#there are probably six million typos but that's my business

[boohoos]

@fallenstcr sent '⭐️' for a headcanon about marina and beau .

it was a thursday when she’d realized she’d fallen in love with him . skies were partly cloudy , sun still peaking out enough to make it warm enough to have on a tank top and not be cold . they’d been seeing each other for a while , things escalated quickly from sneaking around her into his bedroom to actually dating though it was all still under a heavy veil of secrecy. it was their fourth date — and marina’s turn to take the reins on planning. she’d stressed over what to do for days. didn’t want to pick something too exciting only to disappoint him when she couldn’t keep up with the adrenaline but feared picking something too boring would cause him to … well … get bored . 

she’ll never forget how much she hated having to sneak around with him, or how much her hand ached each time she had to restrain herself from reaching down to intertwine their fingers. but it wasn’t all bad , secrecy made their time alone feel all the more sweet . 

she’d told him to meet him at her house at 6:00 and in true beau fashion he’d gotten there at 5:55 , she was practically pushing her parents out the door so she and beau could have the house to themselves — not that they’d been spending too much time in it until later. she stole a kiss from his lips before anything else , digits interlock as she pulls him into her house and locks the door . they get … distracted for a few minutes , takes all but prying herself off of him for them to get to where they’re actually going . 

she leads them back to her family’s barn , grand reveal being two horses waiting for them while grazing on the grass. she can tell he at least tries to resist his laughter with the way it sputters out past his lips , and she doesn’t hesitate to whack him on the arm for teasing her . it’s only when she explains that the horses are meant to take them somewhere that he finally begins to lay off on the jokes . soon after she’s the one that starts laughing , hand covering the giggles that pour out of her mouth as she watches him struggle to saddle up on the horse . she still makes fun of him for it even though weeks have passed. 

part of her’s grateful beau has about as much grace as a baby deer learning to walk. he took so long that the sun had just begun to set when they eventually got to start on their path. the ride was beautiful, sky painted different shades of orange and pink, hooves crunching the grass beneath them while she lead them up the hills of her family’s property. 

the couple’s grown quite fond of picnics, it’s like their own little slice of heaven. somewhere where they don’t have to pretend— somwhere they can just be together . 

that was the big surprise, blue checkered picnic blanket spread out along the top of a hill that looked over their town for miles . brown woven basket sat in the middle filled with all of his favorite foods — including the barbecue from the place downtown that always had a wait upwards of two hours .  

eyes were practically sparkling with pride , never had the chance to spoil someone the way she wanted to.  never really wanted to until she met him . 

marina hopped off of her horse with ease ,while beau somehow managed to look worse getting off than he did getting on. fingers didn’t miss a beat before they were intertwined with each other , bodies still kept close enough to touch even as they sat down .

they ate , talked , laughed — even had a competition to see how many grapes they could throw in each other’s mouths ; marina likes to argue that both of them were equally terrible even though more than half of the grapes she threw managed to hit beau in the eye.

she never wanted it to end. time had flown by so quickly that she barely even noticed the sky had gone dark. it was hard to pay attention to anything else when he was he around. 

eyes were gazing up at the sky, her head resting on his chest , ears pretending to listen to him speak but all they could focus on was the beating of his heart — unconsciously looking for reassurance that he was real , that they were real . 

laying there with him was the first time she felt afraid to lose something, warmth of his fingertips grazing over the skin of her shoulder leaving goosebumps in their wake. she was never religious like her family, but here she found herself praying that she’d never know a day where moments like this didn’t exist. 

it was then when she knew : she was in love .

[flawlesspeasant]

I don’t know if you have even been watching season 16 or if you’re still writing jolex fics but I have a prompt SPOILER FOR MIDSEASON FINALE!!! Fic: Alex’s reaction that jo stole a baby!

this is short and there are probably typos because i wrote it really quick on my phone and didn’t proofread, but yay for being inspired!

                         ————————————

truth is, the two days in iowa made me miss her and that was something i didn’t realize until i stepped outside into the familiar seattle drizzle and waited for the blue honda to park curbside.

the uber was ten minutes late. i called him six times and he answered on the seventh, just to tell me that he was stuck in traffic on the freeway and he’d be there in five more minutes. my first instinct was to yell or look for something soft i could throw at the bathroom wall because she was right, throwing things really does make you feel better.

i’d decided to throw a starbucks cup. a sweet-talking little teenage girl left it there a few minutes ago when she took a call from her boyfriend, and it was half empty so i didn’t think she’d be coming back for it. i was going to take the cup, duck into the bathroom and toss it at the wall repeatedly, over and over, until i felt better because all i wanted to do was get home to her.

the uber came before i could make it into the bathroom, though.

and i knew that it was entirely impossible, but i started to feel like maybe there was somebody in this airport that had access to my mind. stupid, i know. but on the off chance that somebody in the place knew what i was about to do, i tossed the cup into the garbage can like it was what i was going to do the entire time. i didn’t linger around to see if anyone would come back for the cup and frankly, i didn’t care. i just grabbed the small suitcase that she convinced me to take and headed out through the double doors.

i think that was when i started to feel like i missed her.

i didn’t miss her once while i was there because i was busy, barking orders at mom’s caretakers and demanding they give her a room without steps because if she fell down them one more time, i would sue. i didn’t have time to sit down and think about how much i missed the way she’d curl her fingers through my hair in the mornings before i woke up or how she sat me down and gave me an entire presentation on how much more financially responsible it is to stuff everything into a tiny carry-on suitcase instead of paying $45 to check a bag.

but then i was crammed into the backseat of the smallest honda, watching the raindrops drip down my window, thinking about how i could make it home just in time to hear her sing in the shower. that alone was enough to make me grin. see, she sings pretty. i mean, if you asked her if she was a good singer she’d tell you that she isn’t because she can’t hit those really high notes and plus she’s humble. but in reality, she’s great.

iowa made me miss her.

and when i say that i miss her, i don’t mean that lightly.

i missed the big things. like how she always looks for me when she enters the room and how she reaches over to hold my hand when i drive her to work. she looks out the windows and counts the number of trees that haven’t lost their leaves yet and i always shake my head and tell her that she’s “goofy” but what i really mean to say is remarkable.

i missed the little things, too. like way her hair sticks to my chest when she needs to hear my heart beating in the middle of the night, and the way her nose wrinkles when i tease her with a good morning kiss. like the way her eyes wrinkle at the sides when she’s laughing because i burned toast and the small hairs around her ears that she always manages to leave out of a ponytail.

loving her at first was like trying to reign in a hurricane. she came in waves, anger then softness. harsh, then gentle. she ripped through everything that she touched, left carnage in her dust and in the eye of hurricane jo, i stood to be grounded. the eye was the calm. the gentle ways she rubbed my back if she knew i needed a little bit of her, the way she squeezed me in a hug if i needed a lot. she was powerful, and all i could do was try to predict her outcomes, but she was unpredictable. she was strong.

until one day, she wasn’t.

she was undone at the seams, falling apart at every corner. hurricane jo was waning, moving inward to uncharted territory, and the only thing i could do was watch. her strength turned to vulnerablity and she needed me in a way i had never been needed. at last, she was broken and it was up to me to do the fixing.

i was hesitant about therapy at first. i didn’t think that i needed it. funny that way, because after one session, i learned that i didn’t need to chase her. loving her was like reigning in a hurricane, but she didn’t need to be reigned in. i didn’t have to chase her, i just had to follow. she led the way and i trusted her to navigate us into new territory.

she’s back now, by the way. that wild, unpredictability is still the center of her being and i’m glad for that because i don’t know how to love anything less than her whirlwind ways. i’m finally realizing that she was never really gone, her light just burned a little less bright and she has the tools to reignite it now. and i know that i’ve gone soft for her. i mean, when most people think of alex karev they probably don’t think of a guy who sits in the backseat of an uber and reflects on how much he loves his wife. but i swear, if she was your mess — the good kind and the bad — you would go soft, too. hurricane jo has that magic inside of her.

i handed the uber driver two crisp twenties when he pulled up to the loft, and i slid out. the window to our living room was glowing from the outside, so i knew that she was up and she was ready and she was probably waiting for me.

my immediate thought was that she was pregnant, and that scared me which, i found to be a bit weird, actually. because it’s not like i didn’t want a baby with her. i wanted all the parts of her — the mess and the beauty — and maybe the best parts of me. i wanted it all swaddled up into a soft blanket for me to look down at and ogle with love. but the feeling in the pit of my stomach was like going down a rollercoaster ride. the dread and the anticipation swirled all up inside of me, trying to figure out how to coexist at the same time.

i eyed the car seat sitting by the door and closed it, silently trying to think of other reasons why a car seat would be in our loft.

i was sure that she would have told me if she was pregnant, though. if she were pregnant, there’s no way she would have been able to keep that in. jo’s good at keeping secrets, but she definitely would have called me because she’d be bursting and plus, she knows just how badly i’ve wanted this. maybe she was babysitting for hunt and teddy, that was my next thought.

she knew i was home because there’s no way she didn’t hear the door slam shut behind me. i kicked my shoes off on the rug beside the door and shrugged out of my jacket. i knew later she’d gripe at me for throwing it over the arm of the chair instead of hanging it up in the closet, but i didn’t care in that moment. all i cared about was getting to see her.

“jo...?” i called her name as i wandered into the kitchen. there was a half-eaten box of pizza on the stove, so i flipped it open and grabbed a slice. “how old’s this pizza?” i asked, mouth full and chewing.

“from yesterday,” i heard her voice behind me but when i turned around, she wasn’t there.

eventually, she came bounding from behind the divider that separates our bedroom, tongue between her teeth. she exaggerated her tiptoes, dramatic as she often is. watching her come over to me felt like i was waiting for my entire future to come. her hair was tied back in a high ponytail and it swung with every move she made. the sweatpants she got from my drawer hung off her hips and her favorite acdc t-shirt had a white stain down the front of it.

“hey,” i mumbled as the piece of pizza slivered down the back of my throat with a swallow.

“hey,” she sighed and raised up on her tiptoes to press her lips against mine. just like i missed, her fingers curled in my hair and she gave me an eye-crinkling grin. “how’s mom?”

“she’s good,” i tossed the crust of the pizza back into the box and grabbed the bottle of dr. pepper from the fridge to wash it down. “settled in, doing fine. she told me to tell you hi.”

“i’m glad she’s okay,” she continued to smile at me and rocked back and forth on her feet and i knew she was hiding something. “so.. we have to talk.”

“bout what?” I twisted the cap back onto the soda. “baby sleep?”

her eyes widened by about two sizes and she looked at me like i just said something completely forbidden.

“did link already tell you?!”

“tell me what?”

“about the baby...?”

“no? why would link have to tell me?”

“then how do you know?”

“know what? that you’re babysitting allison? the car seat’s right there, i —“

“oh! oh, god, okay, wait —“

“you’re being weird.” i mumbled under my breath as i headed for our bedroom. “how long you babysittin’ for? couple hours?”

“alex, wait. before you go into the room, there’s something i really have to —“

she jogged after me in order to keep up and probably get to the room before me, but i beat her there. i thought she was probably worried that i was going to wake the baby up, but i had no intention on doing that. i just wanted to change out of my pants because the bottoms were wet from the rain.

but when i rounded the corner and crossed the divider, there was nothing pink or blonde or blue-eyed about the baby snoozing on our bed. he was much too new — a few days old if i had to guess just by looking — to be allison. and much too... boy. i looked at jo, expression confused and she gnawed at her fingernail. she only did that when she was really nervous.

“i can explain...” she said, nervous as nervous can be.

a million things ran through my head and none of them were logical. i thought maybe shepherd had her baby and link enlisted her to babysit which was stupid, i know. then i thought that she didn’t know she was pregnant and had the baby at home while i was in iowa because the little tuft of brown hair on his head and his cream colored skin was enough to make me believe... maybe even wish... that he was ours.

“i thought i could handle it!” she started while i was still trying to process. “i told you when i agreed to be a volunteer that i wouldn’t do it if it was too much, that i would just walk away but —“

“he’s a safe haven baby? jo, look this is —“

“i know you’re thinking it’s illegal but it’s not, i checked.”

“you checked?”

“uh-huh! it’s perfectly legal! ...as long as his mother doesn’t come looking for him.”

“jo, you STOLE him. there are policies and procedures in place and certain things —“

“i know but alex, look at him! i can’t even explain it to you but i just held him and i... i just... i was done.”

“you said you weren’t ready for kids. jo, this is all too much for you. this is —“

“i know what i said! but alex, it was so weird. it was SO weird. they put him in my arms and it was like i knew. it was like... like he chose me or something. and then they came to take him away and i... i panicked! i couldn’t let them take him and put him into the system. he’s just so little and so... he’s so little. i panicked. and i told them i was his mother and i changed my mind.”

“this is insane... jo, he’s not ours!”

“but he could be! he could be! just look at him... i was going to call you and tell you but i knew you’d tell me no and this was something i had to follow. i felt it in my heart. i know you don’t understand now, but i need you to trust me. and trust what i feel. this is our baby. he’s meant for us. i knew it as soon as i held him, i knew it. i felt it. and if you held him, you’d feel it too.”

“jo... i...” i sighed and looked at the tiny guy, snoozing with his hands over his head. “this is insane.”

“i know, but just hold him.” she picked him up and handed him to me, awestruck by the little grunts he made as we shifted him. “just hold him.”

i took him into my arms and looked down at his tiny, defenseless body. and it felt wrong because i knew it was wrong. but i wanted to trust her and trust her feeling, so i held him. and i stood by her. because loving her is like trying to reign in a hurricane...

but sometimes i just have to follow her.

[just-some-random-blogger]

One Million In One Day | 6

GOT7 SugarDaddy!Jackson Wang x Reader + Park Jinyoung x Reader | Part 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ? Characters: Jackson Wang (+ other Got7 members in future) Summary: His mother’s final wish is to see him be happy in a relationship, knowing that Jackson would be fine when she left him. But, damn, he didn’t have time for relationships, especially not since he was busy running his father’s billion dollar empire, thus the compromise: you.

Word Count: 3k+

Warnings: class discrimination, slight degradation, TYPOS, ex boyfriends, etc.

Preview | Alternate Moodboard

---

Jackson and I were driving back home. The bright bickering we had on our first ride was gone, and I was genuinely concerned for him. There were two reasons why exactly, 1) he could be upset because one of the snobbby businessmen told him off. Honestly, everyone at the party looked pretty scary, even Bambam, though he was quite nice to me. Or 2) he was upset because I helped the crying child, which I knew may have been too out of charcter for these high-noses, but come on! She looked like she couldn't even run yet, what did he expect me to do.

I huffed, honestly, if he was upset over the latter, that was saying a lot.

"Jackson... are you okay?"

As if I pulled him out of a spell, he turned to me and hummed, off guard.

I pursed my lips and repeated my question.

He kept his eyes on the road when he replied, "Ah, yeah. Just thinking. Parties usually tire me out, esspecially if political moves are played."

I looked at him and decided to believe it. I mean, it didn't seem like a lie. I'm sure it was tiring. I didn't know him well enough to argue otherwise anyway.

"So here's what's gonna happen," Jackson inhaled sharply, "The card I gave you?"

I nodded and pulled it out from the purse Hani lent me.

Jackson nodded as well, "It's wired to an anonymous account, or a burner account if you will. I bought a small bank just for this and how much I put in will only be valid for an exact and entire 24 hours. Got that? What time do you want the clock to start?"

I gulped, "Ni- uh, n-- 10 o'clock. Am."

The man nodded, "10. On the dot."

I nodded back, slowly.

"Okay then."

After, Jackson made a quick call during a red light, and the next thing I knew I was in front of my house. I turned to him and offered a soft smile when he turned back to me.

"Uhm... so I guess I'll just wash this and give it back next--" "What?" Jackson blurted, cutting me off. He began to chuckle and narrow his eyes in amusement, "Ah, jagiya, you don't have to give back anything. Those are yours now."

