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Tag Archives: Media

JourneyTEAM wins Microsoft’s 2020 Partner of the Year Award for Media & Communication Industry | Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement

August 25, 2020   Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Microsoft recognized JourneyTEAM as one of the top partners who demonstrated excellence and leadership in Microsoft technologies, specifically for Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (Media & Communication).

 

Over the past year, JourneyTEAM has seen enormous success. In addition to aligning with Microsoft’s vision, JourneyTEAM has increased employee trainings, headcount, and solution offerings. Recognizing their successes, Microsoft awarded them the 2020 MSUS Partner of the Year Award for Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (Media & Communication).

x2020 08 24 15 29 32 625x487.jpeg.pagespeed.ic.3Rx ywQOnI JourneyTEAM wins Microsoft’s 2020 Partner of the Year Award for Media & Communication Industry | Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement

Several of Microsoft’s partners were honored at this event for showing greatness in solution innovation, customer impact, leadership, deployment, and an incredible application of Microsoft technologies. Winners were chosen from a pool of over 3,300 nominees from hundreds of countries around the world.

“Their work to enable our mutual customers to achieve more shows JourneyTEAM’s dedication to success and they stand out as a model other US Partners,” David Willis, Corporate Vice President, US Partner Group at Microsoft said as he explained why JourneyTEAM was selected as a winner.

JourneyTEAM’s work with PBS affiliate WGBH and other organizations was a major factor in securing this award. Microsoft numbers showed that JourneyTEAM’s Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement team saw year-over-year growth of 47% of client wins and total revenue.

“Recognition as Microsoft’s top partner for Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement underscores JourneyTeam’s focus on helping organizations achieve successful digital transformation,” said Eric Beins, JourneyTEAM’s Head of Dynamics Customer Engagement and Insights. “We’ve selected top talent and streamlined efforts internally, worked with Microsoft, and collaborated with customers to rapidly deploy Dynamics projects.”

Eagle Crystal Award and Other Recognitions

JourneyTEAM was also presented with the Eagle Crystal Trophy, which is given to Microsoft partners who have the highest number of customer adds in Dynamics 365 Business Central. JourneyTEAM saw a 258% year-over-year growth in this solution.

“It’s an honor to be recognized as one of the top Microsoft partners,” JourneyTEAM COO Brain Tenney said. “Especially in the category of Dynamics 365. This award shows that we are headed in the right direction and recognizes all of the great work we are delivering to our clients.”

You can see additional MSUS Partner Award winners here. Every winner was honored during the general session of the 2020 Microsoft Inspire conference.

Contact JourneyTEAM today to see how we can help you with your next project.


140x195x2020 08 24 15 32 44.jpeg.pagespeed.ic.3T aL6xg9o JourneyTEAM wins Microsoft’s 2020 Partner of the Year Award for Media & Communication Industry | Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement

Article by: Dave Bollard – Head of Marketing | 801-436-6636

JourneyTEAM is an award-winning consulting firm with proven technology and measurable results. They take Microsoft products; Dynamics 365, SharePoint intranet, Office 365, Azure, CRM, GP, NAV, SL, AX, and modify them to work for you. The team has expert level, Microsoft Gold certified consultants that dive deep into the dynamics of your organization and solve complex issues. They have solutions for sales, marketing, productivity, collaboration, analytics, accounting, security and more. www.journeyteam.com

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Media Industry Post COVID 19: Prioritize CRM & Customer Data

May 6, 2020   CRM News and Info

In the Post COVID-19 Media Industry, Customer Data Management Will Be Essential to Success

 

There’s no question that COVID-19 has created massive challenges for businesses around the globe. But while some industries are struggling to keep up, others find themselves in an opportune position. The media industry is dealing with both, and better customer data management is the solution.

Providing consumers around the globe with accurate, reliable information is more important than ever before, and media organizations are leading the way. At the same time, however, advertising revenue is down — and this can create revenue challenges for large media companies.

There’s also a transformation underway in the media industry. The consolidation of various channels and outlets that we’ve seen in recent years is accelerating. Once the COVID-19 crisis is over, the media industry is going to look very different. As we’ll see below, the ability to manage customer data with the right CRM software solution will be essential for success.

Internet Providers Lead the Way

 

In the post COVID-19 media industry, internet providers will lead the way when it comes to information handling.

Of course, this trend has been underway for years. On the one hand, more and more people are getting their news and information via social media. Simultaneously, paid subscription services like Netflix are replacing traditional forms of home entertainment such as cable television.

