5 Hope-Filled and Tear-Jerking Examples of Storytelling with Video

It’s been said time and time again that video is the most effective medium for building stories and conveying emotions. And emotional stories are one of the strongest ways to connect with your audience.

No one can argue with that.

But we invite you to try after watching this collection of 5 recent video examples that’ll fill you with excitement, hope, pride, fear, and yes, sadness. Out with the words and in with the videos — ranked in order of potential to tickle your heart — we’ll leave you to it.

1. Garnier’s ‘Beautiful Horror’ Flick

 

2. Momondo’s ‘DNA Journey’

 

3. Interac’s ‘The Surprise’

 

4. University of Waterloo’s ‘Landmine Boys’

 

5. 30 Millions D’Amis Foundation’s ‘Do Not Abandon’

Warning: if you’re a dog lover (or have a heart of any sort), this one is particularly saddening. An important message and a phenomenal video, but viewer discretion is advised.

I’ll give you a minute to collect yourself (*phew*). … And then I want to know, which one was your favorite? Vote for the videos 1-5 in the comments below!

The post 5 Hope-Filled and Tear-Jerking Examples of Storytelling with Video appeared first on Vidyard.

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SMS Campaigns: 5 Success Stories and Why They are Useful for Your Mobile Strategy

SMS campaigns are a strategic tool for your mobile strategy. If you think this is an outdated means of communication, then we’ll give you some data to consider: 100% of mobile devices can receive and send text messages. Over 350 billion text messages are sent across the world every month, despite the growth of apps such as Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. Even companies like Coca-Cola still invest 70% of their mobile budget in SMS campaigns. Perhaps you should consider doing this as well.

Why invest in SMS campaigns?
There are many reasons why SMS will continue to work:
– SMS is created for mobile, so it has the same characteristics that people expect on this device: immediacy, simplicity, and speed.
– Mobile phones have a built-in SMS function so there’s no need to convince users to download anything, unlike apps.
– SMS has a higher open rate than any other marketing tool. Over 90% of SMS messages are read within 3 minutes, compared to 22% for e-mails, 20% for tweets and 12% for Facebook posts.
– 65% of smartphone owners are open to receiving SMS offers on their phones.

Another interesting fact is that this means of communication – apparently simple and lacking of expressive possibilities – offers many creative opportunities to promote your brand. Still not convinced? Follow us as we unfold 5 stories of successful SMS campaigns, which achieved great results with simple but effective strategies.

How to create an SMS campaign: 5 success stories

#1 Aer Lingus and SMS campaigns for customer care

The airline, Aer Lingus, had to find a system to inform its passengers about delays or cancelled flights. Which system could be better than a text message? The SMS implementation was tested for the first time when the company encountered a problem with a flight from Malaga: due to some technical problems, passengers had to be informed to get to the airport 90 minutes earlier. By sending timely SMS, 75% of the passengers managed to arrive on time, thus avoiding refunding a large number of people and also increasing customers’ perception of the company’s reliability.
This is an example of how the immediacy of SMS can be positively used for customer care: every time your brand has something urgent to communicate, SMS is an inexpensive way to do this. It will instantly reach a large number of people, with the certainty of being read within a few minutes.

#2 Pepsimax and the perfect call-to-action

Pepsi launched an SMS campaign inviting consumers to send a message with the text “PEPSIMAX” and a numerical code in order to win tickets to a baseball match. The campaign had great success, not only because the prize was enticing, but also because the call-to-action (the code to type) was clear and customers knew exactly what to do with it. The creativity of this campaign focused on the means that was being used: the SMS.

Here’s what you can learn from this story: if your SMS campaign is based on a code, prioritize it by putting it under the spotlight. The immediacy of the CTA is the key to boosting your campaign results.

#3 Carl’s Jr. and limited time promotions

This fast-food chain, with over 1,300 restaurants around the world, is specialized in quick service. To promote its specialties and defeat the competition time wise, it needed a tool that could meet the customers’ need for immediacy. They inevitably chose SMS. The campaign consisted in sending to its customers’ smartphones a limited time offer of a burger combo at half price. The result was instantaneous: 20% of people who received the text message redeemed their coupon in one of the restaurants a few hours later. For every dollar spent in the SMS campaign, Carl’s Jr. generated $14 in new sales. Try to create something like this for your brand. Think of a limited time promotion and choose SMS to inform your customers. A further advantage is the fact that, unlike traditional campaigns, the results can be measured right away: if a queue is forming a few hours after sending the SMS, you hit the target.

#4 Kiehl’s and SMS integrated communication

The dermo-cosmetics brand, Kiehl’s, created a campaign which integrated e-mails and SMS. Subscribers to its newsletter received an e-mail which invited them to try the new SMS service to receive discounts and promotions. For a six-month period, customers who activated the service by sending a text message with the keyword “Kiehls”, received up to 3 specific offers a month based on their geographical location. The results: over 73% of people who signed up for this service made a purchase after receiving an SMS. And 81% completed a survey with useful suggestions to improve the campaign. In this case, the winning idea was that of integrating the use of SMS with other communication tools such as e-mails. In addition to increasing the visibility of your promotion, you can grow your contact database. Start from the e-mail addresses or phone numbers that you already have and invite people to fill in the missing data in exchange for a discount.

#5 BMW and the right time

The automaker, BMW, created a multimedia campaign to remind people of the importance of changing their tires during winter. This campaign focused on those who bought a car between March and September, considering that they might need winter tires. 1,200 customers received a series of MMS with a product proposal, and they were invited to contact the nearest authorized BMW tire retailer. Over 30% of the customers who received the message bought winter tires and this campaign had bumped up the company’s revenue by over 110,000 pounds.

There are two lessons to be drawn from this case. Firstly, target analysis and campaign segmentation: if you have a very large database or a very specific promotion, do not waste resources. Identify your target and send the promotion only to them. Secondly, the strategic use of time: make good use of the SMS’ immediacy to send your promotion at the appropriate time.

Are you ready to create your SMS campaign?
Did the stories above give you some interesting ideas for your mobile strategy? Once you’ve come up with an idea for your SMS campaign, you have to rely on a good system to send your messages. There are many interesting alternatives on the web, such as systems to create mobile sites and apps online with a built-in SMS sending tool. In this way, you can go mobile with just a single tool and carry out your campaigns on the same platform, via SMS and other means.

This year 100 billion dollars will be spent on mobile advertising. If you’re currently not investing on any SMS campaigns, it’s not too late. You still have time to catch up and take an action. If you’re already doing this, what results have you achieved so far? Can you run your SMS campaigns more effectively?

Silvio Porcellana is the CEO and Founder of mob.is.it the online tool over 1,000 agencies and professionals use to build mobile websites and native apps for customers worldwide. From his retreat in the Monferrato Hills in North West Italy, he bootstraps companies, writes about web and mobile marketing, and helps customers succeed online. Read more from Silvio at mob.is.it blog.

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Keyword Research: Best Practice You Never Used

Business owners, if you’re making money online sure as fate you know how crucial competitor research is. Beating your competitors while ranking higher for the right keywords is what you want.

When we’re doing keyword research we take data from analyzing SERP’s top sites from our niche. This ensures we’re targeting the right keywords.

Simple. But only in theory. In reality, even if giants like Amazon, eBay, Wikipedia aren’t your competitors, they almost certainly will rank higher for “your” keywords because of the enormous sizes of their keyword pools.

