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What A Network Assessment Will Do for Your Company

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It’s fair to assume that most businesses believe their IT network is fit to block cyber attacks at any given time; even if you are a tech wizard, you can’t ignore the need for proactive data security, minimizing downtime, and other benefits that come from having stellar IT support.

In truth, as much as you may believe that you’re hitting the right mark with your IT services, there are probably plenty of areas that you’re not quite up to par on. This is why it is beneficial for any business to have a full IT assessment every once in a while.Even with a carefully constructed setup, any company can develop blind spots as time passes, so hiring another pair of eyes to look at your infrastructure is always a worthwhile idea.

Why do you need an IT assessment?

There are several reasons to seek an IT assessment, here are a few of the most pressing:

• Ensuring your cybersecurity is on point. Every business needs to be confident that its data is secure. Among other reasons that this is so important, your data doesn’t just belong to you; it’s your customers’ data too.
• Identifying weak spots. It’s not uncommon for a business to have vulnerabilities that they hadn’t considered, which is why a dedicated analysis of their network is so vital. A vulnerability, once identified, can be remedied and can make the business more secure.
• Meeting industry standard requirements. Any business needs an assessment once in a while, but it’s all the more important for some specialized businesses such as healthcare providers and government bodies (and government-adjacent private businesses). To ensure that your business remains compliant with industry standards such as HIPAA and other comparable requirements, regular assessment is vital.

What does an IT assessment entail?

Any assessment of IT functions will look at your systems both holistically and in detail, looking for issues relating to functionality and security. For your business to thrive, your IT systems need to be ready to handle things. 

Will your servers stand up to an unexpected spike in demand? How prepared are you for a cyber attack? Are your backup systems and practices fit for purpose? These are just some of the questions that an IT assessment will ask and answer. Where necessary, recommendations for improvement will also be provided.

When should you get an IT assessment?

There is rarely, if ever, a bad time to have an IT assessment, but times when it is more crucial include: 

• When your business is undergoing a significant change. For example, if you are looking to extend remote working to a number of employees, the potential for security slippages will increase. Knowing how to close any loopholes is essential.
• When you are implementing new systems. Any significant upheaval will not only make new vulnerabilities more likely but will also risk obscuring existing issues.
• When you are scaling up your business. Systems and services that functioned perfectly well with your initial IT support infrastructure might need some help if you are adding more people to the network and placing additional stress upon it.
• When you haven’t had an assessment recently. As you may or may not know, the pace of technological change is such that systems can become obsolete in very short order. Having a regular audit of your network will ensure that you aren’t caught out by superannuated tech.

A network assessment is the perfect way to ensure that your systems are always as up to date and as secure as they can be. In business, you can never be too careful about data security and should never miss an opportunity to boost your functionality.

The post What A Network Assessment Will Do for Your Company appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

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October 30, 2020 at 11:53AM

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YouTube Video Strategy: How to Grow a Business With YouTube

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Want more leads and sales from your YouTube channel? Wondering how to use different types of videos for different objectives? To explore YouTube content strategy, I interview Sunny Lenarduzzi on the Social Media Marketing Podcast. Sunny is a YouTube marketing expert who helps entrepreneurs next-level their awareness online. Her YouTube channel has 500,000 subscribers. Her […]

The post YouTube Video Strategy: How to Grow a Business With YouTube appeared first on Social Media Examiner | Social Media Marketing.

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October 30, 2020 at 05:07AM

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YouTube Video Strategy: How to Grow a Business With YouTube - 430

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Want more leads and sales from your YouTube channel? Wondering how to use different types of videos for different objectives?

To explore YouTube content strategy, in this episode I interview Sunny Lenarduzzi. Sunny is a YouTube marketing expert who helps entrepreneurs next-level their awareness online.

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October 30, 2020 at 04:54AM

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Facebook admits its pandemic-juiced user growth is coming to an end

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October 29, 2020 at 05:51PM

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16 Essential Points to Consider When Creating Your eCommerce Marketing Strategy

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Five years ago, UK shoppers only spent 1 out of every 10 pounds shopping online. Now, the number stands at 1 out of every 5 pounds. One thing is evident here. According to the recent 99Firm’s report, the online retail market is booming; the worldwide eCommerce revenue will reach $4.88 trillion by 2021.