But as a result of COVID-19, the prevalence of digital entertainment and news has only intensified. With so many people staying home and practicing social distancing, in-person events and experiences such as sporting events, concerts, movie theaters are being replaced by the ‘new normal’ of YouTube and Facebook live stream events. Once coronavirus abates, it’s likely that some of these trends will continue.

CRM Data Becomes Essential for Success

 

When it comes to generating revenue, media organizations rely on advertising. But in order to provide paying advertisers with maximum ROI, these same organizations need access to the right media tools and customer data. In particular, they need to know who’s consuming their content, what platforms their audience is using, and how to keep their audience engaged.

With so many media organizations preparing to merge and consolidate in the coming years, there’s a real potential for larger companies to dominate certain channels and industry sectors. But doing so requires an in-depth understanding of who their customers are — and that means access to the right data via the most advanced CRM software tools. Simply put, large media organizations need to start investing in customer data management if they want to keep their customers happy, attract the highest paying advertisers, and deliver those advertisers the ROI they want.

Learn More About Customer Data Management, CRM Tools, and the Media Industry Transformation

 

On April 30th AKA Enterprise Solutions’ Media Practice Lead, Adolfo Ramirez, joined other media experts for a live webcast. They discussed the coming post COVID-19 industry transformation, with a focus on how these changes will affect advertising. Topics included:

  • Consumer access to content and advertising on-demand
  • Social media network proliferation at scale
  • Newly digitized media channels
  • Effects of industry changes during crises, including COVID-19

Media Tech Trends – How Microsoft Customer Insights Can Turn Challenges Into Opportunities


ABOUT AKA ENTERPRISE SOLUTIONS
AKA specializes in making it easier to do business, simplifying processes and reducing risks. With agility, expertise, and original industry solutions, we embrace projects other technology firms avoid—regardless of their complexity. As a true strategic partner, we help organizations slay the dragons that are keeping them from innovating their way to greatness. Call us at 212-502-3900!


Article by: Adolfo Ramirez | 212-502-3900

As AKA’s Media Practice Lead for more than a decade, Adolfo is an experienced consultant and project manager with a history of successful CRM and ERP projects across media and other industries. With 17 years of experience working with the Microsoft business platform, he is responsible for leading his team in designing, building, and implementing solutions that help media companies drive value.

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How To Use Social Media To Grow Your Business

February 12, 2020   BI News and Info
 How To Use Social Media To Grow Your Business

In today’s digital world, customers are researching businesses and products online, which makes digital marketing crucial in your strategy. Digital marketing is a go-to method for grabbing the attention of today’s tech-savvy consumers. There are various tactics you can implement, including search engine marketing, email marketing, and social media marketing. Social media marketing is a great tool for businesses that want to achieve growth at a low cost.

Here are three ways you can leverage social media to attract customers and grow your company.

Invest in paid ads

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn all offer the option to place your ads on their platforms to help build awareness and generate new leads. You can create highly targeted ads that resonate with your target audience. Customize your ads based on your audience’s preferences, online behavior, age, gender, geographic location, and more. Not targeting a specific audience can waste ad dollars on people who aren’t interested in your offers. By sharing your message with those who are most likely to need your services, you can make the most of your ad spend and increase your chances of getting conversions. When prospects are a good match with your company, they’ll likely click your ad, which leads to your website. Once on your website, they may go to your product page or initiate contact with you.

Start a retargeting campaign

Having your leads go cold can be one of the most frustrating things about your marketing strategy. You’ve spent a good amount of money to get customers to trust you and buy your products, but it may seem like it’s all going to waste if they’re not converting. However, it’s important to note that most people aren’t ready to make a purchase when they first visit your website. In fact, 92% of consumers visiting a brand’s website for the first time aren’t there to buy. They might visit your product page, read some of your content, and even add some items to their cart – but take no further action, and the lead goes cold. That’s why lead nurturing can be a good solution. Retargeting campaigns can help you nurture and reengage cold leads.

Retargeting involves tracking a cookie that saves a user’s activity on a particular web page. For example, if a lead clicks on your website through a Facebook ad, visits your product page, and then leaves your site, applications like Facebook Pixel can track this behavior. Facebook will then display targeted ads to that specific customer. The ads will likely be centered on the product the customer showed interest in on your website. While a lead may not be ready to buy the first time they visit your site, nurturing them can give them that extra nudge.

