#sponsored online ads are the more recent of the bunch

[manofthepipis]

OKAYOKAY, question because a lot of people have different answers in the Deltarune community and I wanna hear your take on it!

How long do you think the Ads have been around? Time clearly moves differently from the light world versus the dark world, with Jevil being in jail "for an odd hundred years" and the darkners having full backstories supposedly on a portal that seems open yesterday. (Personally, I like to think they always existed and the dark world only made them personally accessible to the lightners [double-sided since they interact daily] within that day. Especially since the "Spamton is 45, May 3rd 1978." headcannon is near and dear to my heart. I love middle-aged men with trauma. I also REALLY like the idea that Spam was in his early twenties when he was at the peak of his fame, (if they have adolecent years of any kind) and then completely fell off before he reached his thirties. Especially since a lot of people consider that to be the prime of their lives.

On that topic, how long do you think the Adds were friends before Spamton went MIA? Do you think they had some type of childhood years? Is there a significant age gap between any of them? How many years did they have a relationship to where his absence significantly impacted their lives like that? I'd love to hear it <3

thanks for asking!! i'm actually rlly intrigued at this topic :D

I don't think the addisons have such a thing as a 'childhood' or 'adolescent years' actually haha like i imagine them as quite literal programs, who once developed by lightners, just kinda spawn into their cyber world, already familiar with how to operate. The concept of age is irrelevant, but is replaced with 'order of appearance'. Honestly i've always headcanoned spamton as the first addison on the scene, with the next following later. (Online advertisements rlly got hot in the early 90's, so there's a definite gap between him and the rest of the ads).

spamton's just always had that middle-aged shady car salesman vibe to him ever since moment one to me.

i'd feel they were around spamton for quite some time before he got his special call, say a couple years or even close to a decade. enough time to have been a witness of the extent of his desperation, while also getting to know the good side of him to max out their regret by the time we meet them in the trash zone.

but like in the concept of time it's so weird from light world to dark world. Like jevil's been locked away for ~100 years but the extra classroom hasn't been unused for that long presumably? That and spamton's whole deal and timeline. Truly, I've pondered that time also gets a metaphoric transition into the dark world, and becomes weird. Kind of like how the light world characters have a set time compared to us, the players, who are waiting 2+ years for their 'tomorrow'. It's kind of like that but for the dark worlds. I'm clinging to time being sort of ambiguous until it's explained in further chapters :D

i do share the headcanon where the fountain being opened let the dark world be accessible, as we get spade king's whole deal of their world being abandoned=the extra classroom closed and then him like hating lightners.

even if i'm completely wrong lol i will die holding the "spamton is a middle-aged guy with trauma" headcanon so close to my heart and everybody else can try to pry it from my cold dead hands :)

[prophbuilds]

Buying through Buyee

OR!

How I Found a Pair of Unobtainium Kits and used a Proxy Service to Increase My Backlog by Two

First and foremost, this is not sponsored. I don’t even take sponsors for my comic – the thing that is effectively my career – so there’s no way I’d do so for the thing I do as a fun hobby. This is all me and my personal experience using a proxy service to buy stuff from Japan.

Anyhoo! What follows is my experience using the proxy buying service called Buyee to purchase a pair of Catsith kits on the Japanese version of the Mercari website. I went into this knowing that many a Retro Tech and Gunpla YouTuber I’ve watched has used it to get stuff. Figured I’d give it shot.

I have had on my old “Kits to Buy” list the HG Catsith – a cute looking grunt suit from the series Mobile Suit Gundam: Reconguista in G (G-Reco for short) – for a while now. It's been sitting on one of my Amazon Wish Lists for so long it’s kind of become a marker for old stuff that never really comes up for a decent price. I say “Decent" because the lowest price it’s ever popped up at was around like $40? It usually runs around $60 or more if it ever pops up for sale.

This is a kit that's Supposed to be priced between $15 to $24 give or take where it's coming from.

Unlike the Hero suit, the G-Self, the Catsith is stuck in relative obscurity thanks to Bandai never reprinting the thing. It may be a Grunt suit but it’s not like a GM or a Zaku. Most of the other characters ended up with fancier mechs that got their own kits. That and G-Reco isn’t all that popular compared to some other Gundam series so you don’t end up with random reprints for the toy hungry fanbase.

Time passed and I’d recently found that it’s harder to find neat stuff for my various family members and myself for the holidays and whatnot. My getting the younger folks into Anime and video games is proving to be double-edged sword. Now… I've known about proxy services like Buyee for a while now. They tend to be talked up in Retro Tech and Gunpla videos as a place through which the various YouTubers have purchased stuff. Having seen their results so many times, I figured it was time to give it a try.

Setting up an account was easy enough. Nothing really too different from setting one up at any other online shop. The one thing that’s really different is it's more akin to the old Metacrawler search engine. You can select the shop you want to search but I kinda’ just winged it and tried out Mercari. No rhyme or reason to it. Just the one I though might have something neat that wasn’t a straight up auction site.

At first, I just kinda’ popped in “Gundam" and saw what dropped. Then I remembered something important: It's searching Japanese sites. It makes more sense to use the language of the folks who post things there. So I took a leap and looked up the Catsith’s Japanese name and BAM! I got a whole bunch of hits. Not just the usual “This is a Gundam Kit” results that I normally get searching English language sites but actual kits – both prebuilt and unbuilt kits. It was here I found a listing for two unbuilt kits.

Needless to say, I bought it as soon as I could.

Now things get fun.

Whenever I do something like this (buy something through a site I’m personally unsure of), I use my PayPal account. It acts as a buffer between my personal bank account and the site if things get squirrelly and, if it works, acts as a buffer between my personal bank account and the site if I decide to go on a spending spree. The more steps I put between myself and buying things, the better I am at not putting myself into debt.

I say this because I’m kinda’ to blame for the added time on getting these into my grubby little hands. It took a bit to transfer funds into my PayPal account to use on both buying the items and paying for shipping. -.-

The price for the two kit bundle came out to 4300 Yen or $30.50 at the time of purchase. That’s 3800 Yen for the item, 300 Yen to Buyee to buy the item, 500 Yen for their in-house checking and a 300 Yen coupon to save a Little bit of money on the whole dealie. This all gets the package to Buyee’s warehouse. They can hold stuff there free of charge for 30 days. You can also buy more and consolidate it later… but this time I did a single package.

After some doing and some waiting on money transfers on my end, we get to the hardest part of any international buying: Shipping!

Buyee gives a Bunch of options for shipping. Everything from fairly quick choices to ocean shipping that will take months. Needless to say, I took them up on their Buyee Air service that would take around a week to get here. It cost me 5188 Yen or $37.05 for the one package. Again, Proxy Services (or just international shops that let you consolidate items) tend to work best when you buy multiple items. That’s when shipping gets low enough to not be more than the original item.

All in all, I’m in $67.55 for two kits that would’ve run me about $7 less if I could find and buy just the one on a site like Amazon. The time from start to finish was a little under two weeks. I ended up with not one but Two unobtainium kits and a way for me to shop for the Holidays when my nieces and nephews ask for items that just never come to or came stateside. = )

[globalfintechseries]

SGE Optimization: An Opportunity to Diversify Your Local Search Strategy

Search Generative Experience (SGE) is continuing to drive a shift in Google search results. As AI innovation continues to deliver more comprehensive and informative answers to Google searches, businesses must ensure their digital presence remains relevant – especially as we can expect SGE results to be integrated directly into most Search Engine Results Pages (SERP), as well as within Local/Maps results sometime this year.

SGE is no longer a trend, but a major component of Google’s search business. As Google CEO Sundar Pichai noted in the company’s recent earnings call, the organization is “seeing an increase in Search usage among people who use the new AI overviews, as well as increased user satisfaction with the results.”

The question is – how much will businesses need to overhaul their Google Business Profiles in order to remain relevant in local search?

My answer: it depends.

There are many factors to consider. To start, do you have a deep understanding of your customer and the path they take to even begin the search that results in finding your business? Where are you at with other online marketing strategies? How much time have you spent already optimizing your business for local search?

To really understand the best path forward for your business, let’s dive in a bit deeper.

Understanding SGE’s Impact on Local Search

SGE has changed local search and will continue to play a role in its evolution, so businesses must understand it in order to optimize for the future. Where traditional search results offer a list of links to business listings, websites and sponsored pages from Google, SGE uses generative AI to create snapshots that answer user queries by summarizing content from Google Business Profiles, websites, social media and customer reviews. This approach allows search to unfold as a series of refined questions and follow-ups, similar to the way ChatGPT functions.

When a potential customer conducts a local business search, SGE provides a comprehensive summary of businesses, including customer ratings and reviews, presenting a more informative search result. While traditional search usually leads with ads, SGE (for now) focuses on providing users with more detailed information regardless of whether a business is paying for it to be there

As it stands today, SGE snippets are more likely to be triggered when a searcher enters a longer query. According to a recent study from SERanking, single-word queries triggered a SGE snippet in approximately 12% of cases, where five-word queries triggered a SGE snippet in nearly 20% of cases.

Marketing Technology News: MarTech Interview with Susan Ganeshan, Chief Marketing Officer @ Emplifi

Let’s look at an example. Say you search for “Subaru dealers near me.” If you use traditional Google search, results will consist of a bunch of sponsored links and a 3-pack (a format for displaying top results for business pages):

When you use SGE to perform the same search, you get a concise summary of nearby dealers – and you even notice that customer review ratings appear alongside each location. SGE has culled those dealers’ websites, business listings, rating pages and other digital channels to summarize this information. Most interestingly, there are zero ads anywhere on the entire page featuring SGE results – although most certainly there will be soon given how dependent Google is on ad revenue.

Now let’s try a more refined search in SGE – this time, Chevrolet service center:

The results here are becoming busy and hard to parse even without any ads on the page. SGE is returning multiple results from the same dealer but without clearly delineating what is a service center page vs what is a dealer/sales page. The additional information they are choosing to show is not consistent with some descriptions appearing to be based off of user reviews (“some say”), while other descriptions seem to be a summary of the webpage, website, or a rewritten business description.

While traditional search also uncovers service listings, only three listings appear, and no ratings or details accompany the listings which means SGE is improving its understanding of the service listing. It now knows that service listings are a department at the dealer, therefore, the reviews that all service-oriented reviews can be attributed to the service listing.

This busy experience is similar for non-branded searches but the execution varies depending on the query. For example, “best coffee shops in Lincoln Square to work,” reveals relevant, descriptive answers about local coffee shops – and remember, these results appear above any other organic and paid search results. Also note comments about food and drink offerings as well as atmosphere.

When you compare the SGE results to the traditional Featured Snippet from TripAdvisor that appears below it, you can see how this type of experience is likely to keep searchers more engaged, especially if they take advantage of the refined follow-up searches Google is encouraging.. Granted, people who simply need to complete utility searches (such as movie times nearby) won’t necessarily care to have a deep conversation in order to complete their search. But, when SGE is integrated into every SERP, utility users may benefit from a better user experience due to the more relevant results and, as a bonus, the lack of ads (for now).

Optimizing and Diversifying to Navigate the Future of SGE

Given the changes – and media coverage – resulting from SGE innovations, it might seem like every business must rush to overhaul their local search strategy. I would advise anyone that rushes to do this to first take a step back and first conduct a thoughtful audit of your local search strategy.

Here are the steps to take to optimize your business’ local search strategy for SGE:

1. Prioritize Google Business Profile:

Ensure that your business listings are accurate and reflect the scale and depth of your offerings. Making note of things that might seem small – like free Wi-Fi or accessible parking – will play a big role in being findable in conversational search.

2. Speak to your Customers:

Opt for a conversational tone in your listings. Make the customer feel like they’re in a one-on-one conversation. Incorporate longtail keywords naturally into your content and avoid keyword stuffing.

3. Proactively Seek Reviews:

Encourage customers to leave reviews on your GBP listings. This directly influences the AI-backed SGE results, which often surface the most representative ones.

4. Elicit Detailed Insights:

Encourage customers to provide detailed feedback when they leave reviews. As AI technologies evolve, users will start posing more nuanced inquiries about local businesses, and details about the Wi-Fi strength at your coffee shop or ambiance at your restaurant will help improve your ranking.

5. Make the Most of Multiple GBP Listings:

Businesses, especially car dealerships, can maintain separate listings for sales, parts, and service, which enhances the search experience for potential customers.

6. Consistency is Key:

Your website’s information needs to be in sync with the listing content. SGE also includes a website carousel in its results, giving the user the option to visit your site directly.

Navigating the SGE Future

SGE is changing local search, but businesses can quickly adapt to the evolving dynamics by mastering the basics and diversifying their strategies by optimizing their business listings, maintaining up-to-date, consistent content across platforms and seeking feedback from consumers. Businesses that are able to adapt and evolve will reap the benefits of higher visibility, more engagement, and ultimately, growth.

[webiatorstechnologies]

Neeva AI - The Ad Free Google Search Alternative, Once Again In News

In June 2018, the Mountain View, California-based firm debuted a subscription-only search engine in the U.S., eventually adding a free "basic" tier with limits. Neeva AI today has over 600,000 customers, most of whom are on a free plan, and is eager to expand into new regions.

Neeva Search Engine has launched its services in the U.K., France, and Germany tomorrow. Due to Google's antitrust issues in e-commerce (Google Shopping), Android, and online advertising, Europe was a good place to start Neeva's expansion.

The EU has pushed Google to relax its grip by offering Android users other default search engines during setup. Search is the doorway to the internet for billions of people worldwide. This has mostly failed, but it does make Europe a fertile ground for search startups.

TechCrunch interviewed Neeva AI co-founder and CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy in London to discuss his three-year-old company's current state and future market ambitions. Over 15 years, Ramaswamy rose from engineer to senior vice president.

He drove Google's $100 billion ads and commerce division. In 2018, he joined Greylock Partners, a prestigious venture capital (VC) firm. Greylock, Sequoia Capital, and other top investors have invested in Neeva twice. Neeva has raised over $80 million since its founding.

Important Features Of Neeva Search Engine

Neeva AI has a native mobile app and a browser plugin for Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Safari that disables trackers and provides organic search. A news or information website you visit cannot share your data with third parties for profiling or tailored ads.

Neeva promotes its ad-free atmosphere. Neeva displays the most relevant results at the top, saving users from scrolling through six or more sponsored results. While few will notice sponsored "inorganic" results, any search tool that preaches privacy has additional trade-offs.

Privacy search engines frequently sacrifice utility, which Google provides. Google Search has many value-added capabilities, such as telling you how crowded a pub will be at a certain hour, where the nearest pub is near your present location, and how to get there. 

Before we discuss current opening times, addresses, phone numbers, and more for nearly every public place in a city. Apple Maps and interfaces with third-party data providers like Yelp and Tripadvisor help Neeva search engine and others close this gap. 

But, the information isn't always current, and navigating isn't possible without giving your location. Neeva AI uses a user's IP address to "infer" their location, although tests showed it was several hundred miles off. It provides more accurate results for current location.

Filtering information sources is another benefit. If you don't wish to buy from Amazon, Neeva can deprioritize it in future results. You can also tell Neeva AI to show fewer or more stories from a publisher. It emphasizes Neeva's business model's main benefit. 

More Effective Attributes Of Neeva AI

Neeva search engine is targeting consumer spending. Thus Google allows consumers to demote specific corporations in search results. It could contribute to the much-maligned echo chamber effect that has plagued Big Tech in recent years. 

It consists of algorithms feeding consumers the same content from the same sources rather than exposing them to "fresh ideas" or content they might not otherwise see. Someone who hates a bunch of political news outlets can minimize their search results. 

Ramaswamy emphasizes that its search indexing methods prioritize quality. How Neeva generates findings is another tricky topic. Neeva, like other "alternative" search engines, uses Bing for some web searches, but it planned to switch to its tech stack soon

“We built all the personal indexing tech from scratch,” Ramaswamy said. Our tech and Bing split web searches around 50-50. Our huge indexing and search system is serving more results.” Ramaswamy stated that Neeva AI does not send Bing personal data.

Neeva search engine also lets signed-in users connect their Google, Office 365, and Dropbox accounts, converting web search into a personalized tool for email, documents, calendars, and more. Premium users can link Slack, GitHub, Confluence, Jira, Box, Notion, and Figma.