Here’s one top technique how even a small business can take on giants.

Page Vs. Page Keyword Analysis

Some tools can perform back to back comparison of domains. This can be used to see which keywords competing sites have in common. But what if there’ a smarter way benefiting from your competitors that requires considerably less time?

If you focus on pushing your single pages to the top, you’ll see great results far quicker than putting tremendous efforts in general site’s promotion.

Getting a list of keywords a single page has is not a new thing, but identifying competing pages for your target page is something we’ve never seen before. Why? Because there simply hasn’t been a tool for that.

Serpstat’s Page vs. Page analysis is a new feature that allows you to define which pages from the top of search are ranked for your targeted keywords but what’s really great about it is that you don’t even have to open the pages to analyze their keywords and get the most out of them; Serpstat does that for you by matching keywords from your page with keywords from pages that you’re competing with and gives you a list of missing keywords.

Missing keywords are a goldmine for those who want to expand their keyword pools, it’s a list of keywords that you don’t use, but your competitors use on pages similar to yours.

Because websites are getting bigger and SERPs are getting more competitive, it’s about time we started treating pages like websites. If you want to promote a page, you have to analyze that page as well as the pages it’s competing with.

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267 The Ultimate Guide to Protecting Your Blog and Digital Empire

Protect your Blog and Digital Empire

Are you protecting your blog?

Do you feel protected against hacking and identity theft?

In this digital world, we are more susceptible to these things than ever. But in this detailed post, I will share tips for minimizing your vulnerability.

What’s the big deal?

I remember the first time I was hacked. Someone hacked my WordPress site so that all of my traffic was redirected to a spammy site.

I never figured out who did it, but it was a pain in the *** to get fixed.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t my last incident with the malicious part of the web. And there are countless examples of even worse things happening to bloggers.

When I left my job to be a full-time blogger/entrepreneur, I knew that I had to take online security VERY seriously.

If someone messes with my digital life, they are messing with my family’s livelihood. And technology makes it easy for them to do that.

Fortunately, technology makes it easy for me to be proactive rather than reactive. So let’s get to it.

Protect you email

Spammy Emails

This is the biggest point of weakness for most people, and many people don’t realize it. If someone gets access to your email account, they can gain access to many of your other accounts.

All it takes is for them to go to Facebook (or many other services) and use the “Lost Password” feature. Then they can go to your email, change your password and they now have access to your account.

Think social media profiles, bank accounts, and any other service that uses your email as a verification tool.

So here are some tips for protecting your email.

Use Gmail

When it comes to email security, Gmail is on top of it. They are very proactive and have features that help to make you more secure. Yes, there are other email services that do a good job, but this is one that I can definitely recommend.

Never download ANYTHING if you don’t know exactly what it is

If you get an email from someone (even a friend) with an attachment and you don’t know what the attachment is, don’t download it.

Contact them using a method other than email and verify the content of that attachment.

Also, you can verify an attachment by double-checking the extension of that attachment. For example, if it’s an image, the extension would be .jpg or .png. Only download trusted extensions. NEVER download .zip files unless you can verify the contents first.

Turn on 2-factor authentication

2-Step Authentication

This is a security feature used by many services (like Gmail). It requires you to use another component in addition to your password to verify that you are who you say you are.

For example, after entering your username and password, the service can send you a text message with a code that you have to enter to verify your identity.

If a hacker gets access to your account information and tries to log in, they won’t be able to do so unless they have your phone.

A great service for managing 2-factor authentication is Authy. It can be installed on all of your devices and generates security codes that expire every 30 seconds. These codes can be used as the second factor for logging into your accounts.

Listen to the episode for more information on how to use Authy.

Use a Password Manager

Use Password Managers

There are a number of very secure password managing programs out there that will generate strong passwords and then store and encrypt them for you.

These services are 1Password, Dashlane, LastPass and others.

Use one of these services to manage all of your passwords. Here are my tips for using these programs.

Create a strong master password that you won’t forget.

When you use these services, it will have you create a master password that you will use to access the program that stores all of your passwords.

This is the only password you will have to remember. Make it a good one, and don’t forget it.

Create unique, strong passwords for every service.

Try not to use the same password for multiple services. If someone happens to stumble onto one of your passwords, this will minimize the chances of them getting into another one of your accounts.

Install the password manager on all your devices.

This will make it easy for you to access your passwords regardless of what device you’re using. All of the good services are cross-platform, so you shouldn’t have a problem with this.

Change your passwords regularly.

I recommend changing your passwords (especially to key accounts) at least once every three months. This is just an additional measure to be on the safe side.

Never Store Passwords in your Browser

No browser auto-fill or auto-save

While browsers do have some security features, it is not a good idea to store your passwords (or other sensitive information) in your browser.

I recommend disabling auto-filling and saving. Instead, use one of the Password managers I mentioned earlier to manage all of the auto-filling functions.

They do more than just store passwords, and since their business is built around keeping information secure, it’s much safer to bet on them than on your browser.

Never send Sensitive Info via Email or Text

No confidential info

I don’t care who you are sharing the info with or how trusted they are, don’t do it. It’s not that you shouldn’t trust them, it’s that you shouldn’t trust technology.

A great service to use for sending sensitive information is One-Time Secret. It allows you to create a link that can only be used once before self-destructing.

With that link, you can share any information you need to share without the risk of someone retrieving it by hacking someone else’s email.

Create Unique Accounts for Every Service

When registering for a site, you are often given the option to log in via Facebook and give the service limited access to your Facebook account (for example).

Try to avoid this as much as possible. Instead, create a unique account by giving your email and generating a strong password (using your password manager) and keep these accounts separate.

Keep Everything Updated

Update Regularly

One of the downsides of technology is the fact that there are almost always some unplanned security vulnerabilities that make software vulnerable to attack.

Fortunately, if the software (or service) you are using is built and maintained by good developers, they are proactive about finding these vulnerabilities and fixing them.

As a result, software developers usually come up with updates to their software on a regular basis.

One of the ways to make sure that your software is as secure as possible is to update your software whenever there’s a new update.

This goes for WordPress, any apps you may use (on any devices), and even your operating system.

Listen to the episode to hear about the potential downsides to doing this.

Have a Strong Backup System

Let’s assume you are doing all of the things I’ve mentioned so far. That’s great. However, you are not 100% secure. In fact, 100% security doesn’t exist.

There’s still a chance that you’ll get hacked, or that something will go wrong with your WordPress site.

In the event that something bad happens to your site, you want to make sure you have a strong backup system. You can always revert to what your site was like before the incident, and then everything goes back to normal (in most cases).

Check with your hosting company.

This is the first thing I recommend for you to check. Depending on the hosting service you use for your blog, they might already have a robust backup system. If that’s the case, you’re good to go.

Use WordPress-specific backup systems.

If your hosting company doesn’t have a robust backup system, I highly recommend for you to check out the following WordPress plugins/services:

• VaultPress – This is a service that was created by Automattic, the company behind WordPress. It provides a continuous backup of your WordPress site that enables you to easily revert to an older version of your site at a click of a button. It’s the easiest system out there, but there’s a monthly fee associated with it. They make the $5/month pricing a little tricky to find, but you can find it here.
• Backup Buddy – This is a WordPress plugin that accomplishes the same thing as VaultPress, but it’s a little trickier to setup. You can backup your site to Dropbox, your own computer, or other locations. Also, it’s a one-time fee to purchase it and then you’re good to go.