Run contests

Running a contest probably isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when you think of social media marketing, but it can be a great tool to have in your marketing arsenal. Many brands run contests to increase brand awareness and create engagement with their followers. You can run a weekly contest that gets your followers involved and encourages them to do fun activities on your platform of choice. These activities can include sharing photos of them using your product/service in some way, using a catchy hashtag, or seeing who gets the most likes on their photo. The contest winners may get prizes like gift cards, discounts on your products, free items, and more. While running contests may not directly drive sales, it can help you make a name for your business and build trust with your target audience.

Social media platforms have billions of users worldwide. Why not leverage this tool to generate new leads and connect with your audience?

Get to know how to build chatbots with SAP Conversational AI in order to improve your customer and employee experiences by signing up for our webinar on March 3.

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5 Ways to Boost Your Social Media Engagement

February 11, 2020   CRM News and Info

In a world where individuals are accustomed to having the information we need at our fingertips, social media has become an essential marketing distribution channel.

One reason social media is so effective is that it makes it fun and easy to consume and share information. Individuals can share ideas, pose questions, and have meaningful conversations with peers from all over the world without even having to leave their desks. And thanks to the rise in mobile usage that has occurred during this past decade, individuals now have access to social media pretty much everywhere they go. 

Social Media Blog Hero 5 Ways to Boost Your Social Media Engagement

Because social media is the place to be, however, it can be very easy to get lost in the crowd. To avoid having your target audience breeze through your posts, you need the perfect recipe to make your followers stop scrolling, check out what you have to say, and take action. 

While it will take some work to fine-tune your social media strategy, the process is easier than you think if you have the right tactics in place. Today, we’re sharing 5 ways you can boost your social media game to earn more clicks, shares, and conversions.

1. Lean Into the Power of Employee Advocacy

Creating an effective social media strategy is not a one-person job. If you want to get in front of your target audience and improve engagement, it helps to have as many people as possible sharing your content. 

Getting your followers to engage with your content is the ultimate goal, but that can only do so much if you only have a few followers to start with. That’s why encouraging employee advocacy is a great way to build your social media presence. Having your employees engage with and share your organization’s recent posts on their own social channels can help you secure better placement on social feeds so you can reach more prospective customers and grow your audience. 

Act-On’s Advanced Social Media Module makes it extremely easy to mobilize your employees to share your content. The tool allows you to use boards to organize your post by topic, making it easy for your employees to find and share posts that are relevant to them and their followers. 

While you can’t force your colleagues to be active on social media, you can definitely encourage participation by giving them some sort of incentive. For example, you can create a leaderboard and give prizes to the employee advocates who share the most posts or generate the most engagement per month. 

2. Be Consistent and Tell a Story 

We often hear about posts that have “gone viral.” For many social media creators and influencers, those 15 minutes of fame are the ultimate goal. Unfortunately, businesses can’t expect one noteworthy post to lead to long-term social media marketing success.

If you really want to drive ROI from your social media marketing efforts, you should tell compelling stories that keep your followers engaged and coming back for more. If your followers know what to expect from you, they’ll be more likely to notice and interact with your content when it pops up on their feed. And, if they really love what you’re doing, they might even take the extra step to visit your profiles on their own. 

But what do I mean when I say that you should tell a story? What I’m getting at is that your social media content should be curated to support campaigns highlighting certain customer pain points and topics of interest. Another important piece of this is that your social media efforts should align with the rest of your marketing efforts so that the messaging your audience is seeing is consistent wherever they go. So, for example, if you develop an email campaign aimed at top-of-the-funnel contacts in the manufacturing industry, you should create content that opens the door for this segment to continue to engage with you on social. 

Adding another marketing activity to your day is probably the last thing you want to do. However, investing in an automation tool that allows you to schedule posts ahead of time, will allow you to easily deliver timely content that aligns with the rest of your marketing efforts. 

3. Take Advantage of Current Events and Trends

Timeliness is key when it comes to getting your audience to engage on social media. Creating  or curating content that is “trending” can also improve your chances of appearing at the top of social media feeds — making sure your audience sees your posts in the first place. So, latching on to current events and trends is an excellent way to get your content featured and capture the attention of your target customers. 

That doesn’t mean that you need your eyes on social media at all times to take advantage of every potential opportunity. Instead, you can set up Google Alerts for terms related to your target audience and industry. You can also monitor relevant hashtags to see what your audience and competitors are posting. Then use their content as inspiration that informs your overall social media strategy.