In 2017, the revenue was around $2.3 trillion, meaning it will double as the economy takes the road to recovery from a grueling 2020.

For those looking to launch a website and start their eCommerce business, gaining the edge over competitors is one of the most important things they can do.

What Is an eCommerce Strategy?

An eCommerce strategy describes the actions and intentions you channel into making your eCommerce venture successful. Strategy can encompass many of the things you need to do to make it in the eCommerce world.

Such actions may include:

• Building a functional website;

• Designing a user-friendly experience;

• Building marketing campaigns;

• Setting clear goals;

• Measuring your progress using the available tools.

All of these actions form a strategy that ensures your eCommerce venture takes off. The eCommerce marketing strategy combines the roadmap, the goals, the team, and a plan to accomplish each of the set goals. 

The Foundation of Your eCommerce Strategy

An eCommerce marketing strategy will guide your hand as you pick the best platforms, the best tools, and implement practices that take your eCommerce to a good level. Let’s examine some of the foundations that will form the basis of your business.

1.  Are you selling the same products?

Many people who start eCommerce ventures tend to look at what others are doing and try to replicate what they think is a success. However, it won’t always have the best outcome. You need to carefully select your products and services and choose the one that will benefit and please you.

The first thing to do is not to replicate success by copying business models but by identifying gaps in the market that your venture can slip into.

2.  Do you have a physical location?

Even when doing business online, location matters. The physical works impact what you do in terms of local brands you have to compete with, weather, mobility, etc.

Understanding your market in their physical location helps you know the income levels, build an eCommerce marketing strategy, set up omnichannel bridges, and employ geolocation tools to encourage location-awareness in sharing and networking with your customers.

3.  Are you selling internationally?

If you are planning to sell internationally, there are factors to look at that would not be present when setting up at the national level.

4.  Are you selling B2C or B2B?

B2B, as an eCommerce marketing strategy, involves business to business operations, while B2C consists of a business to customer relationship, which is emotion-driven, in terms of purchasing decisions. Sometimes there is an overlap, but most of the time, these strategies follow different methodologies.

5.  Do you have relationships with other wholesale retailers?

Wholesalers can be your suppliers or customers, depending on what you want to do. You can even collaborate with them to make logistics easier. Creating these relationships takes time and effort. Find out who you can work with and how the relationship can boost your business.

6.  Where is your product being manufactured?

Transportation costs, supply chain management, and a general understanding of expectations to meet them are just some of the things to consider when thinking about your product. You want an entirely made product, at an affordable cost, with prompt delivery times. 

How Will You Measure Progress?

There are some critical steps you need to take when following the measurement of progress. You’re online, you’re doing something but are you right doing it? Metrics are everything. By metrics, you have to look at every KPI (key performance indicator.)

Not only will the information help to optimize your business, but it will allow you to solve problems efficiently. Keep four things in mind:

• Identify your issues by looking at your marketing goals and how well they’ve been met;

• Understand your customers;

• Measure the things that matter, including conversion rate, average order value, bounce rate, and other metrics;

• Come up with an action plan.

Always keep the end in mind, so you know how to get there.

Choosing Your KPIs

Ensuring that you pick the right metrics will allow you to look at the most important things and avoid dealing with unnecessary mountains of data. Choosing KPIs means:

• Stating your business goals;

• Making them measurable;

• Using ratios and ranges;

• Avoiding vanity metrics;

• Not measuring everything that can be measured;

• Using quantitative and qualitative KPIs;

• Using lagging and leading indicators

When you choose your KPIs carefully, they can serve as a telescope that allows you to see deep into the business and know what to change so that your goals are streamlined to make your venture the most efficient it can be. 

Creating a Business Plan

In the beginning, you will need a business plan. It is more so necessary in eCommerce because there are so many considerations to make. You will begin with the idea, the product, and the willpower it takes to launch your business.