Get Business Insurance

Get Insurance

If you are running a business, it’s important to have business insurance. Liability insurance protects you in the case of a lawsuit and property insurance protects your property and equipment.

The service I use for this is Hiscox. The last thing you want is for someone to sue you and you lose it all. Or for someone to rob you and you be out of business. Look into business insurance to be on the safe side.

Miscellaneous Security Tips

I’m going to leave you with two final security tips.

Tip 1 – Use the WordFence Security plugin. This plugin has a bunch of security features for your WordPress site, including two-factor authentication. Check it out.

WordFence

 

Tip 2 – Use MacID (Mac only). This is a neat app that I just found that connects you iPhone to your Mac in a way that if you walk away from you Mac, it will automatically lock. To get access to your Mac, you can either enter your password or use the fingerprint reader on your phone. It’s pretty slick.

Mac ID

I’d like to hear from you

Where do you stand when it comes to security. Are you already using some of these tips? Do you feel vulnerable? Let me know in the comments area below.

Resources Mentioned

• Authy – A great service for managing 2-factor authentication
• Password managers:
  • 1Password
  • Dashlane
  • LastPass
• One-Time Secret – A great service to use for sending sensitive information
• WordPress specific backup services:
  • VaultPress
  • Backup Buddy
• Hiscox – offers business insurance
• Miscellaneous security tools:
  • WordFence Security
  • MacID

Infographic

Protecting your Blog

The post 267 The Ultimate Guide to Protecting Your Blog and Digital Empire appeared first on Become A Blogger by Leslie Samuel.

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Infographic: PayPal vs. Stripe

If you sell stuff online, you probably already used PayPal at some point. It was one of the first online payment solutions that worked across the globe and was easy enough to integrate with any type of website.

Despite being really easy to integrate, PayPal is not that flexible, which irritates some webmasters.

Over the last few years many competing solutions poped in the market, and Stripe is probably the most popular one.

Now if you are in doubt regarding which would be better for your site, the guys from HostingFacts.com created the infographic below to facilitate your comparisson. Enjoy.

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Legal Rights in Your Video Soundtrack — 5 Questions to Ask Yourself

Choosing music for your video can be a tough choice and what can make that choice even more challenging are the legal considerations that come along with it. Unfortunately, this can be a grey and muddy area in terms of understanding what is and isn’t legal and fair regarding the rights to your video’s soundtrack.

My goal is to help clarify and perhaps simplify an area of video production that is riddled with confusion and misinformation. Let’s begin by figuring out how we get a piece of music we like into our video without facing litigation!

How Can I Use An Artist’s Music In My Video? Permission vs. Public Domain

In most cases (except for public domain, but more on that later), when using a piece of music in your video you will need permission from the rights holders. Who are these rights holders? This is the artist, record label, and publisher that own the copyright to the intellectual property for the song you want.

Usually, the publishing company will administer the rights to gain access to the copyright of the composition/lyrics to a song and the record label will hold the rights to the master recording of that song. Sometimes the publisher and record label are the same entity and other times they’re separate companies.

It’s important to know that when licensing a song you need to make sure that your license covers both the composition/lyrics and the sound recording. These can be two separate licenses.

Permission comes in the form of a legal document called a synchronization or ‘sync’ license. The sync license is the ticket to using your desired track without legal ramifications.

Before contacting rights holders for permission you should be able to answer the following questions:

• Term: How long the license is valid for?
• License usage: This is gauged by how many employees are at your company
• License type: Online promotional video, TV advertising commercial, etc.
• Territory: Where it will be played?

The only time you won’t need a sync license is if the music you want to use is in the public domain (PD for short). “Any song or musical work published in 1922 or earlier is in the Public Domain in the USA,” according to PD Info. This covers the compositions and lyrics, however, sound recordings are not always PD in the United States unless their creators submitted them. In the case where a sound recording isn’t PD you would need permission from the rights holder of that sound recording (most likely the record label).  Here is a resource of music that is currently in the Public Domain.

How Do I Obtain Permission?

So, we know that we need permission to use someone’s music in our video. The challenge is finding out who the rights holders are and how to contact them.

Permission to use a sound recording:

To get permission for a sound recording you have to contact the record label that owns the master recording. A quick Google search will tell you this info or looking at the back of the album (old school!).

Contacting the label is as easy as visiting their website. Most labels make it clear in their ‘Contact Us’ section which e-mail address you should contact for licensing requests.

Permission to use composition & lyrics:

The rights holder of the composition and lyrics are not always the same as the record label and this information can be harder to find.

To track down which publishing company owns the rights to your requested song, you’ll have to visit the websites of the three major performing rights organizations. All publishers and songwriters will belong to one of these three performing rights organizations: ASCAP, BMI and SESAC.

What Are The Alternatives? Using Royalty-Free Music In Your Video

Due to shrinking production budgets, most companies don’t have the funds to license popular songs by well-known artists for every campaign they run. A much more economic solution is royalty-free music, also know as ‘stock music’. The term royalty-free means that you (the content creator) won’t have to pay out royalties every time the video plays on YouTube or even broadcast TV.

There are several stock music libraries out there with huge catalogues of music ready for licensing. No need to worry about getting permission, that’s been taken care of! The copyright and master recording have been pre-cleared by the rights holders.

The quality of music in stock libraries is high and getting higher everyday with today’s most relevant sounds. When you find your desired track on the stock music site of your choice, click “license now”. You’ll then have to choose the license that makes sense for you project and you’re on your way to having music in your video.

Here is a list of some of my favourite music libraries:

• Bedtracks
• Music Dealers
• Marmoset Music
• Premium Beat
• Audio Jungle

What About Fair Use? It Wouldn’t Be Fair to Leave it Out

Under some circumstances it’s possible to use an artist’s song in your video without permission from rights holders. This type of usage falls under the Fair Use provision of the Copyright Law.  This area can get really grey, so be careful and realistic as to how you’re using the music. Ways that music can be used under fair use:

1. News Reporting
2. Criticism
3. Comment
4. Scientific research
5. Teaching
6. Parody

It’s important to note that if the rights holders (the artist, publishing company, record label, etc.) disagree with your use than you may be facing lawsuit and damages. Yikes!

What Will Happen If I Use Copyrighted Music Without Permission?

I do not at all recommend using copyrighted music in your video without the proper permission, but should it happen it’s important to know what you could be facing.

If you’re lucky, nothing will happen. The severity of punishment depends on if you’re making money from the video. The more money being earned the higher the risk. Here are some things that could happen:

• The audio in your video is muted.
• YouTube account receives a strike. (3 and you’re out.)
• Ads are placed on your video with revenue going to the artist/publisher.
• The right’s holder(s) of the work will file legal action against you.

Thanks for reading. If you’re ever unsure about having the proper permissions just remember: when in doubt, leave it out!

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4 Tips to Improve Your Google Indexing

As you probably know, if people can’t find your website on Google it might as well not exist! Google is by far the largest search engine, and getting organic traffic from it is paramount to make any website popular, be it a blog, an eCommerce or a web application.

The problem is that getting Google to index your site correctly and efficiently is not a simple task. Below you’ll find 4 tips that can help you with that.

1. Let Google Know You Exist

Google has a submission form that you can use to inform it about your new site. Don’t!