4. Fuel Demand Gen By Leveraging Social Media as a Content Distribution Channel

A good portion of your social posts should direct your audience to a webpage or asset that will motivate them to keep progressing through the customer journey. 

Using your social media channels as a content distribution platform is a great way to direct your audience to resources that provide the information they need to move to the next stage in the sales funnel. For the best results, we recommend that you use a mix of gated and ungated content.

Ungated content, such as blog posts, is a great way to get potential customers on your website so they can start browsing and learning more about your products or services. Conversely, gated content — such as eBooks that your contacts can access by filling out a form — allows you to collect important contact information that you can use to inform your marketing strategy and create more compelling customer journeys. 

5. Use Data and Analytics to Optimize Your Efforts

While social media provides you room to get more creative with your marketing efforts, you still want your work to generate results. If you’re not already keeping an eye on your data and analytics and optimizing your social media efforts accordingly, you should definitely start.

A few social media KPIs to measure include: 

  • Impressions: Knowing the number of people who see your posts allows you to understand if your content is getting prominently featured on social feeds.
  • Follows and Unfollows: You want to secure an audience that is eager to view your content and hear what you have to say. Tracking how many followers you gain week over week can provide you with an idea of whether your efforts are attracting new potential customers. 
  • Clicks: As I mentioned above, you should create opportunities on social media for your audience to engage with you through other marketing channels. If your social media posts are not motivating your audience to download an eBook, sign up for an email newsletter, or perform other actions that advance them along the sales funnel, you need to re-think your efforts. 
  • Shares: A share shows that a follower not only found your post interesting enough to stop scrolling but also to share it with their audience. On top of that, having followers share your posts helps you get more eyes on your content and improves your chance of showing up on social feeds. Keeping track of which posts are getting the most shares can help you see how to continue to enhance your social strategy for maximum engagement. 
  • Attributable Conversions: Social media should play a key role in your demand generation and customer acquisition efforts. Being able to trace conversions back to your social media efforts is a good way to gauge if your strategy is working. 
  • Attributable Revenue: Speaking of conversions, the ultimate goal for any company is to gain new customers and increase ROI. You should also keep track of revenue generated by specific campaigns and posts, and use your findings to optimize your efforts to help you meet your revenue goals. 

Having access to these metrics will show you where you stand and where you can improve so you can continue to grow your audience and reap the rewards of this powerful medium. 

Act-On Helps You Easily Tie Your Social Media Efforts to Your Digital Marketing Strategy

Investing in a robust marketing automation platform will help you align your social media strategy with top-notch execution and reporting. Act-On equips you with the tools you need to automate your marketing efforts, streamline processes, and measure results. Even better, the time you’ll save on tedious manual processes will allow you to focus your energy on innovating and growing your strategy. 

If you’d like to take a peek into Act-On’s Advanced Social Media module and learn how we can help you implement your entire digital marketing strategy, please schedule a demo with one of our marketing automation experts. They can show you what makes our platform so unique and walk you through a variety of use cases related to your needs and interests.

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Dan Bongino: Another Media Hoax Drops

January 28, 2020   Humor
0 Dan Bongino: Another Media Hoax Drops

The Dan Bongino Show
The Bongino Report

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5 Tricks for Writing Social Media Headlines That Generate Engagement

November 15, 2019   CRM News and Info

We all know social media is a powerful tool, but understanding how to leverage it to its full potential remains a mystery for many marketers. While influencers make getting followers and engagement seem like a breeze, most of us are struggling to create posts that match the algorithm (which is different for every platform) and get noticed by our target audience. 

Social Media Blog Hero 5 Tricks for Writing Social Media Headlines That Generate Engagement

Despite how difficult it is to achieve social media success, it’s a crucial component of any robust digital marketing strategy. When a large percentage of your target audience is constantly online, you’re missing out on the opportunity to promote your product, build brand awareness, and engage your prospects and customers if you don’t invest the proper resources on social media efforts. 

There’s no one-size-fits-all strategy that guarantees social media success, but there are a few steps you can take to improve your chances. These 5 tips will help you write social media snippets that generate engagement and drive ROI. 

1) Ask Questions That Get Your Audience Thinking

One of the biggest challenges with social media is finding a way to stand out from the crowd. While it’s very easy to post a pretty picture that motivates somebody to “Like” your post, it’s much more difficult to write a social media snippet that strikes a chord with your audience. 

