A brand audit is the most important way to analyze your business. The position of your brand in the market determines the profit you will make. A proper brand audit helps you in getting familiar with your audience.
It helps you in understanding those areas of your business where you need to improve. There are various tools by which you can conduct a brand audit. However, before moving on with the steps which can help you do your brand audit, let’s understand what it is.
Before making any significant changes in your business, you need to know about fitful changes. You need to have proper knowledge about why these changes are necessary. Proper knowledge of the right and wrong techniques and strategies along with reasons is really helpful. If you lack this knowledge, the changes you would make may do harm rather than doing good.
However, a brand audit allows you to have a detailed analysis of such information. A brand audit is an analytical study that helps you in understanding and determining your position in the consumer market. It is generally a study of your brand and its strengths and weaknesses. It is essential if you wish to grow your business.
What is brand audit?
When And Why Is A Brand Audit Important?
You may ponder regarding why and when is a brand audit necessary. Well, when you see that the success rate of your business is falling, you need to conduct a brand audit. Suppose, you notice that your campaigns are less successful or your sales are falling. In such signs of weakened business moves, you need to perform a brand audit.
During a brand audit, three main areas are looked upon. The first of them is internal branding, which refers to the values and motives of the company. The second is the external branding, which includes a logo and other display assets of the business. The third is the customer experience, which is the feedback of the customer.
How To Perform Brand Audit?
Most companies often hire brand agencies for conducting an audit of their brand details. However, you can even do it by yourself by following these steps:-
Construct your framework
Analyse your business
Review your business’s social media reach
Review your sales
Interact with your audience and customers
Know and analyze your competitor
Plan and monitor your steps
Let’s discuss these steps in detail so that you can have diverse knowledge about these steps.
Step 1. Construct your framework
This is the first step to a proper brand audit. With the help of mind mapping, you need to analyze the various factors that affect your business. You need to answer the following questions:
1. What’s the niche of your business?
2. Are your products related to your niche?
3. Why customers choose you?
4. Why should customers choose you further?
5. Is your performance better in comparison to your competitors?
The answers will help you have a rough idea about your business and its strengths.
Step 2. Analyse your business
Before thinking of making changes, you need to understand the current status of your business. You need to overlook topics such as:
When you have all these details about the present state of your business, you can move on to the third step.
Step 3. Review your business’s social media reach
Analyze the social media reach of your business
The pillars of a business include its website, social media platforms, logo, and others. Your website and social media platforms are the first impressions of your impression. Hence, they should be properly constructed. They should be easily navigable and understandable. Besides these, your content and logo should even be friendly towards your customers. You need to review the following topics:
1. Is your website friendly to the customer?
2. Does it have the option of language conversion?
3. How does it rank in search engines?
4. Does the logo justify your company’s actions?
5. Is the tone of your conversation friendly?
6. Are your click rates higher?
7. Do you have enough reach on social media?
8. Are your products being recommended by influencers?
9. What’s the reaction of your customers?
A proper analysis of your business pillars will help you understand your business better. It will even help you understand your engagement rate and the reason behind it. Hence, it’s mandatory.
Step 4. Review your sales
Reviewing sales is necessary because it helps you to understand why some people didn’t turn into customers. You need to check up the following questions:
1. If your sales have dropped, then why?
2. Is your pricing rate unaffordable?
3. Are your competitors having better prices?
4. Is your brand not fulfilling the promises?
On having the answers to these questions, you will have detailed information on the strengths and downfalls of your business. However, this information is from your point of view.
Step 5. Interact with your audience and customers
Take customers review
Until this step, you had the details of your weaknesses from your side. However, you also need to have the customer’s point of view. This is far more important because you eventually have to serve your customers. You need to interact with your audience and customers. This can be best done by surveys and polls. You can know the exact sentiments of your customers which you can use to improve your reach.
Step 6. Know and analyze your competitor
Once you know your business, you need to look at your competitors. You need to observe the strategies used by them. You need to do the following things:
Finally, you have reached the final step. You have gathered information about your business and brand. Now, you need to analyze this data while planning your next moves. You need to focus more on the moves of your competitors and plan accordingly.
After proper planning, you need to implement your ideas and plans. While implementing, you also need to check on the performance of your moves. Note down the changes you notice, and you are done with your brand audit.
Conclusion
People often hesitate to conduct a proper brand audit. This is because they are afraid to face the weaknesses of their own business. However, the sickness of your business can’t be solved if you don’t diagnose the issues.
Brand audit diagnoses the problems behind the staggering growth of your business. However, a brand audit isn’t an easy task. You need to be prepared for toiling hard to get the results. In addition to that, you even need to be honest with yourself and your business. Realize your flaws and work on them. It will pave the path to the success of your business.
FAQs
Why is brand audit important?
Brand audit helps a business to figure out its strengths and weaknesses. It helps in creating opportunities for improvement expand the business.
When should you do a brand audit?
Brand audit should be done whenever there are the changes in busines like:
Changes in Market
Changes in your product/service your business offer
With the geometrically expanding population, the demand for electricity and other resources is ever increasing. It’s not possible to reduce our electricity consumption. However, if we spend electricity at this rate, then the day where we will struggle for breath is not far. Hence, each one of us needs to switch to renewable energy.
Renewable energy is also known as green energy. This is because this energy is generated from sources that will last forever. Green energy is mainly generated from sources such as the sun, wind, and water. These sources of energy will never exhaust and are renewable too.
Well, if you wish to switch to green energy you need to talk with your local utility regarding if they supply renewable energy. After this, you need to know about Green Tariff. You also need to know about the projects and companies of your locality which pay Green Tariff.
Green Tariffs are prices that provide access to industries and other such sectors that use renewable energy programs. These tariffs are provided by local PUCs at some specific rates. This is usually offered to large units because it is these units that provide us energy. If renewable energy is supplied to these sources, then the common man will even get advantage from it.
You must have heard about green tariffs from your energy supplier. They must have offered you this source of renewable energy. By this, they mean that they would be supplying you renewable energy which they have been supplied with. By using renewable energy, you can contribute to the protection of our government as an individual.
Green Tariff – How does it work?
However, this Green Tariff is not available in all local utilities. The companies need to check two important things:
1) If their utility provides green energy
2) If they are eligible for Green Tariff
If the company is eligible for Green Tariff, then the company needs to check the suitable program for themselves. There are many various versions of different programs provided by the utilities. They are:
1) Some programs provide energy at a wholesale rate.