The best way to get Google to discover and index your site is to get a backlink from a reputable website. This is more efficient than the tool because any spammer can use the tool, and they do!

If you want more information on this topic, check out this article from Neil Patel detailing how to get Google to crawl your site.

2. Optimize on-site factors

You need to make sure that your on-site factors are optimized if you want Google to crawl your site correctly and to index all your pages and posts. This includes:

– Correct HTML code
– Correct permalink structure
– Efficient internal linking
– Sitemap

Here’s an SEO checklist you can use for this purpose.

3. More authority links

Good search rankings and organic traffic comes from two main factors: quality content and quality links. Lots of quality content and lots of quality links.

Focus on getting links from related websites, and preferably from authoritative ones. A link from an authoritative website inside your niche is worth 1000 non-relevant links from smaller sites.

4. Monitor your rankings

You can’t improve what you can’t measure. If you want to improve your indexing and search rankings over time, you need to measure your performance over time. You could do it manually, but it would very time consuming.

A better way to do it is to use a tool and automate the process. This post from Cyfe explains how to accomplish that.

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The Ultimate List of Feminine WordPress Themes

FEMININE VIBE

The new age successful bloggers and online entrepreneurs are mostly women. Women entrepreneurs and female bloggers from across the globe are no longer new to the internet and a lot of the most successful web presences are highly attributed to the hard work, passion, and skills of women. That is why you will see the web rife with too many feminine themed blogs or websites. This raises the ultimate question of how you can add some feminine ‘vibe’ to your business, fashion, food, or other online website.

Simple. The answer is to look for the best feminine wordpress themes online. There are a lot of feminine wordpress themes you can find online, each affording options that offer more power and functionality, while at the same time allowing your target audience to feel that whole feminine ‘vibe.’ This is exactly the main reason why we have put together this ultimate list of feminine wordpress themes for you. Continue reading below and check each one out.

Even though wordpress was not the first ever blogging site established, it was able to penetrate the market and soon enough became one of the best sites in just a short period of time. Over time, wordpress became synonymous with the term ‘blogging.’ WordPress became the leading choice by many serious bloggers all over the globe. Moreover, it was able to syndicate its blogging script for other websites and other web server companies to utilize for their many online endeavors. In just a few years, it has evolved to become one of the most downloaded blogging platforms worldwide.

As if this writing, over 100,000 new wordpress blogs are created and launched every 24 hours. WordPress platform manages over 70% of the leading content management systems around. In contrast, Drupal has only a 20% share of the content management systems market, while Joomla holds approximately 6% of the market. Presently, there are over 18 million and counting websites on the web that are powered by wordpress.

One main reason why wordpress is the well-loved CMS to date is its ease of use, and customization features. Even a non-techie web user can easily set and configure it with the help of themes and plugins available online. In 2015 alone, there were roughly 120 million themes downloaded from WordPress.org online. An avid wordpress user knows for a fact that themes are the backbone of any wordpress site. The use of these themes makes each wordpress blog distinct and unique in its own way. Everything surrounding
the look and feel of any website may be altered and modified to match one’s preference with the help of plugins and themes. Most of these themes are offered at absolutely no cost to you. You can however look for a premium theme, but, these often have limited features, hence the reason for the free distribution.

Some Considerations When Choosing The Best Feminine WordPress Themes:

Before we delve deeper into the essence of choosing the best possible feminine wordpress themes for your website, let us first take a good look at what wordpress really is, and likewise check into some amazing facts about this wonderful platform.

Basically, wordpress is a 100% free CMS platform that enables anyone to come up with their very own blog and conveniently manage them through its intuitive and innovative dashboard panel. It is a combination CMS and an open source blogging software that operates through a web hosting server. Here are some interesting facts to note about the wordpress platform:

• Approximately 25% of the websites around the world are managed by wordpress
• There are over 70 million websites that are presently powered by wordpress
• WordPress is the world’s most loved and popular blogging system
• It is currently used by more than 20% of the world’s top 1,000,000 internet sites all across the globe.

The Importance of Choosing The Right Feminine WordPress Themes:

Contrary to popular belief, the main purpose of a website theme is not basically to allow a website to look grand and flashy. A theme extends beyond that notion. Themes are meant to enhance the look and feel of a website, however it does not all stop there. Your main priority when selecting a feminine wordpress theme is to look for one which will have the most impact to your visitors and give them a lasting good impression bout you and your blog. That alone, will let your visitors know what your blogs is all about, and why it matters.

One good example is, if your website is meant for women’s fashion, you will not want a theme that suggests your website has nothing to do with anything fashionable, instead you would definitely want to choose one that screams otherwise. For all intents and purposes get a feminine wordpress themes. One that truly and clearly demonstrates what is the nature of your website.

Furthermore, you have to make sure that the feminine wordpress themes that you finally choose will flow effortlessly all throughout your website. Simply put, you do not want different web pages clashing with each other or any one of them. They must all flow together and be one – consistent.

The Ultimate List of Feminine WordPress Themes:

Without further ado, we are bringing you the ultimate must-have list of feminine wordpress themes that you should use for your feminine blogs today. Here are a few:

MH Magazine Feminine Theme

This feminine wordpress theme is magazine-type and comes in various shades and tones of pinks that you can try. You can however try other color combi If you are not fond of pinks. But, this is a good theme celebrating beauty and our femininity. This is the perfect theme for those who have fashion, beauty, cosmetics, or lifestyle themed blogs. Anything that covers female topics, the MH Magazine feminine wordpress theme is the best pick for you. The theme is 100% responsive and works on various devices.

Download | Demo

Dorothy WP Theme

We like this particular theme for any female-centric blogs, regardless of whether they are for lifestyle, fashion, cosmetics, etc. It works well with crafting photos and the theme comes with built in high res images which makes it more appealing. The whole theme is very responsive and comes with highly customizable colors and it is so beautiful you can use it on other blogs for your branding. You can add some logo and or background image to add some personalized touch to the whole theme.

Download| Demo

The Beautiful

This theme lives up to its name. It is a beautifully crafted feminine wordpress theme from StudioPress. It is made of Genesis, and so it is one of the most customizable feminine wordpress theme you can come across with. The beautiful wordpress theme has a distinct feminine touch to it. The theme comes with a really elegant and clean white background, crisp red fonts and some cute images of women and flowers. Easily integrate your social media accounts with its stylish buttons and monetize thru the ad space at the sidebar.

Download | Demo

The Gleam

The Gleam feminine wordpress theme looks great for any fashion or photography portfolio site and it comes with easy to use navigational tools and not too many design that gets people distracted very easily. It comes with a full-screen gallery that offers a great place to show off your fashionable photos and creation. It is 100% responsive, fast, and very fluid. One standout attribute is the background image that you can customize from your dashboard. Get to upload various photos for every single web page of your blog today with Gleam.

Download | Demo

The Fashion Blog Theme

This is one hot fashion blog theme is this one from the popular Nimbus themes library offering you various feminine touch to your website. You will see the amazing contrast between whites and pinks which compliments high resolution images, making it a great feminine wordpress theme you can use for your feminine blog.

Download| Demo

Nimbus Street Style

With the increasing demand for feminine wordpress themes, this amazing theme was given birth to. The theme comes with very clean lines, colorful hues, and chiefly a white background for a fresh yet elegant look for your feminine blog. To begin with, this theme has several social media integration options so visitors can easily share their content among friends and loved ones on Twitter or Facebook. Discover your flair for creativity as you easily customize this theme with the help of its custom CSS attributes that you can use depending on the theme look and feel that you like.