A Delicate Balance - Neeva vs Google

If someone joined Neeva because of privacy concerns with rival goods, they may not want to use any of the connectors. Neeva AI requests read and write permissions when a user links GitHub to their Neeva account, as required by GitHub's API for downloading data.

Google stopped personalizing search results for these reasons. Google used Gmail data to show planned airline and hotel reservations and serve customized adverts. But, the privacy palaver this caused was too much, and Google eventually disconnected these products.

It is done to convey the idea that "it doesn't care about your data" and reassure enterprise customers' worry that Google could be reading their emails. It involves balancing privacy, utility, and user control—not everyone wants the same search engine. 

Some consumers may be fine with Google scanning their inboxes to find out when their flight leaves, while others may be fine with targeted, ad-supported search results if it means they can use Google's goods for free.

Neeva faces the same challenge: "How to create a truly valuable product that people would use and eventually pay for?" and "How to achieve this without advertising or corporate intervention?". As a result, Neeva AI makes a basic product, as un-Google-like as possible.

It then lets consumers manually adjust things to their privacy standards. Neeva search engine allows easy web searches without advertising or registration. If users are willing to sacrifice some privacy, they can open a free account to search across third-party personal accounts.

The user must manually disable Neeva's 90-day search history. Neeva search engine has this on by default since search history provides real value to users, such as homepage recommendations and auto-filling search phrases. 

Search history will be deactivated by default because a product that emphasizes privacy may not need this feature. “Because search is so personal, we're modifying this,” Ramaswamy said. “We thought an explicit opt-in feature was better.”

Yet, someone used to Google Search's immediacy and slickness will likely struggle to switch to Neeva or another search engine without seeing the drawbacks. Google succeeds because it builds sticky goods that entice users to stay.

Maps are one of the best illustrations of how Google has prospered by taking money from one product, investing it in another, and eliminating competitors. Google uses search ad revenue to fund Maps and eliminate the category.

Recognizing Neeva's problem is different from solving it. It all boils down to solving one problem at a time, starting with removing advertisements from the search for people who value it and adding some value-added delights.

Neeva AI Pro-Privacy Search Engine

There are many "privacy" search engines, including well-funded incumbents like DuckDuckGo, You.com, and Brave, which recently launched its search engine. These companies all emphasize "privacy." 

But they're also trying to establish a search business that doesn't require a lot of adverts and can be based on less intrusive keyword searches. Brave, like Neeva, will soon provide a subscription-based premium service that removes advertisements from search results. 

It means advertisements for free plan users. DuckDuckGo relies on keyword-based ads, whereas You.com currently uses affiliate links. Neeva emphasizes that its business model is now focused on getting people to sign up for a premium plan.

Neeva Search Engine will not provide any ads or affiliate links. It is also investigating bundling collaborations with like-minded companies like encrypted email service Proton or licensing deals to fuel enterprise application search. 

Ramaswamy claimed that localization ensures search quality. Neeva's basic ad-free service is available in Europe at launch, but the premium version will launch in the following weeks at $5 per month. Daily Google searches are estimated at 5.6 billion. 

No alternative comes close to that traffic. Google Adwords generates 60% of Google's revenue and provides many businesses with free, organic traffic. It also spawned an industry of Google Adwords optimizers.

Conclusion

We can't decide who will win this Neeva vs Google debate. But we can say that Neeva AI will highly impact the usage of Google and other search engines. Although, it needs a lot of improvements to come into the list of the most popularly used search engines. 

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Original Source : https://bit.ly/42jHUwM

[antoine-roquentin]

The popular conception of chivalry, as a moral code guiding the behavior of honorable knights, is flat-out, laughably wrong. That’s a creation of 19th-century authors like Walter Scott, and the popular fantasy authors (basically up until George R.R. Martin) who built on their worldview in the 20th.

In reality, chivalry was all about one particular version of Guys Being Dudes. Chivalry could refer to a few different things, but the most common meaning was simply battlefield deeds, executed with some style. This, what knights referred to as “prowess,” was at the core of the broader ideology of chivalry: raw, bloody, physical performance, violence done effectively and to an agreed-upon aesthetic standard. The second major concern of chivalry, honor, grew directly out of the first. Honor wasn’t an abstract concept to medieval knights; it was a possession, a recognition of their particular status and place in the social hierarchy, which they were well within their rights to violently defend and assert through their prowess. Piety was the icing on the cake, but no knight really doubted that God approved of their actions.

An oral culture, passed around during training sessions and drinking bouts and feasts and military campaigns, produced this culture and inculcated new knights into it. A whole universe of texts, the kinds of things knights read or had read to them, sent the same message, like this 12th-century poem called Girart de Vienne:

When I see the whinnying war-steeds plunge

With worthy knights into a battle’s crush,

And see their spears and cutting blades well struck,

There is nothing on earth I love so much!

These were dudes who loved getting after it, and for them, getting after it meant blood-soaked deeds on the battlefield. It’s not that there was nothing more to it - sure, there were some bits about romance and ladies, debates about religiosity and moral actions, exhortations to do better - but the core was always physical, male violence. And it obviously wasn’t for everyone: Knights were members of a hereditary military aristocracy, and their possession of chivalry was what set them apart from dirty peasants.

Two aspects neatly parallel modern Bro Culture: first, the emphasis on physicality and the body, and how that provided both a sense of the self and secured social status; and second, the restricted, bubble-like world that produced and emphasized it, with its fictional and real heroes, its stories about great deeds, its values, and its models to be emulated. Your average knight would absolutely identify with and appreciate this impossibly toxic meathead sentiment:

Obviously, there are pieces that don’t neatly parallel, the biggest ones being the hereditary and explicitly military nature of chivalry. You don’t have to be a soldier to be a Bro, though it doesn’t hurt. And - much more important - you aren’t born into being a Bro; you become one, by doing worthy deeds of prowess.

That’s a quintessentially American value: the idea that anybody can make something of themselves if they work hard enough, move enough weight, run fast enough, practice enough to shoot a tight grouping, make the right sacrifices. The physical meritocracy (and its potential rewards of fame and fortune) is open to anyone willing to do whatever it takes to climb the ladder. Even the least intellectually gifted meathead can make something of himself if he does the workouts, takes the right gear, and builds his audience on YouTube and Instagram. Don’t forget to like and subscribe, and smash that follow button.

In a moment of stagnant social mobility, rising inequality, and incredible uncertainty around the future, this strongly visual message of self-betterment and improving one’s socioeconomic status through literal sweat can resonate deeply. It’s all within the individual’s control, if they simply work enough - an antidote to all that uncertainty, everything that’s so obviously beyond an individual’s control and reckoning, no matter how misleading and incomplete the formula actually is.

That’s especially appealing to the many millions of American men who don’t have college degrees (many more of them than women, given the gendered trends in undergraduate enrollment) who are effectively locked out of professional-managerial culture and its straightforward path into the comfortable upper-middle class. Accomplishment through physical prowess is thus a means of building both a sense of self and community.

The connections to this particular moment in American culture and history go much deeper than that, though. This whole edifice of Bro Culture grows out of the broader rise of influencers, performative self-branding through social media, and the construction of identity through consumption.

With the right protein powder, shilled by your favorite strongman, you too can deadlift 800 pounds, or at least tell yourself you’ll get there someday. With the right brand of CBD tincture, which sponsors your favorite Crossfit athlete, you won’t feel that burning pain in your rotator cuff after you clean and jerk too much weight with suboptimal technique. By religiously listening to the right Bro-approved entrepreneurship podcast, hosted by some guy who happened to get booked on the Joe Rogan Experience during a slow week, you too can buy a McMansion in an affordable suburb.

Much of what happens in Bro Culture is driven by lifestyle consumption: ads for sunglasses on Barstool Sports’ Pardon My Take podcast, brand partnerships between supplement companies and YouTube stars, tactical holsters for concealed-carry that an ex-Marine with a million Instagram followers wants you to buy. It’s self-actualization through sponsor codes.

The tactical lifestyle craze, a natural outgrowth of this particular slice of Bro Culture, is the logical endpoint of all this. It’s where entrepreneurial late capitalism and influencer trends meet imperial wars, the militarization of the police, and the emergence of Gun Guys as a default protected class within American society. You’re not a Crossfitter anymore; you’re a “tactical athlete,” doing varied types of interval, cardio, and strength training so you can be a more effective soldier or cop or firefighter or whatever, or you just want to feel like you could be one. The physical training is only part of this, since you can prominently declare your tactical affiliations with a variety of lifestyle products, ranging from coffee mugs to American flag stickers for your car to, naturally, firearms....

Just as much as its coffee, whose quality I can’t speak to, Black Rifle Coffee Company is selling the tactical lifestyle. They offer a staggering variety of T-shirts, hoodies, hats, mugs, thermoses, and stickers, many of them prominently branded with the eponymous “black rifle” of the brand. There are a lot of American flags and pieces of law-enforcement and military iconography, signifiers of the in-groups to whom the consumers of BRCC’s products belong, want to belong, or for whom they want to signal their support. BRCC has explicitly labeled itself as a coffee company for conservatives, an active participant in the culture wars. If you don’t like Starbucks and its effete, refugee-supporting, liberal tendencies, buy some Black Rifle product instead. If you like Trump, you’ll be at home with BRCC. Don Jr. endorsed them.

After the picture of Rittenhouse in the Black Rifle Coffee Company shirt appeared, its founder Evan Hafer quickly disavowed the youthful shooter. Even for an explicitly MAGA coffee company, supporting a teenaged AR enthusiast with blood on his hands was a bridge too far. But Rittenhouse had already been shaped by the world BRCC and its fellow-travelers have made. He got the message, loud and clear: You too can become a hero, or at least dress and drink coffee like one, by purchasing the right products, watching the right videos, and following the same Extended Bro Culture influencers. Don’t forget to like and subscribe.

The Veteran-owned piece of BRCC’s appeal isn’t a coincidence. They’re selling a position in the culture wars, a sense of belonging, but also a particular vision of what it means to be American, a man, and an American man. A staggering number of this part of Bro Culture’s key figures are veterans. Jocko Willink, perhaps the best known (and least openly political) of the bunch, was a Navy SEAL officer; he was actually the commanding officer of the famous sniper Chris Kyle during the Battle of Ramadi in 2006.

After retiring, Willink turned his SEAL experience into a career as a leadership consultant, motivational speaker, media personality, and energy drink salesman. His intensity, built on his military service, is legendary: His exhortations to do hard things regularly, to live by a code, and take responsibility for oneself, resonate with millions of people. And Willink is far from the only one to do so, turning overseas service in imperial wars, especially as a special forces operator, into a key component of his entrepreneurial appeal. This isn’t a judgement on his military service; it’s a statement of fact. Being an undeniable badass is a the core part of why Jocko Willink is a quintessential Bro Hero.

Imperial wars overseas always come home eventually, and they do so in complex ways. The fact that millions of people listen to Jocko Willink, buy Black Rifle Coffee Company merchandise, and dabble in more extreme fringes is a product of decades spent elevating not just military service writ large but violent combat overseas against ill-defined Others. For every Jocko Willink, there’s an Eddie Gallagher, the SEAL who was convicted of and then recently pardoned for war crimes after becoming a cause célèbre for large swathes of the online right.

If these are the heroes Bro Culture puts forth - special operators accustomed to high-intensity, high-volume fighting overseas, who then develop enormous media platforms - it’s obvious what message Kyle Rittenhouse and the innumerable police officers, tactical fitness enthusiasts, and more run-of-the-mill viewers and listeners will take. Millions of people listen to Joe Rogan when he talks to Jocko Willink, Tim Kennedy (the Green Beret and MMA fighter and increasingly open right-wing figure), or Cameron Hanes (who advocated for Eddie Gallagher’s release). They’re warriors. Joe Rogan isn’t a soldier, but he’s a black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, a former competitive kickboxer, a bowhunter, and a firearms enthusiast. If these are the people at the core of Bro Culture, a culture that directly touches tens of millions of American men, then there are bound to be knock-on effects. If they’re constantly telling their listeners to be ready, to be tactical, to be prepared to fight and to be good at it, that means something.

This is why I think Bro Culture, or at least its extended reaches, deserve more scrutiny and attention. The code of American manhood that’s developing out of this social-media melting pot has some aspects that bear watching: A love of firearms centered on tactical usefulness (for use in what context, exactly?), a vision of muscular physicality, self-defense as a personal obligation, an unquestioning hero-worship of military culture, and far too often, a deep suspicion of people who don’t subscribe to this precise view of being a guy. Support the Troops, and if you don’t, you’re not really a man at all. If cops - quintessential subjects of Bro Culture - are told that they need to be bigger and stronger and quicker on the draw, that they’re basically Troops, and that the targets of violence deserve what they get, what’s the likely outcome of tense interactions between police and the people they’re supposed to serve?

[tk9336]

My Curatorial Internship at the Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago!

I began my Curatorial Internship on 6/7/21 bright and early as I drove my first day waking up at 5AM as I live in Wauconda, IL a northwest suburb of Chicago. MSI is in the heart of downtown Chicago, so the drive is usually an hour and half accounting for traffic. That sucked big time, so I took the train for the rest of my time so far. Luckily I only have to be in the office Monday/Tuesday which is bittersweet: my train ticket is $10 a day, parking at Barrington Station is $3.50 daily but what kicks my wallet in the teeth if my Lyft bill, usually around $50 from Ogilvie Transportation Center in downtown Chicago to MSI and back. Thankfully my internship is paid thanks to Studio Institute which is my sponsor, a grant MSI received and SI how I found out about the position for the summer. I thought I would be working with a team of interns since this is a big project I am a part of, but believe it or not I am the sole Curatorial intern! It felt good to know that I did well in my interview and it wasn’t just a hunch, and to have the honor of being the sole recipient! Its been a number of years since there was a curatorial intern and with this in mind I knew I was going to work hard to pay them back for their faith in me. I do not say this lightly, as I am 28 years old now and opportunities like this I have learned are not offered to just any one off the street.

The Project? MSI is digitizing roughly 1,000 artifacts to be shown online on their website (COVID was a strong motivator for this as it hit Museums all over the world. They are passionate about reaching their audience!) Collections has over 35,000 artifacts to keep track of, and all it’s history is just written or printed in a large Accession’s Archive, and there is digital archive to work with. I am going to help with what I am assigned with gaining invaluable professional research experience, with a strong focus as well in writing for labels and anything else that is thrown my way! I am also making this blog conjunction for my school, Loyola University Chicago of which helped me get this position. This will be a long post, so buckle in as I share my weeks to bring you, and me up to date for next week, 7/19/21!

Week 1: 6/7-11/2021 | This position is 4 days a week, for a total of 28 hours. Part-time. My round-trip however with commuting turns a 7 hour work day into a 12 hour day from when I wake up until I drive home from Barrington Station. Thankfully the two days I work from home is a bit easier on commuting from upstairs to downstairs!

Monday: HR/Orientation/Introduction to Collections by Alexis, the talent manager at MSI. Your standard job introduction, but my first at a Museum.

Tuesday: In-depth Museum tour/explaining the research and writing work I would be doing/assisting Kathleen (Collections Director) in the vault*(storage, vault sounds cooler) cataloging.

Wednesday: Photographing Bike exhibit for transcription/beginning research work on first Accessions project on Firefighting artifacts by find corresponding files in Accessions archive, reading the materials in each folder to find relevant material to write in description about the item to put online. I scan the documents I find relevant, so that I can do that additional research and writing at home. This will be the plan going forward (research/cataloging the vault on Monday and Tuesdays) but there are plans to have me assist on additional projects and duties within the department and MSI as a whole.

Thursday: With the information gathered from scanning documents from each accessions folder, then at home I can look over each stapled bunch of materials of each item and then add bullet points of relevant information in a word document. That can then be shared with the Director, Curator and assistant curator to help them use the most relevant materials to weave the labels needed to put online for this historic artifacts.

Week 2: 6/14/18/2021 | Fridays are not included as that’s when I attend Zoom meetings with the program directors and liaison for Studio Institute which has over 40 interns around the country in Museums across the United States. I won’t lie... I got the best assignment in my opinion! This was tailor made for me! As an older student I am FULLY aware of what a incredible privilege it is to be paid to do something you truly love down to your bones.