2) There are some programs in which your company will be directly connected to the process of generation of renewable energy.
3) Other programs offer you a power purchase agreement for some fixed time.
Indian Green Tariff policy
Green Tariff – Renewable Energy Suppliers
Green Tariff renewable Energy
There are two types of renewable energy suppliers. They are:
1) One who directly provide you renewable energy
2) One who buys and then provide it to you
The first type of suppliers refers to those companies that produce renewable energy directly. These companies directly produce renewable energy. The second type of suppliers refers to those companies who buy REGO certifications from the market. This certificate is issued to renewable energy producers. It is issued based on megawatts produced per hour. These companies work together with other companies thereby assisting them in the process of generation of renewable energy.
If you think of switching to a green energy supply, you need to discuss it with your supplier. The supplier shall provide you with the details regarding how much renewable will be the new supply. Not all suppliers provide 100% renewable energy. Some suppliers even offer some percentage of renewable energy. Based on the percentage of renewable energy provided, there are three types of Green tariffs:
1) Greenest Tariffs
2) Moderately Green Tariffs
3) Greenwash
Let’s discuss these Green Tariffs in detail.
Greenest Tariffs
These are the tariffs that offer a supply of 100% renewable energy. The sources of these types of providers are mentioned on their website. The suppliers which provide the Greenest Tariffs have REGO certification. You must be thinking of what exactly is REGO Certification.
Well, REGO is the acronym for Renewable Energy Guarantees of Origin. When a supplier has REGO certification, it means that it has to provide all its customers with the same amount of energy as it was supplied earlier. However, now the supplier has to supply the same amount of renewable energy. Some suppliers who have REGO certification even sell portions of it to other companies and suppliers.
Moderately Green Tariffs
Some suppliers have collaborated with other suppliers who do not promise to provide 100% renewable energy. They provide some percentage of renewable energy. Their tariff rates will even vary accordingly.
Greenwash
We have discussed earlier that some companies or suppliers sell away portions of their REGO certifications. The smaller companies and suppliers who buy these certifications also provide renewable energy to their consumers. This is known as Greenwash.
Here are some examples of Green Tariff along with their dates of establishment and key features.
Name
Date of Establishment
Puget Sound Energy (PSE), Washington
September 28, 2016
Rocky Mountain Power (RMP), Utah
August 18, 2016
Xcel Energy, Colorado
November 9, 2016
NV Energy, Nevada
November 14, 2014
Omaha Public Power District, Nebraska
January 2017
Green Tariff – RE100
RE100
RE100 is a global collaboration of all the companies and businesses working to achieve 100% renewable energy. Companies from various corners of the world have collaborated to meet the rising demands of renewable energy. These companies assist each other in developing strategies for green energy production.
Today, RE100 has about 300+ members who are working hard to meet the demand of 175+ markets across the globe. Even great tech companies such as Apple & Google have even been members of RE100. They are striving towards meeting the demands of top global markets.
Green Tariff – Advantages
There are various advantages of using green energy. These advantages might provoke you into investing in Green Tariff for your company. Some of these are:
The prices are predictable and stable.
There are opportunities where you can save money on electricity bills.
There is a direct transfer of energy between supplier and utility.
It can lead to sustainable development.
It will lead to the conservation of clean fuels.
It also creates an ample amount of job opportunities.
We have already known the advantages of the Green Tariff. However, not all corners of the world have a supply of Green Energy. This is because there are some major challenges to this massive project. Some of these challenges are:
1) Uncertainty in the production of energy due to weather conditions
It’s high time for each one of us to switch to green energy. This is essential for the sustainability of resources for our future generation. However, these hurdles shouldn’t be stones in the path to our success forever. The government should plan out and devise solutions for this. It should work in an organized manner with a dedication to supply green energy to every house.
However, as an individual, we should take every little step we can to save our environment. We must be ready to accept these renewable sources of energy too. We can work hand in hand with our government to save our environment.
FAQs
What is the Green Tariff?
Green tariffs are the prices paid by companies and industries for getting a supply of renewable energy.
Can I contribute to the protection of the environment?
Yes, by using green energy you can protect your environment.
Is Green energy available in all regions?
Green energy is not available in all regions now. However, sincere efforts are being put to make it available in all regions.
Can we overcome the renewable energy challenges?
Yes, we can overcome the challenges with proper technology advancements and cooperation with the government.
Money related organizations, monetary methodology, and budgetary administrations have radically advanced and improved in the last couple of decades. With the development of the Fintech industry in India, the whole business has experienced a huge change in the manner in which the money related methods are completed and budgetary establishments are performed.
The coordinated efforts between account and innovation has prompted an extreme change in banking, venture, exchanging, and digital money. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. This development has prompted the ubiquity of the term “Fintech“, a short structure for the expression of Financial Technology. This post reveals insight into Fintech and why has it turned fierce in the modern world.
Fintech is significantly more than only a reference to money related innovation. It is frequently alluded to as the inventive innovation used to improve customary money related strategies and create powerful answers for budgetary administrations, those which are at standard with the most recent mechanical patterns. Banking programming and portable financial applications are great instances of improvement in monetary innovation.
Progressively, the huge fintech industry comprises of new companies and lofty monetary organizations endeavoring to improve the budgetary administrations given by money related foundations around the globe. The organizations have endeavored to utilize continually advancing innovation and create present-day techniques for taking care of money.
A large number of us may not understand, yet innovation has constantly assumed a critical job in the money related division. In any case, the most recent 65 years have played a huge role in the development of the fintech industry and the creation of a few fintech arrangements.
The 1950s saw the dispatch of credit cards and 10 years later, ATMs changed the manner in which cash was withdrawn from banks. The proliferation of the internet during the 1990s propelled the fintech business to a new level; electronic installment framework, web-based business models, web-based shopping, portable banking, and digitization of banks have brought about a significant revolution.
What Is Fintech Industry | History of Fintech
The world’s first ATM was propelled in 1967 by Barclays and the IPO in 1971, the principal online installment stage Paypal was established in 1998, the primary digital money Bitcoin was propelled in 2009, Google propelled Google Wallet in 2011 and, Fintech startups have been all over the place since then. Earth-shattering advancements of innovation are paving the way for fintech upheaval.
