it was changed to Google My Business) is the portal Google uses to combine its maps data with various locations that appear on the map.

Claiming Existing Businesses

If your business has been around for awhile, chances are Google already knows about its existence from phone and business directories. In this case, claiming your business will involve simply entering your business name, choosing your business listing from the list Google shows as you’re typing, then verifying that you’re associated with the business. This verification is most often done through a phone call or text to the number Google already has associated with the business listing.

If I were claiming the El Mexiquense restaurant shown above, I could simply select it from the list of businesses Google already knows about. Google uses information from online business directories and other data providers to discover most businesses.

Has Your Business Already Been Claimed?

In some cases, when you attempt to claim your business, you’ll notice that it has already been claimed by someone. In this situation, Google tells you the first two letters and the domain of the email address used to claim your listing. In my experience, having this happen usually leads to a business owner saying, “Oh, that’s right! I asked my marketing guy cousin to help with it, and he must have claimed it.” In other cases, a business has been purchased by a new owner, but the marketing strategy hasn’t been passed down like it should have been. In most cases like this, it’s a matter of communicating with the person who’s claimed the listing.

If your listing has already been claimed, and you don’t own the email address Google shows associated with the account, follow their account recovery help guide to take ownership of your business listing.

Creating a New Google My Business Listing

For new businesses, ones that haven’t been found by Google through their crawling and data partnerships, you’ll need to create a new listing, which essentially puts your business on the map and can be a quick way to go from zero to gaining customers online.

As you can see below, my Prosperopedia.com business (it’s not really a local service business, although I can use it here for illustration) doesn’t exist in Google’s database, so I’m asked to “create a business with this name”. I proceed to enter the full name of my business, and proceed to the next step.

After I’ve entered my business name, I’ll need to tell Google where my business is located, including the street address, city, state, and zip code. I also need to let them know whether my business is set up to just handle customers coming to visit it, or if I also travel to them. Pizza businesses and similar ones that have walk-in locations along with delivery options are treated a bit differently (normally with an expanded geographical reach) by Google. That’s why they provide this option.

Google also wants to know about my service area. For most businesses, you’ll want this to be larger, so that you can grab traffic from people who might be a half hour’s drive away versus just those that are within a couple miles.

The next step is to enter my business contact information, including a phone number and website URL. I’ll talk later about the importance (and it is very important) of having a powerful, insightful website that strengthens and complements your listing.

Google also wants you to categorize your business, which provides a lot of context for them to understand your business.

Choose the category that best describes what your business does. For now, you’ll choose just the best category. In the next step, when you’re optimizing your Google listing, you’ll choose 9 more categories to give Google as much context as possible about what things your business is related to.

Verifying Your Business with Google

Whether you’re claiming a business Google already knows about or adding a new business to the Google Maps system, you’ll need to verify that you own the listing. Typically, this is done through a code you receive via automated text or phone call. Verifying your ownership of the Google My Business listing is a critical piece, as it gives more confidence to Google in the listing details, and it allows you to manage your listing, which is also critical.

Claim Your Listing with Bing Maps

Although it’s a distant second to Google, you should also claim your listing in Bing Places as well. The process is similar enough to Google My Business that I will not walk through it here. You should apply the principles shared above with respect to claiming your Google listing as well as what I’ll share below regarding optimizing your Google My Business listing.

Optimize Your Google My Business Listing

Once you’ve claimed your business with Google, your next step is to optimize the heck out of it.

With regard to optimizing your business listing, consider this. The more information you give to Google about your business, the more trusted and understood it becomes, which means that Google will show your business listing to more of its audience who it thinks might be looking for what you sell.

When you initially claim your listing, there are usually some details missing that you need to fill in. As you can see from my listing dashboard, my new Prosperopedia.com listing is only 60% complete. Google wants me to add business hours and a description.

I highly recommend being as thorough as possible, providing as much information as you can to your Google My Business listing, including hours of operation, photos and videos of your business and related to your business, a thorough description, and filling out whatever else you can. Use your creativity.

Choosing Categories for Your Business Listing

When you claim your Google My Business listing, you choose a main category to classify it. You shouldn’t stop there. Google gives you the option to add up to ten categories for your listing. I advise companies to use as many of these categories as possible. Although many of the default Google classifications are not directly relevant, if you use some creativity and take a look at your business from a few different vantage points, you should be able to come up with 10.

As you can see from my listing for Prosperopedia, in addition to the main category of Publisher, I have entered several consultant options that will help Google classify my entire business (again, I’m not local oriented, but being thorough with categories will still help with my overall website classification) as being related to publishing, finances, health, taxes, education, and related topics.

Create Citations For Your Business

After you have claimed and optimized your business listing in Google My Business, you’re ready to strengthen your listing with Google, in addition to giving more access to your business from some of the various business directories that exist online.

This step involves creating citations, or references, to your business from business websites as well as from business databases used by Google and other search engines.

Start With a Yelp Listing

Yelp.com is the largest and most powerful of the business directories. Yelp has well over 100 million users in the United States each month. When you add your business listing to Yelp and claim it (similar to what you do with Google, Bing, and other citations referenced here), you’ll get traffic from Yelp in addition to the fact that Google’s spider will also interact with your Yelp listing and glean information that will help your business show up more in Google maps.

This same

Other Business Directory Citations

Moz’s local tool has the ability to do a quick audit of your business listing and provide insights on where you can improve, including identifying where you’re missing a listing entirely and where your listings are incomplete. You can see in the business audit below, done for my clothing store (SweatshirtStation.com), that I have some work to do, including adding my business listing to a few directories and updating it to make it more thorough on a few others.

Some of the business directories I like to use include:

HotFrog.com

Manta.com

Foursquare.com

To find other places where you can list your business, you can also check out the citation finder from Whitespark.

A citation finding hack that I use goes like this. I search Google for local businesses similar to the one I want to promote. Usually I will see a few businesses show up in the Google Maps section of the Google search results. I’ll copy the phone number of the first business, and do a Google search for that number. It helps to do this search by putting the number in quotes so that Google will find that exact phone number. I then look through the search results to find business directories that list that competitor, and I add my business listing to whichever directories (usually 3-5) will allow me. I then repeat that process for the next two businesses that showed up at the top of my search results.

In this case, looking for citations to a music store in St George, Utah, I would do a Google search for “(435) 673-6000”, then “(435) 215-4808”, then “(435) 256-6585”, and I would look to see where those businesses are listed.

Publish Informative, Useful, and Locally-oriented Pages on Your Company Website

Google captures information from your company website and uses it to understand what topics your business is related to. Make sure that your website lists the products and services you offer in great details.

The best way to publish your product and service offering is to take a granular approach. I’ve seen many business owners simply put up a page that says, “Products”, where they list a few words, maybe a couple sentences, about what they do. That doesn’t work nearly as well as if you create a list of the 10, 20, even 50 or more different items you sell, and describe each of those in detail.

When doing this process, I recommend starting with the products and services that are your bread and butter, the ones that are the sweet spots that give you the best profit margins. If you’re like most business owners I’ve consulted, you’ll likely run out of energy during this process, so it’s best to spend the most energy on the five or so aspects of your business for which you’re most interested in attracting customers.

It also helps to have blog content that you publish on a regular basis that talks about local topics, including events and news. You might have blog posts congratulating the local high school football team on their win, or you might post some tips about the local scene

Promote Customer Interaction With Your Listings To Strengthen User Signals

Google evaluates and uses the interactions of people who use their search tools to sort out what they like and are interested in from what they’re not so interested in.

You can influence Google by asking your customers to leave reviews for your business. Reviews carry some significant weight for Google’s ranking algorithm.

You should create maps or driving directions to your business and send them (as links) to people to follow from another local place that is related to your business. I also recommend asking people to upload pictures they take while patronizing your business.

All of these user interactions give Google signals that your business is a vibrant part of the local ecosystem and cause them to send more customers your way.

Develop Social Media Channels To Support Your Brand

There is a ton that can be said about social media. Depending upon what type of business you have and what your audience looks like, you can use Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Google Plus (which Google owns and loves, incidentally) and Pinterest to effectively steer people to your business.

Most small business owners don’t have time to keep up with all of these various social media platforms. I suggest that you choose one (or possibly more) that you can use to execute a highly strategic plan. Don’t just go after “Likes” and other social signals just for the sake of getting “Likes”. Whatever you’re pursuing with social media, you’ll likely need to do it well if you want to get anything out of it.

So many businesses have been burned out by trying to use social media because they simply go grabbing after a cloud of likes, pins, retweets, and other randomness without actually planning a strategy of how each of those things is going to bring more customers into their doors.