Monday: I start at 9:15 but my train was late to unforeseen circumstances. I emailed my supervisor I would be in a hour later than usual and she appreciated the heads up. I continued pulling folders from the accessions archive, then scanning relevant materials. I would then staple the gathered materials and kept my work in order to mirror the worksheet log I was given for the artifacts in the fire fighting exhibit.

Tuesday: Getting in at my normal time I continued, and finished the worksheet log I was given for the Fire Fighting exhibit. I now have a large amount of material to review on my days working from home to provide bulleted points of relevant material that will assist the Collections team create the labels needed when selected materials are uploaded online. I would do five files at a time to stay organized and not bite off more than I could and get "lost in the sauce" as we would say in the Army. That way, a steady rhythm was established and I could better gauge my time per batch.

Wednesday: I worked from home continuing my task of added bulleted information points on artifacts. I am assuming that the items that have a extensive amount of reference materials will be those making the cut to be uploaded online once the project gets to that point. Made up the hour lost on Monday due to my train out of Barrington, IL running late.

Thursday: Still grinding away by going through the research materials I assembled from the archives in MSI to add bulleted points of relevant information on artifacts to make the lives of the Director, Curator, and assistant easier allowing them to focus on more advanced research and other duties.

Week 3: 6/21-25/2021

Monday: Continued transcription of the Fire Fighting Exhibit. Nearly finished with it. Working from home is getting better as I am getting a better pace of work and less distractions.

Tuesday: I was able to get some opportunities for front-facing guest interaction and educations as I gave my first MSI tour. Two individuals from my organization, the 501st Legion, came down from Green Bay for a Chicago vacation. They had seen my positive posts about being at MSI and wanted to come see it for themselves. I asked Dr. Saridakis if I could learn how to give a tour on my own, to which she agreed. In my inaugural tour I took them around the great hall's exhibits, being careful to focus on items of which I had some background in to better give a small education on the artifacts. My strength is in the Hall of Transportation in which houses the Spitfire, Stuka and new Boeing 727. On the floor I pointed out the Millburn and Tesla electric cars as well. After going at what seemed a quick pace, we made our way over to the Hall of Bicycles, and weaved back to the floor. I took them to U-505 which is my strongest exhibit. Military history is my focus, and I don't ever tire of going to see U-505. In the most surprise to my guests, they were granted a behind the scenes walk-through of Collections in which Dr. Saridakis kindly donated her time to open the vault for us. She accompanied me, but gave me the reigns to get a feel for my first guided walk-through of Collections which is a duty all in the department should be familiar, and comfortable doing. I feel I did well for my first time, and gained experience in doing the same for the following day for a larger, planned tour by mHub. I took my guests out to lunch where my supervisors did a few weeks ago. It ran over time, so I'll make up the hour later at home.

Wednesday: Today was the day of the big planned of tour by Chicago tech company, mHub. My supervisor was not available in the morning so I filled out some other documents and found other work to do until she came in. This was sorting through the former archivist's boxes of files and articles looking for relevant materials that would be of use to the registrar. I had been doing this the day before as well before my guests came in at 11AM. There was a A LOT of material, but there was plenty of relevant stuff, including a complete file on the cars, and motorcycles in the MSI collection which included a recent appraisal of each item in inventory. I found the motorcycles of interest and made copies for myself to be of use on future behind the scenes tours (you pick a handful of items scattered at various checkpoints to engage with guests about. There just isn't enough time to go row by row.) mHub was scheduled for 3:30, but didn't not come until 4ish. My recent work with the fire fighting artifacts proved critically relevant as one of the guests was working on technology for fire fighters to pull up a 3D schematic on a app to see where the beams, and wiring is without them having to hack through the walls to find it. He was very much interested in the various fire fighting artifacts and thankfully I was a part of his group throughout the tour. Exhibitions engineer Jeff brought out two 1930's Ediphones, and while he was setting up I had a lengthy chat with him regarding his duties and responsibilities at MSI which proved insightful.

Thursday:  I wasn't as productive today as I wanted to be in part to some distractions in my personal life. I will make this time up on Saturday. Continued work on transcription of relevant facts to the fire fighting exhibit

Saturday: I finally finished the fire fighting exhibit items and look forward to trying my hand at writing short labels based on returning to the material I have. This label writing experience will be invaluable in such a professional capacity. It will be nice to have this skills honed, refined and on a professional level. I trudged the remaining artifacts, and put more time off the clock to finish so I can begin on my favorite exhibit, U505 on Monday!

Week 4: 6/28-7/2/2021

Monday: I came in and had my weekly 10AM meeting with Voula, and moved onto U-505/WWII items. Same as with the fire exhibit, finding files in the accession archive, scanning relevant materials to take home for work at home.

Tuesday: I continued scanning, and gather materials. At 1:00 PM I took photos of all the labels in the U-505 exhibit for transcription by one of the volunteers, Mary. I then at 2:30 I worked with Director McCarthy cataloguing some more artifact ranks in storage. At 4:10PM I asked if I could get a photo handling a textile artifact for both the experience of doing so and seeing one of U-505's flags not only in person, but to carefully handle, and touch. Director McCarthy and Dr. Saridakis both kindly indulged my request and it was a truly awesome experience for me. I also learned that there is a later train than I usually take. That bit of info is helpful just in case I ever miss the 5 o'clock train out of Chicago back to my home train station of Barrington, IL!

Wednesday: As I did with the firefighting exhibit and items, I continued bulleting down relevant facts and information. I created a new word doc just as I done previously with the Fire Fighting artifacts.

Thursday: Continued transcription. I look forward to trying my hand at writing some labels and short descriptions. I still can barely believe I am being paid to work on items I already love learning about. 

Saturday: Made up 1 hour from Thursday.

Week 5: 7/5-9/2021

Monday: Unpaid holiday for MSI employees. I am going to work half a day today so I only have to work 4 hours later in the week to make up for today. I am going to look over my U505/WWII artifacts and see if any really stand out as candidates for getting labels and descriptions.

Tuesday: I came in Tuesday and had my weekly meeting with Voula. Since the program is half-way over at this point the decision for now is for me to focus on the U-505/WWII artifacts and to also focus on writing a few labels for some of the Fire Fighting exhibit artifacts. I also took photos of all the labels in the U-505 and will transcribe that exhibit to it is available in a word doc to be transferred to the digital site - one day. I then worked with Kathleen in storage to continue cataloging artifacts, in three hours we nearly inputted over 200 artifacts.

Wednesday: I came in and got to work on transcription since there are no more additional accession files to pull and scan. MSI has just brought on a new assistant curator for a year to help with the digitization of the archives and storage. It is a daunting task! But one that will streamline Collections at MSI and make pulling artifacts extremely easy and hopefully foster some excitement from the public online to see items that otherwise sit in a dark, temperature controlled room. I also had the honor of getting to write a pitch to put up a "pop up" U-505 exhibit up in downtown. That was very exciting to me, along with the confidence gained because of the trust to do that. I wrote a few drafts to which the Director edited down. Very happy to be useful with a project that is extremely relevant to my interests.

Thursday: Continued transcription of the U-505 exhibit and writing a few labels that will then be edited by the Curator. Being directly involved in what the public will learn from a artifact is very cool to me. Improving on working remotely, efficiently - making a decision right away in the morning after a shower to begin work is a great guard against procrastination and working late to fairly submit the hours for the day. A regular schedule when self set and stuck to is extremely effective. 

Saturday: Continued work on the U-505 items from home.

Week 6: 7/12-16/2021

Monday: I started working right away after waking up. I want to finish my transcription of the U-505 exhibit which includes every wall panel, all artifacts and everything else in between. I went past midnight and just hit a stride, "in the zone, so to speak."

Tuesday: I worked through the night while on a roll. I didn't look at the clock, I just kept going! Reminded me of the old all-nighters I used to pull. I was excited to be finally complete with this project. I took it upon myself to transcribe the entire exhibit since it only existed on the walls and printed material. With it digitized this will be a tremendous help to the department. I finished it and even double checked Flickr for any photos I may have missed taking myself. I only missed only small panel, but all quotes, stories, artifacts... everything came to a 50 page, 20,000 word document. I look forward to seeing Voula's reaction when I print it out tomorrow! I also made a copy of just the artifacts for MSI so when they want to put some online they'll know what is theirs outright. In my previous job I worked 10 hour shifts so this felt familiar, I enjoy doing four 10-hour days to hit 40 back then and enjoy 3-day weekends. This is less hours, but I am grateful none-the-less to have the time to use for other projects, books and hobbies.

Wednesday: Voula's reaction to the massive transcription was great. I also placed the document in SharePoint so that anyone in Collections can access it. I am sure it will be a great aid in the future when a quick reference is needed for U-505. Today was also the MSI Employee picnic which was great. I took a couple pictures and video. Sodexo made me a Angus half pound burger which was great. I sat by myself since I came after our intern/departmental MSI zoom meeting held by Talent so we could learn how MSI is a collaborative effort and chat with the heads of other departments which was cool. I followed and email Mike Welsh to set up a tour of what Construction and Grounds does around the Museum. Most folks went to the picnic at noon, and our meeting didn't conclude until 1:10PM. Thankfully though Voula stayed a little after and we chatted at the table I was at. MSI redid the Smart Home area and it's a very nice shaded, little park. Definitely never been there before as a guest. Very cool to be a part of the "in-crowd." I took a longer lunch to take it all in.

Thursday: Since I busted my butt Monday into Tuesday and enjoyed yesterday I only had to do two hours today. I sat in the other half of the MSI intern/departmental Zoom meeting which featured Collections/Exhibitions and HR. I had the best chat with Exhibitions and the public relations managers. I will send emails to follow up with both of them as I find their work fascinating, and might as well - only here for a short time and it be an absolute waste to not take utter advantage of it. I cleaned up some of my Word documents and doubled check for syntax errors.

Thats it! You, and me, are now all up to date! I will continue to make weekly postings until its conclusion! I will also add some photos in the following posts, this is a long post so stay tuned, it will be less dense.

[simul16]

Low Effort in Their Own Way

All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." - Leo Tolstoy, "Anna Karenina"

I've been watching a fair amount of D&D content on YouTube of late, for varying reasons, and if I may paraphrase Tolstoy's famous quote above, I've learned that all good D&D channels make high-effort content, while each bad D&D channel makes low-effort content in its own way.

Low-effort content tends to be:

Content that is or can be created quickly; it doesn't require a lot of prep time (and the presentation usually allows this limited prep time to show)

Content that copies current trends; while a certain amount of response to significant events in the gaming world is to be expected, low-effort channels regularly feature content that basically boils down to 'here's my reaction to whatever rumor or scandal is currently being talked about among the community'

Content that does not spark or contribute to a discussion; when such channels go beyond simply recapitulating a recent event, they frequently spend very little time explaining their own reaction and seldom spend any time at all explaining or exploring contrary opinions except to make jokes or elicit emotional reactions from an over-simplified or straw-man version of the contrary opinion

Now let's start off by saying that I'm not knocking low-effort content per se; anybody who knows anything about online marketing can tell you that low-effort content has a role to play in any marketing strategy. Ideally, though, your low-effort content, the stuff that you can get out the door quickly and easily and get in front of your potential customers, exists to guide those customers to your higher-quality content that convinces them to buy your product, order your service, or otherwise become someone who believes that you have something of value to say. Because it's cheap and easy to produce, low-effort content can be cast far and wide to serve as a net to capture many potential viewers and guide them to the gold mine of the really important stuff you have to say. Unfortunately, when your low-effort content is what you have to say, it very much begs the question of what exactly it is people should be coming to your channel for.

Here are a few but by no means an exhaustive list of the YouTube channels that to me seem to feature way too much low-effort content.

The Dungeon Dudes

The Dungeon Dudes are two guys (Kelly McLaughlin and Monty Martin) who mainly do scripted back-and-forth style discussions of D&D-related topics. I've talked about the Dungeon Dudes before, when taking apart one of their recent videos, but they also stream a D&D game they play in on Twitch (and frequently post recordings of those sessions on their channel), do product reviews, and generally do whatever they can to maintain a consistent pace of content output, generally a minimum of twice weekly. They've been around for nearly four years now, and have amassed about 273 thousand subscribers on their channel, with over 44 million views for their content, which seem like decent numbers for a niche content channel. (Contract with CinemaSins, which exists as a viral content manufacturer, and has amassed over 9 million subscribers and over 3.3 billion views. I'm not trying to say the Dungeon Dudes are the CinemaSins of D&D; if they were, their numbers would probably look a lot more like those of CinemaSins.)

The big problem with the Dudes as content creators is that, despite being a niche content channel, they are clearly in it to try to eke out some kind of income or living from the work they put into the channel: they've got a Patreon, they use affiliate links in the descriptions of their product review videos to gain some additional referrer income, and they do sponsored content when they can get a sponsor. They started back in the summer of 2017 with a very 2016-era plan on how to succeed at YouTube: put together a bunch of short (5-10 minutes, occasionally longer, but go over 15 minutes at your peril) videos and release them on an iron-clad schedule to get people used to coming back to your channel and looking over your new content, and to their credit, they've kept up their content production schedule very consistently over the past four years.

They've also learned a few things during that time and have adapted the channel in response: their videos explaining rules and reviewing new products tend to be more popular, so they work those topics in on a more regular basis. They've learned that the YouTube algorithm has subtly changed over the past few years to reward channels that can provide longer 'engagement' (which gives YouTube more opportunities to run ads), and have expanded their video length to an average of about a half-hour, with their re-broadcasts from Twitch being extra-long videos (between two and two-and-a-half hours) which, while drawing fewer total views, probably draw as much or more 'engagement' from the algorithm for the views they have.

But the need to spit out so much content on such a rigid, unforgiving schedule means that they have to aim for quick-creation and easy digestion: putting subclasses into a bog-standard tier ranking, making 'top five' and 'top ten' lists that seem like they're being cribbed from a more thoughtful resource, and generally getting stuff out the door (like their 'Powerful Spell Combos Using Teamwork' video) without spending too much time thinking about how valuable or even accurate their advice happens to be. More to the point, it seems to be taking its toll on the guys who serve as the hosts of the show: Kelly McLaughlin has a fairly dour expression in general, but lately he seems to have the countenance of a man who's about to post a 'very special episode' discussing the dangers of YouTuber burnout.

The Dungeon Dudes feature low-effort content because they have to in order to support the publishing frequency they've chosen; if they were to take the time to put together a truly high-effort piece regarding one of their traditional topics, their Patreon subscribers would likely be asking why their release schedule had slowed down before their work was even half-done.

Dungeon Craft

The Dungeon Craft channel is run by a fellow who refers to himself as 'Professor Dungeon Master'; I have not yet found any reference in his channel or elsewhere that identifies who he actually is, so I'll just refer to him as Prof. Prof has been on YouTube a bit longer than the Dungeon Dudes, having launched his channel in October of 2016, and has put out 185 'episodes' (as of the time of this writing), thus averaging between three and four episodes per month. Prof's own 'trailer' video explicitly states his channel's concept: "Some channels focus on running the game, others on building terrain, others on painting minis. I do it all!" You might think, then, that this would be a place to find quite high-quality content, especially related to terrain and miniatures painting tips, but it seems like the main effect of Prof making his channel be about multiple topics (and there are plenty of topics he discusses that don't fit into any of those three categories above) is that he can't successfully communicate what his channel is actually about, other than about his specific opinions. Maybe that's the reason he's sitting at about 65 thousand subscribers and just under 5 million views.

However, being at a slightly lower 'tier' of content production than the Dungeon Dudes is not itself any kind of crime or even indicative of poor quality -- after all, one of my favorite D&D lore channels on YouTube is RavenloftTravelAgent, and she's got just over a thousand subscribers and only about 50 thousand views on her videos. No, Prof could have a very high-quality, high-content channel with the subscriber numbers and views he has, but he doesn't.