My eyes widened, "Ya... this... this wasn't part of the deal..."

Jackson laughed softly, "No worries. Remember, I'm your filthy rich sugar daddy. This is really nothing."

"Oh my gosh, Jackson," I sighed, pulling an uncomfortable face, feeling my cheeks burn. At this point, Jackson bloomed into brightness, seemingly reverting to his usual self.

"Really, it's fine."

"But," I sighed, "I have no where to wear this."

He threw his head back in laughter, "Baby, you can wear this anywhere. It really suits you."

I shook my head in defeat, opting to just bid him a goodbye because I knew it'd be pointless to argue otherwise. I got out of the car and waved as he drove off. I huffed and went inside.

Gosh I hope Nari isn't here.

Lo and behold, my apartment was empty. I hummed in appreciation. Hopefully, by the time someone starts catching on, Jackson and I will no longer be in the middle of this.

------

"MARK! Mark, thank goodness. I- I- I think I'm having a panic attack. Can-- c-can you come over right now. I'm... in my apartment."

Exactly 12 minutes passed when a red hoody, jeans, and worn out sneakers clad Mark Tuan came banging on my door. I shuffled in my old pajamas and ripped off the faded blanket off me. I ran to the door and immediately sealed Mark into a tight embrace when I saw him. 

"Oh my gosh, what the hell happened? Do you want me to call an ambulance? Your parents? Jinyoung?" "NO!" I shrieked, pulling away from him, heaving.

Mark raised his hands in concern and shook his head in disagreement. "Okay. Okay."

I wiped my face and sat on the floor, "I need-- I need to tell you something."

Mark crouched down before me.

"Okay-" breathing, "I need to be-" breathing, "completely honest with you first," breathing.

Mark nodded and placed his hands on my shoulders, sitting in front of me.

"I tried to call Nari first, but I think she's too busy trying to flirt with Mr. Choi or something to pick up, and then I thought of calling Jinyoung," I inhale sharply, "but I just can't. I can't call him. I can't tell him this." I start hyperventilating again.

Mark snickered, "And so you called me. I get it. I'm not your first choice. No need to rub it in."

"Mark! That's not what i'm trying to getting at."

He nodded and laughed, "I know, loser. Just get to the point."

I exhaled and nodded, "I have a sugar daddy."

Mark looked at me and blinked. For a moment he debated internally, then spoke up. "Sorry, what?"

"I have a sugar daddy!" I exclaim and begin to explain from the very beginning.

"Is this legal?"

"... yeah."

"Homaygahd." he blurts and suddenly starts to panic.

"Mark, you're supposed to hElP mE!1"

"Hol'up!" He raises both his hands in the air, "you're telling me your problem is you don't know what to spend with a million bucks?!" He chuckles in disbelief, "Literally anYTHING BABY GIRL!"

"Don't call me baby girl!"

Mark laughs his high pitched on. "Okay, my first thought was to buy a video game but then my conscience said pay off my student loans first-- or I mean at least yours."

I huffed and nodded, "Yes I know-- my student loans AND your student loans."

He smiles widely.

"But there's still a lot of money Mark."

"... what about like, Nari's and Jinyoung's."

"Nari doesn't have student loans... and, if we pay for Jinyoung's, I'd have to tell him, and we established how you got here in the first place."

"Uhhhh, I'm pretty sure he wouldn't judge you for getting a million bucks just for going out with some rich guy."

I rolled my eyes, "That's not the point. I--I'm not ready to tell him. Maybe... I dunno, like, the second date."

Mark gasps, "Are you for real! Will he really pay you another one six zeroes?!?"

I groan, "I know I shouldn't rely on this, but I assume that there will be more dates in the future, so I'm kinda just trying to make a strategy on how to get rid of all this money first."

Mark nodded and we pondered for a moment. 

"Ugh! Mark, we literally have a count down. It starts at 10, on the dot."

"It's 9:45! Chill, we have time to think!"

"Not that much time!"

"I know, I know!"

We both laid on the floor in frustration and ponder. "I got it, how about we buy a million lotto tickets so that when we win, you won't have to panic about it!"

I punched his shoulder, he whined, "Literally, I already one the lottery, dumb-ass! 10 times over since I probably will reach ten dates with this dude."

"Damn. I wanna sugar daddy too."

"Mark!"

"What?! I want things!"

I quickly sat up, "Then let's just-- buy these things... let's just splurge."

I stood up and ran to my laptop, sitting on the chair in front of my desk, groaning when it loaded slowly. "Okay, first order of business, I'm buying a new damn laptop."

"I want one too!"

I huffed, "Fine."

Mark giggle like a child form behind me. "This is so cool! We can literally buy everything we want!"

"Yeah, but first, let's do the math." I opened a bunch of applications and screeched at the slow internet. "Okay, #2, a better internet plan." Mark chuckled. I pointed, "Post paid."

"Let's do the math." I started listing down all the things we needed to pay first. We reached a fairly high about with out debts and laptops and internet plan to begin with, but it was still a joke against how many zeros we have left.

Assuming we didn't find an open bank today, because it was Sunday, we came to an agreement to stop at a certain amount, so we can pay tomorrow. I mean the 24 hours end at 10 am tomorrow.

"Okay. So," I turned to Mark and raised my hands, "we can buy whatever we want now!"

Mark and I cheered and hugged each other. "LAPTOP!" Mark screamed.

---

"Remind me again why we need to check?"

"Because! I don't want to buy a laptop and be invested in it only to be told my black card doesn't work."

"Didn't you say you trusted Jackson?"

"DUdE!" I whisper-yelled at Mark, "don't just say his name casually like that. Call him, uhm, sugar."

Mark held back a chuckle, "Right, for sugar daddy?"

I shushed him and pinched his side as we walked into the convenience store. He whined, and I defended myself, "It could be a dog name."

He rubbed the part of him I pinched, "Right. Kinky."

I shot him a look. Mark gulped. 

"Do you want a laptop or not?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Then shut up while I buy some candy."

Mark shrugged and I went up to the counter to purchase a chocolate bar. The cashier told me the price and turned to me. I nodded and handed her my card. She turned to it and shrugged, swiping it in.

A few moments later, she turned to me and handed me my receipt.

I smiled widely and turned to Mark, just to see him grinning with a literal handful of junk food. I rolled my eyes, "put it back, Mark."

"But--"

"We can eat at a buffet or something."

"Uh ma'am." the clerk called as I moved to walk away. I held my breath and turned to her. "Sign this please." 

I let out a breath. "Yeah, yeah, sure."

-------

"AW FUCK!" Mark whined, stopping in his tracks, fidgeting in his place.

I licked some of the strawberry ice cream off my lips and whipped my head to Mark. "What?! What?"

Mark turned to the newly bought, shiny, black, fur collared leather jacket on him that was atop his satin button up. He pulled out a tissue from his well fitted slacks and stomped his new high tops.

"I got ice cream on my Gucci."

I looked at him as he wiped off the sugary liquid off his brand new clothes.

Once he turned to me, we blinked at each other and started laughing.

"Oh wow, I can't believe that came out of your mouth."

Mark sucked in a breath, "I know, yikes."

Suddenly, someone called my name. I turned around and saw the past person i wanted to see right now. 

I wanted to scoff, but I decided not to. "Jaebum."

He walked up to me and I crossed my arms.

Jaebum, I think, didn't even notice Mark behind me, as he was too busy swallowing my appearance. I mean, maybe it was too much that I was wearing an dark blue, ankle length, spaghetti strap dress with silver kitten heels, but... Mark said it was fine... and, and it didn't matter. I thought I looked fine.

"Wow, you look... you look good," Jaebum noted.

I nearly scoffed and turned to Mark firm over my shoulder, motioning that he give me a second.

"About last time-" "Let me stop you there." 

I crossed my arms. "I get it. Finally, after all his time," I handed him my empty ice cream cone, "you finally realized what you missed." I placed my hands on his cheeks and proceeded to fix his hair, "but I'm over you JB."

I breathed in heavily and  flashed him a wide smile. "Move on."

With that I turned over my shoulder and gave Jaebum one last look before walking passed him.

Mark followed after, snickering, "Yoooooo, that was badass."

"Better believe it, babe."

[mxblog24]

Google Discover: How to Rank and Drive Traffic

Google Discover is an automatically generated and highly personalized mobile feed based on your online activity. It shows information and news about the topics that interest you, like SEO or golf.

It’s more like a social network than a search engine, but your search activity and history is crucial for providing a relevant and timely feed.

Millions of people see a personalized Google Discover feed on their mobile devices every day, and it’s become a solid source of traffic for many websites since its introduction in 2018. This is especially true for news and media outlets, many of which now get the bulk of their organic traffic from Discover.

Even our humble little SEO blog got almost 150k clicks from it in the past six months:

Google Discover is still a big unknown, though. And because this topic calls for expert collaboration, we asked a few SEO experts for their insights:

But first…

How Google Discover generates your feed

To become a great SEO, you need to know how search engines work. And we need to understand the same with Discover.

According to Google, they use the following data to generate the feed:

Your activity across all Google products (e.g., your search activity, watched YouTube videos, and engagement with Discover results)

Location history

Location settings

Topics you follow

Do you see the similarity to social networks now? The feed reflects your hobbies, current interests, and everything else in the world relevant to you. It’s so personalized that it even considers your level of expertise and how important that topic is to you.

For example, half my feed is almost always about SEO since that’s the topic I interact with the most. As you can see, you can even “follow” the topic of SEO:

Interestingly, you can check how Google categorizes the results in your feed. Suganthan referred me to this method discovered by Valentin Pletzer, who found out that you can access this information by clicking Send feedback > System logs > Card category:

These are the card categories that Valentin came across together with what he thinks they may represent:

For example, we can see that being on Google News certainly helps with Discover performance as it has its own “NEWS_HEADLINES” category. If this is relevant to you, check John’s guide about Google News optimization.

In general, if there’s a demand for your content and it sends the right signals to Google, you’ll be driving Discover clicks from people already interested in that. That’s a huge benefit compared to social media, where posts mostly reach a “cold” audience.

How to drive Google Discover traffic

First of all, don’t spend too much time proactively trying to chase Discover clicks unless you’re already far along with your SEO efforts. Most people will be better off prioritizing standard organic traffic. News sites are the exception, but you already know that if you work for one.

Optimizing for Google Discover is an SEO topic that surpasses anything else in terms of uncertainty. The only available data is in your Google Search Console. You can’t analyze your competitors, and so the scale of your research is quite limited.

It’s hard to predict how a particular piece of content will perform in Discover. Speaking from our own experience in the B2B SaaS industry, you’ll most often see 3–5 day traffic spike upon publishing:

However, some evergreen content will manage to get constant traction:

And sometimes it might be a combination of both patterns:

However, some content might not even make it into the feed despite doing all the right things. As with almost everything in SEO, you can’t guarantee that X will do Y; it’s all about increasing your chances of a desirable outcome.

Luckily, there are a few official tips on increasing the likelihood of getting your content into Discover, which I cover below together with our unique insights. But first, know that indexed content needs to adhere to content policies to be eligible to appear in Discover. Only then should you focus on the following areas to increase the likelihood of being featured:

1. Have a mobile-friendly website

Discover is a mobile-only feed, so your site’s mobile experience is hugely important.

At the very least, you need a responsive, fast-loading website with limited or no ads, pop-ups, or interstitials. Also, be prepared for May 2021 when Core Web Vitals become a part of the ranking algorithm because Cumulative Layout Shift is not a page speed metric.

If you want to go a step further, consider using AMP. John estimates that more than 60% of all Discover articles are running on AMP. Of course, this number is heavily skewed by news websites, and SEO opinions on implementing it are mixed. But the Discover trend is clear:

2. Use unique high-quality images

Discover is yet another feed where the image gets the most attention, so you should use great high-quality images for all visual content on the page.

Google recommends that your large images should be at least 1200px wide and enabled by the max-image-preview: large robots meta tag or by using AMP. That should be your default setting regardless of Discover, as it’s the best practice for image SEO. Plugins like Yoast add this automatically.

You can also use the schema image property to provide more data to Google.

3. Align your content and metadata

Title tags and meta descriptions should summarize the page’s content and entice users to click. Just make sure not to use clickbait or other manipulative tactics here, as Google explicitly warns against these in the Discover guidelines.

An interesting thing we found out by mistake is that Google Discover takes Open Graph meta tags into account. We had a typo in one of our blog: title tags and it went through to the Discover feed despite the title tag being correct. There was a missing “L” at the beginning:

4. Publish content about popular topics

Discover tends to surface lots of timely content about current events, which is why news websites dominate the feed.

But it also surfaces plenty of evergreen content. Our blog is proof of that. We don’t write about trending topics, but we’re still getting tens of thousands of clicks from Discover each month.

This happens because Discover is a personalized feed and shows content that is new to you, not just new to the Web. For example, let’s say that you’re about to start investing in the stock market, which requires quite a bit of research. You’ll probably encounter articles in your Discover feed about investing tips, stockbroker comparisons, and other beginner stuff that could have been published months ago.

How do you target evergreen topics? It starts with keyword research. Just enter a few broad topics into a popular keyword research tool like Keywords Explorer, then look for popular topics.

Just know that merely writing about popular topics is rarely enough. Google says that you should focus on good copywriting and providing unique insights if you want to show up in Discover.

5. Work on your E‑A-T

Google says that the source content from websites with many pages that demonstrate expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness.

There are multiple ways to assess and support your E‑A-T. The Discover guidelines state that you should do the following:

Providing clear dates, bylines, information about authors, the publication, the publisher, company or network behind it, and contact information to better build trust and transparency with visitors.

On top of this, it might be worth using structured data to connect the dots.

Suganthan also suggests looking at Google’s Affinity categories and looking for topics where you can become an authority. That’s because these audiences seem to be linked to “CORE” interests card categories, as shown earlier from the logs.

The easiest way to find these is in the Affinity Categories report in Google Analytics.

In general, you should do everything you can to position your brand as a thought leader in your industry.

6. Focus on entities

When I analyzed the Discover performance of the Ahrefs blog, I managed to pinpoint topics that perform better than others. In the SEO world, it’s the entities and their connections that form specific topics.

Upon receiving the insights from our contributors, it was clear that entities play a significant role here as everyone mentioned them in one way or another.

There’s a Knowledge Graph layer created to map how user interests and expertise develop for any topic over time. This is known as the Topic Layer and is built by analyzing all content tied to a certain topic and all of its subtopics, ultimately connecting all the dots.

It seems that some of the dots can become Discover interests without being a Knowledge Graph entity. For example, querying “meta description” in Knowledge Graph API returns no results, but in Discover, it shows as an interest that you can follow:

You can’t dig into the Topic Layer, so we’ll have to focus on the higher-level entities. And that’s more than enough.

Your goal should be to have authority within the scope of entities that are tied to your business. There are multiple ways to approach this when you create content:

Be consistent in your category

Most websites are about something specific. It could be coffee, laptops, SEO, or something else entirely. Whatever it is for you, try not to deviate too far when creating content. If you’re publishing about iPhones one day and cooking tips the next, that doesn’t send positive signals to your audience or Google. It just waters down your ‘authority’ across all categories.

The only exception to this rule is if you work for a massive media outlet that covers everything.

Find the entities that work for your brand

I tried to spot topics that work best by manually going through our Discover reports. However, this method only covers main entities, and you can’t do it at scale.

If you already have many pages in Discover, you’re also likely to have access to developer resources. If that’s the case, you can do what John did: run your articles through Google’s Natural Language Tool, then combine the entities based on their salience and analyze which drove the most Discover traffic for you.

You can test the NLP API yourself. Just scroll down to the demo input window and paste some of your content there.

Use Google Images to find associated entities and information

Dan came up with an easy-to-use method to tell what other topics Google associates with a topic. Go to Google Images, search for your main keyword and then look at the related entity tags at the top:

Alternatively, you can use a tool like Entity Explorer that seems to get data using this same method.