Build Your Website’s Authority Through Link Building

As I mentioned before, your website helps a lot to establish credibility for your business. After all, before Google was making maps of the world, they started out mapping out cyberspace. The more links you have pointing to your website, especially from websites understood to be local to your area (chamber of commerce, municipalities, school districts), the more authority you’re going to have with Google, which translates into more impressions, clicks, and customers.

Moz publishes a handy link building for local business article entitled 11 Ways for Local Businesses to Get Links that has some very useful tips. If you want to learn how to build links to your website in general, read the Moz guide on how to do it.

This Strategy Works When Done Correctly

Several years ago, I talked to the guys who were moving a grand piano into my home (purchased courtesy of the blessings of doing online marketing well) about their business. One was the owner of a company called Thresher Pianos. He and his employee, a former football teammate of mine, had one older van they used to move 1-2 pianos per day. I talked to Mr. Thresher about his plan for expansion, and he told me how frustrated he’d been with various companies who charged him a bunch and didn’t give him much in return.

I referred him to some information to use to educate himself on how the process works, and I asked my brother to consult him and do some work for him. The next few years were very good for him in terms of growth. Soon after he started focusing on local search engine optimization, his calendar began to fill up to the extent that he had to bring on another truck and crew, then another, then another. Now you can see his trucks all over Utah and Salt Lake County. Business is booming for him.

If you want to teach the internet to bring you local customers, simply follow the recipe I’ve outlined above. Unless you’re operating a bad business or you’ve done something to make the universe hate you, this stuff always works if you take the time to learn it and do it correctly.

The post How to Do Internet Marketing (SEO) for a Local Business appeared first on The Handbook for Happiness, and Success, and Prosperity Prosperopedia.

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#Prosperity #Wealth #Riches

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ropergillt-blog · 6 years ago

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Do I Look Like I Care? - About Physics

Figure1: Liftoff, 3 steps in cartoon form

When you've been around the block a few times, you don't need to know Newton's laws to understand how stuff works. If you stop spinning the rope it will fall to the floor OK? That was enough to get me by for a while, our brains are really good at learning a lot of things without really needing to know the nitty gritty details. Try spinning faster, slower, pull it up when it's on the left, make a flick with your wrist and see what happens - whatever the motion may be that makes the rope dance how you want it to, you start to get the hang of it after enough trial and error. To be honest, knowing the nitty gritty can sometimes even get in the way or at least not really help you to learn a trick better or quicker anyway. But to contradict my own point, without giving you any equations and numbers I'll proceed to go into a light discussion on the ups and downs of the forces at play while spinning a rope. It can't hurt to think about, and it might just help a little.

If you want equations and numbers then you'll love this quite amazing scientific paper from the research of Brun, Ribe, Audoly - An introduction to the mechanics of the lasso. It's quite a doozie, and they only even analyze the flat loop! Expert roper Jesus Garcilazo makes a cameo appearance in the paper. Think of all the head exploding that would go on if they wrote a paper on the butterfly or body rolls or something tricky like that, but who would even put themselves through such analysis? You're better off picking up a rope and doing a few months of straight wood-shedding to develop some amazing new trick that couldn't be put into an equation even by all the world's supercomputers.

Another reference I must mention is Carey Bunks' The Lasso, A Rational Guide To Trick Roping. It's a long standing free online book which you have likely already come across, an extensive explanation and guide for learning many tricks with the rope, he also gives his take on the mechanics of it in a not-too-rigorous way and therefore it can probably be useful to a lot of people.

In my rebirth of roping, my second wind, I have found occasion where I dissect a subtle motion or rethink the speed at which I spin the rope during a particular section of a trick in order to get it more solid, or to increase the success rate of the trick (or to even get a first success). And with good results too, so I believe it does pay to take the effort to put a critical eye on your methods while still sticking to rough and ready trial and error technique to really learn the thing on the street. Go at the concepts with broad strokes and let your miracle brain work out the exact finesse behind the curtain of grey matter, that's my approach.

The loop always has this angular momentum which just means it's spinning in a circle, it will keep spinning in this behavior on its own for a short time but it's constantly being diminished by gravity and air resistance a little so it needs your hand to keep nudging it in the right direction. You can feel some tension where the rope is pulling back on you through the spoke, greater tension when the speed of the loop is faster. This tension is a good thing, it means that you can control where the rope goes next. If you slow down too much or pull on the rope in the wrong direction then you can feel this tension die and you no longer will be able to influence the rope, it will just fizzle out, close up, or go limp unless you make a larger motion in time to correct it and get the control back.

I'll give a crack at a layman's description of what keeps a spinning loop open: Looking down at a loop from above we have a spinning loop (spoke omitted).

Figure2: counterclockwise loop

Newton said something about an object in motion will just keep on goin' how it's been goin' unless you give it some contrary force. Well that means if it's moving it will go in a straight line unless something pushes it to turn it, speed it up, or slow it down. A loop is going in a circle so it's always turning, therefore there must always be some force maintained on the loop to keep it always turning around and around. I can't really understand all of that unless I imagine the loop not as one rope but as a bunch of little connected points. These points happen to be connected as a rope so they end up pulling and pushing each other along in a circle but if they were disconnected from each other let's imagine what they would do. Every point on that loop will want to just keep going straight, here's a diagram to show what would happen if these points were not connected and allowed to keep going straight.

Figure3: independent points on a spinning loop

They would spread out and make a bigger circle. This in essence is the force that keeps pushing the loop open, a centrifugal force as it may be called. Since the rope is all connected together it's not so easy for the loop to open up though. You should feel this pulling force as you spin the spoke and you exert a force pulling back against it to keep the loop going at a constant size.

Speed does matter, spin a faster loop and the outward pull is greater, you'll feel more tension pulling on your spoke hand and have to exert a little more force to keep that loop in place. If your spoke is allowed to freely slip through the honda then you should see changes in the size of your loop corresponding to how fast and abrupt you are spinning. The loop will increase in radius but at the expense of the spoke length. A growing loop eats up spoke so it must either raise up towards the hand as the spoke length decreases or you must feed it more rope if you have any extra bunched up in your other hand. Spinning speed is not a linear correlation to loop radius though, because the friction of the rope rubbing on the honda will make the loop less responsive to speed changes. So up to a certain point you can have small changes in acceleration and the loop will stay about the same.

I've bored you up to this point but now I'll give you something more interesting. I learned a trick as a kid which I could do good enough most of the time but my loop would sometimes close up and I'd have to spin like the dickens to get it to open up again. It was lifting off from a wedding ring to a flat loop in front of you. Follow the sequence in images below. 1. it starts with a wedding ring. 2. take it down to a single handshake. 3. pull it up from the handshake with a good upward tug. 4-5. pop it up directly above the head. 6-7. pull it out to the right side as it starts to come down. 8. *transition from spoke under loop to spoke above loop, pulling the spoke to the side of the loop while in transition. 9. loop comes to lower position and you continue spinning. 10. settled into flat loop.

Photo: The Liftoff Sequence, 10 steps

The transition at step 8 gave me problems stemming from the fact that the spinning hand must move from it's position in the middle of the circle and go outside the circumference of the loop for a bit before being able to move your spoke hand back to the center of the loop's circle when the loop is in the down position in front of you again. My problem was that I was tugging the rope to get it to move down but I wasn't tugging at the right time in the circular phase of the spin to keep the loop open and my rope would get to the floor as a closed up mess.

The upward and downward motion is one aspect of the trick but all the while you must keep the cyclical spinning motion going and not do any tugging on the rope at a time when your pull will cause the loop to close. Before I knew exactly how to correct myself I thought about how the rope must move and about what might be causing the problem. I figured I was either flicking the rope to the side at the wrong time or not aggressively enough to keep the loop open. Most problems are usually a matter of timing or spinning speed. So I started experimenting with pulling down sooner/later and with different flicks of the arm and wrist at different times. I became much more aware of the cycle of the loop, meaning the position of the honda in relation to the loop's circle and after a bit of trial and error I had an awakening.

When the loop goes to the side it's critical where the honda is, if it's about to go around the far side of the loop then a motion to pull towards you will close up your loop. You can only coax the rope into certain positions when the time is right. Sometimes you have to wait and let the spin ride out till the honda is good and ready, this was integral to learning the butterfly also. It's a good feeling to get that connection with the rope and although awkward at first, with concentrated practice and a fair amount of trial and error I'm starting to get in a comfortable groove. I know physics is busy at work in it all but whenever possible I prefer to just keep it in my subconscious while I physically develop a fluid one-ness with the rope.

#trickroper #trickrope #rope #lasso #physics #liftoff #trickroping

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inariedwards · 8 years ago

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A Love Letter to Animal Tumblr

You probably know that Tumblr has lots and lots of different types of blogs, and therefore has many different communities, people with similar interests who blog about them and talk to each other about their topic.