Prof's issue is almost exactly the opposite of that of the Dungeon Dudes: instead of cranking out a rapid-fire, breakneck volume of content to keep up with an arbitrary content production schedule because that's how you make a living producing content for YouTube and you have to keep feeding the hungry algorithm, Prof cranks out content that's very easy for him to write because he's been involved in the game for a long time and already knows that the way he learned to play the game is the best way. Any topic that comes up related to D&D, he's got an opinion and can spit out a script explaining his opinion quickly because it's the same opinion he's held for decades. Classic D&D didn't have skills, so the next edition of D&D shouldn't have them either. Classic D&D had slow advancement, so slow advancement is better than fast advancement. This becomes even more obvious in the videos that have very little or nothing to do with running a D&D game, such as where Prof explains why he thought Avengers: Endgame sucked, or why he thought Season 8 of Game of Thrones was 'nearly perfect'.

Some of the oddest episodes of Dungeon Craft have to do when Prof makes admissions that make him out to be, well, the D&D channel for 'that kind' of old-school gamer: the ones who can make comments to each other that they can't make in front of their wives or significant others because the latter find the comments sexist, the kind of guys you can complain to about not being able to tell a Polack joke at work, the guys who treated D&D in the 1980s and 1990s the way that guys in the 1950s and 1960s treated golf where they could build a wall between the world as it existed and the world as they wanted to believe it was (and, if we're being honest, the way that they believed it should actually be). Nowhere is this more evident than in the video where Prof starts by discussing the hot, rich girlfriend he had once who tried but never got into D&D who he just had to break up with, and which by the 3 minute mark has him "calling bullshit" on the idea that relationships are built on compromise and negotiation. (I mean, you saw this coming, right? Right there at the end of the last paragraph about how the ending of Game of Thrones was so good? You knew that's where this was going, right?)

And, of course, he's not immune to just jumping on the latest bandwagon to contribute his drone to the chorus of voices talking about things just to be talking about things. It shouldn't be surprising that Prof jumped on the bandwagon of the lawsuit brought by Hickman and Weis against Wizards of the Coast over the upcoming Dragonlance trilogy, which turned out to be a nothing-burger. Even weirder is the tag in the description of that video which says "Analysis you can't get anywhere else", even though the video doesn't contain anything that hadn't already been discussed over the three weeks between the lawsuit and Prof's video other than Prof's own opinions about it. My favorite howler that Prof makes in this video is his assertion that, because Hickman and Weis got a lawyer to file a lawsuit, that means there's definitely fire under that smoke, because "big law firms do not accept cases they don't think they can win", which both ignores the existence of SLAPP suits as well as the existence of authors who seem to take perverse glee in suing rival authors just to drive them out of the industry. He's also responded with multiple videos in response to Cody at Taking20s controversial 'illusion of choice' essay, and his response to Ginny Di's essay on making online D&D suck less didn't include any of Ginny's solid advice on making online play more compatible with an in-person mentality (recognizing interruptive behavior, or using text chat to maintain side-conversations that would otherwise not be distracting in person), but instead gave these recommendations to players:

Keep your camera turned on

Mute yourself when not talking

Don't distract yourself with technology during the game

Nothing specific on recognizing how online play differs from tabletop play and suggesting ways to bring those two styles closer together, just commands because he's the DM and he says so. Or, in other words, low-effort, opinion-based content.

Nerd Immersion

Nerd Immersion, a channel by Ted that started in May of 2014 and has amassed over 70 thousand subscribers, starts his "channel trailer" video by leafing through a book, then looking up and saying, "Oh, hello" as if he'd just noticed that there was a camera on pointing at him while he's sitting in his orange-trimmed gaming chair. That, sadly, is roughly the level of thought that goes into the actual content contained on this long-tenured but seemingly still super-niche channel.

The weird thing is that at some point, it was obvious that Ted put some real effort into this channel. There are defined sections of the channel that focus on particular things, avoiding the Dungeon Craft problem of 'what topic is our channel about this week?' On Tuesdays, Ted posts a top-10 list. Ted comes up with an idea for a series, like 'Fixing 5E' or 'Reviewing Unearthed Arcana', posts regular articles until he's said what he means to say, then ends the series. (There hasn't been a new Fixing 5E video in roughly a year, meaning that Ted isn't wasting his own time and that of the viewer continually beating horses he's long since killed.) And he comes up with some great ideas for series, such as his series reviewing products on the DMs Guild; that particular series comes out somewhat irregluarly, but not so irregularly that you think he may have stopped doing the series without telling you.

Nerd Immersion's big problem can be summed up by simply looking at the list of videos on his channel and noticing that when he puts his own face on the thumbnail of the video, the startling frequency with which he's shrugging or has a puzzled face or just seems to be presenting himself as if he's not sure what's happening in his own video. I mean, I get it -- that's his image, the personality he wants to present to his audience. He doesn't have all the answers (a refreshing change from Dungeon Craft, honestly), but has some things to share if you're interested, so go ahead and take a peek. But then you take a look at those different sections we spoke about earlier and see that the 'Fixing' series all have the word Fixing at the top of the screen, the Nerd Immersion logo in the top left, two images underneath the text, one on the right side of the page and one on the left, separated right down the middle, and they all have Fix-It Felix on the far right. The Top 10 videos always have Top 10 at the top of the thumbnail. The Unearthed Arcana reviews all have 'Unearthed Arcana' at the top, then 'Review' in an odd off-set to the right beneath 'Unearthed Arcana'.

In other words, Ted has a formula, and he's damn well going to follow it.

Now it's not a bad thing to have a workflow -- if you're going to be cranking out videos at the volume that Ted does (not to mention the others on this list), you'd better have some kind of process for making the video, getting the thumbnail on it, etc.; otherwise each new video is a horrible nightmare of effort as you re-invent the wheel for every project. Nobody wants to do that, and the results would likely be unwatchable. Having a process is a good thing. But the Dungeon Dudes clearly also have a process -- they've put out at least two videos a week for three and a half years, so they damn well have a process or they wouldn't have been able to get out that much content. Looking at their channel, though, shows you that while they have a brand, and one that's evolving over time to boot, they're not just making the same video over and over again, or at least you wouldn't think that from looking at the thumbnails.

Ted's most interesting videos are where he's interviewing another person or even just having another person in the video, because having another person around clearly takes him at least a bit outside his rigid formulaic comfort zone. The problem is that those videos are few and far between -- the review of the infernal tiefling is about eight months separated from his interview with Celeste Conowitch about her Venture Maidens campaign guide. Also interesting are his unboxing videos, because Ted clearly likes minis and takes some degree of joy in cracking open and looking at new minis. His unboxing videos aren't as irregular as his interview videos, but they are fairly recent, with the first appearing just a few months ago, so it's still not clear if this is going to be a new regular part of the channel, or just another series that goes until he says what he wants to say about minis and then stops.

Most of the stuff on the site, though, is just, well, stuff, cranked out on a formula and thrown out into the digital void with the same soft-spoken volume regardless of whether it's major news or a press release. As an example, while pretty much everybody had an opinion on the Dragonlance lawsuit, Ted covered when the suit was announced, when it was dismissed by Weis and Hickman, when the actual trilogy that was the subject of the novels was announced, and the official release date of the first book in the new trilogy. When it came time to get ready to announce the newest campaign book, Ted was on the job, posting a video preparing for the announcement, another video later the same day when his original prediction of a Feywild adventure book seemed to be contradicted by other rumors that the book would be a Ravenloft book, then posted yet another video when the actual book was leaked on Amazon at 11:24pm later that same day confirming Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, posted the video discussing the official announcement of Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft the next day, and then the day after that followed up with more details on Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft revealed in Dragon+. That's five videos in three days, for a grand total of just over 100 thousand views combined. The intention seems like Ted wants to be the CNN of the D&D news scene, but with those kind of distribution numbers, the result is more like your local home town's shopping circular that occasionally also features stories about the latest project to fix the potholes on Main Street. Just like nobody's doing 24/7 news coverage of your local town council, nobody is (or probably should strive to) doing 24/7 coverage of the gaming industry and Wizards of the Coast. At some point it just becomes running a script, pressing a button to upload the next video, because it's news, and while you don't have to think about news to quite the same degree you have to think about more opinion-based topics, once you stop thinking about the process and what it is you're making, all you have left is executing the formula, over and over again, and both the input and the output becomes repetitive.

Repetitive videos, in repetitive formats, with repetitive text, to keep the monster fed for another day. I can admire the effort that goes into it, but the overwhelming presence of the formula involved in cranking out this content keeps me from feeling that it's worth engaging with. It's low-effort, because the effort has been meticulously removed from the process.

I could go on, but I think I'll stop here. There's not really any constructive criticism I could provide to these channels because, as I hope I've pointed out, it seems like low-effort content is pretty much the only thing these channels have to offer or in truth can offer, and anything that might cause their owners to re-consider their channels to improve their content would almost certainly lead to a very different if not wholly different channel. With things being as they are online, there's no guarantee that any new, higher-effort channel would be any more successful than the old low-effort one (remember the RavenloftTravelAgent channel with absolutely miniscule numbers; effort doesn't automatically equate with success). I can't even claim that being low-effort channels necessarily makes these channels bad (despite what I said in the intro); after all, they all have at least some good ideas, especially Nerd Immersion, and they each have subscribers and a following. I guess this is just my way of putting some small amount of effort into explaining why I don't feel like doing more to help these channels succeed, because I'd rather put my support toward channels making higher-quality, higher-effort content, especially because its not the content itself, but people engaging with that content that really drives a channel's success.

[baby-pigtails]

Kiddo Sites/Apps!

Hi hi! I always see a lot of posts recommending sites and apps for age regressors but a lot of the time they’re the same things, so I thought I’d make my own! All the sites and apps on here are free, don’t worry! (Some may have ads or in-app purchase, though!) It’s under the cut cause I tried to include some preview pictures which made it kinda long! If anyone would like to add more or have me add more, just let me know! Have fun and stay safe during this time of quarantine and social distancing!

WEBSITES

- DisneyClips

     This is probably my FAVOURITE site for when I’m regressed! It’s made by Disney fans for Disney fans, and is updated with new activites pretty often! It has a bunch of safe and fun games, quizzes, coloring pages, and even things like analysis charts for kiddos whose special interest or hyperfixation is Disney! It has dress up games that are super-duper easy and cute, and I love them because their style looks like it could come right out of the film it’s from! Like the dresses and everything, and they stick to each princess’s style while making different dresses from the original ones! It’s crazy!!

-PBS Kids

     A classic but awesome site!! You can watch all sorts of episodes for free, you don’t have to put in an email or anything! There are even games and episodes from shows that have long since gone off the air!

-American Girl

     Don’t be fooled by the site’s title, this site is for everyone! If you’re familiar with the American Girl characters, there’s lots of dress up and themed games, and if you’re not familiar with the characters, don’t worry cause there’s still super cute games like pet grooming and, my favourite, Coconut’s Safari! I linked to the games page, but there’s quizzes and polls, too!

-Webkinz

     I’m sure a lot of you know about Webkinz already, but it hasn’t gone anywhere even after all these years! It’s one of my favourite sites, and it’s free to play now! For people unfamiliar with Webkinz, it’s a virtual world where you can raise a pet, decorate rooms, and collect all sorts of objects, food, and clothing! You can play this one online, with their new desktop app, or with their mobile app! (I will warn you, though, the mobile app does not have that much stuff on it)

-Poptropica

     Poptropica has been around for a while too, but it’s changed a lot in recent years! You can play it online and there’s also an app. This one is probably for older kiddos, though - it has a lot of puzzles and requires a lot of thinking at times, so if you’re looking for a relaxing game this probably isn’t it. 

-Poptropica

    Poptropica has been around for a while too, but it’s changed a lot in recent years! You can play it online and there’s also an app. This one is probably for older kiddos, though - it has a lot of puzzles and requires a lot of thinking at times, so if you’re looking for a relaxing game this probably isn’t it.

APPS

- Habitica

     Habitica is a super-duper easy habit tracker/reminder app! I use it to remind me to take my meds, shower, brush my teeth, things like that! But you put in your habits and to-do list so you can personalize it! Usually I don’t like apps like this because they offer no incentive but Habitica turns it into an RPG like Dungeons and Dragons!! So you can level up and get equipment and even pets! What I love about it, too, is that if you ever have any question, their FAQ is super clear and easy to understand, which makes it ideal for autistic kids like me!

- Cookie Run

     Cookie Run is an oldie but a goldie! It’s a running platformer game where you can collect lots of cute cookies and their pets and learn their stories! Plus there’s canon LGBTQ+ rep with some of the cookie heroes! Cookie Run has a lot of bright colours and fast movement though, so it might not be the best game for kiddos with seizures or sensory issues!

- My Tamagotchi Forever

     Super cute revamp of tamagotchi!! Your pets don’t run away or anything in this one, haha! You can decorate your town and your house with coins you earn from simple minigames, and you can dress up your tamagotchis in different outfits and fill out their scrapbooks and collect them all! I really liked this app, definitely one of my favorites :)

- Hello Kitty Lunchbox

     Super simple “cooking” game! Again, this is a super easy, no hassle game and is good for really young kiddos. You get to make a lunch for Hello Kitty and decorate it, along with her lunchbox before “eating” your meal. But again, I wanna stress this one is super simple and some kids may get bored of it.

-Pocket Ponies

     A My Little Pony version of the classic ball shooter game. You aim to hit enemies with your balls, and eventually charge up your ponies so they can perform their special action. You get to collect My Little Pony characters and each one has a different ability.

-Hello Kitty Music Party

     This one’s more of an idle tapper game. It wants you to tap on your screen along with the beat of the music, but even if you don’t tap with the beat you can still get rewards! It has a couple cutesy pop songs in the app, but it can also access your music library on your device so you can tap with whatever you want! The app itself doesn’t offer much instruction but it’s fairly simple to figure out. But like the other Hello Kitty game, it can grow boring quickly for some kids, which is why it became an idle game for me. 

-Disney TsumTsum

     This one is kind of like Bejeweled or Candy Crush - you connect little Disney characters to make them “pop!” You get to collect a bunch of different characters and each character has a special ability.

YOUTUBE CHANNELS

-RescueHero’s Nostalgia Zone

     A lesser known channel but it’s one of my favorites! It’s a gameplay channel, but pretty much every video is old video games like TV plug and plays, leapster/leap frog games, or CD-ROM games from the 2000s. It’s an active channel, too, and tends to upload every week or so! From what I can tell, there’s no voiceover and their videos are just simple, nostalgic gameplay.

-Shirley Curry

     This one’s a little weird but it’s very wholesome - it’s a grandma in her 80′s(?) who loves to play video games! She mostly plays games for older kiddos like Skyrim, but her videos are very calming and she’s very cute in the way she comments on games. She’s super sweet to her viewers and calls them her grandkids, and usuaslly responds in comments. Her videos are also easy videos to listen to in the background, too.

-pstoyreviews

     I don’t watch a lot of toy channels because a lot of the time they’re over the top and super corny or just... really weird, but this channel is run by two people (I think they are a couple but I’m not sure) named Shannon and Paul, and they’re very casual about their videos (despite the corny thumbnails, lol). Anyway, they mostly do blind bag openings for trinkets and toys that are currently on the shelves - things like Tokidoki, LOL Dolls, Shopkins, minifigures, things like that. It’s a very good channel if you like those cutesy sorts of things but don’t have the money to get them yourself! To my knowledge they’re not really sponsored, so there’s no encouraging you to buy a product or anything like that. Like I said, they’re very casual and do talk during the videos but they talk a little slow and there’s no background music, so they are very easy to understand! I believe Shannon also has a doll-specific channel, too, if you’re into that.

-nana825763

     Better known as piropito, this channel is well known for its really cute and wholesome Minecraft gameplay that you can start watching here. This is a Japanese channel, but he captions his own videos, so don’t worry! Anyway, his goal was to figure out everything in Minecraft with absolutely no cheats or searching the web for information or anything like that. That’s really the only thing I’d recommend on this channel, however, and do be careful because they do have some horror game playthroughs on there so stay safe!

-Sesame Street

     Not much to explain here! It’s Sesame Street, and they post clips of the show, songs, and sometimes even full episodes.