Use this as inspiration for what to add to your current or upcoming content. Dan experienced increased Discover performance after incorporating related entities and information into his content. He also ranked for more keywords.

7. Become a Knowledge Graph entity

People can only follow your brand in Discover if it’s in the Knowledge Graph. You can check if this is the case by Googling your brand. If there’s a Knowledge Panel in the search results, it’s in the Knowledge Graph:

Interestingly, however, even if someone follows your brand, your content might not show up in their Discover feed. Kevin and I both tested this. I’ve been following MailChimp on Discover for a few months, and I’m yet to see any of their content in my feed.

So how does being a Knowledge Graph entity help improve your visibility in Discover?

Being in the Knowledge Graph is a sign that your online presence is strong enough for Google to put your brand in the right context. In other words, it understands what entities and interests are associated with your brand and may show your content to people interested in those things as a result.

8. Create buzz with your content distribution

It makes sense that Discover would want to showcase content with high engagement. We can confirm that posts with more Discover clicks also tend to have a comparatively high CTR in Discover.

What might be more surprising is that all of us have found that there seems to be a high correlation between social media engagement and your Discover performance.

John even crunched the numbers. He found the correlation coefficient between Discover performance and Twitter engagement in the US is a whopping 0.91. That’s a significantly high correlation, but as always, it doesn’t equal causation. Creating buzz with your content benefits you even if Google ignores it.

John also adds that this ‘buzz factor’ might be tied to Discover performance in certain countries. While Twitter plays a significant role in the US, it might be overshadowed by other platforms elsewhere. This means that you should distribute your content to locally popular channels.

At Ahrefs, we can see that this might indeed play a huge role in getting Discover clicks. We localize our blog content into five other languages. Those articles are essentially the same as our English ones that perform well, yet we only managed to get a few Discover clicks to some Spanish posts.

The only difference? We don’t focus on proper content distribution in other languages yet.

Again, none of this proves causation but Suganthan also brought up an experiment regarding the social engagement signal. JR Oakes made people engage with his tweet containing a deliberately rubbish article and it made it into the Discover feed:

9. Periodically refresh your content

Just because your page isn’t showing up in Discover now doesn’t mean it never will. Here’s an article that we first published in 2017 that never received a Discover click until we rewrote and republished it:

Naturally, we didn’t update the article just to get Discover clicks. We updated it to try to improve its rankings and organic traffic from “regular” search results. The clicks from Discover were just a nice bonus.

Republishing content is one of our favorite growth tactics. According to Content Explorer, we’ve updated 60 pages in the last 12 months:

All of this is not just our experience. John and Suganthan confirm that often refreshing evergreen content works well for them too.

10. Embed your YouTube videos into articles

YouTube videos can be seen quite often in Discover feeds:

If you embed them into your content, there’s a chance that the videos will show up in Discover on their own and even outperform the content itself. And as Kevin points out, you don’t even need to use schema markup.

We have some articles that got only a few hundred clicks, but their embedded videos got thousands. We cover some of our topics in both video and written form so repurposing your content seems like a good tactic to boost traffic from Discover.

Just keep in mind that video clicks don’t go to your website but to YouTube instead.

11. Try Web Stories

Formerly known as AMP stories, these are Google’s take on the stories we know from Instagram and other social networks.

Google recently announced that they started supporting Web Stories in the Discover feed. If this type of content is something worth your time, try it out. At the time of writing, it’s only available for English content in the US.

Kevin confirmed that they tried experimenting with these Web Stories, and they indeed got featured in Discover.

Final thoughts

You can leverage Google Discover traffic regardless of your business. It won’t be a priority unless you have a news website, but the optimization tips are likely nothing you wouldn’t do in your everyday SEO work anyway.

Applying these tips won’t be beneficial just for Discover. That’s a by-product. They will lead to generally better SEO, content distribution, and traffic diversification.

The great thing about Google Discover is that it can drive clicks even when the primary keywords have no search demand. The general topic should still reflect people’s interests, but this is another argument in favor of publishing content that doesn’t primarily focus on driving search traffic.

Got any other Discover insights or questions?

Originally published at https://businessscan24.blogspot.com.

[ptersparkers]

Tough Girl (Secrets)

Summary: After leaving your assassin life behind, you seek a new life to forget your past. Nick Fury brings you into the life of the Avengers, posing as Tony Stark’s personal assistant. But, what happens when your secret’s revealed?

A/N: I’m in a rush, but I wanted to get this out (so I’m sorry for typos. I’ll definitely reread this later) because people have been requesting for the next part! Also sorry, this is low-key a filler but the reader’s relationship with Peter as a “mentor” or sorts will probably sort itself out in later chapters. Also, school started today and I’m bummed. 

Pairing: Avengers x Reader, (Eventual) Steve x Reader.

'Secrets Masterlist’

Tony had asked you to fetch Peter from school and then head to his apartment for a little while. You looked at Tony with questioning eyes and raised your eyebrow.

“Isn’t that Happy’s job?” you asked. “I’m not a chauffeur nor am I a babysitter.” 

“Well, you are today,” he said. “Happy’s helping me oversee a large shipment I’m waiting for and I need his help. That leaves you, Y/N.” You huffed, but didn’t argue. 

“Fine. Where are Happy’s keys?” you asked, assuming he left his car for you to drive. 

“Just use one of mine,” Tony said, not looking up from his phone. 

“You trust me with one of your cars?” 

“You handle my money. Plus, if you wreck my car, I can just buy a new one.” Tony tossed you a pair of keys and your shrugged, heading down to the garage. You didn’t know which car the key belonged to. Pressing the unblock button, you instantly saw the car it had knocked - a red Ferrari. You smiled. 

"Classic,” you said to yourself.

You hopped into the driver’s seat and raced out of the garage. It had been a long while since you drove something so expensive. It reminded you of the last high speed chase you had. You had stolen seventy million dollars worth of money in jewelry and some mobster members were tailing you. Mobsters were at the bottom of the food chain when it came to crime. You were confident you could escape them, and you did. 

However, today, you drove the speed limit. You had been to Midtown High a few times to cheer Peter on with his Decathlons. You called Peter via the car’s bluetooth as you approached the entrance.

“Hey, Peter,” you said. “Happy’s off the clock helping Tony, so I’ll be picking you up today.”

“Sweet,” he replied. “Are you picking me up in Happy’s car?” 

“Not exactly.” You saw Peter and drove to where he was standing. He stood with two other boys who looked his age. 

“Y/N?” he asked in disbelief. Peter knew Tony had cars, but there was no way he’d let Peter drive in one. 

“In the flesh. Hop in, we gotta go.” 

“Hot damn,” his friend, who you knew as Ned, said. “This is yours?” 

“Technically it’s Tony Stark’s, but I’m allowed to play with his toys every once in a while,” you said. 

“What are you doing with Peter anyway?” the other kid asked. 

“That’s Flash,” Peter whispered. Your mouth grew bitter. This kid, as Peter told you, was Midtown’s biggest tormenter. 

“Peter’s a good kid,” you defended. “Hey, Ned, do you need a ride?” He looked at you and pointed to himself. “Yes, you. I’ll drive you home, if you want.” Ned didn’t object and hopped into the backseat. 

“Can I get a ride too?” Flash asked, overly excited and confident you’d say yes. 

“I don’t have enough room, sorry,” you said unapologetically before driving away. 

“But there’s plenty of - oh, I get it,” Ned said. You snickered. “How do you know my name?” 

“Peter talks about you a lot. Says you’re his best friend.” Ned looked at Peter and smiled. 

“I’m guessing she knows you’re, you know who?” 

“Yes, I know he’s Spider-Man.” 

“Do I need to tell you where my home address is, or do you already know?” You looked at Ned from the rearview mirror and winked. 

“FRIDAY, give me directions to Ned Leeds’s home address in Queens,” you instructed. 

“Giving you the home address of Ned Leeds in Queens,” FRIDAY replied. 

“This is so fucking cool,” Ned said. 

You dropped Ned off and drove to Peter’s apartment. May was at work and you accompanied him inside. 

“Don’t get me wrong, Y/N. I like being around you and all, but why are you babysitting me?” you shrugged. 

“Beats me. I think Tony feels bad that I don’t have anything to do for him. I’ve always been so busy and now that I don’t have anything to do, I think he wants to give me something to keep myself busy.” Peter shrugged and took out his homework. 

You stayed in the apartment, bored out of your mind. An hour had passed and May was in the living room. You told Peter to keep working on his homework and greeted May downstairs, who smiled at you. You liked May. She wasn’t wrapped up in the while Avengers business and she seemed to be the only outsider who wanted to be your friend. Of course, you were always so busy. Any time you were over, you made up the excuse that it was because of the Stark internship. May learned not to question it.

You went back to Peter’s room and he was frustrated. 

“I don’t understand math sometimes,” he said, huffing and crossing his arms. “Math is useless. I’m useless.” 

“Hey, don’t say that,” you said, peering over Peter’s shoulders. “What are you working on?”

“To be truthful, I don’t even know. I don’t get this.” You looked at his homework and analyzed the problem, finding his error. 

“You carried the ‘x’ and then squared it too quickly. You were supposed to divide the entire fraction before you square it.” You grabbed the paper and pencil from him, erased his work, and redid it. After a while of deriving the equation, you gave the paper back to him. 

“Oh, wow. You’re really smart,” he said. You laughed. “Why are you a personal assistant? This is some hard AP Calculus shit.” 

“Haven’t found the right job yet,” you replied. “I like working with computers.” 

“I’m guessing you’re not talking about responding to emails.” You shook your head. 

“More like coding.”

“Teach me one day.” 

“I wlll, but only if you promise to finish your homework.” Peter groaned and you laughed, ruffling his hair. 

You checked your phone and got no word back from Tony about if you were allowed to leave Peter alone. When Peter did finish his homework, he turned to face you. 

“Hey, Y/N? Can I asked you a question?” 

“Shoot,” you said, turning your body to face Peter. 

“How do you deal with people who seem to not want you there? Remember that party I went to? At Liz’s house? People called me ‘Penis Parker’ right to my face. It hurt, but at the time, I had Spider-Man stuff to worry about.” You pursed your lips, knowing exactly what Peter was talking about. 

“I’m still trying to figure that out myself,” you said with a dry laugh. “I suppose you remember that you’re worth something and hold onto it. You can do so much good whether other people know it or not, but it doesn’t matter. You are your own person and they shouldn’t be able to tell you who you are and who you aren't.” 

“Huh, that’s pretty good advice,” Peter said. You laughed and playful punched him on the arm. 

Just then, you received a text from Tony, which told you to meet him at the restaurant you both went to frequently.

“Gotta go, kid. Promise me that you’ll be safe while you scope the streets,” you said, pointing at him. He saluted. 

“Yes ma’am,” he joked. “Be safe.”

You drove the Ferrari to the location he texted you. The place wasn’t very fancy. You knew that when Tony wanted to have impromptu dinners, he chose a low-key restaurant. You got out of your car and locked it before heading to the entrance. There were a fair amount of people walking around, but a man grabbed you by the elbow. 

“You’re a pretty lady, aren’t you?” he asked. 

“Let go of me,” you demanded. 

“You’re a feisty one, aren’t ya?” he asked. You tried to wiggle from his grip, but he held on even tighter. “Such a pretty girl all alone?” You glared at him, unaware that Tony was calling out the man who held you. 

“Don’t provoke me,” you warned. 

“Yeah?” the man asked, smirking. “Or what?” You maneuvered yourself so that you were out of his grip and held his fingers so tight in your grasp that you were sure you broke some bones. He yelled and ran away, clutching big hand. 

“Serves him right,” you muttered, fixing your hair. 

“Y/N!” Tony yelled. You looked up to see him running frantically at you, catching his breath once he reached you. “Holy shit, are you okay?” You smiled. 

“I’m fine, Tony. Nothing to worry about.” 

“That man tried to make advantage of you,” he said. Tony looked over your body. “He didn’t hurt you, did he?” He spun you around and you laughed. When you faced him again, you put your hands over his shoulders. 

“Tony, I’m okay. He’s gone and I’m hungry.” Tony sighed of relief and entered the restaurant. 

When you were both seated, Tony was baffled at how a small, quiet, and shy girl like you could take down someone who seemed twice your size. 

“Look, I know our dinner dates are usually about me ranting about the company, being Iron Man, or other Avengers, but I want to know how you took down someone way bigger than you,” he said. 

“A little self defense, I guess? I don’t know, I was always taught that men shouldn’t take advantage of women and I get angry when people try stuff,” you replied. 

“Makes sense,” he said, wearily. “You're sure you're okay?” 

“I’m sure. I just want to eat something before I die of hunger, though.” Tony laughed and flagged down a waiter.

“Holy shit, guys, you should’ve seen Y/N. She made this six-feet-something guy whimper like he was a child,” Tony beamed. You didn’t like much attention and tried to hide behind Tony, but he stepped out of the way. 

“What?” Steve and Sam asked, making their way over to you. You were grateful that it was just the two of them and everyone else had gone to bed. 

“Yeah, she made this gigantic guy look so small. I’m pretty sure she broke some of his fingers, or something,” Tony rambled. 

“What happened?” Sam asked .

“Some guy had this grip on her and it looked like he was about to -”

“Wait, some guy took advantage of you?” Steve asked angrily. He was about to yell at Tony for not doing anything, but you spoke up. 

“He almost did. I got away, though.” Steve smiled and sighed of relief. 

“Thank goodness you’re okay,” he said. Sam raised his eyebrow at him, but looked at you. 

“Well, I’m glad you’re okay,” Sam said awkwardly before heading to his room. 

“What a night,” Tony said. “I’m gonna get some beauty rest. Gotta wake up early for China,” he mused before waving goodbye. You and Steve were standing by the elevator. 

“Are you hurt? Did he hurt you?” he asked, scanning your body. “I know it’s later, but I can call Dr. Cho and -” 

“Steve, I’m okay, I promise. I took care of that guy.” 

“I can’t believe Tony didn’t interfere.” 

“He was about to, but the man ran when I took care of him.” Steve smiled down at you. 

“I’m glad you're fine and not hurt. You must be tired.” 

“Just a little.” 

“I bet you’ve had enough action for one day,” Steve teased. You grinned and yawned, making your way to the bed, falling asleep as soon as your head hit the pillow. 

Tag list: @konomoma, @sumiaran, @fandom-planet-lover, @taylenas2, @ravenclaw-geek24, @c-hasinghosts, @dropdeadrxses, @angielollipop, @sammysgirl1997, @ashxley03, @wavexrippler, @remial, @crazy4thewinbros, @generalgoldfishldrm, @doncasterparker, @wildefire.

[dirtyroyalconfessions]

Ok were he go! I was thinking of just posting one long one shot but this is getting way longer than I thought and it’s taking me a lot of time, so i’ll start with this part.

Feel free to modify any typo/mistake you see. If anyone wants to beta it you’re very welcome to do so :D

In His Care

You’ve had your share of strange Saturdays, like when your father awkwardly told you and your siblings he was going to remarry just in time for dessert, or when you had to spend hours at a café on your own while you waited for your friend two tables away from her just to make sure her tinder date wasn’t a psycho killer, or when you had a meltdown over that philosophy course you didn’t understand while you shoved an unhealthy amount of chocolate on your mouth. That being said,  nothing compared to the situation you were currently in.

Two men and one woman were staring at you outside of your front door. They should be glad you even opened it in the first place, because at first you thought they were one of those religious groups that try to make you join them with pretty words and food after church service, but then you wondered if Dubai even had those. After all, you’ve only been living and working there for 3 months.

They introduced themselves as Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum’s staff. A few weeks ago you would’ve asked “Who?” and closed the door on their faces, but you would be lying if you didn’t admit the handsome Sheikh had been on your mind after discovering that good looking man whose pictures’ seemed to be everywhere in Dubai was the Crown Prince.  But what was a simple infatuation that fueled chit chat between you and your coworkers, turned into one overwhelming evening the night before.