Download| Demo

The Girly Theme

No words needed, the theme says it all! You will gauge from the pink hues, lace edges, and roses, all of them provides for a theme that simply shouts femininity. The responsive setup works well on any handhelds, and you may use the theme for anything from portfolio work, or pure blogging. You can easily scroll through your content with its pretty slider and the support is just superb. You can get 24/7 support from WooCommerce.

Download
| Demo

The Tilala

The Tilala theme is best made for women bloggers. However, it does not go overboard with design or super bright colors. With Tilala is a theme with minimalist look, thanks to the white backhround and spacious page. It’s navigational menu is super friendly and the header screams femininity. It comes with very elegant design and cute icons. The theme offers cute social media icons for integrating with social media, and the responsive design is very ideal for those who want a responsive platform.

Download | Demo

Isabelle Girly WP Themes

Rejoice if you are a female blogger! This feminine wordpress theme sports a light pink hue and a minimalist background making it very pleasant and elegant. The wordpress theme comes with social media icons that come in pink shades and the header logo makes it a very good theme for feminine blogs.

Download| Demo

Marilyn WP Theme

A theme named ‘Marilyn,’ surely is feminine theme that’s best for women bloggers out there. It’s simple and very easy to use, perfect for fashion, design, and cosmetics blog. The Marilyn theme comes with a slider that reveals photos about your blog and it comes with a nicely built newsletter form for your readers and it is 100% responsive too.

Download| Demo

Amalie Theme

If you want to show off your content in a unique way, use the Amalie theme. It has a nice header image with a CTA (Call To Action) text that ushers visitors to more valuable reads. This theme is meant for female bloggers and is made around the Twenty Fifteen theme. The designer made it feminine with its cute hues and photos.

Download| Demo

The Kelly

Kelly is a feminine wordpress theme, it is simple and responsive. It is ideal for those who want a simple yet feminine blog. It is great for party or craft blogs. If you can see the demo of this theme, a lot of the colors are yellow and pink; however you can customize the shades to make them fit your specific brand. It has a responsive layout that looks perfect on smartphones, tablets, etc. The logo area works well with the background. Its custom menu enables you to switch pages or links and the social media icons are customizable too.

Download | Demo

Olivie Girly Theme

Olivie wordpress theme is beautiful and elegant and it helps you create your fashion, beauty, and lifestyle blog easily. The theme is responsive and guaranteed to work on all devices, plus it is highly color customizable in case you want to make it a lot less girly. Add your own custom logo for your own branding, and you can make modifications on the menu to help people around your website. One great feature about this olivie theme is that it comes fully packed with social media icons that help a lot of users who are fond of using social media networks.

Download| Demo

Jacqueline WP Theme

One popular feminine wordpress theme is the Jacqueline theme. It is ideal for those who are serious business bloggers. Nevertheless it has all the feminine elements that reveal to your audience that you have a feminine side. It’s a great theme with a big logo area, a newletter form for signup, and lots of white space for easy reading. It is fluid and responsive, works on any device. The color scheme is highly customizable and does not compromise your site and branding. Add in some header design to personalize and some background photos easily. You can also add a sticky menu on top of the site so everyone is led where to go next.

Download| Demo

The Modern Blogger Pro Theme

It runs on the Genesis platform and is a 100% all femme themes. Modern Blogger Pro wordpress theme makes any website stand out from the rest of the pack. Thanks to its cute polka dot header and pink shades. It’s made especially for female bloggers; however you can transform this theme into any type of website. The layout options allow you to have some personality in your design, and the custom background meshes well for branding your website. Modify around the custom header, and make use of the featured images to allow visitors to click through blog posts.

Download| Demo

Carraway

Those who love feminine themes will surely delight in the Carraway theme. It is all femme, responsive and very fluid. You can also customize colors. All you ever need in one place, get this feminine wordpress themes now.

Download| Demo

The Meadowbrook

If you love photography and yet wanted to remain the feminine vibe and personality of your blog, then this feminine wordpress theme is ideal for you. The Meadowbrook is a chic and feminine theme that is best for women entrepreneurs and bloggers. Customize your website with its settings, custom colors, you can also add some custom fonts, and more. The theme enables you to customize the design of the site and you can even see the changes in real time. Now, customizing your wordpress site has never been so easy.

Download| Demo

Chickaboom WP Theme

Chikaboom is hip and cool feminine wordpress theme. It is a standout from among the girly wordpress themes out there. The design is flexible, straightforward, and screams feminininity all the way. It is loaded with amazing customization options and is very easy to use. Select from the display and enjoy. This theme enables you to customize design of your blog.

Download| Demo

Mary Kate WP Theme

Mary Kate feminine wordpress theme shows off the dainty and delicate side of women. If your blog is all about anything ‘girly’ this theme is perfect for your blog.

Download| Demo

The Honeycrisp

The Honeycrisp is the latest girly wordpress theme from Angie Makes. It offers a light and feminine look that is loaded with the greatest customization features and is very easy to use. At the backend you will see amazing controls, colors, and the ability to configure your whole website, shortcodes, sidebars, and more.

Download| Demo

The DeVoe

DeVoe is the best solution for your fashion or entertainment blog. It is easy to configure, fluid, and responsive. View DeVoe efficiently in whatever device – smartphone or tablet, it works fine!

Download| Demo

Zorka WP Theme

Zorka is best for the fashionable. This theme from Woo Commerce exudes chic, cool, and fashionable theme that is perfect for a fashion-inspired or lifestyle blog. Feminine does not always have to be pink!

Download| Demo

So, there you have it. Take your pick and get started blogging. Girl power rules!

Wanna learn how to make more money with your website? Check the Online Profits training program!

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The Attention Economy: Why Marketers Are Killing, Not Capturing, Attention

There’s a principle in economics that lies at the heart of how the entire economy works: scarcity.

Scarcity is the simple concept of something being in short supply. It’s the idea that there is not enough supply of some resource to meet the demand of that resource.

We face scarcity when there are no bananas left at the grocery store, when we wait in line for hours to snag the newest iPhone, or when we want to go to yoga and walk the dog, but there’s only 1 hour left in the evening. Scarcity is everywhere. We even face scarcity when we want our partner’s attention, but they’re all-consumed in their devices.

As marketers, we face scarcity when we want the attention of our audience, but are competing with thousands of other marketers, companies, people, and things for that finite resource.

While all this may sound a little grim, and like we’re in a constant battle for, well … everything. Scarcity isn’t a bad thing. It’s what makes the world go round, it’s one of the principles that drives our economy and how prices for goods and services are set. Without scarcity, no one would ever pay for anything. There would be an infinite supply of everything, no one could make money, which means we couldn’t exchange it for goods and services. But then, why would we need to, if there was an endless supply of everything? Theoretically, no one would go hungry either, but I digress.

One thing’s for sure: the nature of scarce resources is nothing to be afraid of. Even when it comes to our audience’s attention.

The Scarcity of Attention

In recent years, the explosion of information at our fingertips has led to the ultimate battle for attention. There are a wealth of attention demands that didn’t previously exist: advertisers want your attention before you watch the next video on YouTube; your friends want your attention on SnapChat, Facebook, and text; and your colleagues and every marketer out there want your attention in your inbox.