[influencemarketingplatform]

Increase Brand Awareness Through Influencer Marketing

I'm sure there's over a few advertisements. Consumers are bombarded with advertisements day in and day out. Faced with numerous, they've learned to tune them out. Just a few can break through the sound. So, it's not surprising that lots of businesses struggle to capture the attention of the desired customers. To break through the noise, you need to employ innovative marketing strategies. Many entrepreneurs are currently turning to influencer advertising to attain their viewers.

An influencer is a person who inspires people with their achievements, values, or lifestyle. Likeminded people respect their opinion and could be affected by their own recommendations. For example, influencers may promote certain products, encourage their followers to visit new destinations, listen to a podcast, or even see a new publication.

Influencers include print authors, business leaders, consultants, bloggers, and media statistics that relay their views before a loyal audience. However, there is a big difference between locating the influencers offered on your industry and getting them to promote your brand, merchandise or services to their audience or followers.

If banner ads or routine media purchases are not getting you where you need, it is time to consider leveraging influencers. Within this article, you'll discover how influencer advertising can help you produce huge brand awareness and increase your earnings.

Influencer advertising is the practice of collaborating with an influencer to market your brand, product, or service to your targeted audience. Influencers, the majority of the time, use content sharing to advertise your brand, merchandise, or support for their already-established followers or audience.

They might also take control of displays, competitions, giveaways, and other activities which will further publicize the brand.

Outside of the internet, influencers could be family members and friends or people around you. They also include community members and members. Within digital marketing, influencers include celebrities, industry leaders, athletic and style icons, and pretty much anyone with a massive social networking after on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

This form of advertising strategy is how we drive traffic to websites, and how earnings are being generated online. That's why businesses are tapping into this huge opportunity.

67% of electronic businesses are set to improve their influencer advertising spend in the next several years.

When trying to choose which influencer to work with, you ought to be certain on the specific kind of audience or following you want to achieve. Understanding where your preferred customer spends time on the internet can help you identify the ideal platform and influencer to target. This is where growing buyer personas will help. When you've got a comprehensive understanding of your target buyer, you can determine the specific kind of person they would be receptive to hear recommendations from. For instance, if you are attempting to promote baking products and fresh cookbook, it probably doesn't make sense to associate with a fitness influencer.

The number of followers that an influencer has will directly affect the price of partnering together. The more followers that they have, the greater your potential achieve. However, don't dismiss influencers with smaller crowds. They can be highly-engaged and quite receptive to recommendations.

Several factors can adversely affect the deliverability of an influencer marketing effort. By way of instance, choosing influencers who have no public link with your brand or who wouldn't normally use your merchandise or services. Forcing a rigid script onto the influencer, rather than cooperating to a more innovative approach, may even backfire if followers believe the effort is deceptive. It is important to create a natural partnership and collaborate with them to design a campaign that will resonate with your own viewers. Trust their feedback, since they are more acquainted with their audience.

Not certain if your social media strategy is really producing results? Curious if influencer marketing might be a better way to attain your intended audience? Don't hesitate to contact us. We are happy to assess your strategy and discuss methods to grow new awareness.

The Role of An Influencer in Your Online Marketing Campaign Many men and women tend to consider influencer marketing as actors promoting attractiveness products in television commercials: think Cindy Crawford in Revlon commercials. But, influencer marketing has evolved as the digital ecosystem has increased. Now, influencers can use a massive range of digital platforms to share details regarding your brand to their audiences. Influencers can mention your product or services in their social networking platform or produce a blog post that testimonials one of your merchandise. Outside the digital kingdom influencers can also attend events or conventions for meet-and-greets or they could conduct product presentations. Another manner influencer marketing may be used is by simply incorporating your products or new images to videos that are about another matter. This is much like the way flashy cars are placed in films or Target falls product placements in Netflix sitcoms.

When creating your influencer marketing strategy, you need to consider your intended audience and where they spend their time. If they're on social media every day, then that channel could be appropriate. Should they have an inclination to listen to podcasts, maybe it makes sense to partner with a podcast bunch which comes with an engaged audience.

Reasons Why You Should Use Influencer Marketing

I). Better Business Awareness A growing number of manufacturers are taking their advertising to another level and employing the support of influencers with large, engaged audiences. Recent statistics demonstrate that in 2018, 80 percent of entrepreneurs found influencer marketing effective and 89% say influencer marketing ROI is better than other marketing tactics.

Influencers give you access to their audience or followers, which naturally expands your reach. Putting into account that influencers are offered across numerous social networking platforms, collaborating with them will also enhance your social media presence and increase brand awareness.

Let's take a look at how two different brands use Instagram to increase brand awareness:

The outdoor retailer Backcountry partners with many outdoor enthusiasts. Their existence is particularly powerful on Instagram, where many travel enthusiasts go to live vicariously through the gorgeous photography. The photographs capture their attention as well as also the captions convince them why particular products are vital to their next camping adventure.

1 prime example is the influencer Chelsea Yamase (@ChelseaKauai). She uses long-form story captions to engage her viewers, weaving in personal experiences and ideas. By displaying vulnerability, she's ready to connect with her audience and gain his or her confidence. Because of this, the audience is more inclined to trust her recommendations and buy Backcountry's merchandise.

In another example, the Westin Hapuna Beach Resort turned into an influencer, Renee Hahnel (@ReneeRoaming), to market their recently renovated hotel. As she researched the hotel and reasons, Renee used Instagram stories and posts to highlight unique features, beautiful design, and thoughtful amenities. Lots of men and women visit Instagram to locate their next travel destination and trust recommendations from frequent travelers like Renee.

ii).Consumer Trust When people decide to follow an accounts on social media, they are inviting them to their everyday scroll--and life. Every time they use the stage, they know more about the person. They see their successes, failures, and they can often feel as if they're part of the lifetime. Frequent participation strengthens the connection; shortly, the influencer feels like a buddy.

As you probably know, people value the recommendations of friends and acquaintances.

Endorsements out of influencers can boost the authenticity of your brand and help you gain consumer confidence. Just as 49% of customers are known to depend on product recommendations out of influencers. When evaluating products, customers are looking for authentic reviews from authority figures.

By adding the ideal strategies and excellent content, influencers will be able to influence consumer purchasing decisions.

iii). Better Sales Improving sales is the primary objective of marketers who use influencer advertising. This year, according to a Tomson research , businesses earn $6.50 for every dollar spent on influencers. It is called to grow continuously within the next few years. This is ascertained by the fact that nearly all consumers now consider social media when making buying decisions.

It is worth noting that social networking existence issues because most people spend more time in their mobile telephones, absorbing content on these platforms. Online retailers are making great use of this, dominating and revolutionizing the purchasing experience. This survey indicates that 79% of smartphone consumers have made a purchase online using their cellular devices in the previous 6 months.

Another illustration of a prosperous influencer effort is Bigelow Tea. They started a marketing effort with influencers who encouraged the health benefits of drinking tea. They blended Bigelow Tea in their content in various ways: some produced initial recipes that comprised the tea and others flipped the packaging into DIY art. This generated over 32,000 blog page lobbied to get their sponsored posts.

Read More :  Using influencer marketing to grow your online business

It's Cost-Effective

Influencer marketing uses many different pricing models. Often, the popularity of the influencer and their audience dimensions decides which strategy is best. Some influencers will collaborate with your brand simply because it is going to help them to construct their own brand in the procedure. In these instances, free products or experiences can be provided instead of a cash payment.

Additional influencers will accept pricing based on their functionality, where the amount you pay is proportional to the number of clicks and also the number of engagement (enjoys, shares, retweets, posts, etc.. ) your brand earns through their posts. Others will accept flat-rate prices, where you pay a particular amount per post or movie. This wide range provides you a lot of selections to choose from and permits you to pick the option which suits you the most.

Another case study is RESCUE, that desired to increase awareness of their natural health remedies. The bloggers shared their own personal experiences and included the RESCUE coupon in their social networking posts. The campaign produced amazing results, such as 133 million social media impressions and generated well over 6,000 clicks into the voucher website. From the end of the effort, their Instagram following had increased by 258%. The influencers also used Twitter to market the voucher and at one point, RESCUE was the #4 nationwide trending subject on Twitter.

How to Conquer Influencers Now, the effectiveness of influencer marketing ought to be apparent. Leveraging influencers is rewarding to you and your brand.

i). Create a debut

Let us assume you have identified two influencers you'd like to work with, named Brown and James. Brown has a massive audience or follower base and James has a far smaller fan base, which is more participated. Brown is a fitness coach with thousands and thousands of followers on societal networking platforms, published novels, and an informative blog. James' audience, however, may be smaller, but his few thousands of followers trust his opinions and follow up on every recommendation that he makes.

If you're planning to find both of both of these guys to promote your product, service, or manufacturer, you need to first look on their radars. You can do this in several Distinct ways:

Send a fast email complimenting or appreciating the influencer on their most recent social media post or blog article. You might also publish a story about the way the influencer's content or merchandise has helped you. Share the influencer's societal media posts or blog articles in your page. Post an superb review of the influencer's brand or product on your blog. Discuss a quotation or piece of information given by the influencer in your blog. Organize a meeting in a conference or media event. The approach you decide to use will probably be based on the influencers you're targeting. He can, however, be available for meetings at networking or industry events. On the flip side, James' may be responsive to thoughtful comments left on his social networking station.

ii). Be genuinely helpful When working with influencers, you would like to strive for a mutually-beneficial relationship. When you approach the relationship with a collaborative mindset, then you'll achieve more success. Should you share similar values and goals with the influencer, you are going to develop a more real partnership. This will be obvious for their followers and they'll have a better opinion of your brand and sponsorship.

It should never resort to a circumstance where you take advantage of an influencer's standing to improve your gains selfishly. It's vital that your initial contact is accurate and real.

Big Audience Brown, by way of example, doesn't require the societal boost that comes from your stocks, enjoys, or retweets. Even James' business likely doesn't stand to grow exponentially from 1 link or post shared in your blog or page. So, however, you choose to approach your connection with the influencers you're aiming, be helpful by all ways.

As time goes , the helping hand you extend out as long as it's really beneficial rather than just surface-level gestures, it is going to take your connection with the influencer of your decision to another level.

Australian fashion retailer Minnie & Maxxie talented influencers like Sarah from Sarah Merrett Styling bits from their selection of fashion styles to introduce them into the brand and to generate exposure and ultimately sales. Results showed 18,459 direct engagements with effort content and 333,445 consumers attained (size of the crowd reached).

iii). Prove your value If you are determined with your followup, you will find that your connection with your targeted influencer moves past simple and one-sided interactions but to a symbiotic one. As an example, you take the next step from exchanging social networking updates to sharing mails, then meeting up in person either for promotional events or collaborative workshops.

At a certain stage, you need to be prepared to demonstrate your worth and the worth of your brand, product, or services. The moment your relationship with a possible influencer exceeds straightforward helpful gestures, be prepared to describe the different ways your product could be unique and of advantage to the authority figure's real needs, in addition to the requirements of their followers and audience.

Never forget, however, that there is no way to guarantee an influencer recommendation (unless you've made your mind up to pay for it and form a contractual relationship).

Even though you may have some luck when you give it a shot the very first time, you may also have to work hard to attempt and improve relationships which never go anywhere. Influencers are often busy people, and they are not bound to like your product or manufacturer just because you've followed the actions discussed in this article.

You must do your research, start looking for opportunities to be helpful, and plan to demonstrate the advantages of your product and services. Additionally, you need to be aware of the unique needs of this influencer you're targeting. With continuing patience and persistence, you will discover your relationships improve and your brand profiting as a result.

As a result of this, brands need to work tirelessly and develop trust with their target customers.

Relater Article :  Influencer campaigns: 6 common mistakes to avoid.

Conclusion Influencer marketing is without a doubt growing in popularity, and in many instances, it's the best way to engage with your intended audience. Collaborations between brands and social websites influencers will continue to expand in the coming years. You and your opponents could be going after the same influencers--and it is up to you who gets the offer.

To succeed, develop an influencer marketing strategy and start building authentic relationships with people who will have a real impact on the purchasing behavior of your intended audience.

If you are not sure how to start, you might want to speak with one of our advertising and marketing specialists today. We can help you create an influencer marketing strategy and identify possible influencers.

[thehappydromomaniac]

#NoSurbhiNoIshqbaaaz and #EndIshqbaaazWithShivika

I am an ardent fan of serial Ishqbaaaz. And a diehard fan of Shivika especially Annika. I got hooked to Ishqbaaz in the middle of August 2016 because of Shivaay and since then, no turning back. I have watched almost every single episode of it; cried, laughed, angered, agitated and sometimes baffled by it. Ishqbaaaz is the only series that had so much to give. Not the same old sob story or forced romance or boring, draggy plots. The chemistry between the brothers and the pairs are always beautifully portrayed and became the reason for me to follow the series religiously. Kudos to the writer who has even thought about it, the producer and directors who have given it the appropriate treatment, the entire crew for making it happen and the line of talents whom without, this wouldn't be possible at all.

A couple of days back, a news broke all the diehard fan’s hearts - A generation leap in order to save the show. And the main lead, Surbhi Chandna won’t be part of it as she is reluctant to play an older mother character at this point of time - Totally acceptable.

Fans tripped and begin their social media campaign and other whatnot to save their beloved Annika. I was happy to see the unity they had and the unplanned Twitter trend went viral. The issue needed clarification and the show’s producer, Ms Gul Khan was approached. She too answered all questions given honestly. Dear Gul ma’am, first of all, if you ever get to read this post, thanks for what you have given me; Almost 3 years of good entertainment and for always answering honestly without twisting and turning facts. Your honesty and frank personality has constantly been misconstrued as ego but I understand your stand. Being a creative head and controlling the finances at the same time can be a huge burden which you have handled so gracefully. You are an inspiration. I admire you a lot. Stay awesome. Without you, Ishqbaaz, Shivika, Narbhi wouldn't have been possible at all. You believed in it and you gave life to it. Thank you

Now, coming back to the movement “#NoSurbhiNoIshqbaaaz”. I am thrilled by it and to see the love Surbhi has garnered among the young generation who are now driving this campaign. I agree with them. Surbhi is one of the valves in the heart called Ishqbaaaz. Her exit would mean the heart’s function would be compromised. Destruction is inevitable if she leaves. But what I don’t understand is the hatred that is being thrown towards the producer and writer of the show. I have read multiple tweets and comments on Insta that range from disturbingly mean to misplaced hatred; ego, stupid, money-minded, etc. Totally misplaced!

Why misplaced you may ask, since I am in the mood of writing, here you go. 

1. If not for Gul ma’am, we wouldn't have got Shivika or Narbhi. Gul & Harneet CREATED Shivika pair. Technically, they are the first 2 fans. This decision had to be the toughest for THEM. THEY must be the most frustrated compared to any fan out there. Most fans invest a little time on social media or TV to watch, post, comment and then back to their routine life, either work or studies. But for G & H, this is their bread & butter and the food for their creative soul. They work on a daily basis to bring more and more life for those characters. They have more work to do compared to fans who are locking horns with them. Just because they have strong exteriors and practical point of view, they cannot be targeted for such cyber-bullying. Yes, the current reaction towards them is crossing the limits of constructive comments and reaching the line of cyberbullying. Calling them money minded, egoistic. One even condemned Harneet’s writing meanly. That is cyber-bullying, guys. Thank God, it is not affecting them. Or maybe it does, and they are just not showing it. They might be dealing it their own way. But guys, NOT COOL YAAR!

2. The past few months, we have seen the TRP plummet despite a strong fan following in Social Media. The strong fan following did not reflect where it should. Do you think TRP is child's play? This is not a charity organization. This is a business. Most of the fans are educated. You are supposed to be able to analyse this logically. Not impulsively. TRP rates reveal how loved a show is. If viewers don’t watch & numbers don’t show, the channel can only interpret it as “People are not interested in it”. Therefore, it will be pushed to some time slot where it won’t get much appropriate attention. Sponsors or ad times will be affected. These are what feeds the show's finances in the long run - A constant gain of profit or $$$ is needed to cover the production costs, the crews' salary and of course The Actors' salary. And for a show like Ishqbaaz, for the quality I see on screen, it has to cost a fortune. Who is going to give it? You and me? We can’t. But there was one thing that we could have done which we failed - WATCHING THE SHOW IN THE BLOODY TV SO THAT THE TRP DIDN’T GO LOW”. WE FAILED!! 