Money related innovation is said to be a problematic power that is relied upon to reshape the budgetary division, plans of action, and banking structures. New money related innovation simply keeps on progressing, has pulled in speculators from different nations, and has cleared the way for the development of markets and the fintech industry itself.
Retailer banking and installments, protection, financier administrations, business banking, venture, and riches are affected the most by the development of fintech.
A NASSCOM report says that the fintech programming and administration advertising in India was around $8 billion in 2016; it was expected to develop 1.7 times by the end of 2020. The report includes that the exchange an incentive for the Indian fintech division was around $33 billion in 2016 and was scheduled to reach $73 billion in 2021 at a five-year compound yearly development rate (CAGR) of 22%.
The Indian FinTech scene is divided as follows: 34% in installment handling, trailed by 32% in banking, and 12% in the exchanging, open and private markets. Visakhapatnam is being created as FinTech valley and the nearby administration of Andhra Pradesh opened Fintech Valley to advance the interests in this area.
Fintech Industry Growth
In 2018, more than 12,000 new businesses grew in the Fintech space over the world with a monstrous speculation of $19 billion. Fintech includes innovative organizations that are going up against each other and working in unison with existing money related foundations. These organizations likewise work together with colleges and research foundations, government affiliations, and industry bodies.
India now has a system in place that gives new companies a chance to exponentially develop into enormous organizations. Directly from digging into a scope of unexplored portions to outside business sectors, new Fintech businesses are conveying advancement that was deemed hard to accomplish.
Growth Of Fintech Services
The Indian Fintech programming business sector is expected to touch $2.4 billion by the end of 2020 from the current $1.2 billion in FY 2019.
Over the last couple of years, the Indian economy, which is altogether money-driven, has exploited the Fintech opportunity. With a scope of choices that includes digital wallets, loaning, and protection, the assortment of administrations gave an enormous impact to change the manner of money-related activities.
A number of encouraging reasons are propelling the comprehensive growth of Fintech in India. Some of them are:
Easy Payments
Installments have seen a noteworthy transformation in the recent years, particularly due to the disturbance of internet business, versatile trade, and online installments. Budgetary consideration is substantially more than just installments and exchanges and installments are seen as the door for monetary incorporation. Shoppers and vendors will keep on grasping digitized installments while UPI will continue to have its firm ground for both P2P and P2M exchanges.
Partnership Between FinTech’s And Corporates
The Fintech Times says 2020 will be the time of brilliant coordinated efforts between Fintech trend-setters and corporates, where corporate organizations would ideally put resources into Fintech instead of acquiring arrangements. Likewise, banks will be collaborating with Fintech to sort out inconsistencies and offer benefits via administration, smooth client experience, and a progression in cutting-edge highlights to ease tasks.
There’s a rising change being experienced by Investment Advisory organizations with the improvement of electronic riches counsels, also known as “Robo-guides.” And by “Robo,” we mean computerized board-stages as real robots.
These Robo-guides can guide executives through calculations and help clients take money related decisions. The perfect outcome is the ability to yield specially designed, noteworthy counsel to financial specialists without the contribution of human feelings, and that too at a lower cost.
Facility Of Cloud Banking
Usage of distributed computing will lessen costs by an incredible degree on the grounds that no extra speculations are required for overseeing assets and equipment. Cloud adjusts to the changing requests and gives versatility to serve the transforming needs of clients. Cloud assets additionally scale upon necessity and permit simpler incorporations with innovations.
How Fintech Industry Is Shaping Banking Sector
Secure Digital Payments
Security is of utmost importance since money related exchanges are exposed to dangers and assaults. An EY report says innovation like Blockchain will be extremely popular, crediting to its advantages like straightforwardness, changelessness, discernibility, and audibility. Blockchain will give a state of security with regards to the trading of cash and touchy data, enabling clients to draw off its straightforwardness and bring down operational expenses.
NLP Based Chatbots
There is now a rush of problematic innovation in organizations. It is encouraging to see clients continuously attempting to discover better approaches to consistently communicate with organizations.
Fintech will be a sensation by utilizing NLP based chatbots and enhancing Conversational User Interface (CUI) to change portable banking. These chatbots will have the option to react to client issues and give practical arrangements accordingly.
Convenient Personalization
Fintech is improving client experience by giving customized plans suited to the client’s needs. The inevitable destiny of Fintech will see altered outlines that can imagine critical events in a client’s life. Actualizing Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Big Data for personalization will bring about improved availability and capability; the results can then be used in the progression of present-day administration models.
Fintech Industry – Future in India
Fintech Growth Curve
Fintech administration firms are right now re-thinking the manner in which organizations and customers deal regularly.
In India, the scale has been less steep when compared to the international developments. The interest in India’s Fintech industry, which caught pace somewhere between 2013 and 2014, continues to grow.
Furthermore, India has a huge undiscovered market for budgetary administration through innovation in new businesses. 40% of the populace is not associated with banks anymore, and 87% of the installments are now being paid with real money.
With cell phone entrance expected to increment to 85-90% in 2020 from 65-75% at present and web infiltration consistently climbing, the development potential for Fintech in India can’t be exaggerated.
These holes in access to organizations and administrations offer a significant opportunity for Fintech arrangements to flourish and grow.
Fintech Industry – Leading Fintech Companies in India
There are more than 2000 Fintechcompanies in India. Some of the leading fintech companies in India are:
Paytm
Paytm – Fintech Company
A leading Fintech organization- Paytm is a platform for portable installments and money related administration. It gives an application based stage to pay installments, make travel appointments, inn and ticket booking, booking chamber, purchase of gold, gifts, and so on.
Paytm offers banking administrations, credit cards, advances, speculation stage for protection, shared assets, etc. Paytm Mall is an additional offering by Paytm for internet shopping of utilities, garments, food supplies, adornments, hardware, toys, and a lot more. The application is available for both Android and IOS.
Leading marketplace of insurance products- Policybazaar is an online protection aggregator for items from different safety net providers (dependent on the value, quality, and key advantages). Right now, the site offers data to enable clients settle on the best choices alongside arrangement driven client care. The data highlights content in different structures, for example, the top five highlights of an item, hits, and change rates.