Asking a question is one proven tactic to increase engagement. Try asking your audience about a feature they’d like to see from your product or solution, how they’re using it, common challenges they deal with on a regular basis, or anything else that sparks a conversation about your brand. (But be prepared to answer difficult questions.) 

This method works because it gives your audience an opportunity to voice their opinion and provides you a chance to make them feel heard by responding to their comments. You can even continue to fuel engagement down the line by using the insights you gather to inform your product development, marketing efforts, and social media strategy moving forward.

2) Don’t Forget to Include a CTA (When Appropriate)

Motivating your audience to complete an action that brings them one step closer to reaching the end of the buyer journey is an essential aspect of every demand generation initiative. Therefore –– just like you do in emails, landing pages, blogs, and your website –– you should aim to include some sort of call to action (CTA) in your social media posts. 

Prompting your followers to answer a question, as we previously discussed, is one type of CTA, but there are so many other prompts you could also consider. These are just a few examples of CTAs you can leverage to generate engagement on your social media posts:

  • Encourage Your Followers to Tag Their Friends: Ask your followers to tag a friend or two who will find your social media post useful or interesting. This will help you get more eyes on your post and increase your brand awareness.
  • Invite Followers to Visit a Product Page or Download Content: If your goal is to attract more leads and hand raisers, invite your followers to visit a product page or fill out an adaptive form in exchange for a piece of relevant content. This will help you collect data and behavior insights so you can continue to engage with these contacts outside of social media. 
  • Ask Followers to Sign Up for an Event or Webinar: Webinars and events are a great way to engage your target audience, but you have to get them to show up first. Promoting your event on social and asking your audience to click on a link to a landing page to learn more is a great way to build you list of attendees. From there, you can ask them to share the event’s hashtag on their personal feeds for a free gift.

As you can see, your CTAs will vary depending on the purpose of your post and desired outcome, but they are a crucial part of building relationships with your followers beyond your social media profiles. 

3) Review Trends for More Successful Social Media Posts

Even if you already have accurate buyer personas and a good understanding of your target audience, it’s important to remember that different channels require different messaging and content.  Some efforts are better suited for email, your website, or social media.

Therefore, you have to know what type of content your audience is looking for on social. An easy way to find out is to look through your data to see what kind of posts are inspiring your audience to stop scrolling and engage. 

Use the posts that garner more “Likes,” generate engagement, and motivate your followers to visit your site as a model for future posts. This not only helps you share content that your audience has already demonstrated that they like, it also helps you be consistent which, in turn, makes you more recognizable and memorable. 

4) Latch On to Current Events or Trends That Might Resonate With Your Audience

We all know how hard it is to get noticed when posts about a recent event or current trend are taking over social media. But rather than viewing these moments as obstacles, take advantage by latching on to them whenever it makes sense to do so. 

Case in point, the holidays are a great opportunity for you to promote your brand. For example, you could create a post around the New Year suggesting that your followers should make it a resolution to tackle a problem that only your product or service can solve. Posts like this improve your chances of showing up on people’s newsfeed and enable you to talk about a current topic that is likely resonating with your audience while also promoting your product. That’s a win-win-win situation, if you ask me!

5) Delivering the Right Message at the Right Time Is the Key

You need to provide your audience with personalized messaging that speaks to their interests and pain points. 

A marketing automation platform such as Act-On can allow you to track your website visitors behavior to determine which pages on your website are driving them to visit your social media profiles. This allows you to monitor trends among your audience to produce more relevant content that matches where your customers are in the buyer journey and builds upon information they already know.

Improve your timing by posting when your audience is most likely to see your posts. Have target customers in different time zones? Not a problem! A social media scheduling tool like Act-On’s advanced social media module enables you to automate your social media efforts to help you build an active social media presence without having to live in front of your computer screen.

Social Media Is an Extension of Your Overall Marketing Efforts 

Generating results from your social media efforts goes beyond writing witty posts that grab the attention of your audience. If you truly want to drive ROI from your efforts, social media should serve as focal point of your current marketing plan to help you engage, nurture, and keep moving your leads and customers through the buyer journey. 

The idea of going beyond social media might seem like a handful when you’re simply trying to get the gist of it, but crafting and executing a cohesive and effective digital marketing strategy is within reach. A marketing automation platform like Act-On enables you to personalize and automate the majority of your marketing efforts so you can bring your ideas to life and reap the rewards that come from a more robust and personalized marketing strategy. 