But there’s only so much attention to go around; whether it’s yours or your prospects’.

“We each have only 24 hours in the day.  Where we choose to allocate this attention will increasingly determine who creates economic value and who destroys economic value.” – John Hagel, Co-Chairman, Centre for the Edge, Deloitte

Unfortunately, the recent incline in attention scarcity doesn’t only come from these increasing demands on our attention … it also comes from a decline in supply, as well. That decline comes in the form of attention spans, which has fallen from an average attention span of 12 seconds to 8 seconds in the last 15 years. This is, more than likely, due to the increasing demands on an average adult’s attention all day long.

We are facing a gigantic attention scarcity.

But marketers need attention. Without it, you can’t explain all the pain points you solve and you certainly can’t move them down the funnel.

So what do we do? What’s the secret to securing the last bunch of bananas when there are five other potassium-starved shoppers approaching at exactly the same speed as you? Or (maybe more relevant to your current situation) capture your prospects’ attention?

Do you scream louder? Or more frequently? That’s what most marketers do. But most marketers are looking at it all wrong, and actually exacerbating the problem.

Why Marketers Are Looking at it All Wrong

You’re working so hard to drive more pipeline and catch as much attention as you can possible get that you’re actually, maybe, potentially (no really), making the problem worse. Not better.

Just take email as an example: the average person receives 85 business emails per day. That’s a lot. And marketing emails are part of that. But those marketing emails only see click-through rates of 1.5%.

That means that when we email 10,000 people, 150 click through, on average. And we’ve come to accept this, somehow.

But in order to meet our pipeline goals, we need more than 150 interactions with our content, so we compensate. Marketers send more emails so they can boost the opportunity for engagement with potential customers.

But more emails, means more attention demand in the short-term, and less attention supply in the long-term, which puts us right back where we started.

In other words, we end up with a cyclical process called the Attention Resource Cycle:

The presence of competing messages and naturally low attention spans is feeding itself and it isn’t going away any time soon. Sending more and more messages just adds to the problem. So is the answer going radio silent? Of course not, because you need attention before you can even begin to hope to drive pipeline.

The answer lies in how you are trying to capture that attention.

How Marketers Can Conquer Attention Scarcity

It’s critical now, more than ever, to look for new ways to compete by getting more out of each contact with your audience. Look to produce high-impact communications that grab attention with true interest from your audience. This means you’re not looking to use gimmicky “re: … “ or “FWD: …” subject line stuff, no ALL CAPS, or “act now or else we’ll steal your Cheerios”. You’re looking for more.

The ideal attention-grabbing marketing communications piece follows this equation:

But with the current shortage of attention supply and all-time high of attention demand, many marketers are struggling to achieve even the first part of this equation.

The answer lies in a person’s name.

Gone are the days of marketing to personas as a whole. I work in content marketing and surely one of you reading works in content marketing, but chances are your job and my job are different in some ways. And more importantly, you and me as people, are probably very different.

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How B2B Marketers Can Drive More Pipeline with Personalized Video

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Email address*

First Name*

Last Name*

Company*

Position*

Phone*

* Indicates required field

So why would marketers think that something that grabs and holds your attention would do the same for me?

2016 is the time for hyper-personalized marketing. It’s time to treat you, me, and every prospect as individuals.

Personalized marketing first originated with names in emails. Remember when it was a novelty to use “Hi <firstname>” and see your own name at the beginning of an email? Your own name!

That concept was so wildly successful because people crave personal connection and recognition. In fact, a personalized email is still more effective than a generic one today. According to Aberdeen, personalized emails see 14% higher click-throughs than non-personalized emails.

And all the fuzzy-feels seem to trickle through to on-page conversions as well with 10% higher conversions than non-personalized emails. But there’s more to personalization than just merging someone’s name in an email, offering them a new piece of content based on their job title, or even customizing a web page based on their industry.

Today, there’s a great trend towards individualization or hyper-personalization.

This is where content is truly customized for each individual person – on a mass scale – and brings them into the story you’re telling. It’s where the entire experience with your brand feels truly like you’re getting to know your prospects and building a one-to-one relationship.

The future of marketing … your future … depends on this ability to build a connection and hold your share of the attention supply.

The post The Attention Economy: Why Marketers Are Killing, Not Capturing, Attention appeared first on Vidyard.

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6 Strategies to Build Scalable Business

One can often hear people talking about scalability of a business and investors’ willingness to put their money in startups that show a potential for it. But what exactly is a scalable business?

In short, a scalable business is the one that can multiply its revenues with minimal incremental increase in costs. Take a mobile app, for example – most costs are associated with its development, after it is finished any number of copies can be created at little to no expense.

So, how does one go about organizing a scalable business?

1. Maximum Automation

A scalable business by definition cannot require a massive amount of labor. If in order to grow you have to drastically increase the number of staff, it is not a scalable business. Which means that you should start looking for the ways to automate the entire process from the get go, before you even start considering actual scaling. Constantly be on the lookout for methods to supplement the work processes with software and decreasing the number of personnel. Yes, software may incur upfront costs, sometimes rather impressive, but it will save resources in the long run and increase scalability.

2. Outsourcing

If you want to build your company’s presence in different countries or cities, there is a wide range of tasks you can outsource to agencies. The first step is to separate tasks you can delegate to one global agency and tasks that are to be done locally (for example, event management, logistics, facilities etc). According to Luckyposting.com, it’s a good idea to outsource all you marketing activities to one global agency, as it will be best aware of your marketing advantages, competitors and challenging. But unfortunately it is obvious that you need different local agencies for a range of other tasks.

3. Franchising

You may use initial stages of building up your business as a demonstration of your product viability, after which it may be worthwhile to investigate the possibilities for franchising. After you have the proof that your business model works, franchising may allow you to scale faster and more effectively than by trying to do everything by yourself.

4. Licensing

Similarly, licensing your business process to already existing players in other markets may be a better choice than trying to take them head-on. If your startup is your only source of income, it is especially important consideration, because you may simply lack resources to enter another market and do battle with companies that have already established a foothold there.

5. Attract Investor Money

Unlike businesses aimed at growth, which start with low expenses and low incomes that grow more or less hand in hand, scalable businesses often require high upfront expenses and, in case of good planning and quality idea, can increase their incomes exponentially with minimal additional costs. Which means that you are most likely to need money from investors, and in order to do it, you will have to first validate your business model by means of MVP (minimum viable product). Show that your idea really is working, that it can attract paying customer and be scaled, and investors will come.

6. Making Yourself Redundant

Ideally, a scalable business is a business that works and develops without your direct participation. It doesn’t mean that everything should be automated (it is impossible). It means that you should make it your goal to stop working in your business while freeing up your time and resources to working on it. Which means finding and hiring a small, tightly knit team of professionals, trimming the fat by removing redundant processes, outsourcing everything but core activities and so on.

As an endnote it would be appropriate to mention that not all business ideas are scalable. Service and consulting industries, for example, can hardly be defined as scalable, because they are very hard to automate. The same goes for innumerable small businesses scattered across the Internet – one may think that a company that operates exclusively via the web has everything it needs to be scalable, but very often something stands in the way – perhaps the market isn’t large enough, perhaps its owner simply doesn’t want it.

So, if you aim at building a scalable business model, you should very carefully consider the area in which you are going to work.