For a quick read about the importance of TRP for TV programmes, please click the link below. 

https://www.jagranjosh.com/general-knowledge/what-is-trp-and-how-is-it-calculated-1524137013-1

3. For Ishqbaaz to end, means the entire crew could go jobless and once again pushed to look for other opportunities. Which I know isn't going to be easy. Fans are making all kinds of disapproving noises from outside but no one is seeing straight. Gul Khan opened opportunities, gave the crew & talents a way into our hearts. Without her, Ishqbaaaz would have been just an idea on a piece of paper. Almost 3 years ago, she hired them and had faith in them before you & I even thought of Narbhi. Harneet created Shivika on paper. They did all the work. All we did was praising the talents and creating fan followings & factions. And shamelessly insult the very same people who created it. It's like insulting our best friend's parents even though we know our best friend wouldn't have existed if her parents didn't bear her for 9 months & raised her. Don’t forget, the joy of success and the pain of failures hurts them most.

4. You call her egoistic for clarifying her stand without twisting facts, for her straightforward answers, for standing firm of her decision to save her baby whom she gave birth to. Then, you doubt her sanity. If the channel said we are a small bunch, it is because we are reflecting as small bunch where we shouldn't. We should have shown them that we are big in numbers and support by not letting the numbers fall. I ask all of us. Aren't we egoistic too for not even giving a chance to understand her point of view? We are losing entertainment. She is losing the concept/idea she gave birth to. For all your rants and insulting words, may I ask if WE are willing to contribute financially to maintain the series instead of tweeting & spreading hatred? That would be more beneficial. But the truth is, WE didn't even have to do that. All WE had to do was BLOODY WATCHED IT ON TV SO THAT THE TRP WAS STILL GOOD AND THE SHOW WOULD GO ON WITHOUT ALL THIS DRAMA! 

5. If anyone needs to be blamed, it's those fan factions who instigated each other. First Rudy-Soumya fans fought & created the first ripple. Then, Gauri-Omkara. All that unnecessary jealousy towards Shivika. Shivika fans, on the other hand,  were too proud that they cannot be shaken by those fans. Then the Shivika faction further split into separate factions. One wants more Shivika, another more Omkara-Gauri, how are the makers supposed to satisfy everyone? I read all the nasty comments and immature remarks by one to another. Ishqbaaaz fandom parted ways. The larger faction was of course: Shivika. Shivika fans were bigger in number but not enough to carry Ishqbaaaz on its shoulders all by itself. The truth that all the factions and fandom will not accept is they let their ego affect the entire Ishqbaaaz universe. Even now as they read this, they will be too sensitive to the term ‘ego’ - which they conveniently throw at another person but can’t accept their own fault - most of them will be thinking of nasty comments to throw at me for saying it out loud. This was mainly the reason behind the fall of Dil Bole Oberoi. Fandoms came for its defence when it was scrapped and merged but where was the needed viewership when it was running?

6. Now, let’s talk about the digital power that went viral recently. But before that, we must address the matter of online impressions in Hotstar first - Now, I am from Malaysia. Ishqbaaaz has a substantial fan following here. In the channel we are provided with locally, the episodes are far behind, not the latest episodes. My friends & I constantly discuss Ishqbaaaz as everyone knows I am a crazy fan & that I keep myself updated with the latest episodes and progress as part of my daily routine. My day doesn't begin or end without me watching or even thinking about Ishqbaaaz. But you know the sad part for us here, Hotstar is not geographically accessible here. Even if it is, the lack of subtitles can be a bummer because the biggest market for drama here is the Malay market & the South Indian market. Most of us can’t understand Hindi but guess what; Most of us can’t speak Korea and yet the Korean dramas are successfully running here, thanks to subtitles. Ishqbaaaz’s Tamil version was utter nonsense for me as the voices did not give the same impact as the original voices. So, I chose to watch it online via any other sources possible. Mine was an act of desperation.  Not a day goes by without me opening Hotstar, just in case they have made it accessible; Disappointment on daily basis. If Hotstar was available and the subtitled option was available, maybe, just maybe, we could have helped with the global rating but that’s as much as we could have done. The local impression is still the major factor. Which again, whom to blame? Gul & Harneet? Absolutely not! I BLAME those online attention seekers who desperately needed followers and likes in social media that they began posting entire episodes on Insta. The fact is - those people are the biggest reason for all this Pehla Huva Raita. With an easier option to just watch it on Insta, Hotstar was neglected. So, we lost our online numbers as well. Now we don’t even have that ground to defend. Think about it!

Ratings are specific. Entertainment is a business. It survives on its value to bring profit. It is sad to see the fandom is made of a majority of young girls who are supposed to be educated and who are in full capacity to analyse this but are driven by unreasonable hate and anger. We are fans of Annika who is loving, responsible, forgiving, nurturing, fighting for justice without hurting people around her, coming up with quirky but practical solutions, who respect the older people in her life; and yet the girls following her seem to act brashly, unlike her at all. She fights for what she thinks is right but never at the expense of bashing another. Do you see the irony here? You idolize her but failed to follow her good footsteps. And also, I read a few comments about Annika being portrayed as crying a lot lately. Yes, she cried because she is not an emotionless robot. she is just like and me; going through shit on daily basis. But she doesn't lose hope. Annika rarely gives up. Scientific researches have backed that strong people do cry more but they don’t give up. Life can’t be rosy all the time. Without struggle, life becomes boring. and if you think her character has no oomph anymore, maybe it is time to revamp, don’t you think?

And then I see some posts calling to boycott the series now. BRAVO! Just brilliant. I can understand if you want to boycott it after Surbhi is out. But now, while she is still in it, trying her best to bring the numbers up again with the hope that her fans won’t fail her? That’s just brilliant. Instead of helping her, you want to boycott, bring down the numbers and prove Gul ma’ams point? You sure you are a fan? Coz, your actions are not reflecting it. You are supposed to watch it even more now, encourage people around to watch so that the numbers increase exponentially. The same spirit you showed in the Twitter trend, you have to show in front of your TV. Campaign for more people to watch it on TV, your family, neighbours, friends, crushes, etc. Report all the accounts that are conveniently posting the full episodes on Insta. Even if they post a day after, for fans who are convenient with it will go back to their account instead of going to the correct source; HOTSTAR. Pictures seriously won't do much harm unless the pictures show the entire scene. If it shows one juicy scene, it will trigger people’s curiosity to watch it. The real culprits are those who post the episodes. That is not loving. You are butchering Surbhi’s talent for your own greed to get more followers and likes. You want people to go to your account instead of TV and HOTSTAR. So, you are increasing the possibility for the numbers to go down and thanks to that, makers need to look into other angles which have directly affected SC now. So, blame them, not the makers.

The makers have tried and are trying many angles, plot after plot. Seriously, I have followed another Indian series before (which I am not going to name) with the unchanged plot for more than 3 years now. Before the leap, they lead pair didn’t get along, villains always separating them, went on in a circle for years until I got fed up. Leap after leap, the same plot. Even after a major leap, once again the same. The villains always get the better out of everything. The TRP is high still. But that is not the case for Ishqbaaaz. Harneet has given brilliant character progress for the leads, the chemistry between the pairs and who can deny the brilliant love of the Oberoi brothers. Villains are always defeated with Obros & Obahus’ togetherness. No other drama out there did that. And yet, all her efforts are forgotten and you are blaming her for her writing? Her plots are smart. And yes, it is a series end of the day, and it has to have some masala and some ups and down. The plots did get boring at some point but always managed to bounce back. Different angles had to be explored.Y ou think they thought Shivika would be a craze when they first introduced them to us? They just did it by hoping it would and it did. Just like that, they tried coming up with plots after plots but some failed. No one and nothing is perfect. We are all humans and we are all flawed.

For a series named ISHQBAAAZ, the fandom is sure showing a lot of hatred. That won’t solve this. Only love would. Stop fighting and focus on uniting. Start a mission to prove to Gul ma’am and the channel that the fans can BRING BACK GOOD TRP if they unite; THEN, YOU ARE ALL TRUE FANS.

Gul ma’am, I don’t know if you would ever get to read this. I hope it finds its way to you. I know your action is merely to keep the show running. I can understand that you are the most affected party in this. I used to work in the TV industry, so I know a little about how it works. I don’t agree with most of the things that are said to you. But there is one thing that I think might have worked. - Marketing is very important for all products. Ishqbaaaz (just as much as I am emotionally attached to) is also a product. It has a good fan following but something is misplaced. I don’t know what but there are some things that could be done to help get it back on track. I believe in doing everything doable possible before moving on. If you have the same belief, you may read further.

You have seen better numbers for the show before, so you do know that it is not impossible to bring back those numbers. And you can’t be taking everyone’s suggestions for the plots, etc. It is your drama. Your baby. Plots aside, here are some marketing suggestions. I don’t know how effective these could be. But we will never know if we don’t give it a go.

1) Urge the casts to posts videos in their Insta & Twitter urging them to watch it on TV or Hotstar. Their fans will listen to them.

2) Initiate a campaign - throw a contest; A watch & win contest. Real-time contest where they have to answer within 10 minutes of the episode end on TV, via SMS or online. This contest should not be posted in Hotstar and should be an exclusive TV contest. The prize could be a dinner session with the Ishqbaaaz team or the lead pair or either one of them. This could encourage the fans to watch it on TV.

3) I don’t know if Ishqbaaaz has a digital marketing team. If you do but most fans are unaware of it, it means the team needs to up its game. The digital team has to overshadow all the fandom or better, work along. Your team could both look out for accounts that violate and post episodes, report and block it and also join forces with the active fan clubs by feeding them exclusive pics and vid bits in exchange for turning the traffic back to where it should be; TV and HOTSTAR. Again, an online HOTSTAR exclusive contest with probably signed merchandises as prizes could be a good hook.

4) Please consider the ASEAN market for HOTSTAR. Maybe we could help too.

I believe the redux is about to end. Just matter of Shivaay & Annika’s confession. Once the redux ends, I assume the next is going to be exploring the pregnancy track. All of us fans have been waiting for this to happen. Seeing Shivika’s parenting skills have been long dreamt by all of us. We really hope to see that. If even that doesn't work, then probably nothing much can be done to avoid the generation leap. But frankly, it would be much graceful to end it with Shivika. Ishqbaaaz is synonymous with Shivika and Obros, taking it away means taking the essence of Ishqbaaaz away. Though, I don’t think I am in any position to condemn your attempts to breathe new life to the series. Only you know how much investment of time, effort, blood, sweat and money has gone into this. It is easy for us to tell you to kill it with grace, but you are the one living the pain. In many ways, i can associate myself with Annika’s character as in real life I am as emphatatic. I am quirkier and even more stubborn than Annika though. Thank you for showing me a reflection of myself.  

If anyone is going to argue that other successfully running dramas are also available on Instagram but it doesn't affect their TRP, it simply means, their fandom is strong enough to watch it on TV and don’t allow other factors cloud them or disintegrate them. They are doing their job right. Now, it’s our turn. Seriously, if I am part of the makers, for all the inappropriate hatred showered, I would lose my interest to even think of making it better. They must be highly motivated to deal with all this and still go on with this tiring job. Anyways, spamming inboxes, ambushing the offices, trending helps a little. But you know what will help the most? WATCHING ISHQBAAAZ ON TV! LET THE TRP TALK TO THEM COZ THAT’S THE RIGHT LANGUAGE TO GET THE MESSAGE ACROSS!

Last but not least. Thanks, to everyone for reading this long post. I hope the series that has woke me up everyday feeling good will not end too soon. And yes, I support #NoSurbhiNoIshqbaaaz and #EndIshqbaaazWithShivika

Constructive comments are welcomed.

Insta: @arulkc

[olko71]

New Post has been published on All about business online

New Post has been published on http://yaroreviews.info/2021/10/facebook-whistleblowers-testimony-builds-momentum-for-tougher-tech-laws

Facebook Whistleblower's Testimony Builds Momentum for Tougher Tech Laws

WASHINGTON— Facebook Inc. FB 2.06% whistleblower Frances Haugen testified to Congress Tuesday on internal documents showing harms from the company’s products—from teenagers’ mental-health problems to poisoned political debate—adding fuel to efforts to pass tougher regulations on Big Tech.

“I saw Facebook repeatedly encounter conflicts between its own profit and our safety. Facebook consistently resolved these conflicts in favor of its own profits,” Ms. Haugen told a Senate consumer protection subcommittee. “As long as Facebook is operating in the shadows, hiding its research from public scrutiny, it is unaccountable. Until the incentives change, Facebook will not change.”

Ms. Haugen singled out Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg for criticism, citing his control over the company. Mr. Zuckerberg controls about 58% of Facebook’s voting shares, according to an April regulatory filing.

“There is no one currently holding Mark accountable but himself,” she said. Facebook under Mr. Zuckerberg makes decisions based on how they will affect measurements of user engagement, rather than their potential downsides for the public, she said.

“Mark has built an organization that is very metrics-driven,” she said. “The metrics make the decision. Unfortunately that itself is a decision.”

Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen made the case for policy changes to address her concerns.

Photo: Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg News

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D., Conn.), the chairman of the subcommittee conducting Tuesday’s hearing, called on Mr. Zuckerberg to appear before Congress to testify, terming the company “morally bankrupt.”

Facebook noted that Mr. Zuckerberg has testified seven times in the past four years and its executives have testified 30 times overall. The company said that it has taken numerous actions that have affected its profitability in order to protect its users’ security and privacy.

“We’ve invested heavily in people and technology to keep our platform safe, and have made fighting misinformation and providing authoritative information a priority,” the company said. “If any research had identified an exact solution to these complex challenges, the tech industry, governments, and society would have solved them a long time ago.”

The company has previously disputed the characterization of the documents in the Journal and by Mr. Blumenthal and other members of his committee, who asked Facebook executive Antigone Davis about the documents last week.

In a statement following the hearing, Facebook questioned Ms. Haugen’s knowledge of the issues raised in the documents she disclosed, calling her a low-level employee not privy to the decision-making process by senior executives.

“We agree on one thing; it’s time to create standard rules for the internet,” the statement said. “Instead of expecting the industry to make societal decisions that belong to legislators, it’s time for Congress to act.”

Facebook has said it plans to continue doing internal research and is working on ways to make that work available to others. The company has recently battled with some academic researchers over access to its data, but Facebook says that it works cooperatively with many others.

Republican and Democratic lawmakers at the hearing renewed their calls for regulation, such as strengthening privacy and competition laws and special online protections for children, as well as toughening of the platforms’ accountability. One idea that got a particular boost was requiring more visibility into social-media data as well as the algorithms that shape users’ experiences.

“I think the time has come for action and you are the catalyst for that action,” said Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D., Minn.).

Sen. Marsha Blackburn and Sen. Richard Blumenthal listening to testimony from Frances Haugen Tuesday.

Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Ms. Haugen, a former Facebook product manager who resigned in April, said lawmakers need to go beyond some of the legislative remedies under consideration.

“The severity of this crisis demands that we break out of previous regulatory frames,” she said. “Tweaks to outdated privacy protections…will not be sufficient.”

A good starting point, she added, would be “full access to data for research not directed by Facebook. On this foundation, we can build sensible rules and standards to address consumer harms, illegal content, data protection, anticompetitive practices, algorithmic systems and more.”

In a previous statement, Facebook said: “It is not accurate that leaked internal research demonstrates Instagram is ‘toxic’ for teen girls.”

“The research actually demonstrated that many teens we heard from feel that using Instagram helps them when they are struggling with the kinds of hard moments and issues teenagers have always faced,” it said.

The Journal has defended its series, saying Facebook hasn’t identified any factual errors.

During Tuesday’s hearing, Ms. Haugen also raised national-security concerns about Facebook, citing foreign surveillance on the platform—for example, Chinese monitoring of Uyghur populations—and what she termed Facebook’s “consistent understaffing” of its counterintelligence teams.

She said she is “speaking to other parts of Congress about that.” The Chinese embassy didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Mr. Blumenthal said his committee may seek more information from Ms. Haugen on the security concerns.

Facebook’s director of security policy, Nathaniel Gleicher, responded to the security concerns with posts on Twitter.