You may also know that one of these corners of Tumblr is animal blogs. These blogs are typically run by people who work with animals in some way, as vets, trainers, zoo staff, scientists, etc... or people who are experienced in a particular type of animal keeping.

And I just want to publicly thank everyone who participates in Animal Tumblr: for the many things I have learnt just from following along and reading the conversations, for the important work you do both online and in your professional lives and with the animals in your lives, and also for what you contribute to the Tumblr culture in general.

🐁

I wanted to list out a few specific things I have gained from this valuable work these bloggers do. This got long so under the cut it goes:

1) General enthusiasm for animals that people generally aren't all that enthusiastic about.

For me the first changes were birds and snakes. You know the types of posts that have a lot of pictures and exaggerated enthusiastic comments like "look what a good round birb" and so on? That kind of enthusiasm is very contagious and I enjoy content where people express genuine enthusiasm for and their knowledge of something. So even though I'm not that into, say, gerbils or cockatiels, I love seeing people who are and how much they love the animals they love. Like, simply learning that snake owners have affectionate names like 'Noodle' for their beloved pet snakes helped change the way I thought of snakes and snake owners. Over time, Tumblr's lovely culture has made me "aww" at squids and millipedes and who knows what strange creatures are out there. My initial reaction to any animal is never "yuck" anymore.

🐁

2) Deepening knowledge of animals I really like.

I've always been a dog person, though I've never owned my own dog (my family has had two dogs on separate occasions but neither was "my" dog, though I was very close to the last one). And following blogs that discuss different breeds, different behaviours, training, grooming, and many other really nitty-gritty things about dog ownership has been wonderful. I don't know if or when I will be able to have a dog of my own (financially it is not possible at this moment), but I feel like I'm slowly building an understanding of myself and what kind of traits in a dog I should look for and what sort of things I definitely wouldn't be able to handle, etc.

🐁

3) Getting a glimpse inside the world of people who work with animals, and the respect that grew in me for that field.

There are several people on Tumblr who are Professionals with a capital-P in what they do, whether it be working in a zoo, as a vet, as a trainer, or as a researcher. There are discussions on blogs that intentionally lift the curtain a little on what life is like for people who work in this field. There are posts that help figure out some of the political issues touching the animal world. I now have a better understanding of these types of professions, as well as a deepening respect for them and the work they do. I want to in particular mention zoos and aquariums and the work they do with education, conservation, and rehabilitation.

🐁

4) Becoming inspired to take action.

Last night I came across a blog that advocates for a paradigm shift with regards to pigeons. They shared their feelings about these birds, the shared history of humanity and pigeons, and the factual realities of these animals with the perfect blend of passion and rationality and sources, that I found myself thinking "I would not be against the idea of adopting a rehabbed pigeon if one needed a home and a knowledgeable professional thought I was suitable." Which is not a position I was holding earlier that day.

Reading about pigeons made me realise that the town I live in doesn't actually have pigeons. We have a ginormous flock of jackdaws, we have crows, we have a couple sorts of seagulls, but not really pigeons. I was a bit bummed to realise this since it meant I couldn't do anything for a local population if I didn't have a local population. (PS if anyone has any ideas for what to do for my local population of jackdaws, I'd like to hear. I really like jackdaws too, thanks to Tumblr. Someone mentioned putting a pan of water out sometimes for the birds to have a bath in?)

This all prompted me to look up my local bird rehab (which due to my location isn't all that local either, because I live in a small place surrounded by other small places and this bird rehab is in one of these other smaller places quite far from here) and follow them on Facebook, as well as look up my local animal/pet shelter. That in turn led me to email the pet shelter and let them know I'd be possibly interested in fostering cats (since that seems to be a need they have) before they are adopted, and they sent a lovely email back today promising to be in contact with more details later.

To conclude (also known as a TL;DR):

Thank you Animal Tumblr. You’re awesome.

🐁

#writing #animals

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superdavidplank-blog · 5 years ago

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Traffic Cloud Review – Unlimited Traffic!

Traffic Cloud Review

What is Traffic Cloud?

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kcmortgageguy · 5 years ago

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How long does it take to refinance your house?

Buying a house is an exciting time.

Whether it’s your first house, your second house, or your dream house, your mind is filled with possibilities, paint colors, landscaping plans, and just an overall excitement. We rarely spend a lot of time worrying over the paperwork and nitty gritty details, like the interest rate you’re going to receive on your mortgage. And why should you? Buying your house SHOULD be a happy and exciting time for you!

But then the dust settles, you unpack your boxes, and time passes. One day, a few (or many) years later, you happen to read an article titled “NOW is the time to refinance your mortgage!” and you stop and think, ‘When can I refinance my house?’ So you begin to read about how interest rates have dropped and you have the possibility to lower your monthly mortgage payment. This gets you thinking about what interest rate you currently have on your mortgage and how much equity you’ve built up in your home. Is now a good time for you to refinance your house?

After digging in and researching the hows and whys, you finally decide that you really should look into refinancing your house. This leads to your next big question. How long does it take to refinance your house?

The easy answer is that the national average is 20-45 days, but everyone’s situation is unique. So, to better answer this question for you and help you figure out how long it’s going to take you to refinance your house, let’s break down refinancing step by step so that once and for all you can decide when you refinance your house.

What is your home worth?

You can check your home’s value through several different methods. There are many different online home value estimators, just like this one at NerdWallet. You could also hire a professional appraiser to do the research for you (and some refinancing institutions may ask you to do exactly this).

Whichever way you use to determine the value of your home, the number you calculate will help you determine exactly how much equity you have in your home. You will typically need at least 5% equity, but some lenders may want as much as 20% (or more) before they will refinance your home.

If you’re having trouble with this step, don’t hesitate to reach out to a lender. They can help answer questions and lead you towards trusted home value estimators that can provide the information you need to make a decision on whether or not to move forward.

What are your loan options?

There’s a lot to consider here. If you have a good amount of equity in your home, it might be worth it to consider reducing your current 30 year mortgage down to a 15. A good lending institution will walk you through much of this once you reach out to them, and they will have great advice on the types of loans you qualify for and what lower interest rate you could lock in. But general online searches on sites like LendingTree and other trusted sites should give you a great current overview of the going interest rates and loan options are for individuals in your situation.

Do you already have a trusted lender or do you need to “shop around?”

You might have a great relationship with the lending institution that gave you your original mortgage. And unless you’re unhappy with the service they provided, they will be a great place to start gathering information and feeling out whether or not refinancing is a good option for you.

However, if you feel like it’s time for a change and are looking for a new lender to refinance your mortgage, then do your research! You should be able to find online reviews and get an overall sense of the processes the lenders use. Gather a list of ones you’d like to talk with and start making phone calls.

Look for a lender who is willing to patiently answer all your questions and who is dedicated to finding the best refinancing options for you. These lenders will move at your pace, not try to rush you to make a decision or sign paperwork.

What types of documentation do you need to gather?

Speaking of paperwork, what exactly will you need to move forward with refinancing when you’re ready? Here’s a list of the typical paperwork you’ll need to supply to your lender in order to move forward with your refinancing.

Past 1-2 months of pay stubs

Past 2 years of W-2’s

Past 2 years of Federal Tax Returns

Past 2 months of bank statements

Your homeowner’s insurance policy

Recent mortgage statement

List of personal debts and amounts (car loans, personal loans, student loans, etc)

Proof of supplemental income (if applicable)

Your lender will supply you with a complete list of documentation needed, but it never hurts to begin gathering these documents early in the process so that you have them on hand and can make the process run a little more smoothly.

Ready to apply for your refinancing loan?

You’ve valued your home, you’ve done your research and picked out your trusted mortgage lender, and you’ve begun gathering all the paperwork you think you’ll need for the process. What happens now?

Once you’re ready to begin, you will fill out the necessary paperwork to apply for a loan from your lender. (You’ll be glad you gathered all those documents in advance here as they will help you answer questions on the loan application!) From there, you’ll receive a loan estimate and the loan processing will begin.

During this time is when you’ll want to pay close attention to interest rates as at some point you’ll have to lock in your rate. You can lock in a rate as early or as late if you want. Some individuals (who are far braver than I am) like to wait until the last minute in the hopes that the rate will drop further before locking it in. This is your choice and your mortgage lender will have advice for you on how interest rates have been fluctuating lately.

As your lender is processing your loan, they may ask for additional information or even for an official appraisal of your house, if you didn’t already receive one. While this will be an additional expense for you, your lender should set up the appraisal for you and handle communications with them.