“His Highness requests your presence over dinner tonight, Miss.” Said the tallest man “The Sheikh will have a car ready for you at five and— “

“Wait what?”

“His Highness Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the Crown Prince of—“

“Yeah, I know who he is, thank you. Dinner, you said?”

“Yes, Miss. Dinner will be served at six thirty at a private location per request of his Highness. The Sheikh also picked himself a selection of clothing for you to wear and if you request so, there will be staff to help you get ready”

You met the Sheikh. Well, kind of. Last night you attended a party hosted by one of your boss’ associates, and he requested some of his employees to join him and to mingle with Dubai’s most important people. Networking is everything in this world, he said.

You were in the middle of exchanging makeup compliments with the wife of some hotel owner when you felt his presence and you couldn’t help but move your gaze towards him, only to find his eyes were already on you. Dressed in all black and surrounded by an entourage, he was a sight to behold. You knew there were rumours about someone from the royal family making an appearance but you were too busy reading contracts to pay attention. His stare was intense, overwhelming even.  You could feel it gracing every inch of your body, as if he wanted to save all of it in his memory.

“I mean, if the lipstick smudges then what’s the point of it?” Mrs Hellington’s loud voice brought you back to reality.

“Of course, Lydia, it’s not fun if the lipstick’s gone at the end of the night” You said to her, and your eyes went back to the Sheikh only to find him stretching some men’s hands in another corner of the room. You politely excused yourself to the ladies’ room to give yourself a moment to put yourself together while you kept repeating in your head that exchange had been part of your imagination and he was probably looking at someone behind you.

When you came back to the party you told yourself to continue to enjoy yourself. It wasn’t like your eyes were looking for him, no, and you didn’t see his broad back while he talked to some men you guessed probably owned half of the world. You were a grown woman after all, you had free glasses of Pinot Noir waiting for you.

One hour and 3 glasses later when you got bored of hearing your boss’ bad jokes to his associates  you started thinking of reasons to excuse yourself so you could finally go home and eat something other than those tiny appetizers with weirdly named fish rich people seemed to love.  You could already see yourself in your comfy pajamas, with Netflix and one big pizza.

You should know by now things don’t go according to what you expect them to.

“Ah, Sheikh Hamdan! How good of you to join us” said your boss and you were glad you had swallowed your sip of champagne already or you would have choked on it. “You know Vincent and Mark, who started the company with me, old pals! And this young lady here is one of my smartest employees, I finally convinced her to move to Dubai to run things in the big league” said Mr Benson while doing his famous overly expressive hand gestures.

“I don’t believe we met before” You thought his stare was bad, but you hadn’t heard his voice. Deep and warm, firm in a way you could tell he had the world under his command.

“We haven’t, Sir” Now you were sure you didn’t imagine the slight smirk and the sparkle in his eyes the moment you called him ‘sir’.

“I hope you are enjoying your time in Dubai”

“Dubai is treating me well, Sir. I’m glad I moved here” Mr Benson’s raspy voice made you remember it wasn’t just the two of you alone eye-fucking freely, and you were torn between keeping your attention on Mr Benson’s business ramblings or if you should return the stare you could feel on you.  He wasn’t even trying to be subtle, and you were sure he would have no idea what Mr Benson was saying if somebody asked him about it.

A few moments later a man approached to the Sheikh and whispered some words to him. He started to excuse himself but not before he turned to you “It was lovely to meet you, Miss”

“Likewise, Sir” You smelled his perfume as he walked past you, his shoulders almost brushing yours.  The men next to you kept talking as you took a deep breath and turned your head, only to see him doing the same with a smirk on his face.  You decided to call it a night and excuse yourself as well,  and when you almost tripped on the stairs on the way to your taxi, you laughed at you being like a lame excuse of a Cinderella. Cinderella could walk straight, you said to yourself. Once you got home you completely forgot about insanely hot Crown Princes’, Pinot Noirs, and canapés, and you focused on the next episode of House Of Cards.

…

But that was last night, and it didn’t really explain why you had three people standing at your front door. It was then when you realized one of the men and the woman were carrying bags of designer brands, as if you weren’t overwhelmed already.

“We will leave you the items and we will contact you later with more details” said the man and the other carrying the bags started walking towards your door to leave the bags.

“Wait a minute! I – I didn’t agree to this!” You exclaimed. It wasn’t that you wouldn’t go to dinner with him, but having stangers bossing you around and informing you of a date you didn’t even think about in the first place wasn’t exactly the best way to get you to agree to it. It didn’t help that your brain was going at a million miles per second: when did he decide this? Did he do the same with every girl he liked? What was he expecting of you? Was this his way of doing a one night stand? Thanks for the dress, here have some designer dresses.

“But Miss, His Highness—“

“You can tell His Highness that I appreaciate the gesture, but if he wants to have dinner with me then he’s very welcome to come and ask himself” You didn’t even give the man the possibility of replying when you closed the door on their faces.

It took you 10 minutes to move away from the closed door, your mind filled with questions after experiencing one of the strangest situations in your life. You kept telling yourself you did the right thing, who did the prince think he was? That just because he spent a few thousand dollars he can boss you around?

It wasn’t like you wouldn’t have a one night stand with him, or let him boss you around there. And you were certain if you two had met in other circumstances that weren’t in a business party you would’ve approached him with a clear intention in your mind. But your mother raised a girl with manners and self-respect, and if someone wanted you he had to come and tell you himself.

You didn’t spend the rest of the day thinking about him, remembering the way he looked at you, wondering how that voice would sound like whispering demands on your ear, or how much those hands could grab, or if they’d leave marks on you. You certainly didn’t google him, you don’t know where he studied, or what he was thinking when he posted a picture of a sandwich on Instagram. You didn’t wonder if in an alternate universe you would have a chance, and the thoughts of endless nights didn’t cross your mind. Of course not.

Right when you told yourself to grown up and behave like the adult you were and to get up and get your groceries you heard a knock on your door. Looking at the clock next to your fridge you realized it was 5:30, so you guessed it was either the Sheikh’s staff or one of your neighbours complaining about something.

  You were so wrong.

  So wrong.

Standing there in all his black Gucci suit glory was the man himself, with a smug yet slightly annoyed expression on his face while held the bags you refused to accept that morning.

“Imagine my staff’s faces when they had to tell me my companion wouldn’t make it to dinner”

After getting off the shock you reply “They shouldn’t have had to ask in the first place” as you hold his intense stare.

“May I come in?”

-Submission

I'M YELLING!!!!!!!

[goodra-king]

Transcript of What’s Podcasting Got To Do With Marketing?

Transcript of What’s Podcasting Got To Do With Marketing? written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

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Transcript

John Jantsch: This episode of The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Klaviyo. Klaviyo is a platform that helps growth-focused eCommerce brands drive more sales with super-targeted, highly relevant email, Facebook and Instagram marketing.

John Jantsch: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Guy Kawasaki. He’s the Chief Evangelist of Canva, a great online design service, and executive fellow of the Haas School Of Business at the University of Cal Berkeley. And he has the distinction of being on my show for about the sixth time, probably. I think we talked about this last time you were on my show. I think I’m the only podcast or to interview you for both versions of Art of the Start.

Guy Kawasaki: And that and a nickel will buy you… Well, not even a cup of coffee, but yeah.

John Jantsch: So, we’re going to talk about a number of things today. It’s been far too long. Guy’s most recent book is called Wise Guy: Lessons From a Life, so we’re going to touch on that. But I always like to get a little update on Canva, so why don’t we start there? As an evangelist, this is your only job, right, is to talk about it?

Guy Kawasaki: Well, I also have four children, but who’s counting? So, I’m the Chief Evangelist of Canva, and for those of you who may not have heard of Canva, it is an online graphics design service based out of Sydney, Australia. And the essence of Canva is that it has democratized designs that basically anyone can create beautiful designs for social media, posters, business cards, presentations, t-shirts, whatever you want. And I’ll just tell you that, in the month of October, Canva made 139 million images, so we make about four or five million images per day at Canva for people all around the world.

John Jantsch: So, there are dozens of folks that have tried to crack that nut. Why do you suppose Canva was so successful? I mean, there are other online design tools that are been around a long time that haven’t been that successful.

Guy Kawasaki: Well, I think that one of the key decisions was that we decided that we’re going to make every conceivable design type, and within a design type, hundreds of templates. So, what I mean by those two words is that, a design type is a square Instagram image, right? A design type is a 16X9 presentation. A design type is a Kindle book cover. So, when you come to Canva you say, “All right, so I want to create a Pinterest pin. I want to create the Etsy store. I want to create the eBay store cover photo. I want to create the cover photo for my LinkedIn account.” And all of those, we have the optimal dimensions already figured out, and within those design types, we have hundreds of templates. So, you find a template that you like, you upload your own photo or you use one of our stock photos, you change the text, and I promise you, in the time it takes to boot Photoshop, you could finish a design in Canva.

John Jantsch: I totally agree with you. I mean, the ease of just saying… For example, if you’re working with a small business client like we do and they are on six different platforms, and you need a header image for each and all the things, every single one is a little different size, and so it’s just so convenient to just go boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. So, I know [inaudible 00:04:04].

Guy Kawasaki: I mean, John, I don’t know if you realize this, but even more convenient than going boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, we have a feature called Magic Resize. And what Magic Resize says is, “Okay, you did the basic design for one. Now, we will resize this for all the other five platforms.”

John Jantsch: Oh, but I don’t know about that because that’s the $10 a month one, right? I’m not going to pay $10 a month [inaudible 00:04:29].

Guy Kawasaki: Oh, John, you’re killing me, John, bro. Your books are free, right?

John Jantsch: No, that’s awesome. So, are they going to stay true, do you think? Or would there be a temptation to say, “Let’s get into audio and video editing,” and all those kinds of things?

Guy Kawasaki: Well, certainly video because we already do that. Going to 16X9 presentations, we’re trying to make it so that mere mortals can have beautiful PowerPoint-like presentations. I don’t know. We would like it so that every graphic in the world is produced by Canva. We’re not shrinking violence at Canva.

John Jantsch: All right, well I guess you just sold me. I’m going to pony up the 10 bucks a month.

Guy Kawasaki: Okay. We can end this now.

John Jantsch: All right, so this is, what, your 14th, 15th book, Wise Guy?

Guy Kawasaki: Yeah. Wise Guy’s number 15. I truly do think it will be my last, also.

John Jantsch: Yeah? Is that because you’re out of things to say or because you’re tired?

Guy Kawasaki: Well shit, I was out of things to say on my third book, so… Well, it’s partially retired, but switching to the next topic, I am now convinced that podcasting is the new book writing. Because, well, the advantage of podcasting is, well, you can be in front of your audience a minimum of 52 times a year. You can change on a dime. So, next week if John Ives says, “I want to be in your show,” you can put them on, right? Whereas, in your book, it takes a year to write a book, it takes six to nine months to publish it, so let’s say two years, and then, it’s done. It’s laid in concrete, and you’re never going to touch it again unless you fix typos. So, you get that initial burst of, I don’t know, maybe for you, five million people buy your first version. But then, some people read it, but it’s never picked up again. Whereas, a podcast, man, you’re in their face every week. That’s so much better.

John Jantsch: Except for What the Plus! I mean, that one lives on forever.

Guy Kawasaki: Well, What the Plus! may have lasted longer than the service, but I digress.

John Jantsch: I completely agree with you on the pod… I mean, there’s so many… You mentioned an obvious benefit, but I mean, the first time you and I met was through this format and I’d like to at least call you a little bit of a friend. You’ve been a [inaudible] of my career over the years, and I think this is where the introduction happened the first time. And I’ve done that with most people.

Guy Kawasaki: But see, I’m an idiot because it took me… I’m just a late bloomer. I took up hockey at 44. I took up surfing at 61. I took a podcasting is 65. I don’t know why people listen to my advice. I clearly don’t know what the hell I’m doing.

John Jantsch: I don’t even have to ask you questions because you’re just going along my proposed questions here, but I was going to ask you that. Was their resistance or was it just literally a matter of, “I just didn’t get around to it”?

Guy Kawasaki: What, the podcasting? Okay. So, there’s the high road answer, and there’s the low road answer. Which answer do you want?

John Jantsch: I want them both, and we’ll balance them out.

Guy Kawasaki: Okay. So, the high road is, I’m at the end of my career, I’ve made a lot of connections. I’ve made a lot of friends. I can tap into that so that I can interview a Jane Goodall, a Margaret Atwood, a Steve Wozniak, Steve Wolfram, Bob Cialdini. I can get to these people because I’ve been dealing with them for years and years. So, I have this tremendous competitive advantage to interview people that many people could not get unless you’re Terry Gross maybe Malcolm Gladwell. And now, I have a much better filter system because I’m so much older that I, theoretically, have acquired some wisdom, so I can ask them the right questions. So, my time has come to do a podcast featuring remarkable people. That’s the high answer. You want to hear the low answer? Well

John Jantsch: Well, let me let you think about the low answer for a minute. So, your podcast is called Guy Kawasaki’s Remarkable People, and that’s, ultimately, what you’re doing. So, the chances of me actually being a guest are pretty minimal, I think.

Guy Kawasaki: Well, I have a test that if somebody asks to be on the podcast, they’re not remarkable enough.

John Jantsch: Yeah. Fair test. So, let’s have the low answer then.

Guy Kawasaki: So, the low answer is, when I came out with Wise Guy, I was a guest on many podcasts. Okay? So, I got to talking to somebody’s podcast where I say, “So, how often do you do this?” One guy said 52 times a year., Another guy said 156 times a year. And I said, “So, what’s your model?” “Well, it’s advertising and sponsorship.” I say, “Okay, so where does the advertising go?” He says, “Well, there’s one or two ads in the pre-roll, there’s one or two ads in the middle, and there’s one or two ads at the end.” And I said, “Well, how many people listen to these things?” “A quarter million.” “How much do you get per ad?” “Well, the ones in the front get 20 grand, the ones in the middle will get 15 grand, and the ones at the end get 10 grand.” So, I’m sitting there doing the math. So, let’s say there’s six of them and they’re doing like 15,000 bucks each on average, and I say, “So, six times 15 is 90. Ninety times 52 is fricking four and a half million bucks. That’s 10 times bigger than any advance for a book I ever got. What the hell am I writing books for?

Guy Kawasaki: Simultaneously, at 65, I just don’t want to travel anymore. I would just like surf, and so I said, “Okay, so maybe I can make my podcast successful. Basically podcasts and surf. I don’t know if I’ll make four and a half million dollars a year, but if I come…” Well, I don’t even need to come close to that to be happy. So, maybe this is my path to retirement and a better life and more surfing. So, that’s the low answer. I did it for the money.

John Jantsch: I want to remind you that this episode is brought to you by Klaviyo. Klaviyo helps you build meaningful customer relationships by listening and understanding cues from your customers, and this allows you to easily turn that information into valuable marketing messages. There’s powerful segmentation, email auto-responders that are ready to go. Great reporting. You learn a little bit about the secret to building customer relationships. They’ve got a really fun series called Klaviyo’s Beyond Black Friday. It’s a docu-series, a lot of fun. Quick lessons. Just head on over to klaviyo.com/BeyondBF, Beyond Black Friday.

John Jantsch: So, we’re recording this in December of 2019, depending upon when people are listening to this, you’ve launched the show already, your first guest, or at least the first show I was able to see was Jane Goodall. A lot of people know her work for years with the apes in Africa. What’s the basis of your relationship with her and that interview?

Guy Kawasaki: Okay. So, about a little more than a year ago, the person who runs the TEDx in Palo Alto, out of the blue asked me if I want to interview Jane Goodall for her at TEDx. And that’s like, “Well, duh. Of course I want to interview Jane Goodall at TEDx.” So, it actually cost me a lot of money because I turned down a speech. I could’ve got paid speech for the same time. I said, “No, I can always get another paid speech, but how often can you interview Jane Goodall?” So, I interviewed Jane Goodall for TEDx, which is on YouTube if people want to see it, and I really became friends with her. Sometimes you just hit it off with a person. Right? And so, we’ve been communicating and stuff like that, and I communicate with her staff. And [inaudible] Fitzpatrick and I, we always help Jane Goodall when she wants to raise money or make something go out on social media.