BillDesk
Billdesk
BillDesk powers electronic installments and accumulations administrations for banks, organizations, and different establishments. It also oversees VISA installment administration. Billdesk empowers installment of service charges, Mastercard, and ISP charges for huge banks like Citibank, HDFC Bank, State Bank of India, and for organizations such as Bharti Telecom.
One of the leading fintech- Pine Labs gives POS programming services for disconnected retailers and brands. The organization’s POS arrangements are a cloud-based system that coordinates with a nonexclusive POS terminal and enables retailers to acknowledge payments and Visas, e-wallets, QR code, and UPI based instalments.
The organization offers installment passage, API arrangements, portable installment arrangements, dependability gift voucher projects, and others. It additionally offers esteem-oriented arrangements like EMIs, limits, pay by focuses, e-Wallets, directed advancements, dynamic money change. Pine Labs’ versatile application is available for both Android and iOS.
MobiKwik
Mobikwik
MobiKwik is an advanced wallet administration. It offers a halfway installment for ticket reservations and bookings. MobiKwik also gives momentary individual credits to its wallet clients.
BankBazaar
Bankbazaar
BankBazaar is an online budgetary dissemination and co-relation platform. BankBazaar empowers clients to purchase individual advance, home advance, vehicle advance, and other items, charge and Visas, disaster protection, medical coverage, accident protection, home protection, travel protection items, shared assets, fixed stores, and bank accounts. Clients need to give their essential subtleties to apply for an item on the web and can then track its status.
Bharat Bill Payment System is a coordinated bill installment framework that offers interoperable and open bill installment administration to clients through enlisted operators and various installment modes. BBPS is an incorporated installment platform that makes a solitary, bank-free pitstop for all utility installments, and wallet administration for clients by taking care of their transactions through portable wallets.
Unified Payments Interface (UPI)
Unified Payment Interface
Unified Payments Interface is a framework that powers different ledgers into a versatile application, combining a few financial highlights, consistent reserve directing, and trader installments into one hood. It likewise takes into account the Peer-to-Peer system which can be planned and paid according to one’s comfort and convenience.
Fintech is term for Financial technology. All the companies that involves finance services using technology in their business come under Fintech Industry.
What are leading fintech companies in India?
Paytm
Razorpay
Upstox
Cred
ETMoney
Instamojo
PolicyBazaar
MobiKwik
Pine Labs
UPI
What is the valuation of fintech market in India?
The valuation of Fintech market in India is currently around $31 Billion. It is expected to grow to $84 Bn by 2025.
LinkedIn Learning is an American online educational platform. It’s the live example of the fact “Learning is never late”. It has three broad streams of courses offered. They’re business-related, technology-related and creativity related.
There are over 5000 courses. Once you subscribe, LinkedIn Learning recommends personalized courses based on your field and interest. These are video training courses created by experts in the desired field.
A lot of us regret not being as attentive as we could be during our lessons at schools or colleges. We feel down the mark, not fully ready and so. Budding marketers are no different. However, every rising sun brings with it new opportunities.
Hence nothing is too late. It’s always the right time to start. There are multiple courses for marketers to chisel their techniques and abilities. Here we are enlisting the top seven courses for marketers and entrepreneurs to make their quest easier.
It is a complete guide for a marketer to get highly valued in LinkedIn and in other companies. It’s a strategic guide by the LinkedIn marketing solutions team. It gives you ways to engage one’s audience, gathers quality leads, increases awareness and so much more. This course arms you both with the basics and with everything that’s trendy and also hacks that will separate your brand positively from the rest.
Instructor of this course
Alex Rynne is the main instructing coach of this course. She is an award-winning global content creator at LinkedIn who has been there in the Frontline for the last five years.
Skills covered in this course
LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
LinkedIn Campaign Manager
Social Media Marketing
Social Media Marketing Foundation
Social Media Marketing Foundation
Social Media has been a super popular source of advertisement in recent times. Hence this course one is taught the basics of Social Media Marketing. This course tells how to invest wisely in social media marketing and why it is beneficial.
It also teaches you how to connect to leads effectively through leading social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram and extract the best results from paid advertisements there. Crafting social media strategies based on a company’s goals is also taught in this course.
Instructor of this course
The instructor for this course is Brian Honigman the CEO of Honigman Media. It is a content marketing consultancy existing in Philadelphia. He has been training leading personnel to collect business value from SEO and Content marketing.
Skills covered in this course
Marketing Strategy
Social Media Marketing
Advertising on LinkedIn
Advertising on LinkedIn
This course teaches you to create original LinkedIn ads. It gives you a clear picture of how LinkedIn ads are beneficial, how they work, how to create the best ad for your campaign on LinkedIn and also optimizing for better results. This course is glorifying for B2B marketers as they need a specific type of audience that too at a certain scale which can be attained through LinkedIn.
Instructor of this course
The instructor of this course is A.J. Wilcox who is the founder of B2Linked an agency specialized in account management.
One of the most basic and useful courses in LinkedIn Learning is this one. If one is new to LinkedIn and is looking for a less costly yet effective way of marketing, this course should be their one-stop. It will help you forge connections to the needed sources to expand your brand. It is a shiny opportunity how one gets marketing at absolutely no cost.
Instructor of this course
Marcus Murphy, the head of business development and partnerships at DigitalMarketer is leading this course. He’s also a member of Linkedin’s customer advisory board.
Skills covered in this course
LinkedIn Marketing
LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
Digital Marketing
Business Storytelling
Business Storytelling
Storytelling isn’t just fictional. It helps you communicate your business to customers and clients. It is a great way to market your ideas as well. Hence this course provides one with master Storytelling strategies, nailing down the correct audience. Storytelling is the best way to get down to, how the human brain thinks and processes information.
Instructor of this course
The coach of this course is C.C. Chapman who’s an award-winning content creator who has been working with HBO, Coca-cola and many more.
Skills covered in this course
Business Storytelling
Learning Personal Branding
Learning Personal Branding
There are multiple courses and ways available online for personal branding. However, this course is unique because it explores your personal brand to assure one right way for their content creation. The powerful original brand always assures clean marketing. It assures customers and clients about the efficiency of your brand.
Instructor of this course
In this course, the instructor shall be Chelsea Krost. She’s an influencer marketing personnel and personal branding space professional since a very young age. She started her own radio talk show at the age of 16. Hence the course shall be the same efficient exercising.