Now you’ve done the hard work and it’s time to sit back and let the Underwriters do their work. They’ll review all of your information and determine if there are any missing pieces of paperwork that need to be filled in. If they need any additional information, they, or your lender, will reach out to you.

Once the underwriters are sure that all the paperwork supports your new loan, all that is left is for you to sign documents and close on your loan. Then you can enjoy your new lower interest rate and monthly payment!

All in all, the process is fairly streamlined, especially if you understand the steps and the documentation needed. Going in blind and unprepared can result in delays, headaches, and lots of additional stress for both you and your lender.

Having a basic understanding of how refinancing works can also tell you when to refinance your mortgage. If you see interest rates dropping and you keep tabs on how much equity you’ve built up in your home, you’ll be much more likely to lock in the best interest rate.

While the average refinance takes anywhere from 20-45 days, know that every situation is unique. It may take you longer to sort through and gather all the necessary paperwork, or you may have additional questions that require a little more research and understanding before moving forward. Doing your due diligence can only help to speed up the process.

You can also check out this article by Realtor.com which offers up tips on how to speed up refinancing your mortgage.

You may have read through this article and are thinking: ‘Yes! This is something I’ve been thinking about for a while now!” And if that’s the case, I urge you to reach out to me or your trusted mortgage lender, today. We’ll be happy to answer any questions you might have regarding refinancing and can get started as soon as you’re ready to move forward.

For more information on refinancing, Click Here to learn more and to get started today. You may find out that now isn’t the best time for you to refinance your house, but even if that’s the case, you may learn that you’re not that far away from being able to refinance. Learning what you can now can help you be prepared for that right time when it comes along.

So don’t wait! Reach out today to find out if refinancing your home is the best option for you.

#home refinance #how long does it take to refinance your house #refinancing #mortgage refinance

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amannahmad-blog · 7 years ago

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Podcast Transcript: Detailing a trip to the Train Show

Hey y’all, Amann here. This week on “How to be a Woke Teacher”, I’ll be talking about a not only educational, but also super cool field trip you can take your students on around anytime between November 22nd and January 15th of every year. I was originally going to discuss the ins and outs of a field trip to the entire Botanical Gardens that covers a whopping 250 acres, but I just visited this seasonal exhibit there and I gotta share it with you! So, let’s focus on the Holiday Train Show the NYBG puts on inside of its historic glass conservatory. Interwoven between the tropical landscape of ferns, waterfalls and a 10-foot palm, visitors watch toy trains move between historical NY landmarks like the Brooklyn Bridge and Penn Station. But, that’s not even the coolest part! Created by this dope artist named Paul Busse, the buildings are all made of natural materials found at the NYBG. He uses things like pine bark as the stone facade of buildings and cocoa nuts, mahogany, pine oak acorn caps and black lichen to make cherubs (you know those uh weird baby angels Europeans love to put in their drawings and make into statues?). Students can see the intersection between engineering, things found in Nature and New York’s history at the train show. How cool!

So now that we know a little bit about what the Holiday Train Show is, we can get into the nitty gritty you are all wondering about. That’s right! Logistics!

Cost: This is, of course, is the most important aspect for some since I know our budget’s are basically non-existent. Each visitor between the ages of 2 and 12 costs $10 each. We can come back to this but there are some great fundraising ideas to get around this, so that the students don’t have to pay this fee out of pocket. I hope you agree that all our students should be able to come, regardless of if they can front the 10 bucks or not.

Group size: For grades 1 through 8 there’s a 30 students maximum and 1 adult per 7 students ratio including the teacher. The Gardens allow a max of 3 additional chaperones at a fee of $12 per chaperone.

Registration: It is NECESSARY for all school-group visits. To register your class, and yes we have to do this even if we aren’t taking a guided tour and are doing a self-guided tour through the train show, you must either call 718-817-8181 between 8 a.m.-4 p.m., Monday-Friday OR email [email protected].

Payment needs to be received two weeks after registration and this can be done either online or by mailing a check in (who does that anymore). Of course, all this information is detailed at NYBG.org. Click on “Learn”, then “Schools and Teachers” and then “Class trips”. Oh actually, while you’re on this page, you’ll see links for “Trip and Class Resources” and also “Pre and Post activity guides” and this is great BUT they won’t apply to our train show field trip. Later on in the podcast, I’ll mention some resources and pre and post activities that do pertain to the train show.

Okay back to logistics...and I know, I know it’s not as interesting to go over but it’s still important. When registering your class, include any information on disability-related accommodations needed by your students. The NYBG will make sure to include these accommodations in your visit. And while we’re on the topic of accessibility, the buildings of the NYBG are all wheelchair accessible. But the placards that label all the buildings in the train show are only written in English, not also in braille. There is a super cool video for people to watch before walking into the exhibit though and it has Spanish subtitles which is pretty cool. I gave the Gardens points for this, but am still confused as to why they aren’t also English closed captions for folks who are hard of hearing. Anyway, after the first scheduling change, you will be charged a $15 processing fee for each additional change. To receive a full refund, cancellations must be made at least 4 weeks before the scheduled visit. Cancellations made 2 to 4 weeks in advance will only be refunded 50% of their payment. There are no refunds for cancellations made two weeks or less before the scheduled visit.

Lunch! There is no indoor eating facility for school groups. But, they can eat the lunch they bring with them, there’s also no cafeteria for kids to buy food, at the Clay Family Picnic Pavilion, which is located near the School Group Entrance. It’ll probably be cold to eat outside between November and January but you know what they say! There is no bad weather, just bad clothing. So, make sure to send home directions for winter jackets, gloves, hats etc to parents before the field trip. Speaking of weather, the holiday train show is open rain or shine since its inside. I would recommend allotting two and a half hours for the field trip with an hour and a half to walk through the train show, half an hour to eat and the rest of the time to round the group up and take a bathroom break before leaving.

Final piece of logistics: School group check-in is at the Everett Garden Gate, located on 2900 Southern Boulevard, across from Fordham University. All school groups must be picked up at the Everett Garden Gate at the end of their visit. Since there is no bus parking available in the Gardens, the bus must find street parking. Chaperones can park in the Gardens parking lot if they come separately but they’ll have to pay the $15 parking fee (yikes). I don’t mention the option of getting to the botanical gardens by subway because the B, D, or 4 train stop at Bedford Park Blvd. is pretty far from the entrance to NYBG so you’d have to take the Bx26 bus east to the Garden’s Mosholu Entrance or walk eight blocks down the hill on Bedford Park Blvd which takes about 20 minutes. That doesn’t seem very doable with a large group of elementary school children... Oh darn, one last logistical thing, garden hours are Tuesday to Sunday, 10am-6pm. I visited later in the day around 3pm and the exhibit was still really beautiful, but I’d recommend going in the morning when the light filtering through the glass ceiling of the conservatory helps students see all the details of the train show. It will probably be a little warmer during the early afternoon anyway.

A cool interactive activity students can do while walking through the exhibit is writing down short phrases to describe their reactions to what they see, hear and smell. They can also sketch what they see. [But honestly, there is so much to take in, it might be nice to just let students explore all the stimulation without having to also draw and write.]

I’ve chosen three primary resources we, as teachers, can introduce to our students before and after heading to the glam and glory of the botanical gardens. The first is two pictures from the early 1900s of the NYBG conservatory which now hosts the train show. These original photographs will show students what the site looked like a century ago. You can find these black and white photos in the transcript for this week’s podcast along with the link to the NYBG’s archive (Oh my Gaia, I said ahr-CHive!) with many more photos to choose from.

Primary Resource #1: Historical Photos of the NYBG

October 27, 1938

Photo Credit: http://mertzdigital.nybg.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/p9016coll20/id/27

March 13, 1919

http://mertzdigital.nybg.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/p9016coll20/id/803

The second resource is a set of design plans for N.Y. bridges including

The Williamsburg Bridge, the Manhattan Bridge, Brooklyn Bridge and Queensboro Bridge. These sketches made by engineers were found on the Weinstock Brothers website, the company that supplied the structural bolts and equipment for these bridges along with other structures like the Twin Towers. As a class, you can compare and contrast these blueprints and try to spot the differences between the bridges before seeing them at the train show. I’ll include some pictures I took of these amazing mini-bridges at the end of the transcript or on the tumblr page.

Primary Resource #2: Design plans for NY bridges

Photo Credit: http://www.weinstockbros.com

The third primary resource I thought would be neat to use with students after the field trip was an interview NYC monthly did with Paul Busse who created all of the buildings in the Holiday Train Show (not only for NY but all cities like Washington D.C. and Chicago). This interview would hopefully answer some questions the students had about his process or designing and building. Because the interview is a little wordy, you could re-type a few particularly interesting questions the interviewer asked like “Share with us a story of one of the New York landmarks that you most enjoyed working on and why.”