Merchants may fail at the stage of the business plan creation. You will need to make sure that you have the roadmap a business plan provides to adjust yourself as you progress.

Your plan needs to have details like ownership, products, operations, market analysis, marketing strategy, financial plans, milestones, and any other pertinent information and considerations key to your business success. 

Can Your Product Make Money?

Consider who you are selling to and what kind of pitch you are making. Do the people you are targeting in need of your product? If so, how do you plan to advertise it? What do you think will make them buy?

The whole idea of determining if your product will make money starts with solving a significant problem by identifying a market that needs something or could be into buying whatever you are selling. Find the gap, look at trends, know the margins, examine recurring sales, and understand your interests.

Your marketing goals should include the answer to this question. 

Build a Site

First off, niche-based sites are easy to promote because they have to contend with less competition than the generalized counterparts. If you have a unique product, you enjoy more visibility because few or no one else is doing what you are doing.

However, building a site takes more than just centering everything around the product you intend to sell. 

Choose a Right CMS Platform

A Content Management System allows you to optimize lead generation, promote consistency, build your brand, and create a customer experience people enjoy. When picking out a CMS, you need to focus your energies on finding the best one that works well with what you are trying to achieve.

A CMS streamlines the creation and management of websites. Most of the CMS platforms support third-party integrations to make your operations smooth.

Let’s look at some of the most widely used CMS examples. 

Magento

Magento is a feature-rich platform with an ever-growing library of integrations and add-ons. It is open-source software that you should consider when starting with the hopes of expanding to include more than your initial offering. You can use Magento custom development services to shape your website to be exactly how you need it to be.

WordPress

According to Kinsta, more than 60 million websites, including over 33% of the top 10 million sites, use this platform. It is one of the most popular CMS platforms in the world. 

Shopify

This platform stands out in eCommerce as it gives businesses the ability to scale with hundreds of features. Shopify custom themes are just one of the many options you have. It connects multiple marketplaces and social media platforms in one vast ecosystem. Shopify customizations allow you to project your style on a website.  

Shopware

As the platform with the most live stores in Germany, this enterprise-level platform powers some of the largest online stores in the eCommerce world. It gives unlimited flexibility with the API-first approach for the tech side and an easy-to-use admin panel.

Other

Some of the other options to consider are BigCommerce, PrestaShop, and plugins like VirtueMart and WooCommerce.

Ensure Your Site Is Secure

Security is a priority. Any downtime means customers lost, people who may never come back because the site was down at one point, and other related issues.

If you are unsure what to do, use security services with reliable track records to prepare yourself.

Prepare for:

• Whaling/spear-phishing;

• Ransomware for servers.

Secure your website by:

• Using secure passwords;

• Opening emails carefully;

• Installing updates;

• Using a safe hosting service;

• Using SSL certificates;

• Securing folder permissions;

• Running regular security checks.

There are so many ways you can stay secure, and finding out the gaps, will help you know what you can do to fill those gaps. 

Create an eCommerce Marketing Strategy

The strategy is everything. Creating it will require you to do the following:

• Have an executive summary, clear goals, and logical objectives;

• Have a mission statement and value proposition;

• Target a market you understand and have analyzed;

• Develop proper pricing and positioning strategies;

• Optimize distribution and fulfillment;

• Use marketing strategies that work.

We can’t list everything you can or should do but before anything is carried out, make sure it is planned. For instance, have clear content marketing strategy goals before you launch content marketing. 

4 Types of eCommerce Marketing

The four models of eCommerce will define what you do. Understand them and how applicable they are to your plans.

They are:

• B2C – Business to Consumer;

• B2B – Business to Business;

• C2B – Consumer to Business;

• C2C – Consumer to Consumer.

From their names, they are pretty self-explanatory but may overlap in some areas.

Email Marketing

Email marketing entails sending emails to develop the best relationships with leads and customers. Currently, email marketing is one of the most effective marketing channels, ranked above affiliate, SEO, and social media marketing. Set clear email marketing goals so you know what to communicate and how.

Content Marketing

By creating content that appeals to your market base, you can reach them more easily in a way that they can relate to. Content marketing includes blogs, videos, and social media posts. A great content marketing strategy can drive a lot of traffic.