Skills covered in this course
Personal Branding
SEO Foundations
SEO Foundations
Consumers these days track the World through click and search. Hence, it is necessary to leverage the fundamentals of your search engine optimization. This will make sure that your business website pops up in every important search. This course ensures the basics of SEO, reading of result pages and how rankings affect firms big or small.
Instructor of this course
The instructor to this page is David Booth who’s one of the founders of Cardinal Path. He’s also a consultant there. He received the Digital Analytics Association’s Practitioner of the Year award.
Skills covered in this course
SEO
Web Content Optimization
Conclusion
These are a few of the best courses that LinkedIn Learning offers for marketers. There are multiple more like Storytelling with Data, Writing to be Heard on LinkedIn and so on.
FAQ
Are LinkedIn learning certificates worth it?
LinkedIn learning are a great source for the people who are looking to develop or explore their professional skills further.
Is LinkedIn learning free?
There are both paid and free learning courses available on LinkedIn.
In this growing modern world, technology has taken a huge leap. And in today’s world AI (Artificial Intelligence) is the new face of modern technology. In terms of Computer Science, AI or Artificial Intelligence refers to human-like Intelligence exhibited in a computer.
Now after years of being devoted and researching science-fiction, today AI is a part of our daily lives. And the advancement in AI technology has made our lives more functional and comfortable than before. AI is completing our words as we type them, providing us directions in the form of tutorials and other functions in other ways too.
Facebook, one of the largest social media platforms by Mark Zuckerberg, has now announced the same. Quoting that, for the improvement in the experience of shopping across its various ventures, a new way has been made for the existing and future businesses to set up a single online store for customers to access on Facebook.
The company has already characterized all the new products powered by AI. Also, the machine learning system has a surge in its vision for an all-in-one AI assistant that can search, categorize, and can stimulate products. While at the same time it can personalize its recommendations to the individual persons as per their choice preferences.
Before digging deep into the matter, let’s understand what are the key AI features Facebook is using to improve its shopping experience. So they are:
1. To automae the Marketing 2. Making Small Scale Business Possible 3. Product Recognition 4. Identifying many unseen objects and other attributes 5. Stepping Footprints for the Next Age Shopping.
Now let’s discuss them one by one.
Facebook – AI To Automate Marketing
Many E-Commerce businesses just as Facebook Marketplace depend on Artificial Intelligence. They depend on automating a host to stimulate the job being behind the stage. It starts from learning choice preferences and body types to look into and understand the possible factors that may influence the buyer. It may also influence the purchase decision of an individual or a group of purchasers.
McKinsey and Company known as a trusted advisor and counsellor to many of the world’s most influential businesses and institutions estimate that Amazon, which recently used AI to handle that what the shopper inquiries. And this in return generated 35% from its product recommendation engine.
Facebook – AI Making Small Scale Business Possible
Facebook marketplace
“We are seeing a lot of small businesses making their presence for the first time on this online platform, (as a result of the ongoing pandemic) whom we never saw before,” said Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg during an online Livestream event conducted. He also disclosed that small-scale businesses around the globe used the platform’s services.
“This can help to endure some of the loss made due to this pandemic to their lost businesses. Facebook is distinctively positioned to be a winner for small-scale businesses. It is helping them to grow and create a healthy environment for their successful business.”
Facebook remarked that its AI shopping systems segments detect and make classification of images to know of that. They also make a decision, where the products should appear and deliver shopping suggestions.
One of the systems that Artificial Intelligence uses is known as GrokNet. It was trained on seven sets of data. It contains images of the products that many as in millions of users post, purchase, and sell in a bulk or dozens of categories.
Facebook – AI for Identifying many unseen objects and other attributes
To help the buyers or the respective shoppers find accurately what they are searching for, the product recognition systems must shine at recognizing specific product characteristics. They are also known as attributes. But there lie thousands of other possibilities. Each one of them can be applied to a range of other categories. For example, a person can have blue jeans, blue shirts, blue pants, or even a blue car.
Mainly, several state-of-the-art classification models have taken the superintendent approach. But the thing is that, with near-infinite possibilities, this is not much ascendable.
Facebook – AI Stepping Footprints for the Next Age Shopping
Today, Artificial Intelligence shopping is walking its infant steps. From machines to photos of different products are still just collections of pixels. Just like “full sleeves”, others are more objective like “casual wear” Or “cold weather”. So basically training these AI models which can flexibly make the use of the precise and right information provided in each situation. Because each situation requires solving scientific and engineering challenges.
With each year Artificial Technology systems are being built smarter. Due to this training, they are finely tuned to understand all the shopping-related photos and text with the state of the art being exact.
And on a good note, there’s a long way to go for such futuristic innovations. Personalized shopping is very difficult as everyone’s choice preferences are becoming distinctive and are constantly evolving with time. So they need to keep on building on their fundamental Artificial Intelligence. This may also include enhancement for even deeper AI understanding for not only just products and fashion. But also dynamic context and vivid knowledge of relationships should be kept in mind with the items. Thus making us one more step closer to the next age of shopping.
Hence, there are advantages as well as disadvantages of Facebook’s AI on shopping that the buyers or the sellers will face. They are:
1. Requirement for selling through the Facebook marketplace. 2. Allotment of selling Fee 3. Unable to include extra additional or enhanced features 4. Excluding buyers, purchasers, or customers who are not on Facebook
Conclusion
Although these are the advantageous aspects that Facebook AI is having for Next-generation shopping. Yet it is also easy to forecast the disadvantages that will come along with it. But as this system came into force due to the pandemic going on, it’s not certain how it will perform in the future once the pandemic is lifted. So now all the small-scale businesses should incur some profits from the losses they endured.
So it’s a major plan set up by Facebook for the coming age. But the generation will decide its operation. Keeping in view its pros and cons, it’s the upcoming generation who’ll take charge of its fluent operation.
But whatever it may bring tomorrow, it surely had its impact now bringing success to many. Successful results say that not only in Facebook but everywhere else Artificial Intelligence is the new face for the rising tomorrow. Hence it’s a great initiative led by Facebook to help many small-scale businesses come out of their losses to start freshly. However, disadvantages may show up at any possible time. Hence, Time is the only condition evident of the fact that what will be the new aspect of Artificial Intelligence.
FAQs
How AI is transforming the way people shop?
AI system automatically scans through the product catalog and identify the exact product and makes it more convenient to give better shopping experience to the customers.