Kate Graaf is an experienced content marketer and blogger. She loves writing about business, technology and entrepreneurship. She is a co-founder of content marketing agency Luckyposting.com.

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Old Irish Blurs The Lines of Virtual Reality in this Incredible Video

Take any major technological advancement of the past hundred years, and chances are you’ll find that there are three stages to success. Whether it’s the printing press or Instagram, here’s how it typically works: first, the early adopters take a chance. Then, mainstream acceptance comes and celebrities get on board. Step three? The marketers arrive!

Virtual reality, long the dream of every kid that grew up in the 1980s, has become more than just … well … reality. It’s not only achievable, but beautiful, as these examples from the Wall Street Journal show.

With all the focus on virtual reality, the question of what happens to real life, face-to-face connections in marketing is becoming a bigger issue. If your prospects can take part in a virtual tour of your product or facility, what role does real life play in your marketing?

Old Irish, a craft beer hailing from the Eastern European country of Georgia, decided to have some fun blurring the line between virtual and reality. Their video proves that sometimes it’s not what happens when you put on the virtual reality goggles that matters — it’s what happens when you take them off:

And since we’re all a bit jealous we weren’t standing in downtown Tbilisi when someone offered us a headset, here’s why this campaign was so amazing and what you can learn from it:

Virtual Reality is a Premium Experience

Hands up if you own a VR headset like the $600 Oculus Rift, or the $800 HTC Vive. A few hands, for sure, but definitely nothing compared to, say, a smartphone. Virtual reality, and the technology that powers it, is still a premium experience, so being offered an opportunity to put on a VR headset and experience Ireland in high-definition, 360-degree motion is still pretty amazing.

That said, businesses who are willing to invest in a 360-degree camera, or work with an agency that has this kind of technology, can still take advantage of this awesome new format of video without having to give all of their prospects a VR headset. Facebook allows for 360 videos that integrate into the mobile motion sensor on your phone, meaning you can move your phone around to take in all of the 360 action. Prospects viewing your video in their browsers can navigate the 360 experience with their mouse. Want a taste of the action? Here’s a video from Michelle Obama that shows off that power pretty perfectly:

 

The Most Multi-Channel Video Experience Ever

We’ve seen some pretty cool interactive elements built into videos in the past. Honda’s “The Other Side” invited viewers to swap, in real-time, between the lighter, family-friendly version of the Honda Civic experience, and the dark, seedy version:

That experience was amazing for viewers, but the jarring, awesome moment of taking off your VR headset and being transported from a main square in Tbilisi to an authentic-styled Irish Pub in the span of only a few moments is probably the most amazing interactive video experience we’ve seen yet.

Old Irish obviously put a significant amount of time into creating the perfect stage for their ‘wow’ moment, and given that they’re an Irish beer, what a better place to finish than an Irish pub, feeling like you walked in off the street? The not-so-slightly looking gatekeeper of this pub standing menacingly in front of you creates the perfect moment to remove the headphones and VR headset that have completely cut you off from actual reality for the past few moments and slam you back into reality — albeit a new reality that was pleasantly unexpected.

Not every brand is going to have the capacity to build a hidden bar in a downtown corridor and secretly enclose people in it for the sake of a marketing campaign.

Even reading that sentence feels like something out of a movie script, but there are some great take-aways you can use if you are experimenting with VR. In-person events would be a great opportunity to use this technology, especially at conferences. Imagine having someone walk your prospects through your office, and then taking off the headset to find that person waiting for them at the booth? Or what about incorporating a give-away into your VR experience for attendees that make it to the end of your video and find the cool item they were promised in the video is sitting on the same pedestal in real-life?

Companies betting big on VR are already putting some big budget towards their production efforts, so why not go the extra mile and incorporate some actual reality into your virtual campaign!

The Video Lets Everyone be in on the Joke

The key to this campaign isn’t that you were one of the unsuspecting people that was about to have a bottle smashed on their head. It’s that you, like the people running the campaign, get to watch along from home as someone’s entire reality gets shifted right before their eyes, and watch their surprise and awe as they experience one of the coolest marketing stunts we’ve seen on record. Recording it means that Old Irish can extend the magic of this campaign well beyond the handful of people who got to participate. And they are not the first company to pull a big public stunt in a town square and catch it on candid camera. Television network TNT did something similar with their Push to Add Drama Button:

But much like this video, Old Irish succeeds in letting us come along for the ride. From awesome shots of the VR landscape behind the goggles:

To the great drone footage they used to capture the bar taking shape on another unsuspecting Ireland enthusiast:

And finally, people’s reactions to transitioning from virtual reality to actual reality:

Old Irish has done a great job of packaging this real life campaign into a video that shows everyone the power of pairing virtual reality with an unexpected change to the world outside the goggles.

The moral of this story? Even if your marketing campaign only touches a handful of people, if you can capture the experience in a meaningful way on video, you can bring the same feeling of awe to thousands of viewers from all over the globe.

Wrapping It All Up

Now that virtual reality and the 360-degree cameras that power it are starting to move from incredible technologies of the future to household appliances, campaigns like this may seem normal in a few year’s time. But Old Irish will definitely go down in history as one of the earliest companies to use virtual reality to wow its prospective customers, and they did so by blurring the line between VR and real life in an incredible way.

Your prospects are being bombarded with messaging every minute of every day. What can you do to genuinely surprise and delight them? Maybe your business doesn’t want to break bottles over the heads of your customers, but you never know. In the meantime, nothing fuels a good brainstorming session like a beer. And Old Irish seems like a pretty good place to start.

P.S. If you’re wondering how they managed to smash so many bottles over their heads without a permanent traumatic brain injury or two, I’ll just leave this here. Feel free to skip it if you don’t want to ruin the magic!

The post Old Irish Blurs The Lines of Virtual Reality in this Incredible Video appeared first on Vidyard.

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How to: Control Access to your Video and Restrict Video Sharing with Vidyard

Videos may be a fantastic medium for sharing and distributing content, however, there are times when you’ll want to restrict who can see your video and whether or not it can be shared. Let’s take your internal company training video, or the video you’re saving for a niche group of prospects; you wouldn’t want either one leaking out on social media or embedded on any outside domains, would you?

These videos – along with any others you want protected – can be secured safely and effectively. Find out how below!

Secure Your Videos with Vidyard Player Security Settings

There are 5 tools that can help you take control of your videos:

1. Access Codes
2. Scheduled Videos
3. Domain Restrictions
4. A Player IP Range Whitelist
5. A Secure Platforms Whitelist

Access Codes let you control who sees your video and who doesn’t. Access codes work as a gate to your video; viewers must input an access code (chosen by you) BEFORE they are able to view your video. You can also choose to let users request an access code if they need one – which a moderator you select can approve or deny. The beauty of this is that you can have very precise control over your viewership.

Scheduled Videos are a great tool for when you’re ready to deploy a player, but not ready for your viewers to see it just yet. If you embed a scheduled player on your website or landing page, it won’t allow playback until the date and time you’ve set.

Domain Restrictions prevent your players from being shared or embedded outside a webpage that you choose. Take for instance, that internal training video you have for new company hires. Once you’ve embedded it on a web page, you can restrict it to make sure it can’t be embedded or shared anywhere else – this will protect your top secret training information from leaking outside of your company.