Referral Marketing

Referral marketing entails promoting services and products to new customers through referrals that can happen spontaneously, like using word-of-mouth or initiated by the business using effective strategies. 

Social Media Marketing

With this strategy, you get to leverage social media accounts tailored for business. The platforms allow you to build communities, gain brand visibility, reach out to customers personally, and drive traffic to the website. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, and Snapchat are places where you can deploy social media marketing strategy.

Set Your Marketing Goals

Clearly defining your goals is the first step to success. Not only will plans allow you to measure progress, but they also help you know what you need to optimize to reach your goal. If you do not have a goal, your analytics mean nothing.

Taking the right metrics and understanding what you want to achieve is the best way to show you are doing well.

CLEAR Goals

CLEAR, as an acronym, stands for specific things that your goals should have. Here is a brief look:

C-Collaborative. Encourage employees to work as a team, cohesively.

L-Limited. The goals should not be too broad. The scope and duration need to be well-defined).E-Emotional. Employees have to connect with the goal emotionally to tap into their energy and passion.A-Appreciable. Large goals have to be broken down into smaller ones for easy and quick accomplishment.

R-Refinable. Your goals need to have a strong objective but be flexible when something new comes up, so you can modify your goals.

SMART

Let’s look at SMART.

S-Specific. Your goals need clarity and no ambiguity.

M-Measurable. Results have to have to be measurable to track progress.

A-Attainable. The goals have to be realistic and attainable by the employees you have.

R-Relevant. Goals have to relate to your mission and vision.

T-Time-bound. Goals need to have definite starting and ending points — a fixed timeline.

In Conclusion

The whole idea of creating your eCommerce strategy may seem hard or quite complicated. However, with structure, everything can come together neatly, more or less. 

Nothing ever flows smoothly all the time. But, when you have structure and an idea on what to focus on and how to move forward. It becomes much easier to create a plan where you work your way from the smallest steps up to the end.

Hopefully, this article helps you see a way forward regarding what you need to consider when creating your eCommerce marketing strategy.

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October 29, 2020 at 05:41PM

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Social Media Strategies to Boost Your Digital Marketing Campaign

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Social media platforms can help you effectively reinforce your imprint on the consumer market. Social media campaigns allow you to boost your business and enhance the productivity of your marketing strategy. Companies reach millions of customers across the globe by manipulating social media in their favour. That’s why social media has become an integral component of digital marketing worldwide. The positive effects of interconnectivity platforms on business campaigns are undeniable. It’s unfortunate to observe that even in 2020, many companies are unaware of the commercial potential of social sites. Let’s find out how social media enhances your business to contribute to commercial prosperity.

Social networking that impacts your company

1. More potential customers can reach you on social media platforms. Innovative advertisements and masterfully-crafted campaigns convince more people to visit your page/profile. These subtle ads will attract guests to communicate and interact with you.
2. Higher website traffic generates better search engine rankings, and Social media provides indirect SEO benefits to your website. You can enjoy brand visibility, along with loyal followers. Your online presence will receive perceptible improvement.
3. This online presence will maintain and uplift your reputation as a brand. You will monitor the public perception of your company. People’s comments will help you remove the negative image of your brand. That’s how you build commercial-consumer relationships.
4. Social media also directs you to track competition and find means to compete. You can get accurate information regarding the behavioural patterns of your targeted audience. It helps you create not just content but also products to fulfil customers’ needs.
5. When you heed to public demands, you get satisfied customers. Your company becomes capable of resolving people’s issues in real-time. That’s how social media contributes to customer engagement. 

Social Media Strategies In Digital Marketing

Google uses multiple factors to determine a website’s ranking on its search engine. Links and content are among the three significant factors companies can leverage in their favour. A common misconception states that social media backlinks are worthless. In reality, companies do use Facebook/Twitter link-building to enhance their SEO ratings. It will help if you learn how to get backlinks to improve your digital marketing game. Other such social media strategies you can try are:

1. Pick a suitable platform:-

Multiple social media websites are suitable for different marketing requirements. You have to make sure you’re choosing a workable network for your commercial needs. You have Facebook and Twitter are ideal platforms to generate leads and engage an audience. Twitter brings it closer to potential consumers aged less than 50. B2B and B2C companies use LinkedIn to earn loyal customers and build brand authority. If you need a glamorous visual appeal, you can try Pinterest. These platforms offer advertisement opportunities to small businesses. The modern marketing experts advise considering the power of online products recommended to people by friends.