Does Facebook use AI for advertising?
Facebookuses AI to advertise the relevant content to users through text, photos and videos.
How is AI used in marketing?
AI tools use data and customer profiles and find best way to communicate with customers. They communicate though relevant tailored messages at the right time without any intervention from marketing team members.
It was the early days of my SEO career. I used to work for a Digital Marketing agency. I was handling a brand new website there.
As the website was new, thus my primary focus was working on on-page & technical SEO. I spent most of my time building Content strategy and fixing Site architecture.
But there was pressure from the client-side, as they want to strengthen their link profile too.
Whereas, Our Agency did not have the resources to build high-quality relevant links. Thus, they outsourced the complete Link building work to another agency.
End of the first month, they have created around 60 links. ( Most of them were profile links, blog commenting and web 2.0)
End of the 2nd month, they doubled the number of similar kinds of shitty links.
But DR remained 0.
There is no significant improvement in the 3rd month as well.
As a result, My agency lost the client.
But, It does not mean those profile links, blog commenting and web 2.0 do not work today.
It still works, Only if you are doing it strategically.
Thus, before outsourcing your link building campaign, ask the following questions to yourself.
At Startuptalky, we were able to generate 5000 daily pageviews without building significant links. (We got some natural links due to our quality of content and created very few profiles and blog commenting links.)
Links work as fuel to your traffic. Thus build a strong foundation with your content and proper On-page SEO first, and bring decent organic traffic. You can always invest later in Link building to boost your traffic and Domain Authority.
2. Do you have the budget to hire a professional link builder, a professional content writer, and the maintenance cost of tools?
If the answer is yes, then go for it and launch your link building outreach campaign.
If the answer is no, then simply outsource. You need professionals to bring results and get your ROI back. Else, end up losing your money and time.
3. Are you passionate about different techniques of Link building & want to pursue a career upon that?
If you are passionate about link building, then do it by yourself. You can explore this field in your own way and may end up with your own link building methodologies.
4. Do you have the time to invest in a link building campaign?
If you don’t have time or you have other important tasks to run your business smoothly. Then outsourcing to the right person or agency is the best option for you.
5. Is your business heavily dependent on SEO?
If SEO is the core of your business. Then always hire an expert. Not just to build high-quality links but also to ensure that you are not building spammy links which may affect your website badly. No matter what Google says, Link is still a key factor to outrank your competitor and scale your website traffic.
6. How to Choose the right Link building provider?
If you are about to hire a link builder or any agency, here are a few questions you should ask them.
1. Ask about their process. How will they create links?
2. Ask them to share some relevant sites from where they will create links for you. Then check and verify the quality of those websites.
Check the right metrics
3. Always ask for sample links and check their indexing status.
4. Confirm the duration of the live links.
5. Avoid people who send you the list of hundreds of profiles, directory submission, and PBN links. Also, ignore who offers you guest posts in bulk on low-quality irrelevant sites with cheap prices.
However, you need to understand link building is not a one-time investment. It’s a process. It takes time and money.
Thus don’t invest in link building randomly. Keep tracking and measuring the KPIs. Analyse what results they are bringing.
According to my experience, there is no single way to get success in SEO. It’s about finding the winning process that will work best for your website. Till then, keep experimenting and keep hustling.
FAQ
What is link building?
Link building is a search engine optimization technique that increases your search engine ranking. Having a good number of links to a website indicates that the content there is valuable.
How much does link building cost?
You can expect to pay around $100-$250 per hour or $2,000 – $8,000 per month on average.
Is link building still relevant to SEO?
Yes, Link building is a crucial part of any successful SEO strategy.
Making one’s startup recession-proof is not a quick switching activity. It is a process. Ignoring it on regular days isn’t the ideal way. During the downturn of the economy, it might be too late to control or even preserve the existence of the business.
This ‘R’ word is always a nightmare to business owners be it big or small. However, if the mechanism against recession is designed wisely, a business can be running smoothly, whatsoever the conditions might be.
Here’s the enchiridion to a recession-proof startup. Hard work counts along with a witty application of needed aids. Here’s the one-stop solution to make your startup recession-proof at any time and every time.
Cutting off unnecessary expenses is always a plus for businesses. Look for ways to reduce the round expenses along with operational costs. New product launching should be held back for favourable situations only. Unless needed urgently, new employment shouldn’t be entertained.
Investing in new products, for “experimenting” is not a positive aspect while making your startup recession-proof. To enable the smooth running of a business even during a recession period, cost controlling, is very important.
Find Costless ways of advertising
Cheap or costless ways of advertising is again a savings-friendly method. Guerilla marketing is one of such techniques which is cost-beneficial yet effective. For example, If an ice cream shop opens in town, they give free ice creams to their first ten buyers for the first week. This doesn’t hamper their profit much as there will be way more customers than usual in order to be one of the first ten. However, there are more ways to advertise without sinking a penny.
Clearing off debts on time is one of the very significant factors, affecting the cost management of a business. Avoid opting for high payoff debts in the first place. Such debts slow down the ability of the service of the startup to meet the debt itself. Debts should be paid off immediately or they should be lesser in the count and lower in amount.
Staying in good communication with investors and stakeholders are very important too. The business or any operation that is not running in profit should be sold.
Build a Goodwill in the existing customer base. Invest in bigger and regular clients than investing in matters to attract new customers. Allow discounts to regular best customers. When they will receive the best experience and end results from you, they will be interested to work along with more and will be a source of advertisement to attract new customers.
Have a Clear objective
Having a clear objective is very important to build your business recession-proof. You either focus on cost leadership or quality differentiation. You choose anyone and don’t hang in the middle. This will enable you to hold on to your customers even while there’s an economic recession. This displays and retains loyalty.
Especially for smaller startups, there’s no need of being everything at once. Find your specialization and master it to thrive in even the worst market situation. This is because if you build a good customer base, you’ll still have your business running because of them even during the economic downfall.
Make/Build Durable products
Startups should focus on necessity, durability and eligibility. Since startups are replicable businesses, they aspire more to follow them. They should be durable, and day to day usable. To make sure even during the recession period of economy, your product should have its demand intact. The products should be durable too otherwise they cannot gain customer’s confidence.