Guy Kawasaki: And then, I decided to do this podcast, and I said, “Well, I need a spectacular, remarkable person as the first guest. Who could be,” and you weren’t available, “so, who could be better than Jane Goodall?” And so, she was going to be in San Francisco, I recorded her, and yeah, I mean, life is good. It’s good to be Guy Kawasaki sometimes.

John Jantsch: Yeah. Well, I know what you have a good relationship because I’ve seen pictures of her grooming you.

Guy Kawasaki: Yeah. She’s looking for lice in my head.

John Jantsch: Which, I think, was reminiscent of her work in the jungle, wasn’t it?

Guy Kawasaki: Yes. Yes.

John Jantsch: So, who else is up for the show? Who else do you plan to talk to in the upcoming weeks?

Guy Kawasaki: Yeah. So, Jane Goodall is out, so is Phil Zimbardo. Phil Zimbardo is the Stanford psychology professor who did the Stanford prison experiment where kids simulated being guards and prisoners. Next week is Stephen Wolfram. He is the creator of Mathematica and Wolfram Alpha, the search engine. Got a PhD at 20, MacArthur Award at 21. The next week after that is Margaret Atwood, the author of Handmaid’s Tale. And then, believe it or not, we have Wee Man, Wee Man from Jackass, the MTV series and movie. And then, I have Bob Cialdini, who I’m sure you’re heard up because you’re into sales and marketing like I am, so I have Bob Cialdini.

John Jantsch: He’s been on this show. Yeah.

Guy Kawasaki: Yeah, he’s great. So, basically, that’s the kind of people I have. I mean, they pass the remarkable test.

John Jantsch: Yeah. So, what do you have to learn to do this? This is a different format. This is different technology. This is maybe a different skill. What’s it going to take to get Guy Kawasaki to the Remarkable Podcast host?

Guy Kawasaki: Well, I’ve done a lot of panel moderation and stuff and fireside chats, where I’ve been on both sides, so it’s not like, to use a Jane Goodall analogy, it’s not like I was Tarzan and I got off a ship from Africa and now I’m in London and I have to figure everything out. So, I’ve been to this rodeo, maybe wearing a different hat, but I’ve been to this rodeo. And have you listened to the Jane Goodall one?

John Jantsch: I listened to about half of it. Yeah. In preparation for [inaudible 00:15:22].

Guy Kawasaki: Okay. So, you could see that… Well, one is, to tell you the truth, I believe that the role of the podcast or is to make the guests look great. And I also believe that, if you look at the minutes spent who’s talking, it should be about 90/10, or 90 is Jane and 10 is Guy. And so, that’s something, and a lot of people have said, “I really like your podcast, Guy, because you let Jane talk.” I think a lot of podcasts, it’s all about them, right? They’re just talking and talking and talking, and then, finally, the guest gets to say something and then the podcaster gets back on a riff. So, I don’t step on my guests. Now, honestly, I don’t know how to get subscribers or advertisers, but I figure, if I get all these guests and I produce a great podcast, I’m a big believer in, “If you build it, they will come.”

John Jantsch: Well. I think that’s a lot of it. And you’re also doing the networking. You contacted me to tell me about it, and you contacted a lot of people to tell them about it. I mean, that’s kind of Marketing 101, right?

Guy Kawasaki: Well, nothing is easy, right? Well, if you’re Michelle Obama and you started Michelle Obama Remarkable People Podcast, I’m pretty sure you’ll get 5 million subscribers in the first day, but I’m not Michelle Obama.

John Jantsch: Do you listen to podcasts?

Guy Kawasaki: Yes.

John Jantsch: Yeah. What are some of your favorites?

Guy Kawasaki: I listen to Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History, who I’m trying to get as a guest. I listened to Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! I listen to Freakonomics. I listen to Joe Rogan. I listen to Terry Gross. I’m a big NPR fan, basically.

John Jantsch: Right, right, right. Yeah. Yeah, you can [inaudible] a lot of those shows have moved to the podcast format, but obviously, there’s still broadcast, as well. Where do you think this is going? The audio… And again, maybe you’re not in the position right now where you want to future cast trends and things because you’re just trying to figure it out to make it work for you, but it seems to me like audio content right now… I mean, podcasts had been around a while, but it seems to me like audio content is really hot and it’s going to get hotter.

Guy Kawasaki: Yes. I think that podcasting is like artificial intelligence. So, artificial intelligence for the last 30 years was going to be the next big thing, right? And finally it is. So, I think we may be there with podcasting. A lot of it is… It’s critical mass. I mean, in a sense, Apple has created a critical mass for podcasting. In the same sense, I think, one of the things I’ve noticed is QR codes, which was supposed to be a big thing, Apple finally made it a real big thing because now when you just put your camera on a QR code, you don’t have to download a QR reader, right? So, all of a sudden, yeah, QR codes makes sense. And I think Apple did the same thing with podcasts, that now that they’ve done so much and they put a podcast player on every iOS device, Apple has created another market.

John Jantsch: Yeah. And I’ve been doing this before, that was the case and that was one of the initial challenges with podcasts. It was hard to show people how to listen.

Guy Kawasaki: Yeah. Yeah.

John Jantsch: Where do you think Spotify fits into this? It seems to me like Spotify is really gaining some traction in the podcast space. Do they take on Apple, or is it just broaden the universe for everyone?

Guy Kawasaki: Hell if I know. I mean, based on two episodes, I don’t consider myself an expert. But Spotify has taken a different position. In a sense, they’re like Netflix, right? So, Netflix just doesn’t share stuff anymore. Netflix has its own series. Right? So, similarly, Amazon Prime, I watch Jack Ryan on Amazon Prime. Amazon Prime owns Jack Ryan, right? And so, Spotify is trying to create content, not just distribute content, and so they’re supposed be making this huge investment in podcasting. And I guess we’ll look back and say, “Wow, that was a genius move,” or we’ll look back and say, “Well, what a dumbass move.” And I don’t know. If Apple said we’re going to be a content creator… Well, they they do that, right? They created that Morning Show for Apple TV and all that, so I guess we’ll see. I don’t know.

John Jantsch: Yeah. I think that’s the direction a lot of people are going ahead, and I wouldn’t be surprised if, just like you are playing the evangelist role for Canva, I’m wondering when companies like that start bringing in somebody like you to be their podcaster or to be their spokesperson as a podcaster.

Guy Kawasaki: Well, funny you should mentioned that because I’m Chief Evangelist of Canva, and I told Canva, I told you know the other people at Canvas, like, “So, right now you have your Canva social media, the Instagram, Facebook, all that, and you have your email lists, but there’s a limit to how many times you can send an email to someone in your registered user database. And that limit is not 52 times a year.” So, I’m making the case that, if we could get my subscriber base up to a million or so, that is a fricking tremendous weapon. So, if Guy Kawasaki’s Remarkable People has a million subscribers and Guy Kawasaki’s Chief Evangelist of Canva, so at an extreme, the pre-roll, the midway, and the end ads could all be for Canva. So, imagine, 52 times a year you can hit a million people with an ad three times. Oh my God. I mean, life is good.

John Jantsch: Absolutely.

Guy Kawasaki: So, yeah.

John Jantsch: So, I think that’s going to be a role that, I think, you start seeing is that whether they’re media companies or just companies seeing it as another channel, I think are going to start buying up people’s reach with the podcast.

Guy Kawasaki: Yeah. Because, I mean, for the very simple reason that you could hit people much more often with a podcast than you can with an email, MailChimp campaign. Accenture did a five or six podcast series with will.i.am, right? And you couldn’t hit your Accenture database six times, or probably maybe 18 times, because there are multiple ads inside the six episodes. There’s no way you could have hit your installed base with 18 email campaigns. Well, first of all, there’s not 18 interesting email campaigns you could do.

John Jantsch: Yeah. And I think that’s the key point, too, is it’s far more engaging content than an email ever will be.

Guy Kawasaki: Well, I mean, in a sense, how does NPR raise money? I mean, you don’t enjoy the pledge drive, right? So, you feel a moral obligation to reciprocate. And similarly, with Wikipedia, you don’t like to see that ugly banner where Jimmy Wales is asking you for money, but because Wikipedia provides such great information and content, you feel a moral obligation to donate. So, you could make the case that if Guy Kawasaki’s Remarkable People has all this great wisdom and advice and inspiration, and then it’s sponsored by Canva, you might feel, “Oh geez, I should help Guy out and use Canva.” That’s the theory anyway.

John Jantsch: Yeah. I think it’s a good theory. Well, Guy, we’ve exhausted our time. It was great catching up with you again, and I wish you luck in this new venture. And I will not ask to be on the show, I will just wait by my email for the invitation, if it should come.

Guy Kawasaki: Well, I hope someday to send you that email.

John Jantsch: All right, well-

Guy Kawasaki: Let’s hope that you have four files.

John Jantsch: Yeah, we’re recording with some new new technology here that I think is going to just be awesome, so I-

Guy Kawasaki: If you don’t have four files, it’s my fault for convincing you to do this, and I will appear again.

John Jantsch: That’s right. All right. Well, I get to say to you, mahalo, then.

Guy Kawasaki: Take care.

from http://bit.ly/2O719G4

[realmotionxi-blog]

ON THE COUCH WITH FALZ & LAILA Aspiring President of Nigeria DONALD DUKE On the Interview