2. Set clear marketing goals:-

Your campaign must never be direction-less. That’s why you need to establish campaign objectives. What do you wish to achieve from digital marketing? What results do you anticipate your marketing team to produce? These goals/objectives must be smart, which is just an abbreviation for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. These goals help you track the progress of your company and deal with any unexpected marketing results.

Many factors impact your marketing ROI. These factors include your product’s market demand and your firm’s cost structure. Goals being quantifiable let you assess the ROI the company has gained from the campaign. Social media activity not only expands your customer list but also permits you to gain critical feedback. Your demands from the campaign influence the social media techniques or strategies you will apply. Lead generation, thus, will gradually increase web traffic.

3. Interact with your targeted audience:-

Audience engagement is necessary to maintain your brand’s relevance. When a product stops being relevant, people generally lose their interest in it. Your company can’t just create an ad, dump it on Instagram, and expect people to flock up. Your strategy needs to interact with the audience and build a connection with the public. Your page must appear to even scrollers. It’s essential to earn loyal and trusting customers to generate more leads on social media.

Remember that your targeted audience consists of distinct behavioural clusters with various missions. It’s essential to connect the social media metrics with hard metrics (leads, sales, et cetera). People’s likes, shares, upvotes, retweets, and comments help to engage them with your brand. You can put forth queries/surveys and answer business-related problems. You can share relevant educational info with them and express your gratitude to win them over.

4. Maintain a constant online presence:-

Communication and engagement should be the actual objectives of your campaign. Social media isn’t the right place for vociferous promotional content. It’s better if you one-fifth of your content to promote your brand. Spend the other 80% to educate or entertain your targeted audience. It will help if you also create stuff for the public regularly. Keep them updated and keep appearing in their newsfeed. Cultivating a prominent social media presence, takes patience and quality content. 

But it doesn’t mean you should update your page/profile limitlessly. Twitter is the right platform for you to tweet 24 hours a day. But Facebook works best in your commercial interests if it’s updated daily. More than a dozen pins every day undo the Pinterest charm. Spend more time reading through the public response to your online presence. Reply to essential questions and let people know your company cares about their wishes.

5. Create stuff that sells:-

Your audience won’t respond to stuff they don’t need/crave. Your digital marketing strategy must consider what sort of ads entice people’s interest. Your advertisement campaign must stand out alone and beat your rivals’ plans. Give your audience a sense of value and connection with your brand. Create the content your target audience approves. Don’t go for regular emails and spam messages. Your content needs to be user-centric, i.e. revolves around the public wishes/demands. Collaborate with an Instagram/Snapchat influencer to appeal to the public. Conduct surveys to determine what people want from your company. 

Conclusion

A recent survey found that 45% of companies didn’t even employ a viable digital marketing strategy. Many American people in business are ignoring the business potential of digital marketing. It creates an opportunity for companies to spend more to improve their marketing campaigns. Social media brings a surge of fresh visitors, staying clients, and engaging consumers to your website. Social media strategies increase conversion rates and rejuvenate the excitement of existing customers. Set pre-defined goals, maintain a constant online presence, and create content with a selling potential. Your social media strategy will start driving sales sooner than you’ve calculated.

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October 29, 2020 at 04:31PM

Troubleshooting Common Remote Work Problems

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2020 saw a ground shift in remote working, as millions of workers across the country began working from home almost overnight. While those with robust remote working policies in place coped well with the sudden change, others were left scrambling to implement systems and policies quickly and reliably. 

Remote working has many advantages for both employees and organizations. While there are not many positives to come out of this year, perhaps breaking down the barriers to remote working is one of them. It has been shown to work and improve the productivity and wellbeing of many employees. 