“One reason the public knows about the scope of efforts like this from China, Iran and others is because we’ve taken them down and reported on them publicly,” he wrote. “We know that threat actors will target every public platform. It’s essential that we *all* take this threat seriously and work to counter these actors.”

‘I would simply say, let’s get to work,’ said Sen. John Thune (R., S.D.), who has sponsored several measures on algorithm transparency.

Photo: Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg News

Ms. Haugen made the case for policy changes to address her perceived concerns. In products such as cars and cigarettes, she said, independent researchers can evaluate health effects, but “the public cannot do the same with Facebook.”

“This inability to see in Facebook’s actual systems and confirm that they work as communicated is like the Department of Transportation regulating cars by only watching them drive down the highway,” she said, arguing for an independent government agency that would employ experts to audit the impact of social media.

She said that if Congress moves to change Section 230, a federal accountability law that protects Facebook and other companies from liability for user-generated content, it should distinguish between that kind of content and choices that companies make about what type of content to promote.

“Facebook should not get a pass on choices it makes to prioritize virality and growth and reactiveness over public safety,” she said.

Ms. Haugen was hired by Facebook two years ago to help protect against election interference on Facebook. She said she acted because she was frustrated by what she viewed as Facebook’s lack of openness about the platform’s potential for harm and its unwillingness to address its flaws.

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What actions, if any, should the Senate Commerce Committee take on Facebook? Join the conversation below.

Ms. Haugen has filed a whistleblower tip to the Securities and Exchange Commission, informing regulators about potential violations of investor protection laws and making her eligible to receive a share of fines collected in any future enforcement action. She is also interested in cooperating with state attorneys general and European regulators.

Several lawmakers also expressed renewed interest in transparency measures that would give the public and policy makers more understanding of how algorithms work in suggesting content to users.

“I would simply say, let’s get to work,” said Sen. John Thune (R., S.D.), who has sponsored several measures on algorithm transparency. “We’ve got some things we can do here.”

Other suggestions from lawmakers on Tuesday included crafting comprehensive privacy protections for U.S. consumers and new competition rules for the internet age. Some senators also pressed to cut back the immunity from liability that Congress long ago conferred on online platforms for the actions of their users.

But several lawmakers acknowledged that some efforts to regulate big tech already had drawn intense opposition from some major companies. “There are lobbyists around every single corner of this building that have been hired by the tech industry,” Ms. Klobuchar said. “Facebook and the other big tech companies are throwing a bunch of money around this town and people are listening to them.”

Facebook has publicly called for government action to better regulate the online environment.

“There’s always reason for skepticism” about Congress reaching consensus on legislation, Mr. Blumenthal said after the hearing. But he added that “there are times when the dynamic is so powerful that something actually is done…I have rarely, if ever, seen the kind of unanimity on display today.”

—Deepa Seetharaman contributed to this article.

Write to John D. McKinnon at john.mckinnon@wsj.com and Ryan Tracy at ryan.tracy@wsj.com

The Facebook Files

Copyright ©2021 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

[digitallyglobal]

How To Handle Every Digital Marketing Services Challenge?

You might think that having all these digital marketing services is ideal, but the truth is you need to know the right way to handle each one of them. If you don't, you could end up with a bunch of unproductive, even counterproductive, marketing tactics.

For instance, if your brand just started out in this space and wants help awareness for their company or product, they should look into social media management. That's where social media teams come in handy. They can help manage your pages with multiple accounts (which is something not everyone knows how to do).

Challenges Involved With Digital Marketing Services

Digital marketing services can be expensive, but there are affordable services. Companies can launch various campaigns with the help of digital advertising. They can also communicate their messages online by using social media channels such as Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

Many digital marketing services in Kolkata have been targeting small businesses in recent years because of insufficient funds. It’s necessary for them to develop a campaign themselves or run ads on traditional media outlets that reach a wider audience. Such businesses also need targeted information about what works for them.

The most common challenges associated with digital marketing services in Kolkata are:

Lack of knowledge on how to identify which company to hire. There are many companies out there, but some of them are more reliable than others. It's even more difficult when so many offer the same service.

Increase in advertisements on social media sites and other websites, making it difficult for people to find relevant content. To solve this use community service, where companies can help you manage your content on social media sites so that more people will discover it. 

There are too many options available.  With just a simple search on Google, you'll discover that there are already dozens of companies offering these services. If you don't know how to separate the good ones from the bad ones, it could become very difficult for you to find a very reliable team for your brand.

Companies that offer digital marketing services at a cheap rate. Hiring a company that offers something that no other company offers before, then you might make a mistake that will cost you more than what they've changed. Not to mention the fact that if their staff doesn't know how to do what they claim they can help with, the results might be very damaging for your business or brand image.

A terrible choice for small businesses is Google AdWords. Google AdWords is an advertising service provided by Google which allows companies to purchase their ads in specific areas, such as sponsored links, pop-up ads, and keyword searches. The downside to using this service is that it costs money upfront for each ad campaign.

What small businesses may find more beneficial is Google AdSense. This is an advertising service in which the website places ads in specific areas where they can gain revenue from advertisements on their sites.

Conclusion

The best way to tackle all these challenges is by hiring a company that offers digital marketing services in Kolkata and one that has been effective and has an efficient team.

They've provided quality service and proven results for many clienteles they've served, which is what you're looking for if you're looking for such companies as theirs.

If you’re an established business, you’re likely facing a digital marketing services challenge. Digital marketing is a necessary element of any business’s marketing strategy. That’s because digital marketing services offer unmatched versatility. Not only does it provide added exposure for your brand, but it allows you to target your specific audience.

[acommonrose]

inemmasmoonlight replied to your post “Deep down, I know buying random sort of overpriced things online from...”

How did you like the random podcast things?

Thank you, person related to me, for indulging me. Anyways, I’ve actually had a pretty good experience with all of them. The only one that wound up being underwhelming was HelloFresh, and that one wasn’t bad, just not quite what I was looking for.

I’ll put detailed thoughts about each of the things I tried under a cut, but the general impression I got of all of these things is that most of the things podcasts advertise (or at least all the ones I’ve tried) are things that are generally things people need to buy at a higher price point but with the advantage of some combination of quality and convenience. That means that if I had given up on this whole grad school thing and gone into industry, I would have been the target demographic of young, hip people with money and no time. As is, I’m slightly outside of that demographic and in the category of young, only slightly hip people with no money and no time but a little bit of disposable income because my stipend’s pretty generous, I live in a somewhat subsidized student apartment, and I don’t spend that much money on going out to eat/drinks/etc because my friends also tend to be people who don’t make much money and live in this hellishly expensive city. That also probably explains why things like Sitch Fix’s default being a monthly subscription or meal kits defaulting to sending you food every week seem like too much to me, since I see them as luxuries, and their target audience apparently doesn’t.

All that said, I’d definitely be interested in trying out more of these, since it’s an interesting phenomenon and kind of a fun way to treat myself. As I mentioned, I do kind of want to try out Stitch Fix (though, um, maybe after I get my fall stipend), since I’m fascinated to see if they can accommodate my requests of “please find a single pair of jeans that fit my very short legs because I sure haven’t any time recently” and “hi, I’m very gay but completely the wrong body type to wear anything that even remotely resembles menswear”. I’d also be willing to try more of these random things that podcasts advertise, so if there’s one that you’re terribly curious about, I might be willing to give it a try.

Anyways, that was already long so look under the cut for exciting discussions of bra sizing and my mediocre cooking skills.

So the first one of these I did was ThirdLove, and the fact that I used a podcast promo for it was almost incidental, since I had been looking through online bra sellers before I ever heard a podcast ad. Some time between the time my mom bought me a bunch of bras in high school and now when I’m a financially independent adult, I went up a cup size, making it even harder to find bras in my size in person outside of expensive department stores, so I wound up asking my mom for online recommendations. I actually started with a different website, which was a bit disappointing, since they were out of stock on things, and a lot of their recommendations given my bra sizing info used small/medium/large sizing instead of actual sizing, which seems bad for the large bust/average band size combo. I wound up getting a bra from that website, which I still have an wear, but it doesn’t fit amazingly. (I’m kind of awkwardly between band sizes, and what I really needed was one band size down and cup size up, but they didn’t really have any options for that.) I was pointed to ThirdLove shortly afterwards, and it was right around the winter holidays, so they actually had a sale on a few of their things (it seemed to be a strange combination holiday/clearance sale), and while I actually liked the bra I got (and it was available in both of my potential sizes, as were most of their bras), it turned out I needed the larger band size for their bra, and because I bought it on sale, they’d only let me return it, not exchange it.

Fast forward to spring, and Wonderful is sponsored by ThirdLove, so I try them again. I will admit I technically cheated the system a little by making a new account with a new email (though the same info otherwise), because apparently I wouldn’t get the “first purchase” podcast discount otherwise despite the fact that I hadn’t actually purchased anything from them before. This time, I got the larger band size, and it’s now probably the bra I like the most? It’s nowhere close to the perfect bra (as I have yet to find such a thing), and it slips a little, but it mostly fits and makes my boobs look good, so I call it a win. I’d probably get a second bra from them if they ever had a sale, but despite the fact that they emailed me all the time about new products or things they were promoting until I unsubscribed, I don’t think I got a single one about a sale. (I’ve noticed that a lot of these advertised services give discounts to first time users but don’t really do other sales/promos, which sort of makes sense for subscription models but seems weird for a site like this.) Bras are stupidly expensive, so given that, the price was mostly reasonable (and only maybe $10-15 more than the other site I tried), but it’s still a lot of money, you know?

Anyways, the next one was quip, which was also a thing I tried because my old electric toothbrush had died. I’d temporarily replaced it with a $5 battery-powered electric toothbrush from my local drugstore, but it’s nice to have something you don’t have to completely replace frequently, so I was looking for something with replaceable heads. One of my friends had recently mentioned using quip, and I’d also just listened to a string of Night Vale episodes that were advertising it, so I figured it was worth a shot, since the plastic brush is actually a bit cheaper than most of the standard models (and significantly cheaper than the higher end ones). That said, the brush heads are $5 each, which is more expensive than the dirt cheap ones for other models. (I just checked, and I can get an 8-pack of the ones for my old toothbrush for $12 on Amazon.) I’m not overly concerned about paying $5 every 3 months (especially since that also includes a replacement battery), but it is something to keep in mind. There’s two notable differences between it and my old model. First, it’s battery powered instead of having a charger (and the battery replacement is included with the new head). That’s probably a plus in that it’s more portable, so I can take it with me when I’m going out of town, but I may revisit that once I’ve actually had to replace the battery, depending on how annoying it is to replace. Second, it’s just a normal toothbrush head (albeit a vibrating one) instead of the normal rotating ones you get with electric toothbrushes. They claim it’s better for your teeth. I don’t buy it, but ultimately, it’s an electric toothbrush that works, so it’s good. It’s hard to have strong feelings about a toothbrush as long as it’s functional.

The other two I’ve tried are Blue Apron and HelloFresh, which I intentionally did as a head to head comparison, since they’re providing roughly the same service. Interestingly, the word roughly is important here, since I found that while the basic concept is the same, they’re slightly different products. Basically, the short version is that Blue Apron has more complex recipes and tries to include small amounts of unusual ingredients in many of their recipes, whereas HelloFresh is aiming for simpler, more widely appealing recipes. Neither of these things are bad on their own, and I could see how either service could be appealing depending on your tastes. I actually really liked most of the meals I got from both services, and I can imagine using HelloFresh’s recipes (including the pasta I got in the one box I did) and just getting the ingredients from the recipes (since both services make their recipes freely available), but what struck me was that I think I knew exactly where and how to find every single ingredient in my HelloFresh box in either my pantry or my local grocery store, whereas the same really wasn’t true of my Blue Apron box.

If anyone is still reading this (which I somehow doubt), I could discuss specific recipes and experiences in more detail. (I will say that in the two deliveries I’ve gotten, Blue Apron has sent me one flop but a few of the best dishes I’ve ever made in my life.) Ultimately, what I will say is that even though it’s definitely overpriced (even compared to NYC grocery store prices), I feel like it’s worth it to keep doing Blue Apron every few weeks. Oddly, I get a lot of the same utility from it that I get from owning a children’s cookbook in that they break down a lot of steps in terms of breaking down the little steps (chopping vegetables, setting water to boil ahead of time, etc.) that recipes aimed at more competent cooks sort of take for granted. (They also both assume incorrectly that I have a competent adult around to chop vegetables for me.) I don’t think it’s worth it if you don’t like cooking to begin with or are a picky eater (at least in the traditional sense of not liking certain flavor profiles or proteins -- I’m picky about which vegetables I eat and hate salads, because apparently I’m either a 10-year-old or Ron Swanson). Even I can’t imagine doing it every week, both because of price and the time it takes to cook the meals, especially since you still have to grocery shop for your lunches (unless you work one of those weird Silicon Valley jobs where they feed you most of your meals, I guess). But if you want to try cooking more of a variety of things and don’t know where to start (or, like me, can’t justify the stupidly expensive prices on seafood at the grocery store but can somehow justify the cost of a Blue Apron box), it’s worth a shot.

[speaknowslut13]

Hi Lauren lovely! 🪴

I know, I was kind of surprised that it’s *that* long of a wait, when everything else has been either book surprise or a much, much shorter wait, like even her traditional album announcement/release periods aren’t that long 🤔 I totally agree about the “sonic cohesion” and I think that’s one of the biggest draws of Red, that and it’s an album about being in your early 20s and your early 20s are notoriously NOT cohesive 😂

Hahahaha I mean hey, totally fair 😉

Ugh I feel that, I miss bookstores! Do you ever shop online for books? ThriftBooks dot com saved me when I was in college, they do used books for insanely cheap prices, they have a great member rewards program (that’s free to sign up for, and I can send you my referral link once I reveal myself if you want!), and free shipping for all orders over $10. (Not sponsored lol I just love the site)

That is really tough, especially when little kids are not necessarily the best at staying distanced/wearing masks 😕 and really frustrating the school isn’t willing to be more accommodating! Fingers crossed for you that things are better by fall 🍀

Oh my gosh well best of luck with your interview, I’m sure you’ll nail it!!! 🤩🤩🤩✨✨✨🍀🍀🍀 what would the job be?

Omg I love sherbet, it’s not really a thing here though. I can kind of relate to that, dairy does horrendous things to my skin, so most of the time I’m an oat milk gal and I try to eat low lactose cheese. Or goat cheese. Pizza is literally my favorite food. And not like how some people default to “oh pizza,” I could genuinely eat pizza for every meal. I’m so sorry about your food situation though, that sounds miserable :( I admire your humor and matter of factness about it all though ahdkahska

And thank you! I really love working with students and I also love the relative freedom the schedule gives me, plus my colleagues at my current school are all wonderful, amazing people.

Ohhh that sounds super cool!! I never quite got into DnD, but I have a bunch of friends who love it and it’s fun to hear them talk about it. Do you have any other board games that you like to play? (I’m personally a huge scrabble person but my friends don’t like to play with me bc they claim I “know too many words so it’s not fun” 😒)

And your random question of the day: do you have and/or want any tattoos? If yes, what of?

And I’ll send a few photos of some pretty things from my weekend for you ☺️ hope your week is off to a beautiful start! 💖 xoxo Drew

Omg Drew, this week was exhausting for me. So thank you for being patient. My interview went well. However, I’m not sure that I will actually get the job. But maybe that’s a good thing. It’s a full time tech position in an ophthalmologist office. I will go into more specifics once I know for certain how that plays out. My socials are all hidden so they shouldn’t be able to find me, but you never know.

I will definitely look into thrift books! You can send me the referral link later!

Oat milk is my saving grace. Starbucks recently added it on the menu and I’m thrilled. I can’t drink coffee as much anymore either, but when I get a latte at least I can use the diary free options.

I like to use humor to cope with my trauma. It makes it’s ✨spicy ✨😉 because trauma isn’t spicy enough 😂

I would LOVE to play scrabble with you! Having a large vocabulary makes the game fun! I grew up playing board games like monopoly, sorry, trouble, and risk. Board games are awesome. Kid is a little young for a lot of board games right now, but Chase and I play them from time to time. She’s interested in them. She’ll ask to play trouble or even sometimes life. Cards against Humanity is one of my favorite games. I’m craving having a family board game night now!