NOTICE: This is a Transcript so there's bound to

be little or much Grammatical and Typo errors

Please be sure to give your Opinions regardless This season on the couch, falz, the bad guy and Laila Johnson salami place your presidential aspirants on the hot seat, the truth. Okay, do you think that, right now, people who have a certain sexual orientation are being discriminated against? I don't know, I don't believe the excitement and the totally unscripted nature - oh wait, but what is on the couch relax? I don't want anybody to calm me. I'M tight so shakes from the face. This kind of setting relax its on the couch with thousand Leila. What'S up what's happening, my name is fouls. The bad guy AKA, president of the association and I'm laila johnson salami welcome to another episode of on the couch, and today we have the former governor, of course, river states aspiring president of the frm go ahead and hysteresis. Also, you guys have too much energy aspire to leave this great country to greater heights. Okay, nice! Before we get into that, though, let's, let's keep it calm and casual to begin with, so tell us a bit about yourself: okay, happily married three daughters to have found their way out of my home. Thank goodness for that they don't know they have taken over. My problems, I am from cross of a state - grew up in Lagos, went to school in Lagos, so good he's area and the United States lawyer businessman in my past, life have been commission of a financing cross river governor cross River for eight years, and I think We'Re an underperforming, an underachieving nation and the basis of our problem is poor leadership. What is the greatest passion? What is what you're most passionate about life? Seeing the improvement? Seeing people achieve the potential it's exciting because you see each one of us is a value addition to the entire realm of our society and each one that does not achieve that. Full potential is a frustrated person, and that is the basis of all the problems we have in our nation. So my passion really is actualizing our true potential as a nation, even every single individual can actually do potential. At least they should be given the opportunity to right now, most of them. I feel frustrated from even thinking, let alone acting it out. What is what is that? One thing that you always like: just your life motto: yeah your mantra, oh really gone to others. Try to do unto others, I feel like, as you want them to go on to you trust, it's very high, hmm. So what I'd like you to do once? Was you guys I think country? Oh, I would like to do for Naija. What really Naija has done for you? I just been good for me, I mean whatever I am today is because of the opportunity that Niger has afforded me. Could it have been? More? Probably I don't know, but the reason were conducting this interview. There is reason I'm aspiring to be. President of Nigeria is because I'm opportune through education, through exposure through opportunities that have been afforded me most people in Nigeria. Most Nigerians do not have that same opportunity. When I was in government, I should tell members of my Executive Council and we sit around the table and the reason why we can sit around the table and discuss the fate of crossover state is because one way educated and where opportunity to do so. The least we could do is provide similar opportunities for other coastal areas to achieve that, whether they make it or not depends on the zeal and their individual volition, but at least the basis of of achieving that is ok interesting now. The primary essence of governance is security, and welfare of the people and governance is basically a c4 sense of a citizen's welfare. What would you say is the starting points under a potential Donald, Duke administration? What would you say your starting points would be: let's go into your first 100 days, get a few things right right now, we're embroiled in a war, a civil war. You don't want to call it that, but it's a civil war when you're fighting when brothers are fighting brothers for regardless of the reason it's a civil war, so we have a civil war in the northeastern part of the country. We need to deal with that. You need to deal with the chequered assaults on our people in parts of the country, aka heads men, crisis and farmers, and all that, but you've also got to deal with the economy that has frustrated so many Nigerians from achieving their full potential right now. Every sector is in dire need of attention, but if you deal with the economy, if you get your credits right, if you get the credit the financial system going, then that will exacerbate or curb some some problems or some challenges that folks are facing. But because of where we are it's difficult to say, this is one thing I would do. You'Ve got to do a multiplicity of certain things. You'Ve got to get the army sufficiently motivated because I believe we have a capacity to deal with the insurgency called book around, but I think there's a motivational problem going on there I mean I could tell you, for instance, that if you, if you pay a soldier 500 naira in a war zone too, for his feeding - and I know that sometimes about 20 30 soldiers have to come together, pull their resources together to be able to feed that has to do a lot with motivation. So you've got to deal with that, but even beyond that, you've also got to get the credit system working. The reason why seven countries go faster because their innate their citizens can borrow money and and build on their businesses. But that's most people don't go to the banks for credits in Nigeria, but there is a multiplicity of things that you've got to do. I hope I've answered your question. Okay, so I'm policy-wise. What are you looking to introduce in the area of education? You know we have wise policy wise you've got to you've got to redress the whole thing. The curriculum has to be revamped to deal with a society that is going into that is in the digital age. You'Ve got to train the teachers right, motivate them train them to deal with that curriculum. You'Ve got to tie teachers careers to the students passage, in other words, and we did this in cross river. If you have 80 students going or 100 students going for an exam and 80 % of them, don't make it all 20 % of them. You know you can't promote the teacher and all that you go to, but you've got to motivate the teachers for you to do that. You'Ve got to amend the curriculum. But, more importantly, you ask yourself this the first of all right. I we need to build so many new schools you in a primary school. You ought not have more than 300 students trained in a class two classes, six classes, that's 300 and in the secondary school three classes, not more than thirty. In a class six classes to go that's 540 students, then you need to have the right ratio of students and teachers, but again you've got to also look at the curriculum, so you've got to build a lot more schools. You have schools that you have to 3,000 students that doesn't allow for learning. You have classrooms and have over a hundred students that doesn't allow for proper learning, so you've got a tailor. The number so because teaching is requires a lot of interface. I need a class where the teacher knows all the students by their names and can relate to them and can tell the weak ones and the ones I need extra help. So the policy really in a summation should be one. We'Ve got a speedily amenda curriculum. The curriculum we're using today is totally outdated. It at best teaches you how to read and write the world is gone beyond reading and writing. So you need to include in your curriculum digitalization. In other words, you've got to be able to do programming and things like that. That'S that's an essential tool. The second thing is that you've got to also train the teachers for that build the required number of schools and, of course, at the end of the first eighteen years, your senior secondary. You should be able to leave school with a requisite skill. So, regardless of whether you go to university or not, you are able to fend for yourself. Ok, ok, let's talk about security, I think being a policeman idea a bit of it. You can stop joking stuff. Just I mean definitely the police force is Oliver. Leek list is quite shambolic to be honest: what how how are we what's the way forward policy wise because citizen, I am scared of the Nigerian police force, yeah yeah, I mean we hear numerous stories about individuals being harassed by members of the sukhasan. I take that from someone. First of all, we have only 300 whatever on the 400,000 per D slain in Nigeria with a nation. I think the statistics should be one to every hundred, so we need about two million, please manager, so we're on the police. Now, with 300 or 400 that we have, half of them are escorting VIPs and VIPs, and all that so only about half of them are to get work and that's why there's an increasing clamor for the State Police and all that. But people don't understand you believe in the state policeman, I believe in state, policing, right and I'll explain it now, you, if you couldn't get someone to protect society, you've got to a properly trained the person right. I think there should be a minimum qualification to join the police force and I don't think it should be school set. I think society is far more sophisticated today than it was because today's school set is equal to first living certificate of years passed today. I think it should be an HND or degree to join the police force then remunerated emma cording, you cannot render it. The man who's gon na spend all night on patrols. The same way you'll remunerated, someone who is working in an office, so you need some insurance policy. He needs to know that, if anything happens to him, his family is well secured for to the point where his children out of working age and that they're not gon na, be destitute. His take-home pay sure to actually take him home right. If you, if you don't, do that and he's liable to extort money from people see today, so you've got to correct that, but they've got to go through training and discipline and just scrap these sighs. Of course, I would because I do not subscribe to a force where people carry arms and they're not in uniform, because I don't know who you are: there's zero discipline in the service. You know zero motivation, but I was talking about policing, state policing way, the the it's. It'S almost impossible to expect the federal government to employ 2 million people to please all of Nigeria, so you've got to get the local government and the state governments to contribute now policing is more of is 80 % gathering of information, 20 % enforcement right okay. So if you know everybody who lives within a particular area - and you know what they do, you can be afford to be proactive. You can stem activities before they happen. You need to have a system of policing where the federal, the state and the local government get involved at different levels: the local government and state government more on the level of information gathering and general policing. But enforcement should be more on the federal level. But my concern when it comes to state policing, I think it's one of those that's pretty much a double-edged sword because on one hand, yes, it makes all the sense in the world, but on the other hand, we have reports that reach us stating that 14 states In Nigeria today can't even survive on internally generated revenue, so they're still depending on federal allocation in order to survive we're seeing cases where public servants are not being paid their salaries. We saw recently would like the eddo sweepers protest and then a basic. He ended up sacking the commissioner etc and we are having this problem within the states. So if we bring policing down to a state level, how can we assure an improvement in the welfare of the police officers? Well, you don't need to employ new people. Oh, my experience is that most state public services, civil services bloated anyway, so you can conveniently take two three thousand people who are just fooling around in the service, really get them trained in policing and give them other responsibilities to do. Without you know, you could without really dealing with the salary issue, because they are not doing more of enforcement. They'D be more information, gathering information, so it's it's. I wouldn't wouldn't puncture their budgets at all. There'S hardly any service in this nation, whether local, state or federal. Right that is not bloated, okay, but that's that's all well and good, but I would say that one of my major issues - and this actually really upsets me - is the fact that I feel as though, as the Nigerian populace were very fooled and I'll give you an Example now I was reading a report recently there was speaking on the pension allowances of ex governors of states right and it was going down. I think it's under a provision in the Constitution called the RM something I cannot remember. However, some of those entitled early mobilization of fiscal. Thank you sorry of MC, that's without very much there we go now some of those provisions included family holidays or paid holidays, a new car every three to four years. Yep I mean so changed, wait. So, basically, the reporters 30-day holiday new car, this for the state government or from the federal from the state governments. Now the fiscal commission, I will go back on double checks, either way either way. Next governors are, governors are getting certs and pension allowances from the government. Whether it's state or federal level and states like okay, they gave an example about she: states right and billions had gone in to this pension fund for ex-governors. Yet it's one of Nigeria's poorest states. In 2017 alone, forty billion naira went towards this fun. For ex-governors I mean what's this all across: yes, you, I think you are not a beneficiary of no unexplained. I think you have it a bit mixed up. I think the mobilization Commission makes a recommendation nation to the states of what payments should. What pensions or allowances should go to political office holders right, but it has to be passed by the State House of Assembly right for remuneration. Some states have some states have known. I know states like Lagos require Delta. I do know about bouchy, but a few things have that a good number of states have it also at different levels that some that you may consider excessive and some like the one in Cross River is hardly there right. Actually recently, the governor called me to speak to me about it because I'm not getting anything right. I didn't. I didn't provide that a lot because I thought he was unethical for me to provide pension for myself and I was hoping that my successor would do what he didn't do it you know so, but in some states it's very, very accessible. Your name you're. Clearly, not a beneficiary of any such game, and even when I become - and I hope I become a benefit of some pension of the other I'll be honest with you yeah, but there's absolutely no way Cross River would would afford some of the excesses enemies all right. Something I need yeah, I need to live with the conscience. I need to be able to I'm not averse to receiving a pension. It must be something that is justifiable. Okay, and what do you think about the fact that our lawmakers received 13.5 million naira running costs? Every month, because, personally, I think it's quite absurd, especially juice the fact that you're in plenary for weighs it Tuesday, Wednesday Thursday or you and the rest of the time you know what you're chilling, okay, our walls, I've also asked that question. I think it's it's it's! It'S excessive there's a lot of excessiveness in our society. Today. I'Ve spoken to some senators, who tell you all. You know that money is not just for me and pay some stuff we're doing research. For me. I know they don't research into Jack. You know that's a story, you know, and all that, and that amount has been growing from 1999 to date, every every time they coming they up it now the leadership must have the political will to stem this okay, because if you compare what the legislators are getting To what the judiciary is getting, which is another mo governments, it's it's it's ridiculous. What a judge, even a Supreme Court judge gets, is a far cry less than what a legislature gets and they didn't so. But what is lacking is a political will at the the box tops of the president. He must sit down with the president and the leadership of the National Assembly see this. This is not justifiable, so what do you think is justifiable? What are the justifiable circumstances for a lawmaker like what? What would you say is fair for a lawmaker, it's difficult, I can tell I don't work with them. I think my example. I think that a lot of what success, but I can't tell you what they see, for example, I think that every lawmakers you have is the job like you have what you do. People are proposing. You are just doing this and proposed that it should be part-time. Yeah, it should be part-time shouldn't, be full-time. People have proposed that shouldn't be anybody. Does it does make some sense, because because then people are now running because they're going away, I think they work for days in a week. I don't think it does not even time job he's, not a full-time because of all these seasoned spokes. Everyone agrees it's excessive. Let'S talk about. Let'S talk about light as in electricity or sunlight, God said let every night well yeah. Do you plan to give every Nigerian 24 hours electricity, I'm sure you speak to any aspirin hotel? Yes, the challenge is: how do we do it yeah, that's what I was going, so everyone will say. Yes, we should have electricity and all that, but when it comes to, how do we do it, how are you going to do it? Okay, let me give you a basic premise of Governments. Anything that is essential must be local. The problem with power. It'S now in the modern world is an essential item, but you generate power. One end of the country transmitted to the other end right, if you, if you're, generating the power set with j-b and you're transmitting into Kaduna. If you generate a hundred megawatt Sidhu gaining by tell me guess who kinda late to be less than 40 or 30 okay, so I talked about the Flair of gas that will flare about. I want time we're playing about 2.5 billion cubic feet of gas daily. It'S come down a bit, but we still flare rather than flare pipe less gas throughout the country right so that the gas is the fuel the fuel is available. All I need to do is put turbines equaling, for instance, of Victoria or aquarium Victoria, and combined should have his own power station right. It shouldn't depend Egbe, most of them gave us get our power from a new power. Plant egg mean does about maybe under a thousand megawatts now, but it's really supplying the entire southwestern part of Nigeria. It can't work. You need to localize the generation, okay, Lagos being the most industrial part of Nigeria, literally every sector of the state. Every local government is large enough to have its own power generation facilities so that you you you don't have transmission lines that I interstate. So right now, if it's a problem of failing the transmission system, you can have a national shut down and you hear of it from time to time where they say it's a total shutdown, there's no pilot, a whole country, that's a security risk. You need to have several plans. What I would do is to ensure that there's gas, for instance, available throughout the then I can encourage you fault right. The state government can give you a concession to generate power. The gas is available, you buy the turbine, you have affordable credit, don't forget I kept on talking about a photo credit earlier on, so you go to the bank and say: listen. The government has given me concession to provide power for all of you either right. There 20,000 homes in Victoria, each one should pay X amount of now. If you give me a loan at 7 % or whatever over three years or five years, I should be able to repay the loan. I think, and Lagos or Victoria Island has its own local power station right now. Victoria Island gets its power from a be okay by the time it gets yet several things could happen along the way one truck would run into a pipeline to into a tower and disconnect. So we just live by luck. It shouldn't work that way, but if it's like, I said anything that essential has to be locally available, that's how society should go. Would you also focus on renewable forms of energy, so low course, of course, of course, of course, so do you think that your greatest achievement as a person was becoming governor? No, my greatest achievement was being a good father. Okay, it's still Travis right. That'S that's! Really. What matters you, okay, I'm being a role model to others, getting people to see, and so I like to pattern my life after certain so person. I think that's the achievement, governor's come and go there, many of them, and so it's not it's not it's it's something. To be proud of, but it's certainly not the greatest on our part in everyone. Ah, that's a good question. I I saw that coming. I will make an announcement this week, so you're not entirely sure. Yet are you defecting from the PDP? Are you correctly? I said I'll make an announcement this week, well you're Carney in the PDP, yes, okay! As to whether you're going to run on under the PTP, with the likes of otaku, Quan, Chi saw, etc anyway, so you wan na make it defecting, maybe Felina a senator's footsteps. It depends on why you're defected if you are defecting, because you seeking a platform to run an election, that's a different thing. In my case, I've stayed with the PDP. I am not pleased with the party. I think a party that the country gave such incredible opportunity to has shortchanged the country whether it is a viable vehicle to seek the presidency at this time, make up my mind speaking, have you ever been accused of corruption or anything like that? Well, look. People are gon na accuse you of anything, that's politics, you know the first thing, they'll say: oh yeah, a thief, that's accusing is not. The problem is being convicted for one people have written petitions that I did this. I did it. Someone wrote a petition that I own 10 Appa and I said it was a prayer I would like to own it, but I don't own it. You have never misappropriated public funds, not intentionally. No, no, but seriously. No have not, and I don't have a case with any of the agencies they never have. Do you have any corrupt acquaintances mmm. I love quite a few people. I know quite a few. I shared yeah, oh yeah acquainted with them yeah in politics. Politics is not about a Quentin with a good, I mean Lord Jesus said he didn't come here, for you came for the sinners bad right. Thank you. If you want to deal with a reformed society, you've got to deal with everybody, both the good and the not-so-good and other horrible. How do you plan to ensure that these these corrupt acquaintances do not form a part of your government? If you won't, they won't have they just my government. What is pretty, I know, Ted with them yeah, if they're, showing you fool. If there are, you know that, if they're rolling with you, because they believe that you are the man and then when you get there, are you just going to turn your back on them? Are you gon na handle that that won't be the first half time of turn, my back on people questioning Buddha, my loyalties to Nigeria, not to an individual? What are your views on capital punishment? Nigeria has some of the highest statistics for people on death row in the world. Frankly, I don't believe in death row when I was governor, I never signed it. I always committed it to life because the nature of our courts - you don't know, I look what, if the guy's innocent in law, you know we have this adage father. I don't need. How do you still remember this? It'S better for one person to go for a group of people to go scot free that one you know yeah, so we have that our rather err on the side of caution question. So I don't freedom. I just committed to death to up to life in prison. Big one: oh sorry, I've been a good bit of My dear boy. I could have done a lot better. I think. Has it been free play yes or no for about you see what a lovely contesting for love interesting back to your favorite food, though it changes. I used to love the other one time. I was crazy about the beans. What have you ever gone on in new rice diets? No rice, yeah? Are you living in Nigeria? Listen! Look! Look next to you is not me me, no wonder your smooth today! Yeah we get most of our Cubs from that, but it's good! It'S healthy, yes, and then I think my face is too much carbs in our food right. You know you look you go to the typical book you find at the gallery or the party yeah. This way this should be just two pieces yeah. I'Ve never invested that. Like your apology on will be like this and then I don't worry about gender and I'm gon na take up a question about gay rights and stuff like that. Okay, I want to talk about that. Hmm, I don't understand it because I'm straight right, I don't understand the emotional feelings. A gay person, for instance, would have to or someone any sense of their sexuality. I don't understand it mm-hmm, but I will not criminalize them right. I would I would ensure that they have the protection of the law, but if they want to exhibit their sexuality, that's enough front on the norms of society. The current norms know: what is what? How would you define it? Does it make your skin crawl when you like ceiling, I arrived at New York and went through the airport and at the passenger rank two guys came together and were kissing right, okay, so public display of affection, yeah the airport, but then it's my girlfriend taking about The norms of society - I guess the society - accept that as it long so you would have that day. You know this is personal. The day you try and kiss me, I'm not gon na crack. You see because we'd like to see how I know seriously. You cannot jettison the normal society Society, a certain owns the certain things you do in America. You can't own the England or nature that you cannot do in Saudi Arabia, for a sign. You'Ve got a respect with most of the same Mary, I'm coming when you're wrong behave as the Romans don't go contrary to the Romans. Those swim against the tide because we're not there. We can. You have a gay person in your cabinet. He sexuality is private to him. I don't want to know if you got my business, but businesses can he perform yes and that his that has been a side to him yeah. So you shouldn't ki. She wants to marry another man, he wouldn't what the law doesn't like to marry. Another man understands not if he wants to live with another man. What about civil partnerships when they just sign off? Nothing like the Lourdes narro does not recognize civil partnerships. If I go, we needed to do something for us. Tell me just this camera right here: mmm! That'S a camera! Okay, so you're in a music video! Okay! Classic Sunday morning, I heard my thing come off of my room. I heard her say that he thinks it was a great big toy wearing nothing. He can't do you want me to rap yeah. Do not attempt to just from where you are cuz. There'S nothing wrong we're taking control to bring you this special show, and we will return it to you as soon as your groove. Okay, welcome to Powell's show top of the charts in Lagos. We'Re gon na give you a 500 kilowatts, a real Punk bat. So sit back dig while we're rid of your eardrums. As for me, I'm Donald you class of the whole lot suckers. Now this all. What I want to do your if you got faults, defects or shortcomings such as arthritis, rheumatism or migraines, whatever part of your body needs, I want to be right down there. Let the flies go through. You see funk number of moves. You can remove dig. The desired effect is what you get when so guys hit it's between one next time on the couch with files and Leila make it make light a bit more expensive. Generally, I'm telling you, Nigerians are happy to pay more and have spiria. They will be happy to pay more and have steady electricity than what, because III use generators a lot, and I have to use generators. You soul. I use inverter than everything. If I have one company that is charging me half of what I pay for all those sources of energy, I use I am happy to do that. You can leave enough, you cowardly enough, everybody be criminals. This is Nigeria. You can read. Is enough? Look what we hit Sena everyone Read the full article

[hakireview-blog]

Warlord Optin 2.0 Review - A Majority of web traffic now comes from mobile devices.

You Are Still Hesitant. In this article Is Why It is advisable to Get Warlord Optin 2.0?

FINE, Don't hurry!! I managed to get 2 question for you: Two important questions:

If you are on somebody's lead page, and you decide you want whatever lead magnet or freebie they're offering... so what do you type into the opt-in form?

Do you type in your better email address? You really know what I'm talking about... the "golden" one? That main, primary one you give your buddies? That one you check every five minutes throughout the day?

No. You most likely avoid. You probably put in a "secondary" email address that you use only for promotional stuff and collecting freebies, right? Sure at one point you considered it your "business" email address, great you have a million web entrepreneurs filling that inbox with promo emails and really literally become your specified freebie collector. The address you make use of to ensure your MAIN, BEST email address doesn't get filled with promotional emails and fake. And there's a thirty chance some of you even type fake info into those opt-in varieties.

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So here's the second (and more important) question:

What do you think your visitors are keying in into the opt-in forms?