As with all things, remote working also poses unique challenges for IT teams when it comes to preventing troubleshooting issues for remote workers. Here are a few tools to embrace that will help with remote working IT troubles.

Embrace Collaboration Technology

Email alone isn’t going to cut it for a remote, dispersed workforce. That’s where collaboration technology comes in. Many businesses have started relying on Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Slack, and other similar software to enable teams to interact with each other. 

Keep exploring options for your organization and develop a comprehensive training plan so that every employee knows how to get the best out of the collaboration systems you use. 

Enable Secure Access to Data

Access to business systems and data is necessary for employees to do their work. However, they are in an environment you cannot control and could potentially be using unsecured internet connections, exposing sensitive data to cybercriminals. 

One way to mitigate this risk is to set up a VPN to provide an extra layer of protection between public networks with unsecured connections and company systems. 

Invest in VoIP Systems

Remote working is where VoIP really comes into its own. It allows for seamless communications between you, your team members, and your customers. 

VoIP is a flexible, secure technology that lets employees access their phone service from different locations and through various devices, all done through the Internet. In addition to the productivity benefits, you will also save money compared to legacy PBX systems. 

Tighten Up Your Security

Cybersecurity is a top priority for many businesses, with good reason. Cybersecurity breaches can severely damage a company’s finances and reputation, potentially putting them out of business altogether. Cyberattacks have increased over the last six months as new remote workers and companies are potentially more vulnerable.  Often their policies and systems haven’t caught up with the new style of working, leaving gaps to be exploited. 

You need to identify and plug these gaps as a matter of priority. If you don’t have an in-house IT resource, find an IT company that has expertise in this area. They can perform a risk assessment, implement fixes and new policies, remote monitor your systems 24/7/365, and train your employees. 

Conclusion

Remote working is now a way of life for many people. This looks set to continue as businesses and employees realize the benefits. While it may present new problems when it comes to IT systems, these can be solved with diligent planning and implementation of new technologies and policies. 

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October 29, 2020 at 04:31PM

Twitter revenue rises 14%, but user growth fails to impress

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Twitter continued to see its traffic rise in the third quarter, thanks to that trifecta of returning sports, the presidential campaign and the COVID-19 pandemic. But there wasn’t quite enough growth to appease Wall Street. 

Twitter beat out analyst expectations on revenue and net income; However, Wall Street appeared to get stuck on Twitter’s user growth figures and sent shares lower in after-market trading. Twitter’s MDAUs — the company’s internal audience metric that measures monetizeable daily active users — hit 187 million in the third quarter. That’s a razor thin improvement from the 186 million the company reported in second quarter of this year, although it did represent a 29% rise from the 145 million in the same period last year. Analysts from FactSet had expected 195 million MDAUs.

Shares were down nearly 15% in after-market trading.

Twitter reported Thursday net income of $29 million in the third quarter, or 4 cents per diluted share, a decline from the same time period last year, when the company brought in a net income of $47 million at 5 cents per diluted share. Adjusted earnings were 19 cents a share.

The company’s revenue came in at $936 million, up 14% from the same period last year. Analysts had expected revenue of $777 million. 

Twitter’s ad revenue also grew 15% to $808 million. Total ad engagement rose 27% over the same period in 2019. The return of live events as well as increased and previously delayed product launches helped boost ad revenue, Twitter CFO Ned Segal said.

“We also made progress on our brand and direct response products, with updated ad formats, improved measurement, and better prediction. We remain confident that our larger audience, coupled with ongoing revenue product improvements, new events and product launches, and the positive advertiser response to the choices we’ve made as we have grown the service, can drive great outcomes over time,” he added.

The U.S., Twitter’s biggest market, accounted for $513 million in revenue, a 10% increase YoY. 

However, Twitter warned that the holiday season and U.S. election could impact advertiser behavior.