IP Range Whitelists give you the power to restrict a player so it only plays in a specific physical location, such as your company office or a set of offices. It’s as easy as telling Vidyard the IP addresses where the player can be viewed (your ‘whitelist’), and the player won’t play anywhere else. You can set this for individual players, or for all the players in a group.

A Secure Platforms Whitelist lets you restrict a player so it can only be viewed from a secured platform – a platform where viewers need to log in to have access (such as a Vidyard Video Hub, or Salesforce Chatter). This gives you two advantages: you can control who views the video, and it means all your viewers will be identified, since all your viewers are logged in.

How To Secure Your Videos Quickly and Easily

Secure your videos quickly and easily with Vidyard’s Player Security features. You can find them all from a player’s the security tab in your Vidyard account.

1. Once logged in at secure.vidyard.com, hover your mouse over the player you want to secure and click Security.
   

2. Under the Security Restrictions tab you’ll find the Domain Restriction, Player IP Range Whitelist, and Secured Platforms Whitelist options.
   
3. Under the Security Access Control tab you’ll find the Scheduled Videos, and Access Code options.
   

4. Use this powerful toolbox to secure your player based on your video strategy. You find more detailed instructions at the Vidyard Knowledge Center here.

Now that you know all the powerful security tools Vidyard offers you, what are you waiting for? Get started now! 

 

The post How to: Control Access to your Video and Restrict Video Sharing with Vidyard appeared first on Vidyard.

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Welcome to the Brand New Vidyard HQ

Over three years ago, we made a pretty big move as a company. Leaving behind the tiny house that we had gutted and rebuilt to serve as our office, we moved our small team a few blocks east to what we thought would be a long-term home at 119 King St in Kitchener. The new office had everything – room for our desks, a real kitchen, and a rooftop patio. A year later, we moved half our team to the floor below, and once again doubled our space. Little did we know how big we would grow!

Last week we bid a not-so-tearful farewell to our now cramped space and triumphantly marched as a team to our new office at 8 Queen Street. In a building steeped in local history, Vidyard was now prepared to open the next chapter for both our team, and for the community we live and work in.

Making our way to our new space. (Communitech photo: Anthony Reinhart)

Keys in the door at 8 Queen. (Communitech photo: Anthony Reinhart)

8 Queen Street, or the Goudies Building as it’s known locally, started its life as a department store in 1925 and served as a pillar of Kitchener’s bustling downtown community. When the store closed officially in the 1980s, the city acquired it due to tax arrears, and split it in half. One portion became Kitchener’s landmark children’s museum, and the other sat largely empty, save a small supply company that caters to the Catholic church.

That was until Brick By Brick Developments took over the property, and began the process of modernizing the space while retaining the incredible brick-and-beam architecture and history that makes the Goudies building so unique. Once renovations were completed earlier this month, including the addition of a glass atrium on the 3rd floor, Vidyard made our grand parade, and started unpacking our boxes in our new home.

As Michael Litt often says, “Spaceships don’t come equipped with rear-view mirrors,” and while we loved our office at 119 King Street, the only place to go from here is up. Divided among three floors, the office presents as many challenges as it affords new opportunities, but as we crest the wave of over 150 employees, nobody is looking back at our old office with longing. Having room to stretch out our legs, expand our various teams, and finally have events in our office again without having to move all the furniture out of the way is simply too good of a feeling to pass up.

Interested in checking out our space for yourself? Check out the photos below, scroll through this awesome photo set Communitech took on our move-in day, and join us June 24th for our open house!

Checking out the new 2nd floor. (Communitech photo: Anthony Reinhart)

Getting some sun in the atrium on 3rd. (Communitech photo: Anthony Reinhart)

Catching up in the 2nd floor kitchen. (Communitech photo: Anthony Reinhart

The sign makes it official!

We couldn’t leave behind the foam pit!

So much extra storage!

So much room for activities!

And once the boxes are unpacked, back to business as usual!

The post Welcome to the Brand New Vidyard HQ appeared first on Vidyard.

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B2B Portals: An Ocean of Benefits

There are two kinds of commerce active in the world marketplace: business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C). Companies involved in the latter form of commerce spend a lot of time and effort marketing to individual consumers they believe would be interested in their products or services. But what about companies involved in B2B commerce? How do they market?

Marketing in a B2B setting is far different. Rather than taking out ads and attempting to get attention by developing catchy marketing slogans for an audience with a limited attention span, companies have to be more thorough and technical in their presentation to other like-minded businesses. This is where the B2B portal becomes so important.

A B2B portal like ExportersIndia.com is essentially an online marketplace that brings companies in the B2B sector together in one large online meeting place. Any company involved in B2B commerce should be a member of at least one of these portals. Memberships on multiple portals are even better.

B2B portals offer members the ocean of benefits that are hard to achieve any other way. Those benefits are as follows:

1. Global Exposure

In terms of raw exposure, there is nothing quite like a business portal. Any portal with a reputation for success is one with a global reach. It is a portal that brings together multiple industries and their players from around the world, connecting them via business listings and other opportunities.

The kind of exposure your business would get by listing on ExportersIndia.com, for example, is far greater than you would get by trying to make global business connections by yourself. The portal has done all the heavy lifting, all you need to do is sign up and create a profile.

2. Instant Communications

Have you ever wondered why B2B portals are so important to business growth? It’s all about communication. Unlike B2C commerce, B2B companies are not investing millions on marketing campaigns geared to the general public. They are soliciting new business by making cold calls and connecting by way of in-person meetings. Communication is at the center of both. Without a fast and effective means of communication, doing business in the B2B world is much harder.

A B2B portal offers instant communications with the click of a mouse. Business representatives can browse listings in a variety of categories, looking for other businesses that would benefit from their products or services. Then those businesses can be contacted directly through the portal rather than having to hunt down an e-mail address or the website contact form. What you can do through the portal to contact others are the same things they are doing to contact you.

3. Buyer Attitudes

The third benefit of B2B portals is the fact that buyers love them; and why do they love them is because a large portal with enough members gives buyers access to lots of different options in one place. Working within the portal means they don’t have to spend hour after hour searching online for what it is they need; they just browse the different categories and click the listings that interest them.

From the buyer’s standpoint, the B2B portal is the best way to find products and services with as little effort as possible. They are also more likely to trust companies they find on the portal than those they don’t. It’s a matter of trust by association.

4. Sales Automation

With so many buying/selling options at your disposal, it can become a little difficult sometimes to find the right type of business to contact; however, the B2B Portals let you configure certain alerts that notify you every time a supplier or a buyer posts a lead relevant to your business. Also, you get an option to follow the activities of the companies that are of importance to you and get notifications of their latest moves.

Chucking out the leads that aren’t relevant for your business help you focus on the opportunities that promise you better returns.

5. Market Analysis

B2B portals are perhaps the only platform that lets you carry out business alongside your competitors and offers you an excellent opportunity to study their products and pricing strategies in detail. With B2B Portals, you cannot just analyse different businesses in your niche, but also leverage upon the strategies they have adopted to enhance your sales.

A B2B portal is an excellent tool for businesses of all kinds. Joining a portal gives the company access to a virtual ocean of marketing benefits that are simply incomparable to any other platform.

Author Bio: Ankit Gupta owns and manages ExportersIndia.com, one of the largest searchable buyers and sellers marketplace in India.Owing to his passion for writing, Ankit keeps sharing his valuable insights with marketers of SMEs and start-ups, to keep them upaded with the latest business news and trends.

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