Primary Resource #3: An interview with the creator of the Holiday Train Show, Paul Busse

Link: https://nycmonthly.com/article/holiday-train-show-interview-w-paul-busse/

Some other post-field trip activities you could use are writing letters to Paul Busse asking any questions the interview didn’t answer. Hopefully Paul, or someone else from his company, Applied Imagination, will respond (maybe not individually but to the class). Another post-trip activity is taking a walk outside around the school, in the park down the street, in the community garden close by to collect things like leaves, twigs and acorns to make a class structure. This structure will involve planning, sketching of blueprints, and Gaia knows a whole lot of cooperation. But, it’ll give the students an opportunity to try creating famous landmarks with things found in Nature the way our man Paul did. Lastly, using a jigsaw activity in which you break up the students into groups and have them becomes “experts” on something together before breaking up into new groups and teaching their new group all about what they are an expert on. Before or after the field trip, you can have students from each initial group conduct research on the computer on one NYC landmark including the Brooklyn Bridge, the Empire State Building, Grand Central Terminal and Central Park. Then, after those groups have mastered the key facts of landmark along with a couple of “fun facts”, they will be placed in a new group comprised of students who each mastered a different landmark. They will then teach each other about their landmark. This gives the students an opportunity to practice researching skills, teach each other instead of listening to us blabber on and learn more deeply about the buildings and places we might see every day.

Let’s talk standards. How does running around the Holiday Train Show adhere to NYSS? For one, comparing the historical relevance of city landmarks to how they fit into popular culture and society today, is delving into the theme of “Time, continuity and change”. We are also “studying places” and asking, “Why were these structures originally built? What do these places mean to us today?”. Lastly, the Holiday Train Show is playing with the connection and “relationship between science, technology and society”. We’re interacting with the engineering of the buildings and can think about how their construction was beneficial or detrimental to NYC society. Since we gotta stay woke, push your students to ask, “Who built these structures? Who reaped the benefit of using them? Who was not allowed to participate in the more ‘important’ roles of building?” Make sure to send a SHOUTOUT to Emily Warren as a woman who helped complete the Brooklyn Bridge. She was one of the first female field engineer’s in the U.S. (and also got her law degree at NYU, as if she wasn’t cool enough). Check out roeblingmuseum.org and look for info on our female comrade, Emily. If you still don’t feel strong in your pitch to your administration as to how this field trip links to Standards, check out www.socialstudies.org/standards/strands for yourself!

So we’re questioning the master narrative, as New Yorkers we’re super proud (even boastful) about our skyline, our progress, our superiority as a city. But, we built all these buildings in the late 1800s at what cost? At whose cost? Who held the power in the planning and building of our city? And who did the physical building? Emily Warren Roebling is dope, but why did her father-in-law (the chief engineer for the Brooklyn Bridge) have to die and then her husband who took his father’s role have to become bed ridden in order for Emily to get her shot? And yes, women are now encouraged to enter the STEM field and more women are engineers, but have we totally moved passed sexism, racism and all the other “isms” in city planning. Why is it still “weird” if a woman is a construction worker? Hopefully students will not only be engaging in the history of NYC, but also on how identity has changed over time and how the socioeconomic impact of racism and discrimination affected how our city was literally built.

Well, that’s it for this podcast! I hope this was helpful for y’all out there trying to be woke teachers. Here’s a quote for us to end on- “They tried to bury us. They didn’t know we were seeds”. Salaam.

#NYBG staywoke

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contractordynamics · 7 years ago

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The Complete Guide to Facebook Advertising for Contractors

Due to the internet’s consistent rise in popularity – particularly when it comes to social media platforms – online advertising on social media has become an integral part of any solid marketing plan. It is one of the most effective and most affordable advertising channels available; after all, according to Facebook’s newsroom, over a billion people visit Facebook daily, making it one of the largest potential consumer markets available. As a contractor, reaching out to local potential clients and getting your company in front of them is vital, and Facebook advertising is one of the best ways to do that.

We want to help you get your business up and running with Facebook Ads, which is why we’ve developed this guide to help you understand what they are, how they work, and why they’re important. Read on to learn everything you wanted to know about showing off your business on Facebook.

I: Introduction to Facebook Ads

We hear what you’re saying – isn’t Facebook just a website for sharing pictures of your kids and watching funny videos? Well, it can be that, but it can also be a great way to generate leads and revenue for your business at an affordable cost. Facebook ads let you target specific audiences, choose what type of goal you’re going for, set locations or age ranges for your ads, and more. They’re incredibly customizable, relatively affordable, and can be extremely effective if you set them up correctly – but that’s the challenging part.

Many small businesses will boost a post here or there, or perhaps throw 20 dollars at a week of Facebook advertising and wonder why they’re not seeing results. While advertising on Facebook can be incredibly effective, you have to go about it the right way. It’s important to build an organic presence on Facebook (for example, having a business Facebook page connected to your website), and it’s important to be consistent with your social media updates, especially if you’re using your advertising to direct potential customers to your Facebook page.

It’s also important to know which ad types are relevant to contractors. While Facebook offers a huge variety of ads, not all of them are going to be helpful to you or help you reach your target audience effectively. We’ll talk about that in more detail a little bit later.

However, advertising on Facebook is exciting for a few very important reasons:

Potential Audience Size – with over a billion daily active users, Facebook is the single largest network of potential clients available.

Captive Network – the average Facebook user spends about an hour on the platform every day, scrolling through their feed (which is where your ad has the potential to appear).

Targeting – like we mentioned above, the ability to specifically target your ads to your desired customers is very nearly unmatched. When you use Facebook Advertising, you can choose clients by location, interests, gender, age, average income, and so much more. For example, if you’re a home renovation contractor who specializes in high-end custom kitchen and bathroom remodeling jobs in the Tri-State area, you could target a Facebook ad to potential leads who own a home, have expressed an interest in home renovation, and make over $100,000 a year. And that’s just one example!

Affordability – when compared to other popular advertising methods, such as Google AdWords or traditional print advertising, Facebook Ads nearly always have a higher return on investment and lower overall cost.

II: Pros and Cons to Facebook Advertising

In this guide, we’re going to get pretty specific with Facebook Advertising – the nitty gritty. But before we get into that, let’s talk about the pros and cons of advertising on Facebook, and why it could be a huge benefit for your business.

Pros:

You have complete control over your daily budget and maximum cost-per-click, which is generally more affordable than Google AdWords; an average cost-per-click (CPC) for a Facebook ad is around $0.60-$0.70, while an AdWords CPC is very rarely less than a dollar.

Huge variety of targeting options

Easy to track your statistics (you can check how well your ad is doing and it’s easier to understand your profit margin)

Easier to reach people early in their research or even before they’re fully aware of their need for your services, while also getting the attention of people who are looking for a contractor

Ability to use your own images and video (if you have it) to display your work and capture the interest of your target market

Cons:

If your campaign isn’t set up properly, it can be costly – but not as costly as an incorrectly managed Google AdWords campaign

Not the best platform for B2B advertising; this is much more effective for B2C businesses

Not as effective if you’re limiting your target audience to a single town or small area; the majority of your potential audience could become irrelevant

While there are some potential drawbacks to Facebook Advertising, we believe that the pros far outweigh the cons, especially if you set your campaign up properly. For more evidence that Facebook ads can work well for local lead generation, check out this case study.

III: Different Types of Facebook Ads

Facebook ads are incredibly versatile and offer a wide array of different options. However, as a contractor, it’s unlikely that you’ll need some of the types of ads that some other businesses, such as e-commerce, use. Ads that increase app engagement or raise event attendance, for example, are going to be less useful to you than some of the other advertising choices. The Facebook ads most likely to help contractors include:

Educate your target market on their options

Sending people to your website

Increase conversions on your website

Collect leads for your business

Reach people near your business

Boost your posts

Get people to claim your offer

Each of these ad options – which you get to by clicking the button on your Facebook Ads dashboard – has a unique focus for your business, whether it’s brand awareness, lead generation, or general business promotion. While the setup for each is similar, the different ad types serve different functions, and it’s important to pick the right ad for your desired outcome.

How to Choose Your Ad

We’ll talk more in-depth about the types of ads that may be useful to you as a contractor in a moment. First, though, we want to talk about how to choose your ad. You may be tempted to just select the first option available, but strategically choosing your ad based on the results you want from your campaign is vital to ensuring its success. For example, if your overall ad campaign goal is to generate 10 leads in a month, you’ll likely have more success with a lead generation ad than with a website conversion ad. But if your goal is to drive 100 new visitors to your website, a website conversion ad is exactly what you want to pick.