Don’t add/purchase extra or unnecessary products and services
Diversification is not the right way. Adding extra products and services to your offering doesn’t make it any different. It just increases the wastage of money simply. Startups must promote unique and different products not unique and different products’ additionals. Begin with a useful and unique product in the first place.
Invest wisely in adaptable technology
A wise investment in adaptable technology saves a lot of hard work and unnecessary expenses. Like an online meeting with a client can easily save a lot of expenditures. If a single machine can replace numerous labourers, it should be put to use immediately. This would save cost when there’s a high demand for labourers and their cost is high, it will hardly bother you!
Hire a Financial Planner
Hire a financial planner to track your monetary activity very well. A professional can help you and your business with cash flow, expenses and savings so that your business finance is in your control even during a recession period.
Development Should be your Priority
Development should always be your priority. When business is strong, most people leave it loose waiting for instances of downfall. No matter how strong a business is, ways of development should always be monitored. Development designing controls the future prosperity of one’s business. Also when a business is slow, action plans should be implemented to restore the conditions.
However, startups can never be made 100% recession-proof. Business is all about ups and downs. Such measures can ensure the survival of a business through hard times of recession and maybe ensure profit-making out of such times to some extent. The startup owners analysis and experience are also the keys to a recession-proof startup.
FAQ
What products are recession proof?
Nutrition products, Home and cleaning essentials, Inexpensive entertainment, Pet care essentials, Food and beverages and baby products are some products which are recession proof.
What is the best recession proof business?
The food and beverage industry is one of the most recession proof industries due to the fact that everyone still needs food and drinks to live.
What companies suffer most in a recession?
Retail, restaurants, Hotels, Automotive, Oil and gas, Sports, Real estate, and many others Industries see heavy declines during times of recession.
Loco is currently one of the most popular interactive games in India. The game operates on a simple principle: Play and earn. The application was released for the market in January 2018 with a quiz-based module. Thanks to its easy-to-use approach coupled with attractive incentives, Loco has spread like wildfire with users. Most users of the app are from two-tier cities, towns, and rural areas—locations where high-speed Internet and smartphones were rare until recently.
The quizzing system in Loco has a simple user interface. It runs in real-time and can only be played at set intervals. The user has a chance at a prestigious award pool by answering within ten seconds. Completing ten questions during the scheduled quiz is an opportunity to win another prize. An incorrect answer immediately terminates the user.
Loco invites users to play a quiz in real-time and earns money if they answer all the questions correctly. Quizzes are held twice on weekdays (1:30 pm and 10 pm) and once on weekends (10 pm). Loco, formerly known as the Showtime app, is a mobile adaptation of the hit TV show like KBC.
Loco has Gaurav Kapoor, popular sports presenter, as the host. He asks users 10 multiple choice questions and also provides them with a ‘life’ to get back into the game if they get terminated. You get a life in the game after recommending Loco to your friend. Once he or she downloads the app, the life gets credited to your in-game persona.
Finally, players are rewarded with cash prizes that are deposited in their Paytm accounts.
After downloading and installing the app, you will need to sign up. To sign up, Loco asks for your mobile number where an OTP is sent. The user needs to confirm the OTP. Loco now has your mobile number. It currently has over 5 million downloads and over 3 million concurrent users. These mobile numbers are then shared with an advertising agency in exchange for money.
Top Trivia Based Apps In India
Third-Party Advertising
Loco makes use of service providers like AdMob to show in-app advertisements. When someone clicks on the advertisement they get paid.
Subscription
Loco provides additional features and enhancements to premium members. Making money through a premium subscription plan is a common strategy.
In-App Purchases
In-app purchases is another way gaming apps make money. Loco offers in-app purchases without the requirement of showing advertisements. Loco not only helps you earn money but also helps in building knowledge. However trendy and attractive these apps may seem, one should always do some research about the credibility of these apps.
Social media has become an integral part of our lives. Almost everyone has an account on one or more social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. Be it family, friends, relatives, or acquaintances, you might have tried locating their social media profiles out of curiosity or for some other reason.
Email address is one way of finding social media handles/accounts. And it is quite accurate in most cases. After all, two individuals may share the same names and date of birth on social media platforms. But the same email address? That’s hard to imagine.
This tool is often considered to be the ‘Google of social media’. It has a huge database of millions of email addresses. Lullar uses this database to search for social media accounts. You can access the tool only through its website; Lullar is not available as a browser extension/add-on for now. To search for someone’s social media profile, you visit Lullar.com and enter the person’s email address. Lullar is free to use.
Lullar.com – Find Social Media accounts by Email
Truthfinder
The next tool in the list is Truthfinder. Truthfinder helps you to trace social media profiles and other informationsuch as the first and last name of the concerned person. It also tells you about the city and the state they live in.
There are two caveats with Truthfinder. It is a paidtool and only lists people who are from the United States of America. So you will be left disappointed if the person you are searching for lives in, say, Dubai or India.
FullContact is a software application that provides details on social media profiles. You can find people on FullContact by entering their email ids, Twitter handles, or contact numbers. The software gets you the location, job profile, and much more about the person. You may also lookup organizations/companies through their website URLs. FullContact in turn gives you information about the organization from different social networks.
FullContact can be integrated with other websites through its API. And the best feature of the application? With FullContact, you can gain unparalleled recognition and insights by mapping fragmented identities into a persistent PersonID through a ‘person-first identity graph’.
FullContact Pricing
Plan
Pricing
Get Started
Try it for Free
Self-Serve
$1,499/month (billed annually)
Enterprise
Custom Pricing
Clearbit
Clearbit – Find Social Media Profiles by Email
Clearbit is another important tool that needs to be featured in this list. By entering an email address and domain on Clearbit, you can find a person’s social media profile, bio, employment, role, Twitter information, details from LinkedIn, etc.
Pipl
Pipl – Search for Social Media accounts by Email
Pipl is a search engine application. It provides information about an individual’s social media profile, related images, career details, and more. Pipl’s tool accepts only valid email addresses. It has a massive database comprising 20 billion records.