I don’t have any tattoos. My husband has one though. He created the design himself. It’s so cool. It’s two dragons intertwined. I do want to get one. Or a few. For starters, I want a ; either on my wrist or on my finger. If I put it on my finger, Chase would get a ( so when we put them together it made a wink. But the ; holds a lot of meaning to me. TRIGGER WARNING, I self harmed from about 2012 to 2014. And I almost committed suicide November of 2012. I also struggled with an ED. In fact, Red TV comes out three days before my ; anniversary. So it’s gonna make it extra special, since Red was part of that time in my life.

I also want a Phoenix tattoo. But I recently came across the idea of taking your dog’s paw print and turning it into a tattoo. We suddenly lost a fur baby in March of 2020. So chase and I wanted to take the ink print of her paw and get it made into a tattoo. We miss her. So it was a bitter sweet thought. We thought we’d do it with all of our fur babies.

I like tattoos, but I tend to dislike large ones or sleeves. But small ones that are fairly discreet are my favorites. Everyone is different though and age has taught me to accept those differences. Do you have any tattoos or piercings? My ears are pierced. I’ve always wanted to double pierce my ears, but the holes are lopsided a bit since I had to have them pierced twice. So I’m afraid a double piercing would exaggerate the difference. And then I’ve always wanted. Nostril piercing but I don’t think it’s a thing I will ever do. I found fake nose rings though and I love the way they look.

I would have loved to see those pictures! I’m sorry tumblr won’t let you send pictures anonymously! Maybe I can see them later!

Hope your week went well! Would you rather bungee jump or sky dive?

[fuertedevelopers-stuff]

Instagram Stats All Marketers Need to Know in 2021

2020 has been a year of new developments on Instagram, and some new Instagram trends are emerging along the way. It is no more a photo sharing platform, Instagram has introduced a ton of features to help businesses market and sell directly from the app.

If your product is not on Instagram, these Instagram marketing statistics will convince you why they should be so and give you an idea of ​​what to do on social media.

These are top Instagram stats for 2021 to shed light on the growing Instagram value of your business.

Instagram Hashtags

Ever since the idea of ​​using hashtags to tag and point articles on social media was invented in 2007 (via Twitter), their use has exploded and today is considered an important element of social media.

Instagram is certainly no different from this. From companies and Instagram influences to the average Joe, the use of hashtags on Instagram is popular and widespread.

This is so great that recent Instagram statistics show that the standard Instagram post contains as many as 10.7 hashtags (HubSpot, 2020).

But if you are thinking of getting out of all the hashtags to try to reach new users and grow your audience, think again. Studies have shown that with Instagram hashtags, it is not a problem for these highly intertwined. In fact, engagement decreases posts by six or more hashtags, so try using five or fewer.

And if you want to make a plan, you might be interested to know that the most popular hashtag on Instagram, #love, has been used more than two million times. So while it may evoke that warm feeling in your viewers, your post can be crammed into two million more posts with the same hashtag.

Businesses are Using Instagram

Instagram is expanding it's reach rapidly. Almost 71% of the businesses are using Instagram to improve the reach of their customer base. Almost 70% of the Instagram Hashtags are branded.

One of the most important metrics is engagement through Instagram. Including Instagram is crucial for marketers into their KPI's and KRA's however it is not that easy to measure it

This becomes difficult as there are continuous updates every-time.

Sponsored Content Growth

The practice of prosecutors publishing sponsored content on Instagram continues to grow without signs of quitting. Over the course of the year from February 2018 to February 2019, the number of Instagram influencers using the #ad hashtag has grown by 133.

In fact, in the first quarter of 2019, about 25,000 Instagram accounts were published via the #ad hashtag.

Since posters with more compliant prosecutors may have more ideas and reach out, it is expected that these accounts will be more sought after by effective marketing campaigns than those with fewer followers.

This is reflected in the number of times these top promoters have used the # hashtag. More than a quarter (26 percent) of influencers with over a million followers use #ad in their posts. By comparison, fewer than one in five have an influence with less than one million followers and about 2 percent of less than ten thousand minor prosecutors do so.

And it’s not just the posts sponsored by the growing influence on the likes. Of all Instagram posts posted during this period, #ad usage increased by 120 percent.

Stories Usage

Instagram launched the Instagram stories feature four years back. This feature allows users to post photos or videos which are visible for 24 hours. After introducing this feature, people started sharing it a lot on Instagram. 500 million Instagram accounts use Instagram news every day (Instagram, 2018). Not only that but 1/3 of IG's most watched news comes from businesses.

Before the Instagram news, people shared a lot of their important moments, which were rare every day. Instagram has hit the hammer on the head with Instagram news, giving people a better reason to share their daily moments without keeping content on their profile. Business increases their visibility through this great opportunity. There is a post showing you how to start using Instagram news to build your audience.

Follow Brands

Half of Instagram users follow at least one business on instagram which means businesses  can cutter he market and reachout to the larger audience through Instagram. Whether you are associated with confined brand or running global business, you have the chance to promote and be in market through Instagram. Many Instagram marketing company help to promote businesses.

Business profile are way much different from the personal profiles, where in brands can add contact information along with all the website details so that the consumer finds it easy to reach the brand. This includes business number and address. If you have an Instagram Business profile and have access to Instagram analytics that can give you details about the appearance and accessibility of each post, as well as more details about your people. All the analysis of the traffic is done . From clothing to the food or the target market you are interested in will be analyzed by the Instagram and displayed with all the numbers.

Instagram Engagement

Instagram engagement is growing exponentially. It increased by 29% between October 2017 and May 2018.

This means that products can generate more than 4x more connections to Instagram compared to Facebook.

While we understand that Instagram engagement is important for brands, the question remains as to what Instagram engagement is and how it is measured. Instagram engagement is the level of engagement your followers show in your Instagram content. This can be in the form of likes, comments, or shares. Instagram is a platform based on visual content which is one of the reasons why it has such high engagement. It offers a platform for a variety of content creation such as photos, videos, live videos, news, and the IGTV app.

This enhances your content, as it gives you more variety of content to choose from. If you are a product or business, you should be using the power of Instagram to improve communication. We've got a bunch of tips to improve your Instagram engagement.

Impact on Consumer’s Shopping Journey

Instagram is a user-friendly platform, which consumers can decide whether to chose a product or a service. Decision of purchasing depends on the ads or the content they on the App. Influential marketing plays a big role in influencing these buying decisions as well, so if your product does not include Instagram in your social media marketing, you are missing out on a great opportunity. Especially if the business is established years ago

There are ample strategies can be used to make an impact on consumer's decision on Instagram. So whether it’s Instagram ads, engaging users with creative stories, or inserting the appropriate Instagram hashtags for easy access, it can all be important if you do it right.

Instagram advertising statistics

• While not at the level of Facebook popularity, the Instagram ad platform is definitely growing.

• With new types of ads being released every year, brands have more freedom than ever before when it comes to their campaigns (indicating challenges and opportunities).

• Influencing people of the case have been working to make the actual transcript of this statement available online.

User and usage statistics

Instagram user growth has been strong and consistent, especially among the small crowd.

Building on the above point, Instagram users are among the most dedicated in terms of how often they log in.

A large number of app downloads show the importance of mobile usability of your marketing strategy on Instagram.

Content statistics

News, Carousels and short form video should always be at the center of your content plan.

With strong competition and a lot of content around it, even the smallest aspects of optimism (think: time, captions, bio) count.

As engagement levels draw, brands should consider including their content through Instagram ads.

Statistics for brands

Instagram is vital for both business to business and business to customers for building brand awareness.

More people are following products on Instagram than ever before, showing how the platform can compete with Facebook in terms of shopping and advertising in the long run.

Instagram is not responsible for the direct Sales, however creating the network, educating them and social media marketing.

Conclusion 

Over the years Instagram has proven to be a powerful marketing tool for businesses looking to increase their visibility and reach. We hope that these 10 Instagram figures for 2021 have helped explain why your brand should invest in Instagram and give you ideas on what to do on the next stage.

[payment-providers]

New Post has been published on Payment-Providers.com

New Post has been published on https://payment-providers.com/ridge-wallet-hits-50-million-with-influencer-marketing/

Ridge Wallet Hits $50 Million with Influencer Marketing

Ridge wallets launched via a Kickstarter campaign in 2014.  Ultra-thin, metal-clad, with RFID protection, the wallets are enormously popular in the U.S., with $50 million in sales in 2020 alone. Influencer marketing has driven much of the growth.

Sean Frank is The Ridge’s chief operating officer. He told me, “We sponsor a lot of influencers on YouTube. Roughly 750 in 2020, when we spent $3.9 million on 3,000 unique videos. That’s 10 new videos a day that we’re integrated with.”

Frank and I recently discussed the company’s process for managing influencers, as well as its founding, global growth, and, yes, selling on Amazon.

Our entire audio conversation is embedded below. The transcript that follows is edited for length and clarity.

Eric Bandholz: Tell us about The Ridge.

Sean Frank: We have one main product, the Ridge Wallet. We started on Kickstarter in 2014. Since then, we’ve sold probably 2 million wallets, and we launched bags, knives, and phone cases. But the main item is the Ridge Wallet.

Bandholz: It’s a minimalist wallet with RFID protection.

Frank: It’s the smallest a wallet can get. It’s the size of a credit card with two metal plates on the outside made from premium materials — such as carbon fiber and titanium — with cool designs.

Prices range from $75 for an aluminum wallet to $175, which is our Damascus design.

Bandholz: I’m doing the math — $75 times 2 million is $150 million since inception.

Frank: Yes. We’re still growing at 50 percent year over year. We did $50 million in revenue last year. We’re not slowing down.

Bandholz: How do you grow a $50 million brand?

Frank: It takes luck. That’s the first part. Our CEO, Daniel, and his dad, Paul, started it. They put it on Kickstarter with no training or background. Paul was a special ed teacher for 35 years, and they just had a cool design. He’s now our semi-retired chief financial officer. Our company is entirely bootstrapped — no debt, no investors. Four of us have equity ownership. We have roughly 20 employees.

Bandholz: That’s $2 million an employee. It’s unreal. Are you stressed to the gills?

Frank: That’s the number we care about, the revenue per person. Public commerce companies are nowhere near that. Everyone here works really hard. I hope they’re not burned out. We don’t have investors. That simplifies our management. I do a lot of tasks. Daniel does product development. Paul still acts as our CFO.

So, yes, we’re a lean team. We have two broad internal departments: people who sell wallets and people who save us money. The people who sell wallets are the marketing team, including our influencer program, which I’m involved with. People who save us money are the logistics manager (who brings everything in from China), our operations person, three people on the wholesale team, and a five-person customer service team.

Bandholz: Let’s discuss your influencer program. That seems to be a big chunk of building awareness for your company.

Frank: Yes. We sponsor a lot of influencers on YouTube. Roughly 750 in 2020, when we spent $3.9 million on 3,000 unique videos. That’s 10 new videos a day that we’re integrated with.

Bandholz: How do you protect your brand when using influencers and ensure that the price is right to be profitable?

Frank: We have two people on our team. Neither had done it previously. One, a female, worked at TikTok. She has a good Instagram following. So she’s familiar with the space. The other, a male, has been with us the longest. We look for fresh managers and then we train them.

Influencers want as much money as possible. Everyone does. But we’re transparent with the numbers that work for us. We’ll tell an influencer, “We’ve sponsored a lot of people. This is what we typically pay. We want to work with you. But if you don’t want to, that’s fine. No ill will.”

We’re industry agnostic. We will work with anyone. We’re a secondary income source for all those people. There are probably 50 accounts we’ve worked with for two years that consistently deliver responses. To them, it’s a guaranteed paycheck because they know they’re working with us, and they can budget around that.

Bottom line, influencer marketing is pay what you want.

Our first communication with a new influencer is, like, “We like you. We’re interested. We think this can work. Can we get demos?”

A lot of brands think they know who their customer is — age, location, gender. We’re not that specific. If your channel is two-thirds English speaking and 50-percent men, there’s a good chance we want to work with you. That’s basically every channel on YouTube, incidentally.

After we get the demos, we determine a price per video. We look at their last 10 videos. Then we take a CPM number that makes sense to us. That’s typically in the single digits — $3, $5, or $7 per thousand views. Then we do some math and offer $250 a video or $300 or whatever.

They’ll typically say something like, “I want $2,000 a video.”

We’ll respond, “We can give you $2,000, but we need six videos.” It’s finding common ground. If they want $2,000 a video, that usually means they want $2,000 overall.

Plus, we pay everybody up front. Then it’s hands-off afterward. Certainly someone could steal the money and leave. That’s happened maybe four times in the past two years.

We’ll tell an influencer, “We don’t need to approve your video. We don’t care what the content is around the video. We don’t really care where you put the ad in the video. We’re going to send you a product. We’re going to send you money, and hopefully you put the videos out like we agreed to.” There are no contracts.

Bandholz: Changing the subject, The Ridge is self-funded — growing through profits. What are your strategies for scaling to $100 million in annual revenue?

Frank: First, our marketing bucket would need to change. Ad costs are getting more expensive. Our CPMs on Facebook were up 100 percent year-over-year for most of 2020. YouTube pre-roll CPMs were up 300 percent. Thankfully we had pre-booked ad space at preset rates.

We’re going to hire two or three more people this year on our marketing team. There is an opportunity for us to go into Instagram; we’re going to start spending money there. We’re also going to spend money better on TikTok, Twitch, and Twitter.

Second, the operation side of the business would have to evolve for global customers. We are currently about 90 percent U.S. sales. We need to get more international. We launched localized online stores in Canada, the U.K., and E.U. with their own currency checkouts, payment options, and local inventory for quick deliveries. We hope to add Australia and Japan soon.

We’re on Shopify. We’ve duplicated all the stores and then localized each one. When I log in to Shopify, I have five accounts now.

Bandholz: Do you have fulfillment centers in all those places?

Frank: Yes, local fulfillment. We have a lot of warehouses. We have two primary ones in the U.S., and then one in each market — Canada, U.K., E.U. We have a customization warehouse in the U.S. for customers who want their name engraved on their wallet or whatever. Then we’re on Amazon in all those markets, using Fulfillment by Amazon. So we’re probably sending products to 10 to 11 places.

Bandholz: We’ve talked about reaching $100 million. What’s happens after that?

Frank: If I could tell you my dream, it would be for Yeti to buy us as a strategic acquisition. We do digital better than them. They’re a big company — billions of dollars in revenue, but Covid exposed them. Two-thirds of their revenue happens in person. I think we’d really add a lot of insight into what they’re doing. That’s my dream.

I’m wary of an IPO. I’ve had friends who’ve taken companies public, and they said it’s the worst experience ever. I don’t think any of us at The Ridge is up for it. If we can have a $100 million per year company with a $20 million EBITDA, that’s a strong business to hold on to.

Bandholz: You could live a good life making that kind of money. Although some would say making more than $200,000 a year doesn’t improve the happiness quotient.

Frank: Yes, all of The Ridge’s owners are down to earth. All of our lives would get worse with more money. I honestly believe that.

Bandholz: Let’s talk about Amazon. How it’s working for you?

Frank: You were ahead of the curve at Beardbrand talking about the evils of Amazon from a merchant standpoint. If you are a branded product, Amazon is a double-edged sword. Amazon doesn’t do a good job conveying brand value. And it forces you to compete with subpar goods, which is a huge issue for us. There is a bunch of knock-offs to our products on Amazon. Our Amazon business was eight figures in 2020. But other sellers there are violating our patent. When we go after those people, Amazon is not the best partner.

With Amazon, you’re paying for an expensive warehouse. When Covid hit, Amazon restricted inventory levels and pushed our shipment days from two days to four weeks. It feels like a multi-level marketing scheme with the ad budgets they require.

Those are some of our problems with Amazon. We’re going to continue on that platform, but a big focus for us isn’t growing Amazon. If you’re a DTC brand or a superior good, focusing on growing Amazon is not the right thing to do.

Bandholz: How can our listeners learn more about you and reach out?

Frank: Hit me up on LinkedIn — @seandavidfrank. Our website is RidgeWallet.com.

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