Many people who complain that Facebook advertising isn’t working for them simply haven’t taken the time to set up an overall goal for their campaign. When you choose to take the time to set up your campaign goals, you have a leg up on your competition, and are more likely to see the results you want from the money you spend.

Now, let’s get into the types of ads that are going to be most useful for you as a contractor:

1: Sending People to Your Website

The most important thing to do when you select this option is to designate the page on your website you want to send a potential customer to. You have a few options to choose from:

Your homepage: If you have a new website that isn’t getting a lot of organic traffic, sending people to your homepage can be a good way to boost visitors. However, because your homepage is fairly generic, you may find more people bouncing from your website more quickly. If your website is not designed to be a salesperson, to convert visitors into leads, (which most aren’t), you’re likely going to be disappointed with the results with this approach.

A service page: If you’re interested in increasing your website traffic in a specific area – for example, you’d like to get more clients interested in whole-home renovations – directing potential leads to that specific page is a good way to generate interest. Sending leads to a specific page also works well for contractors who have seasonal lines of business; if you run an HVAC business, for example, having a targeted ad directed towards furnace or air conditioning repair during the appropriate season can increase your traffic. We highly recommend sending people to a specific service page with your advertising.

A promotions page: If you happen to have a special or deal available – and we know not everyone does – a promotions page can be a good landing page for an ad. However, this should probably be your last choice; you don’t want to devalue yourself to a potential customer!

A contact page – this isn’t the best page for people to land on, but can be useful if you’re trying to collect information from a potential client. However, we’d recommend having a short contact form on an internal page, rather than sending people directly to a contact page; if your website is designed correctly, your phone number and contact information will be displayed prominently on every page, and you’re not providing any additional information to a customer when they land here.

A landing page or squeeze page – a landing page is specifically designed to promote one specific offer and includes one specific all to action. After all, the purpose of any marketing channel such as Facebook, is to drive traffic to an offer. The more specific you can be with your ads, with your landing page copy, and with your offer, the more effective your ad campaigns will be.

Once you’ve decided what page you’d like to promote, you also have the option to create a Facebook Pixel and attach it to your website, so that you can track different actions that occur and fine-tune your advertising. For example, a pixel can help you serve ads only to people who have visited your website or landing page, otherwise known as remarketing. You can learn more about Facebook Pixels and how to implement them here.

You’ll then want to set your audience and budget, which we’ll talk about in the following sections. And then you’ll finally get to the exciting part: customizing your ad! We’ll talk about ad customization in the next section, as it’s a similar process for most of the Facebook Ads available. However, there are a few things you want to consider specifically for a “send people to your website” ad:

Does the page you’re landing on feel consistent with your ad’s copy (wording)?

Do you have clear calls to action (CTAs)?

Do the ad and the page feel related?

If you make sure the answer to all these questions is “yes,” you’ll be on your way to having a high-quality Facebook ad! If, however, you find that one or more of these things isn’t true, you may want to look into updating or modernizing your website to make sure that it’s consistent with your current business and marketing goals.

2: Increase Conversions on Your Website

This ad type is very similar to the “send people to your website” ad; the major difference is that you want to make sure you’re using a Facebook Pixel, and that it’s set to “increase conversions on your website.” Facebook does a good job of simplifying that process in this guide.

You’ll also want to make sure that you have call tracking set up on your website; after all, not everyone is going to fill out a contact form. Sometimes people will contact you directly, and you want to make sure you’re tracking those results as well.

For this style of ad, you’ll still be directing potential leads to a specific page on your website. We highly recommend one which encourages clients to fill out a contact form or sign up to receive a lead magnet. That way, you’re getting their information and can follow up with with them, leading to a higher chance of gaining a customer.

3: Collect Leads for Your Business

One of the most important ad types for most contractors is lead collection – getting information from your potential clients so that you can connect with them on a more personalized basis. Facebook lead ads are fairly similar to “boost post” ads, with one notable exception: the Lead Form. The ad will offer you 6 different options for buttons, but you probably wouldn’t use all of them as a contractor. The buttons you’re most likely to use are:

Get Quote

Learn More

Download (if you have a white paper, an article, or something else of value for a potential client)

Each of these buttons will link to a form that you’ll be creating within your ad editor. Lead Forms are great because you get to choose from a huge variety of options for information you want to receive; Facebook will suggest collecting your potential client’s full name and email, but there are 19 other choices you can make, and you can also add up to 3 questions of your own, in addition to the client information you collect. While we would suggest keeping your forms short (the longer the form, the less likely it is a potential customer will fill everything out), you may want to request their phone number and their city and state. You may also want to add a question like “What service are you hoping to have done?” or “What questions do you have for us?” as a way of having something concrete to discuss when you reach out to that customer. The full list of potential collectible information includes:

First and Last Name

Phone Number

Street Address

City and State

Province

Country

Post or Zip Code

Date of Birth

Gender

Marital or Relationship Status

Company Name

Military Status

Job Title

Work Phone Number

Work Email

Most of these are not particularly applicable for you as a contractor; we wouldn’t recommend asking about their work phone number or email, for instance, unless you’re specifically running ads targeted at potential commercial clients. But the great thing about Lead Forms is that you can customize them to the audience you’re targeting with that specific ad, and change the information you’re requesting based on what type of group you’re focusing on.

One of the aspects that’s important for a lead generation ad is the privacy policy and legal disclaimer link; Facebook will ask you for a link to your specific privacy policy, but if you don’t have one, they provide a standardized policy for clients to agree to. You can also choose to send potential customers to your website after they fill out the form, if you so choose.

Context Cards

While Context Cards are not necessarily something you’ll use in your lead generation advertising, we wanted to provide you with some quick information about them. In essence, these are what a customer sees after selecting your button from your ad but before filling out your form; they let you give a bit more detail, if necessary.

For example, if you were encouraging people to sign up for your newsletter, a Context Card would let you add an example picture and a bit of information – how often your newsletter comes out, what’s generally included in it, if people who sign up are eligible for special deals that are only offered to subscribers, etc. While useful, it’s not a fully necessary step; if you’re working with a marketing professional to arrange your Facebook advertising, you can discuss with them whether or not you want to use Context Cards.

4: Reach People Near Your Business

These localization ads are great for targeting a specific service radius. Unlike other ads, these start out with having you choose an area from a map, which is usually centered around your business’s street address. However, you can choose any address you like and set the radius around it from 1-50 miles – or define a custom mile radius that covers your service area. You also have the ability to select a few different areas, if – for example – you have showrooms in multiple cities, or do landscaping work for several suburbs.

Ads designed to reach people in your target area have four different business engagement opportunities:

Call Now

Send Message

Learn More

Like Page

As a contractor, your best options will likely be the “Call Now” or “Learn More” choices. If you have someone who handles your social media, “Send Message” could also be a good option; however, you really only want to choose that if you’re able to respond promptly to inquiries. Potential leads don’t like waiting a day or more when they message you on Facebook.

The “Learn More” ad lets you direct customers to a URL of your choosing, whether that’s your homepage or an internal service page, and acts similarly to the ad which drives engagement with your website; the main difference is in how you’re targeting people.

This ad can be super helpful if you’re trying to boost awareness of your company in a specific target area; for instance, if you do a lot of work in your home city, but want to expand to a neighboring city, targeting your ads over the city you want more work in can generate more leads from that area.

5: Boost Your Posts

Boosting posts is often confused with Facebook Advertising. They are not the same thing. While boosting your posts is not the most useful advertising option for contractors, it can be helpful in a few specific instances:

Trying to drive Facebook engagement with a new business page

Increasing awareness of a Facebook-specific offer

Establishing expertise by promoting a blog or article you’ve posted to Facebook

These are one of the easiest ads to create, as you’re boosting a post you’ve already made; the ad creative (where you customize your images and text) is already set for you, as it’s the post itself. You also don’t necessarily have to use Facebook Ad Manager for this post. You can boost your posts directly from your Newsfeed, simply by clicking the “Boost Post” button that’s displayed there. If there’s a specific post you’re wanting to draw attention to, this is a good option to choose.

However, we see too often that contractors engage in post boosting without any type of strategy, which typically results in nothing but a waste of time and money.

6: Get People to Claim Your Offer

If you’ve recently published an offer to your Facebook page, or you want to create a new offer that’s exclusive to Facebook, this is a good ad option. Examples of offers may include:

Free in-home consultation

% off service fee

$ off total cost (if over a certain amount)

You can create offers both from the ad editor and from your Facebook page, and set an expiration date and limit the number of people who can take advantage of your offer (if you’d like). Then just include a promo code or link to a promotions page, and you’re all set!