 

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October 29, 2020 at 04:23PM

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Twitter’s API access changes are chasing away third-party developers

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October 29, 2020 at 08:49AM

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Trump hints at stopping “powerful” big tech in latest ‘get out the vote’ tweet

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If there was any doubt that yesterday’s flogging of big tech CEOs by Senate republicans was anything other than an electioneering stunt, president Trump has thumped the point home by tweeting a video message to voters in which he bashes “big tech” as (maybe) too powerful but certainly in need of being “spoken to” and (maybe) more.

The not-so-subtle suggestion being that a vote for Trump is a vote to break up the likes of Facebook, Google and Twitter.

In the video Trump signposts the DoJ’s antitrust suit against Google — ending with a call to his supporters to get out the vote. So the president is brandishing an anti-big tech message as the latest cudgel in his culture war, just a few days ahead of the 2020 US presidential election.

“For a long time I’ve been hearing about how powerful big tech is, whether it’s Facebook or Twitter or Google or any of them,” he begins the video, before making a quick vanity-dig about winning the 2016 election regardless of the “powerful” platforms being “totally against me”, as he glibly claims — entirely failing to mention that Facebook actually allowed its network to be a free and unfettered conduit for millions of pieces of anti-Clinton, pro-Trump propaganda cooked up in Russia.

Instead, he segues into a claim that the platforms have taken their power to a “a new level”, as he puts it — accusing them of “suppressing the corruption of Joe Biden” by ‘not letting the stories out’.

This is a direct reference to Trump’s Democrat challenger for the White House, and an indirect reference to a controversial New York Post story about a cache of emails purported to have been found on laptop hardware owned by Biden’s son Hunter — but which carry the distinct whiff of another election-focused political disinformation operation.

The big difference this time around is that ‘big tech’ is rather more alive to the reputational risks to their platforms and companies if they’re found ignoring another orchestrated episode of election interference.

Hence both Facebook and Twitter limited the sharing of the Post’s story.

Twitter initially blocked links to it citing its hacked materials policy — though it later revised the policy after Republicans screamed ‘censorship’. And CEO Jack Dorsey got plenty more grilling on that theme at yesterday’s Senate hearing as Republican senators used the hearing as an opportunity to try to mint gotcha soundbites on bogus claims of big tech’s ‘anti-Conservative bias & censorship’.

The tech CEOs mostly had to sit there and be bashed as it’s not politic for them to suggest Republicans might be experiencing more content moderation vs liberals because they break the rules more. Instead the electioneering pantomime ran on for hours.

Trump is just closing the loop on the politically biased soundbite fest by trying to turn tedious and trumped up claims of anti-Conservative bias into a bald ‘get out the vote’ message to his base.

“Big tech has to be spoken to and probably in some form has to be stopped,” is the closest he gets to an actual policy position here. So Trump voters shouldn’t get their hopes up that he might actually deliver a break up of Facebook et al either.

The ironies are of course hot and heavy, given evidence shows social media algorithms’ baked in preference for spreading controversial/outrageous content further and faster than the blander, more nuanced stuff that’s likely to be closer to the truth. Simply put, it’s human nature to click on the crazy stuff — and ad-funded platforms are fuelled by eyeball engagement. So lies have been great for big tech’s bottom lines.

That then means these very same ‘big tech’ platforms tend to amplify Republican messaging — certainly of the Trumpian flavor, i.e. where trumped up claims, lacking in evidence and/or reality, are preferred. (Like, say, Trump calling Mexicans rapists or claiming the pandemic is over as thousands continue to die. Or that he has immunity from COVID-19 when the scientific consensus is we don’t know how long a person may be immune after fighting off the virus and we know some people have been reinfected with COVID-19, and so on.)

So the scale of the nonsense being peddled by Trump’s Republican party is indeed very strong and very powerful. But then, well, we haven’t been in Kansas for a long time.

At the time of writing Twitter has also not placed any kind of contextual labelling on Trump’s tweet — despite the contents of the video arguably containing misinformation about big tech itself. But that’s just one more irony to add to the steaming pile.

And if you’re feeling a pang of pity for the tech CEOs caught in this partisan bind it pays to remember they made their bed by claiming to operate community and content policies they didn’t — and still don’t — properly enforce. Which makes Trump their very own monster.

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via Twitter – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com

October 29, 2020 at 05:48AM