Pipl Pricing
Subscription Pricing for Teams –
Numbers of Users
Pricing
1 user
$298/mo with Annual Subscription
5 users
$198/mo/user with Annual Subscription
10 users
$148/mo/user with Annual Subscription
>10 users
Custom Pricing
Per-match Pricing for Enterprise Applications –
Type
Information
Pricing
Contact
Name, Age, Gender, Address, Landline Phones
$0.10 per match
Social
Everything in Contact + Images, Associates, Social Site Handles
$0.20 per match
Business
Everything in Social + Employers, Education, Mobile Phones, Email
$0.40 per match
Direct Social Network Search
Another alternative to the tools listed above is the all-encompassing search bar available on different social media platforms. In other words, “direct social network search”.
Social Media Search on Facebook, Instagram, etc.
These search bars filter profiles based on the information you provide in them. The information may be a person’s name, platform-specific ID, or the name of the academic institution they went to. Moreover, the search fields also accept email address and use it to locate the linked profile/account.
Conclusion
A person’s social media account is a treasure trove of information.The account may be on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, or some other platform. If you are going to meet somebody for the first time, spare some time and skim through their social media profile. You may come across their likes, dislikes, and other topics of interest. Or if you want to stay updated with the latest happenings in someone’s life, their social media account is the answer.
A social media profile can be defined as the profile that people have on various social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and more.
How do I find someone’s email address?
There are a number of ways to get someone’s email address. The person might have made it public on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, or some other social media website. You may also try out an email lookup tool. If the person owns a website, he or she may have mentioned the email address in the ‘contact’ or ‘connect’ section of the website.
How do I find someone by email address on Facebook?
You simply type the email address in Facebook’s search bar. The relevant profiles then pop up in the search results. The results shall contain the exact profile as well as any related ones. So, you will need to filter out the profile you are looking for.
How can I find someone’s social media for free?
Simply log on to the various social media websites; almost all of them are free when it comes to signing up. Then look up the person’s name. If the individual has an account with a different name, try to find out that person’s friends’ or colleagues’ accounts. You can then go through that friend’s list of connections to identify the concerned person.
How to know if I have been blocked on social media by someone?
Visit the person’s profile (the one you suspect has blocked you). You will either not find your name in that person’s list of connections or the profile won’t open up for you.
The power to convince someone to change their mind helps you in developing the business and to solve interpersonal problems. These may be helpful in arguments and in getting clients for the business. Sometimes people may fall into the pit while convincing someone to change their mind. To avoid certain pitfalls, one has to maintain a few things which help to convince someone to change their mind in a better and long-lasting way.
Changing someone’s mind is difficult, and one argument alone won’t usually do the trick. But if you know how to make persuasive arguments and go about them the right way, you’ll have a higher chance of successfully convincing someone. Studies have shown that more than 70% of people get convinced by friends and family rather than an unknown person. Following these steps, you can increase your chances up to 90% of convincing someone.
Build Connection
Build Connection
The first thing that you need to do to convince someone to change their mind is to build a connection with them. In a conversation, you can easily forget the goal to connect with the other person and sometimes collaborate with them. So, aim to connect first. How can you do that? Try to understand their need, interest, and concern. You have to know what is important to that person. Seek to understand first than to be understood.
Be a good listener
Be a good listener
Let them speak first. Show your interest in listening to them. Don’t meddle while they’re speaking. In dealing with critical situations of convincing a person, one should listen to the problem or the issue that he/she is explaining. Keep asking as many questions as possible rather than giving answers. When you ask questions, you create trust and loyalty for other people to give you an honest truth.
Gain Trust
Gain Trust
With trust comes the willingness to consider your viewpoint. Give them a reason to trust you. Be honest with them. Some people can’t get the point that speakers are trying to convey to them. Cite examples or true incidents, if needed. You can talk about some respected or recognized person with whom they can relate to. And once, you gain their trust, it increases the probability of getting convinced. They would listen to you more than others.
Speak their language to make them understand. The words used in convincing should align with their desires and preferences. If you want to change their mind, frame it in such a way, that it could influence their mind in one go. You can persuade a child in their language but the same tactic won’t apply to adults.
Making of Speech
Your speech should sound persuasive. You are trying to convince the audience to do what you want them to do. If you are successful, the audience will get convinced.
Arguments
By arguing with someone you actually can convince someone to change their mind. In the case of arguments, we face two types of people.
Good Arguments
In the case of good arguments, people need to consider how the person is arguing. In this, one can convince the person with their good words that will make the person listen to them with some interest.
Bad Arguments
The bad arguments don’t contain head or tail. People speak randomly about what comes to their mouths. In these conditions, some patience is needed to convince the person. Basically, while arguing with the person one needs a good manner of speech to attract and convince the person about the particular topic.
Motivate them
Motivation
You can motivate them on their ideas. The best way to help people change their own minds is to first show them how they are right. This way they feel more attached to you. Make them feel happy about doing the thing you suggest. Motivating through the words helps the person to convince easily. You can give them multiple reasons for doing what you want them to do.
Be Confident
Be Confident
This is very important when trying to convince someone to change their mind. Before speaking to a person one should have clarity and confidence in the speech they are going to deliver. Be confident of what you speak so that the person in front of you can rely on your words. How you deliver your message can make someone more receptive to hearing you and changing their mind.
Unique language
When convincing someone to change their mind pay attention to your vocabulary when forming an argument, and look to make it different than that of your opponents. As persuasive arguments use words that are different from the original person’s language.
When speaking to someone with opposing views, it can actually be more persuasive to speak more quickly. A fast pace doesn’t allow the person to have time to think critically about your arguments. So much of changing someone’s mind is in the way you position your questions or statements and the emotional tone of your voice, as well as your body language. “How you deliver your message can make someone more receptive to hearing you and changing their mind.”
FAQs
How to change a person’s mindset?
You cannot change a person’s mindset. The person has to change it by themselves. You can either influence or convince them to change their mind.
What causes a person to change?
A person’s behavior can change gradually throughout life depending upon the nearby surroundings, his mood, or maybe mental illness.
Can toxic people change?
Yes, they can change too. However, they must see their part in the problem before they are likely to find the motivation to do so.
How to change your behavior from negative to positive?
Start Slowly.
Do just one habit at a time.
Control negative behavior as much as you can.
Do one week challenge.
Stick to your goals. Don’t deviate.
Keep yourself motivated.
Surround yourself with good people.
Do physical exercise to freshen your mind.
Read good novels.
How to motivate yourself to change?
Stick to the reason why you want to change.
Pamper yourself by rewarding gifts or anything that you like.
Fill yourself with good vibes. You can listen to music, podcast or any motivational videos.