Yes. Same story. So is it any wonder why your email marketing isn't very succeeding? Is it a legitimate surprise that you have such low open and click-through rates?

Your emails are winding up in supplementary email inboxes that are rarely checked and, even worse, their surrounded by 1000 other marketing emails from your competitors. And on top of the, you aren't probably not even taking good thing about the 41% grab hold of open rates and 73% increase in profit that comes from personalizing subject matter lines because you either don't acquire names (because a "guru" alerted you not to) or individuals type in fake or childish garbage into the name field.

Warlord Optin 2.0 Review - Now think about for a point in time what would happen if rather than clients typing useless fake labels or secondary emails into your opt-in forms, you had a magic button that your visitor could just tap on and *POOF* you collected their primary, best email address and real name right then, without them writing in a single thing.

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Variation 2.0 of Warlord Optin is very a BREAKTHROUGH. Have a look at the reports below:

-           30% of visitors submit bogus contact info.

-           20% of opt-ins contain typos or other errors.

-           Leads are 3X more likely to open up emails provided for their primary/best email address.

-           Subject range personalization boosts open rates by 40% and rises email marketing earnings by 70%.

-           68% of emails are opened on mobile devices.

-           A Most web traffic now comes from mobile phones.

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[maryhare96]

Has LinkedIn Ruined Slideshare?

I love Slideshare. The “YouTube of presentations” was at one point the number one destination for business owners and managers. It sported better demographics and site visitor loyalty than even LinkedIn. It was one of the top 100 most visited websites on the planet. Maybe that’s why LinkedIn bought it for $119 million in 2012, padding the nest eggs of serial investors and Slideshare backers Mark Cuban and Dave McClure, among others.

It was a smart deal—and a good price. In those days (which seem SO long ago, even though it’s been just five years) LinkedIn fancied itself as the content hub for business. It’s about the same time that they started the influencers program and enabled publishing (blogging, really) on the Linkedin platform.

I wrote a post in 2015 called “Is Slideshare Digital Marketing’s Secret Weapon?,” and I meant it. But it’s not true today.

Since the acquisition, the entire proposition has started to fray like a hem on a K-Mart dress. First, they eliminated the popular lead generation capability that allowed Slideshare users to garner email signups in exchange for content. They also changed how users could customize their Slideshare home pages. The promise at that time was the monthly introduction of new features for all users. That lasted about . . . one month.

Next, LinkedIn paid $1.5 billion for online training company Lynda. That’s 13 times more than they paid for Slideshare, so certainly that was going to be a priority. Note how the Slideshare home page now prominently features online courses? And that each of those featured courses has updated in the past three hours?

And then, the big move: Microsoft bought LinkedIn itself for a whopping $26 billion—in theory, to drive usage of Skype and finally give Microsoft SOME sort of social network (beyond its investment stake in Facebook). Wired, however, speculates that it was really the world’s biggest acquihire, giving MSFT access to the sparkling reputation of LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, who recently joined the board of directors.

Whatever the underlying cause, the effect of the past five years of LinkedIn ownership of Slideshare has been severe atrophy. Like Paul Sheldon’s leg at the end of Misery, Slideshare is now but a shriveled appendage.

The 3 Biggest Slideshare Problems Today

First, traffic to Slideshare has fallen off considerably. This is despite the fact that three-quarters of all content marketers are creating more content than ever, according to Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs. To be sure, not all (or even most) of that content is in the form of presentations and ebooks (the most common content types found on Slideshare). But you would think more content would equal more Slideshare usage. But it hasn’t, probably because of points two and three.

Second, Slideshare has jettisoned their editorial team, for the most part. At its apex, part of Slideshare’s appeal was its curation, including regular promotion of new and interesting presentations to the site’s home page in the “Today’s Top Slideshares,” “Featured Slideshares,” or “Trending in Social Media” sections.

A screen grab from November 30 shows that “Today’s Top Slideshares” were uploaded to the site 51, 55, and 61 days ago. Freshness! And the “Trending in Social Media” section is almost laughably ancient. Amazingly, the top two presentations “hot” on Linkedin and Google Plus were created FOUR YEARS AGO. Trending on Facebook? Presentations uploaded one year ago. On Twitter? Just nine months. Again, this is on the home page of a site that was in the top 100 in the world in the recent past.

Perhaps it’s simply a labor issue. An examination by my pal Mathew Sweezey using Linkedin found that the only employees still working on Slideshare appear to be a handful of engineers.

Third, Slideshare now appears to be making puzzlingly awful customer experience decisions. I have no idea if this is correlation or causation. But in my long career in digital, I’ve found that when engineers  run CX, customer friendliness typically doesn’t surge.

In his own post about the troubles at Slideshare (which inspired this one), Sweezey noted that Slideshare now prohibits re-uploading of Slideshares. Plainly, this sucks. The issue is that if you upload something and decide to refresh it later (fix a typo, add a slide, tweak the headline) you now cannot do that, despite the fact this has been a feature since essentially day one of the platform.

Now, Slideshare demands that you upload an entirely new version of the file. That means any comments, shares, or links you’ve created and propagated across the web will be null, void, or dead. Hurray. Want to add a new slide six? Start over, pal.

Maybe this is just the way it has to go? Maybe platforms that emphasize longer form, written content are doomed to be dominated by platforms featuring short form, video, and disappearing “story” content? After all, Slideshare’s evident and imminent demise comes on the heels of the death of Squidoo and the business model shift and subsequent near-irrelevance of Scribd, among others.

But I would think that a business social network (or whatever LinkedIn considers itself to be at this point) would see value in being the world’s only meaningful hub for presentations for businesspeople. But maybe I just don’t get it?

Do you?

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[mercedessharonwo1]

Has LinkedIn Ruined Slideshare?

I love Slideshare. The “YouTube of presentations” was at one point the number one destination for business owners and managers. It sported better demographics and site visitor loyalty than even LinkedIn. It was one of the top 100 most visited websites on the planet. Maybe that’s why LinkedIn bought it for $119 million in 2012, padding the nest eggs of serial investors and Slideshare backers Mark Cuban and Dave McClure, among others.

It was a smart deal—and a good price. In those days (which seem SO long ago, even though it’s been just five years) LinkedIn fancied itself as the content hub for business. It’s about the same time that they started the influencers program and enabled publishing (blogging, really) on the Linkedin platform.

I wrote a post in 2015 called “Is Slideshare Digital Marketing’s Secret Weapon?,” and I meant it. But it’s not true today.

Since the acquisition, the entire proposition has started to fray like a hem on a K-Mart dress. First, they eliminated the popular lead generation capability that allowed Slideshare users to garner email signups in exchange for content. They also changed how users could customize their Slideshare home pages. The promise at that time was the monthly introduction of new features for all users. That lasted about . . . one month.

Next, LinkedIn paid $1.5 billion for online training company Lynda. That’s 13 times more than they paid for Slideshare, so certainly that was going to be a priority. Note how the Slideshare home page now prominently features online courses? And that each of those featured courses has updated in the past three hours?

And then, the big move: Microsoft bought LinkedIn itself for a whopping $26 billion—in theory, to drive usage of Skype and finally give Microsoft SOME sort of social network (beyond its investment stake in Facebook). Wired, however, speculates that it was really the world’s biggest acquihire, giving MSFT access to the sparkling reputation of LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, who recently joined the board of directors.

Whatever the underlying cause, the effect of the past five years of LinkedIn ownership of Slideshare has been severe atrophy. Like Paul Sheldon’s leg at the end of Misery, Slideshare is now but a shriveled appendage.

The 3 Biggest Slideshare Problems Today

First, traffic to Slideshare has fallen off considerably. This is despite the fact that three-quarters of all content marketers are creating more content than ever, according to Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs. To be sure, not all (or even most) of that content is in the form of presentations and ebooks (the most common content types found on Slideshare). But you would think more content would equal more Slideshare usage. But it hasn’t, probably because of points two and three.

Second, Slideshare has jettisoned their editorial team, for the most part. At its apex, part of Slideshare’s appeal was its curation, including regular promotion of new and interesting presentations to the site’s home page in the “Today’s Top Slideshares,” “Featured Slideshares,” or “Trending in Social Media” sections.

A screen grab from November 30 shows that “Today’s Top Slideshares” were uploaded to the site 51, 55, and 61 days ago. Freshness! And the “Trending in Social Media” section is almost laughably ancient. Amazingly, the top two presentations “hot” on Linkedin and Google Plus were created FOUR YEARS AGO. Trending on Facebook? Presentations uploaded one year ago. On Twitter? Just nine months. Again, this is on the home page of a site that was in the top 100 in the world in the recent past.

Perhaps it’s simply a labor issue. An examination by my pal Mathew Sweezey using Linkedin found that the only employees still working on Slideshare appear to be a handful of engineers.

Third, Slideshare now appears to be making puzzlingly awful customer experience decisions. I have no idea if this is correlation or causation. But in my long career in digital, I’ve found that when engineers  run CX, customer friendliness typically doesn’t surge.

In his own post about the troubles at Slideshare (which inspired this one), Sweezey noted that Slideshare now prohibits re-uploading of Slideshares. Plainly, this sucks. The issue is that if you upload something and decide to refresh it later (fix a typo, add a slide, tweak the headline) you now cannot do that, despite the fact this has been a feature since essentially day one of the platform.

Now, Slideshare demands that you upload an entirely new version of the file. That means any comments, shares, or links you’ve created and propagated across the web will be null, void, or dead. Hurray. Want to add a new slide six? Start over, pal.

Maybe this is just the way it has to go? Maybe platforms that emphasize longer form, written content are doomed to be dominated by platforms featuring short form, video, and disappearing “story” content? After all, Slideshare’s evident and imminent demise comes on the heels of the death of Squidoo and the business model shift and subsequent near-irrelevance of Scribd, among others.

But I would think that a business social network (or whatever LinkedIn considers itself to be at this point) would see value in being the world’s only meaningful hub for presentations for businesspeople. But maybe I just don’t get it?

Do you?

http://ift.tt/2j0WNDU

[christinesumpmg]

Has LinkedIn Ruined Slideshare?

I love Slideshare. The “YouTube of presentations” was at one point the number one destination for business owners and managers. It sported better demographics and site visitor loyalty than even LinkedIn. It was one of the top 100 most visited websites on the planet. Maybe that’s why LinkedIn bought it for $119 million in 2012, padding the nest eggs of serial investors and Slideshare backers Mark Cuban and Dave McClure, among others.

It was a smart deal—and a good price. In those days (which seem SO long ago, even though it’s been just five years) LinkedIn fancied itself as the content hub for business. It’s about the same time that they started the influencers program and enabled publishing (blogging, really) on the Linkedin platform.

I wrote a post in 2015 called “Is Slideshare Digital Marketing’s Secret Weapon?,” and I meant it. But it’s not true today.

Since the acquisition, the entire proposition has started to fray like a hem on a K-Mart dress. First, they eliminated the popular lead generation capability that allowed Slideshare users to garner email signups in exchange for content. They also changed how users could customize their Slideshare home pages. The promise at that time was the monthly introduction of new features for all users. That lasted about . . . one month.

Next, LinkedIn paid $1.5 billion for online training company Lynda. That’s 13 times more than they paid for Slideshare, so certainly that was going to be a priority. Note how the Slideshare home page now prominently features online courses? And that each of those featured courses has updated in the past three hours?

And then, the big move: Microsoft bought LinkedIn itself for a whopping $26 billion—in theory, to drive usage of Skype and finally give Microsoft SOME sort of social network (beyond its investment stake in Facebook). Wired, however, speculates that it was really the world’s biggest acquihire, giving MSFT access to the sparkling reputation of LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, who recently joined the board of directors.

Whatever the underlying cause, the effect of the past five years of LinkedIn ownership of Slideshare has been severe atrophy. Like Paul Sheldon’s leg at the end of Misery, Slideshare is now but a shriveled appendage.

The 3 Biggest Slideshare Problems Today

First, traffic to Slideshare has fallen off considerably. This is despite the fact that three-quarters of all content marketers are creating more content than ever, according to Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs. To be sure, not all (or even most) of that content is in the form of presentations and ebooks (the most common content types found on Slideshare). But you would think more content would equal more Slideshare usage. But it hasn’t, probably because of points two and three.

Second, Slideshare has jettisoned their editorial team, for the most part. At its apex, part of Slideshare’s appeal was its curation, including regular promotion of new and interesting presentations to the site’s home page in the “Today’s Top Slideshares,” “Featured Slideshares,” or “Trending in Social Media” sections.

A screen grab from November 30 shows that “Today’s Top Slideshares” were uploaded to the site 51, 55, and 61 days ago. Freshness! And the “Trending in Social Media” section is almost laughably ancient. Amazingly, the top two presentations “hot” on Linkedin and Google Plus were created FOUR YEARS AGO. Trending on Facebook? Presentations uploaded one year ago. On Twitter? Just nine months. Again, this is on the home page of a site that was in the top 100 in the world in the recent past.

Perhaps it’s simply a labor issue. An examination by my pal Mathew Sweezey using Linkedin found that the only employees still working on Slideshare appear to be a handful of engineers.

Third, Slideshare now appears to be making puzzlingly awful customer experience decisions. I have no idea if this is correlation or causation. But in my long career in digital, I’ve found that when engineers  run CX, customer friendliness typically doesn’t surge.

In his own post about the troubles at Slideshare (which inspired this one), Sweezey noted that Slideshare now prohibits re-uploading of Slideshares. Plainly, this sucks. The issue is that if you upload something and decide to refresh it later (fix a typo, add a slide, tweak the headline) you now cannot do that, despite the fact this has been a feature since essentially day one of the platform.

Now, Slideshare demands that you upload an entirely new version of the file. That means any comments, shares, or links you’ve created and propagated across the web will be null, void, or dead. Hurray. Want to add a new slide six? Start over, pal.

Maybe this is just the way it has to go? Maybe platforms that emphasize longer form, written content are doomed to be dominated by platforms featuring short form, video, and disappearing “story” content? After all, Slideshare’s evident and imminent demise comes on the heels of the death of Squidoo and the business model shift and subsequent near-irrelevance of Scribd, among others.

But I would think that a business social network (or whatever LinkedIn considers itself to be at this point) would see value in being the world’s only meaningful hub for presentations for businesspeople. But maybe I just don’t get it?

Do you?

http://ift.tt/2j0WNDU

[kraussoutene]

Has LinkedIn Ruined Slideshare?

I love Slideshare. The “YouTube of presentations” was at one point the number one destination for business owners and managers. It sported better demographics and site visitor loyalty than even LinkedIn. It was one of the top 100 most visited websites on the planet. Maybe that’s why LinkedIn bought it for $119 million in 2012, padding the nest eggs of serial investors and Slideshare backers Mark Cuban and Dave McClure, among others.

It was a smart deal—and a good price. In those days (which seem SO long ago, even though it’s been just five years) LinkedIn fancied itself as the content hub for business. It’s about the same time that they started the influencers program and enabled publishing (blogging, really) on the Linkedin platform.

I wrote a post in 2015 called “Is Slideshare Digital Marketing’s Secret Weapon?,” and I meant it. But it’s not true today.

Since the acquisition, the entire proposition has started to fray like a hem on a K-Mart dress. First, they eliminated the popular lead generation capability that allowed Slideshare users to garner email signups in exchange for content. They also changed how users could customize their Slideshare home pages. The promise at that time was the monthly introduction of new features for all users. That lasted about . . . one month.

Next, LinkedIn paid $1.5 billion for online training company Lynda. That’s 13 times more than they paid for Slideshare, so certainly that was going to be a priority. Note how the Slideshare home page now prominently features online courses? And that each of those featured courses has updated in the past three hours?

And then, the big move: Microsoft bought LinkedIn itself for a whopping $26 billion—in theory, to drive usage of Skype and finally give Microsoft SOME sort of social network (beyond its investment stake in Facebook). Wired, however, speculates that it was really the world’s biggest acquihire, giving MSFT access to the sparkling reputation of LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, who recently joined the board of directors.