While these ads aren’t as customizable as others, they still serve a useful purpose if you’re trying to get more clients focused on a specific service or are simply trying to increase your overall lead generation. Promoting an offer can help you reach a larger portion of your target market and can encourage people to opt in to a service they may not have initially been considering, because everyone loves a deal!

IV: Customizing Your Ad

We talked a little bit about customizing your ad in the previous section; here is where we’ll get into the nitty gritty of what that means and how you can best manage your advertising on Facebook.

For most ads, setting the creative elements is very similar; you choose a picture (or pictures) or video, write some text, and preview your ad to make sure that everything looks the way you’d like, then select your budget, audience, and time frame. We’ll talk more about budgeting and how to choose the best audience for your ad in the next few sections.

Image Selection

When you’re selecting images, you have a few options. You can use your own photos – which we’d highly recommend, if you have high-quality images of your work – or choose from the searchable Shutterstock photos Facebook offers. Once you’ve run a few ads, you’ll also be able to choose from a library of previously used images.

Note: Facebook used to have a hard rule that 20% or less of your chosen image should be text, and ads would be rejected if they didn’t follow this rule. Now, that’s more of a guideline. However, we would recommend choosing clean images and leaving the text to your ad’s copy, as images with more text can yield less distribution and a higher cost. Having clean images with ad copy is also the most similar to a standard Facebook post, ensuring that your advertisement won’t stand out in a bad way on a news feed.

You can choose either a single image or 3-7 photos that Facebook will put together as a slidesho. You can also test how different images perform for your ads by creating up to 6 ads at a time; all you need to do for that is upload multiple images on your image selection screen. However, you want to make sure that your images adhere to Facebook’s guidelines:

1,200 x 444 pixels

8:3 image ratio

20% or less text (ideally)

Ad Text

You’ll also want to keep in mind that your ad has an upper limit of 90 characters, so your copy really needs to convey what you’re advertising. For example, if you’re a plumber who wants to help people upgrade old piping, your ad copy may be something along the lines of “Call us to get rid of leaky pipes and upgrade to PEX piping today.” With only 53 characters, you’re conveying the benefit of your service and including a call to action for your business that has a sense of urgency – no one wants leaky pipes! Pair this with a direct link to a page talking about the benefits of upgrading to PEX pipes for maximum customer immersion.

One of the things to consider when choosing your ad copy is what audience you’re writing to. If you’re advertising to more than one target group, you definitely want to customize your content to each group, and make sure that your copy goes with your picture. For each group, you want to make sure they know what you’re offering, how it can benefit them, and what they need to do next. No matter what type of ad you’re showing, whether it’s a lead generation, an offer, or trying to get people to your website, following this standard format will help you create the best Facebook ads possible.

Advanced Options

You have a few “advanced options” for most of your ads, such as choosing where you’d like your ad to appear. By default, your ad will appear in the desktop and mobile News Feed, as well as in the right column on a desktop, but you can choose to remove any of these options if you wish.

You can also choose to add a headline to your ad, though this only appears in the right-column advertisements. If you have an ad that’s directing people to your Facebook page, you can also choose where your visitor ends up; though it defaults to the Timeline, if you’re running an ad that encourages people to check out your work, you can choose to have them land on your Photos instead.

And, as we’ve discussed before, you can track conversions as an advanced option, which involves the installation of a conversion pixel. This is something we highly recommend with any applicable ad, because it’s a great way to see exactly how effective your advertising is being and lets you fine-tune your marketing plan to get the best return on your investment.

V: How to Choose an Audience

Once you’ve decided how your ad should look and what it should say, the next most important thing to do is choose your desired audience. This is where Facebook advertising really shines; the customization options for picking an audience are almost endless, letting you target by a number of different factors to make sure that your ad is showing to exactly who you want to see it.

However, if done incorrectly, you run the risk of making your target audience either too broad or too narrow; either of these situations will lessen the effectiveness of your advertising, lowering your ROI (return on investment) and giving the perception that Facebook ads are an ineffective marketing tool. Let’s talk about the choices you have when it comes to audience customization.

1: Custom Audiences

Custom audiences are a cool feature – they let you show off your ads to people who have had a previous relationship with you. You can create audiences using a Customer List or Website Traffic.

Customer Lists – this lets you upload or copy and paste a data file of email addresses, phone numbers, or Facebook user IDs. If you use MailChimp, you can also pull from existing MailChimp lists to create your custom audience.

Website Traffic – if you’ve installed a conversion pixel on your website, you can use this option to create an audience based on a variety of different options. In addition to choosing a timeframe for traffic monitoring, you can also show ads to:

Anyone who’s visited your site

Anyone who’s visited a particular page (good for when you’re wanting to increase leads for a particular service)

People who have looked at some pages but not others (good for increasing awareness of your other services)

People who haven’t visited your website for a while (good for bringing your business back to people’s’ minds)

Once you’ve created your custom audience, you can continue to filter it based on other options (which we’ll discuss briefly in a moment), and you can also save it for quick use in your next ad.

2: General Audience Customization

You can choose to target your audience using several different criteria. Location, age, gender, language, interests, and whether or not they’re connected to your page are just a few options. Once you start digging into these, you can get even more specific. For example, when you’re defining your audience based on location, you can pick more than one area to target and can even choose the people you’re targeting; choose everyone in that location to reach people who have recently been there or who live there, or choose “people who live in this location” to just reach people who are listed as having a permanent address there.

The most complex choices you’ll make will likely relate to interests and behaviors, which include demographics. You can sort by income level, education level, whether or not someone is a recent homeowner, what type of things they’re interested in on Facebook, and more.

When considering your audience customization, it’s really important to sit down and define your ideal customer. Do you want to advertise to everyone who owns a home? Are you looking for more high-end jobs only, or are you just looking to increase your exposure (which we don’t recommend)? Do you want to focus on different types of people for different services? While this can seem complicated, it’s where Facebook Advertising really shines – and it’s important to do it correctly.

VI: How to Decide on an Advertising Budget

Deciding on an advertising budget is often where Facebook ads go wrong. Facebook suggests a default daily budget of just $20, but this generally isn’t enough to reach a significant portion of your target audience. If you’re setting a daily budget, we’d recommend between $60-80+; for a lifetime budget, we’d generally suggest at least $1500 a month, if not more, to make sure you’re getting optimum reach and maximizing your ROI.

We see too many contractors who try Facebook ads with a budget of only a few hundred dollars per month, and they end up disappointed with the lack of results. Just like with any other advertising channel, there is a minimum you need in order to reasonably expect any type of results.

While this may seem expensive, consider the fact that you’re potentially reaching thousands of people a day with your ads, on the most highly trafficked social network in the world. While Google AdWords campaigns, for example, can be good for locking down people searching for a specific term, Facebook Advertising lets you have far more control over your audience, the type of ad you’re running, testing, and more.

Don’t focus on expense. Your focus should be on getting quality leads profitably. This is why it’s so important to track everything. You need to know exactly what you’re paying per click and per lead, so you know what it costs you to get a new customer. The goal is to get more customers profitably. Don’t forget that.

The Difference Between Daily and Lifetime Budgets

A daily budget is the maximum amount you will spend on your Facebook ad in a single day, and is best if you want to continuously run your ad – for example, if you’re running an ad about snow removal and want it to run throughout winter.

Lifetime budgets require you to set a start and end date for your ad, so you can also use this for season-specific advertising. However, this is a standard way to do monthly ad budgets; you can set your budget to $2000 for the month and rest assured that you won’t go over that.

Choosing your budget is a vital part of making sure your advertising works; if you’re not sure what your budget should be, consider working with a professional to make sure you’re getting the most bang for your buck.

VII: Understanding Facebook Ad Data

One of the pluses of Facebook advertising is that it offers a ton of data and analysis for every ad campaign you run. You can go from the very basic – like how many people you’ve reached, how much you’ve paid in general, what your results are, etc. – to more specific (if you’re running a bunch of ads). Facebook has charts and statistics available to you for every advertisement you run, so that you can see what’s working and what isn’t, what people are engaging with and what they’re not paying attention to. You can get to all this information from your main ads dashboard, and you can even see multiple campaigns or ads at once for side-by-side comparisons of effectiveness.

Here’s everything Facebook ads lets you track:

Delivery – whether or not your ad or campaign is currently running

Results – how many actions your ad or campaign has received; this varies depending on what you’re looking for. You can check for clicks through to your website, lead signups, likes to your Facebook page, and more.

Reach – how many people have seen your ad or campaign

Cost – how much you’ve paid, on average, for every action taken. This is a great way to check your ROI. For instance, if you’ve paid $30 per lead form and 10 of those have been filled out, you’ve paid $300. However, if 1 of those leads generated a client who then paid for a $30,000 kitchen renovation, you have an extremely high return on your investment. Even if you’re only making 10% net profit on that project, that’s $3,000. Spend $300 to make $3,000 in profit? Sign me up!