Whatever the underlying cause, the effect of the past five years of LinkedIn ownership of Slideshare has been severe atrophy. Like Paul Sheldon’s leg at the end of Misery, Slideshare is now but a shriveled appendage.

The 3 Biggest Slideshare Problems Today

First, traffic to Slideshare has fallen off considerably. This is despite the fact that three-quarters of all content marketers are creating more content than ever, according to Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs. To be sure, not all (or even most) of that content is in the form of presentations and ebooks (the most common content types found on Slideshare). But you would think more content would equal more Slideshare usage. But it hasn’t, probably because of points two and three.

Second, Slideshare has jettisoned their editorial team, for the most part. At its apex, part of Slideshare’s appeal was its curation, including regular promotion of new and interesting presentations to the site’s home page in the “Today’s Top Slideshares,” “Featured Slideshares,” or “Trending in Social Media” sections.

A screen grab from November 30 shows that “Today’s Top Slideshares” were uploaded to the site 51, 55, and 61 days ago. Freshness! And the “Trending in Social Media” section is almost laughably ancient. Amazingly, the top two presentations “hot” on Linkedin and Google Plus were created FOUR YEARS AGO. Trending on Facebook? Presentations uploaded one year ago. On Twitter? Just nine months. Again, this is on the home page of a site that was in the top 100 in the world in the recent past.

Perhaps it’s simply a labor issue. An examination by my pal Mathew Sweezey using Linkedin found that the only employees still working on Slideshare appear to be a handful of engineers.

Third, Slideshare now appears to be making puzzlingly awful customer experience decisions. I have no idea if this is correlation or causation. But in my long career in digital, I’ve found that when engineers  run CX, customer friendliness typically doesn’t surge.

In his own post about the troubles at Slideshare (which inspired this one), Sweezey noted that Slideshare now prohibits re-uploading of Slideshares. Plainly, this sucks. The issue is that if you upload something and decide to refresh it later (fix a typo, add a slide, tweak the headline) you now cannot do that, despite the fact this has been a feature since essentially day one of the platform.

Now, Slideshare demands that you upload an entirely new version of the file. That means any comments, shares, or links you’ve created and propagated across the web will be null, void, or dead. Hurray. Want to add a new slide six? Start over, pal.

Maybe this is just the way it has to go? Maybe platforms that emphasize longer form, written content are doomed to be dominated by platforms featuring short form, video, and disappearing “story” content? After all, Slideshare’s evident and imminent demise comes on the heels of the death of Squidoo and the business model shift and subsequent near-irrelevance of Scribd, among others.

But I would think that a business social network (or whatever LinkedIn considers itself to be at this point) would see value in being the world’s only meaningful hub for presentations for businesspeople. But maybe I just don’t get it?

Do you?

http://ift.tt/2j0WNDU

[conniecogeie]

Has LinkedIn Ruined Slideshare?

I love Slideshare. The “YouTube of presentations” was at one point the number one destination for business owners and managers. It sported better demographics and site visitor loyalty than even LinkedIn. It was one of the top 100 most visited websites on the planet. Maybe that’s why LinkedIn bought it for $119 million in 2012, padding the nest eggs of serial investors and Slideshare backers Mark Cuban and Dave McClure, among others.

It was a smart deal—and a good price. In those days (which seem SO long ago, even though it’s been just five years) LinkedIn fancied itself as the content hub for business. It’s about the same time that they started the influencers program and enabled publishing (blogging, really) on the Linkedin platform.

I wrote a post in 2015 called “Is Slideshare Digital Marketing’s Secret Weapon?,” and I meant it. But it’s not true today.

Since the acquisition, the entire proposition has started to fray like a hem on a K-Mart dress. First, they eliminated the popular lead generation capability that allowed Slideshare users to garner email signups in exchange for content. They also changed how users could customize their Slideshare home pages. The promise at that time was the monthly introduction of new features for all users. That lasted about . . . one month.

Next, LinkedIn paid $1.5 billion for online training company Lynda. That’s 13 times more than they paid for Slideshare, so certainly that was going to be a priority. Note how the Slideshare home page now prominently features online courses? And that each of those featured courses has updated in the past three hours?

And then, the big move: Microsoft bought LinkedIn itself for a whopping $26 billion—in theory, to drive usage of Skype and finally give Microsoft SOME sort of social network (beyond its investment stake in Facebook). Wired, however, speculates that it was really the world’s biggest acquihire, giving MSFT access to the sparkling reputation of LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, who recently joined the board of directors.

Whatever the underlying cause, the effect of the past five years of LinkedIn ownership of Slideshare has been severe atrophy. Like Paul Sheldon’s leg at the end of Misery, Slideshare is now but a shriveled appendage.

The 3 Biggest Slideshare Problems Today

First, traffic to Slideshare has fallen off considerably. This is despite the fact that three-quarters of all content marketers are creating more content than ever, according to Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs. To be sure, not all (or even most) of that content is in the form of presentations and ebooks (the most common content types found on Slideshare). But you would think more content would equal more Slideshare usage. But it hasn’t, probably because of points two and three.

Second, Slideshare has jettisoned their editorial team, for the most part. At its apex, part of Slideshare’s appeal was its curation, including regular promotion of new and interesting presentations to the site’s home page in the “Today’s Top Slideshares,” “Featured Slideshares,” or “Trending in Social Media” sections.

A screen grab from November 30 shows that “Today’s Top Slideshares” were uploaded to the site 51, 55, and 61 days ago. Freshness! And the “Trending in Social Media” section is almost laughably ancient. Amazingly, the top two presentations “hot” on Linkedin and Google Plus were created FOUR YEARS AGO. Trending on Facebook? Presentations uploaded one year ago. On Twitter? Just nine months. Again, this is on the home page of a site that was in the top 100 in the world in the recent past.

Perhaps it’s simply a labor issue. An examination by my pal Mathew Sweezey using Linkedin found that the only employees still working on Slideshare appear to be a handful of engineers.

Third, Slideshare now appears to be making puzzlingly awful customer experience decisions. I have no idea if this is correlation or causation. But in my long career in digital, I’ve found that when engineers  run CX, customer friendliness typically doesn’t surge.

In his own post about the troubles at Slideshare (which inspired this one), Sweezey noted that Slideshare now prohibits re-uploading of Slideshares. Plainly, this sucks. The issue is that if you upload something and decide to refresh it later (fix a typo, add a slide, tweak the headline) you now cannot do that, despite the fact this has been a feature since essentially day one of the platform.

Now, Slideshare demands that you upload an entirely new version of the file. That means any comments, shares, or links you’ve created and propagated across the web will be null, void, or dead. Hurray. Want to add a new slide six? Start over, pal.

Maybe this is just the way it has to go? Maybe platforms that emphasize longer form, written content are doomed to be dominated by platforms featuring short form, video, and disappearing “story” content? After all, Slideshare’s evident and imminent demise comes on the heels of the death of Squidoo and the business model shift and subsequent near-irrelevance of Scribd, among others.

But I would think that a business social network (or whatever LinkedIn considers itself to be at this point) would see value in being the world’s only meaningful hub for presentations for businesspeople. But maybe I just don’t get it?

Do you?

http://ift.tt/2j0WNDU

[fairchildlingpo1]

Has LinkedIn Ruined Slideshare?

I love Slideshare. The “YouTube of presentations” was at one point the number one destination for business owners and managers. It sported better demographics and site visitor loyalty than even LinkedIn. It was one of the top 100 most visited websites on the planet. Maybe that’s why LinkedIn bought it for $119 million in 2012, padding the nest eggs of serial investors and Slideshare backers Mark Cuban and Dave McClure, among others.

It was a smart deal—and a good price. In those days (which seem SO long ago, even though it’s been just five years) LinkedIn fancied itself as the content hub for business. It’s about the same time that they started the influencers program and enabled publishing (blogging, really) on the Linkedin platform.

I wrote a post in 2015 called “Is Slideshare Digital Marketing’s Secret Weapon?,” and I meant it. But it’s not true today.

Since the acquisition, the entire proposition has started to fray like a hem on a K-Mart dress. First, they eliminated the popular lead generation capability that allowed Slideshare users to garner email signups in exchange for content. They also changed how users could customize their Slideshare home pages. The promise at that time was the monthly introduction of new features for all users. That lasted about . . . one month.

Next, LinkedIn paid $1.5 billion for online training company Lynda. That’s 13 times more than they paid for Slideshare, so certainly that was going to be a priority. Note how the Slideshare home page now prominently features online courses? And that each of those featured courses has updated in the past three hours?

And then, the big move: Microsoft bought LinkedIn itself for a whopping $26 billion—in theory, to drive usage of Skype and finally give Microsoft SOME sort of social network (beyond its investment stake in Facebook). Wired, however, speculates that it was really the world’s biggest acquihire, giving MSFT access to the sparkling reputation of LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, who recently joined the board of directors.

Whatever the underlying cause, the effect of the past five years of LinkedIn ownership of Slideshare has been severe atrophy. Like Paul Sheldon’s leg at the end of Misery, Slideshare is now but a shriveled appendage.

The 3 Biggest Slideshare Problems Today

First, traffic to Slideshare has fallen off considerably. This is despite the fact that three-quarters of all content marketers are creating more content than ever, according to Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs. To be sure, not all (or even most) of that content is in the form of presentations and ebooks (the most common content types found on Slideshare). But you would think more content would equal more Slideshare usage. But it hasn’t, probably because of points two and three.

Second, Slideshare has jettisoned their editorial team, for the most part. At its apex, part of Slideshare’s appeal was its curation, including regular promotion of new and interesting presentations to the site’s home page in the “Today’s Top Slideshares,” “Featured Slideshares,” or “Trending in Social Media�� sections.

A screen grab from November 30 shows that “Today’s Top Slideshares” were uploaded to the site 51, 55, and 61 days ago. Freshness! And the “Trending in Social Media” section is almost laughably ancient. Amazingly, the top two presentations “hot” on Linkedin and Google Plus were created FOUR YEARS AGO. Trending on Facebook? Presentations uploaded one year ago. On Twitter? Just nine months. Again, this is on the home page of a site that was in the top 100 in the world in the recent past.

Perhaps it’s simply a labor issue. An examination by my pal Mathew Sweezey using Linkedin found that the only employees still working on Slideshare appear to be a handful of engineers.

Third, Slideshare now appears to be making puzzlingly awful customer experience decisions. I have no idea if this is correlation or causation. But in my long career in digital, I’ve found that when engineers  run CX, customer friendliness typically doesn’t surge.

In his own post about the troubles at Slideshare (which inspired this one), Sweezey noted that Slideshare now prohibits re-uploading of Slideshares. Plainly, this sucks. The issue is that if you upload something and decide to refresh it later (fix a typo, add a slide, tweak the headline) you now cannot do that, despite the fact this has been a feature since essentially day one of the platform.

Now, Slideshare demands that you upload an entirely new version of the file. That means any comments, shares, or links you’ve created and propagated across the web will be null, void, or dead. Hurray. Want to add a new slide six? Start over, pal.

Maybe this is just the way it has to go? Maybe platforms that emphasize longer form, written content are doomed to be dominated by platforms featuring short form, video, and disappearing “story” content? After all, Slideshare’s evident and imminent demise comes on the heels of the death of Squidoo and the business model shift and subsequent near-irrelevance of Scribd, among others.

But I would think that a business social network (or whatever LinkedIn considers itself to be at this point) would see value in being the world’s only meaningful hub for presentations for businesspeople. But maybe I just don’t get it?

Do you?

http://ift.tt/2j0WNDU

[mariasolemarionqi]

Has LinkedIn Ruined Slideshare?

I love Slideshare. The “YouTube of presentations” was at one point the number one destination for business owners and managers. It sported better demographics and site visitor loyalty than even LinkedIn. It was one of the top 100 most visited websites on the planet. Maybe that’s why LinkedIn bought it for $119 million in 2012, padding the nest eggs of serial investors and Slideshare backers Mark Cuban and Dave McClure, among others.

It was a smart deal—and a good price. In those days (which seem SO long ago, even though it’s been just five years) LinkedIn fancied itself as the content hub for business. It’s about the same time that they started the influencers program and enabled publishing (blogging, really) on the Linkedin platform.

I wrote a post in 2015 called “Is Slideshare Digital Marketing’s Secret Weapon?,” and I meant it. But it’s not true today.

Since the acquisition, the entire proposition has started to fray like a hem on a K-Mart dress. First, they eliminated the popular lead generation capability that allowed Slideshare users to garner email signups in exchange for content. They also changed how users could customize their Slideshare home pages. The promise at that time was the monthly introduction of new features for all users. That lasted about . . . one month.

Next, LinkedIn paid $1.5 billion for online training company Lynda. That’s 13 times more than they paid for Slideshare, so certainly that was going to be a priority. Note how the Slideshare home page now prominently features online courses? And that each of those featured courses has updated in the past three hours?

And then, the big move: Microsoft bought LinkedIn itself for a whopping $26 billion—in theory, to drive usage of Skype and finally give Microsoft SOME sort of social network (beyond its investment stake in Facebook). Wired, however, speculates that it was really the world’s biggest acquihire, giving MSFT access to the sparkling reputation of LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, who recently joined the board of directors.

Whatever the underlying cause, the effect of the past five years of LinkedIn ownership of Slideshare has been severe atrophy. Like Paul Sheldon’s leg at the end of Misery, Slideshare is now but a shriveled appendage.

The 3 Biggest Slideshare Problems Today

First, traffic to Slideshare has fallen off considerably. This is despite the fact that three-quarters of all content marketers are creating more content than ever, according to Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs. To be sure, not all (or even most) of that content is in the form of presentations and ebooks (the most common content types found on Slideshare). But you would think more content would equal more Slideshare usage. But it hasn’t, probably because of points two and three.

Second, Slideshare has jettisoned their editorial team, for the most part. At its apex, part of Slideshare’s appeal was its curation, including regular promotion of new and interesting presentations to the site’s home page in the “Today’s Top Slideshares,” “Featured Slideshares,” or “Trending in Social Media” sections.

A screen grab from November 30 shows that “Today’s Top Slideshares” were uploaded to the site 51, 55, and 61 days ago. Freshness! And the “Trending in Social Media” section is almost laughably ancient. Amazingly, the top two presentations “hot” on Linkedin and Google Plus were created FOUR YEARS AGO. Trending on Facebook? Presentations uploaded one year ago. On Twitter? Just nine months. Again, this is on the home page of a site that was in the top 100 in the world in the recent past.

Perhaps it’s simply a labor issue. An examination by my pal Mathew Sweezey using Linkedin found that the only employees still working on Slideshare appear to be a handful of engineers.

Third, Slideshare now appears to be making puzzlingly awful customer experience decisions. I have no idea if this is correlation or causation. But in my long career in digital, I’ve found that when engineers  run CX, customer friendliness typically doesn’t surge.

In his own post about the troubles at Slideshare (which inspired this one), Sweezey noted that Slideshare now prohibits re-uploading of Slideshares. Plainly, this sucks. The issue is that if you upload something and decide to refresh it later (fix a typo, add a slide, tweak the headline) you now cannot do that, despite the fact this has been a feature since essentially day one of the platform.

Now, Slideshare demands that you upload an entirely new version of the file. That means any comments, shares, or links you’ve created and propagated across the web will be null, void, or dead. Hurray. Want to add a new slide six? Start over, pal.

Maybe this is just the way it has to go? Maybe platforms that emphasize longer form, written content are doomed to be dominated by platforms featuring short form, video, and disappearing “story” content? After all, Slideshare’s evident and imminent demise comes on the heels of the death of Squidoo and the business model shift and subsequent near-irrelevance of Scribd, among others.

But I would think that a business social network (or whatever LinkedIn considers itself to be at this point) would see value in being the world’s only meaningful hub for presentations for businesspeople. But maybe I just don’t get it?

Do you?

http://ift.tt/2j0WNDU