Amount Spent – how much you’ve spent so far on your ad or campaign

End Date – if you’ve set one, when your specific ad or campaign will end

Conversion Tracking

One of the ways that Facebook gets data about your ads is through conversion tracking, which we’ve touched on before. Conversion tracking using a Facebook pixel is an amazing tool, simply because of how much information you can get from it. It’s one more way to truly double down on your ad testing and make sure that your ads are working the way you want them to.

One of the most important ways to make sure this is working properly is to have your ads directing to a specific landing page, as opposed to just your home page. That way, you can see which services people are most interested in based on how many people are traveling to that page from your ad.

Pixels also let you track things like lead captures; you can use them to see exactly how many people are filling out a contact or signup form, which can show you exactly how effective your ad is. These are probably the most useful things you’ll be able to track with a conversion pixel. However, you can also track website searches, payment info – if you have an online payment portal for clients – and much more. Working with a professional to fine-tune your advertising campaigns will help you see exactly what you can get out of things like conversion tracking and budget planning.

IX: Popular Ad Strategies

There are a million different strategies out there for how to make sure your Facebook ads perform as well as possible – and what to avoid to make sure your ads don’t become a costly mistake. Some simple tips for creating a successful Facebook ad include:

Keep your information short – while the content you can include is limited by a character count, short, punchy ad copy is better than trying to cram everything possible into 90 characters.

Include keywords – your ad should always include a keyword or two so that potential leads know what you’re doing.

Include persuasive or interesting images or video – it’s true what they say; an image is worth a thousand words. Having compelling images or video makes it more likely that leads will click through to your site, your form, or your Facebook page. And you never want to use low-quality images, generic stock photography, or images you don’t have the rights to use. Don’t go hunting on Google Images for a picture because you think it “looks nice”; you can get in big trouble for copyright infringement.

Whenever possible, use your own images. Images of yourself or your team can work really well, as can pictures of your work which are high-quality and clearly show what you’re wanting to emphasize. Keep in mind that Facebook ad pictures are small, so you don’t want to use anything too busy.

Include your URL in the text section – this advice can be controversial, especially if you’re already including a button for people to click through to your website. However, including your URL in your ad copy can help establish trust, as people are more cautious to click links when they don’t know exactly where they’ll be taken.

Use taglines or hooks to draw in potential customers – “Get the house you’ve always dreamed of,” “Create your perfect yard,” “Customize your kitchen today”; using hooks that appeal to a potential customer’s emotions can make them more likely to click on your ad and see what you have to offer.

Use Facebook ad targeting to your advantage – if you have a potential audience of a million people, you can choose to break those down into more specific groups. Set your general parameters, then create different ads for different specific sections of people you want to target; that way, you can show custom graphics and copy to the people it may appeal to more, and potentially increase your engagement rate.

Keep mobile users in mind – while you may be using a desktop to edit your ads, the mobile population of internet users is continuously growing. Over 60% of people use their mobile phones or tablets for day-to-day browsing of social media platforms; don’t get discouraged if your ads don’t get many views by desktop users. Instead, consider it a success that your ads are appealing to mobile users – and make sure that your website is also mobile-optimized, to keep those customers engaged with your brand.

Another great tip is to “double down on what’s working.” If you have an ad that’s doing amazingly well, performance-wise – say, generating a ton of attention to your website, or grabbing you a lot of leads – don’t be afraid to increase its budget. It might not work as well down the road, so the best time to make sure you’re getting the most out of it is when it’s at its highest-performing!

We touched on this in our section about ad budgeting, but it really is important; you have to allocate a big enough budget to be successful. Spending $1-2 dollars for an ad is not enough, because you won’t reach many people and you won’t see a big return on your investment. Make sure you’re allocating enough of your marketing budget to test different variations on your ads. Changing your images and copy won’t mean anything if no one is seeing any of your ads at all!

A tip from Jon Loomer can also be useful to keep in mind: sometimes, even if your routine for your ads is working, it’s good to scrap everything and start over. For example, if you’re consistently targeting for people between 35-60 in a specific area for your advertising, maybe your next campaign should open that up. Go 20-50-year-olds instead, or change your targeting area, or the interests you’re screening for. Try different settings for different campaigns. You might learn something new about your advertising, and maybe even find a new population that gets you more results!

Overall, be SMART about your goals – make sure your advertising goals are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely. When you have specific, achievable goals in mind, it’s a lot easier to create an advertising campaign that will make sure those goals are reached.

Advertisement Funnels

You may have heard before that you need to set up a “funnel” for your advertising, but it might not be clear to you what that is. In essence, a Facebook Advertising Funnel lets you communicate with different groups of people based on their interest in what you have to offer.

Here’s an example:

You’re a home remodeling contractor that specializes in high-end, custom kitchens. Your ideal target is someone who’s wealthier, owns a home, and has expressed an interest in remodeling their kitchen, but that’s not going to be everyone your ad reaches. And if you’re selling $50,000 kitchen remodels, you’re not going to have a landing page for a free estimate.

Instead, you might advertise downloading a kitchen island guide that you’ve created. This helps establish you as an expert in your field, while also grabbing the attention of people who are within your target demographic. Once you’ve got a list of potential leads from people who have looked at your kitchen island guide, you can remarket – show a new ad to the same group of people that draws them a little closer to becoming a customer. So, for instance, maybe your second ad displays common kitchen remodeling prices, with an emphasis on higher-end kitchens.

What this advertising strategy does is focus on the end-goal of generating leads that are more likely to become clients, instead of spending a lot of time giving out quotes or making appointments with people who are just shopping around. And while it can be complicated, we can help you create an advertising funnel that will increase your overall Facebook ad success.

X: FAQ’s

While we do our best to answer all the questions you might have when it comes to Facebook Advertising, we know there’s some things that might not be covered in our guide. So, we’ve created a list of some of the most frequently asked questions we’ve heard concerning advertising on Facebook. If you’ve got a question that’s not answered here, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us!

1: Do I need a Facebook page to use Facebook ads?

While you can create Facebook ads without having a Facebook business page, you’re extremely limited in the ad types you can use – the only ad you’ll be able to make is one that sends people to your website. We don’t recommend this, especially as it’s really simple to set up a Facebook business page. Plus, Facebook business pages are another place for clients to leave you positive reviews and for you to organically share your information, establishing you as an industry expert. And people often search for businesses on Facebook as well as on Google, so it just makes sense to have a page set up.

2: What’s the “power editor”?

If you want to create a large amount of ads at once, the power editor is what you’d use. You can get there through your Facebook Ads menu.

3: What’s the “audience network”?

Audience Network placement extends the reach of your ads by showing them to your target audience on other sites and apps approved by Facebook. This can include Facebook-affiliated sites and can even be extended to Instagram.

4: Do I need a mobile-friendly website?

To get the most benefit out of your Facebook ads, we highly recommend that you invest in developing a mobile-friendly (also known as “responsive”) website. Facebook is the number one app in the world, and the majority of active Facebook users are using their mobile devices to access the website. Advertising on Facebook – especially if you’re trying to get people to click through to your site – works better if your site is modern and easy to use. Check out your site on your phone or tablet and make sure it looks good. Take notes of any improvements or changes you might want to make. Your online advertising revolves around the hub that is your website, so making sure that is as good as it can be will improve all of your other online marketing efforts!

5: How often should I refresh my ads?

You should try to be vigilant when it comes to keeping your ads updated; a good way of doing this is running several ad variations at the same time, and swapping out low-performing ads as soon as you’ve gotten enough data to confirm that they aren’t doing as well as you’d like. Facebook Ads can potentially go stale in a matter of days, and that’s one way to make sure that you’ve always got a fresh version of your ad circulating.

6: Can I advertise for free?

Technically, creating a Facebook business page and being active on it while promoting it on your website and other social media channels can be seen as “free” advertisement; anyone who’s liked or followed your page has a chance to see the posts you create without you having to spend money. However, as organic reach (the percentage of people you’re able to reach without paying) for Facebook posts has dropped over the past several years, you won’t have nearly the impact as you would with a paid Facebook advertising campaign.

XI: Conclusion

Facebook Advertising is a great way to promote your business, encourage engagement, drive clients to your website, generate leads, and increase your conversion rate when it’s done correctly. While this guide is a great start to learning about Facebook Advertising, we know that it can seem overwhelming. At Contractor Dynamics, we’re here to help you create a comprehensive marketing strategy that will help your business thrive. If you want to take the next step in marketing, contact us today to arrange a consultation. We’ll help you understand exactly how Facebook Ads can benefit you!

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