Interested in learning more about how Act-On can empower you to own the customer journey from beginning to end? Schedule a time to talk to one of our experts to learn more about how Act-On can help you launch better marketing campaigns that drive even better results.

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Digital Media and Natural Sources of Entertainment

November 9, 2019   Humor
Digital Media and Natural Sources of Entertainment Digital Media and Natural Sources of Entertainment

Entertainment has become an industry in this world and we all had experienced many types of entertainment. According to its definition, Entertainment is an activity that holds the attention and interest of a person or audience to amuses in an elegant way.

What is Digital Media Entertainment

Digital Media has changed the entertainment a lot. Digital Media has opened a new door to the entertainment industry. If you have a smartphone or a computer along with internet access then you are welcome in the world of Digital Media Entertainment. You can easily download or get online books to read, games to play or movies to watch for entertainment.

Digital Media have occupied our minds in the name of entertainment but we should not oversight the Natural Sources of Entertainment. Unfortunately, we are neglecting natural means which is quite more entertaining, healthy and beneficial for mankind.

For example, many of us may have experienced that we were busy watching a movie, playing a game or reading a book while it was raining outside but our addiction to digital sources of entertainment has overcome our minds enough to neglect the rain outside of the window. 

Digital Media effects on Society

We can not miss the positive effects of Digital Media on our daily lives. A common man can have access to the world of information and entertainment. Digital media and Digital devices have shortened the world even more. We are no more dependent on anyone to have any type of Information, Education or Entertainment.

But as we use to say that, “Excesses of anything is Bad”.

Digital Media is definitely a source of Information or Entertainment to fulfill your need or desire but considering it as a purpose or goal in life is completely the wrong approach. 

Many of us have heard about the news of suicides due to a video game called Blue Whale Challenge. According to news, there were hundreds of suicide attempts by users of that video game and most of them were teenagers. Cause an immature or childish mind is easy to capture through these types of games.

Do you realize the intensity of this situation and where our new generation headed?

This was just one demonstration but there are many other examples of developing abnormal behavior in kids due to playing video games. They are haunted by many psychological disorders and badly damaging their lives. 

As a parent or guardian, we have to keep an eye on the activities of our children and try to develop a friendly environment between parents and kids to avoid irrevocable losses.

Natural Source of Entertainment

There are many ways to entertain yourself in a healthy way. You can simply follow below-mentioned activities:

  1. Take a drive.
  2. Plan a trip with friends or family.
  3. Play a sport. (indoor/outdoor)
  4. Take a walk. (alone/friends)
  5. Cooking. 
  6. Visit a friend.
  7. Gardening.
  8. Board games.
  9. Take Yoga classes.

You should choose healthy entertainment activities rather than boxed ourselves into digital entertainment boundaries. Also, educate and promote healthy activities in surroundings and take an active part along with your friends and family. You may not be able to bring instant change to society but I assure you that you’ll initiate a healthy trend of entertainment to your circle of community.

The Trend of Healthy Activities

You should arrange or participate in social activities or healthy competition in your town and try to involve your friends and family to boost the confidence of a new generation which leads them to better living standards.

You should also promote indoor/outdoor team-based games and improve people’s interaction with your family and friends, believe me, you’ll reintroduce the healthy lifestyle to your community for sure.

Benefits of a Healthy Lifestyle

You can not deny the long-listed benefits of a healthy life. Everybody wants to live their lives in a healthy way but couldn’t take the necessary steps towards it. So we discuss some notable benefits of living happily.

  1. Avoid many dangerous hearts, mental and other diseases.
  2. Maintain a good mood.
  3. Improved memory.
  4. Good sleep.
  5. Improved decision power.
  6. Avoid anxiety.
  7. Healthy behavior.

You can clearly see the mindblowing advantages of a healthy lifestyle and these can definitely lead you to a happy, satisfied and successful life.

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How To Create a Social Media Employee Advocacy Program

November 1, 2019   CRM News and Info

There’s no denying social media is an effective and essential communication tool for any business, but it’s limited to reaching a brand’s existing following. And since posting the same material to the same audience over and over again doesn’t yield a good return on investment, it’s time you started branching out beyond your current following — which brings us to today’s topic: how to create a social media employee advocacy program. 

shutterstock 369008021 How To Create a Social Media Employee Advocacy Program

The numbers speak for themselves. 

  • Brand messages have a 561% higher reach when shared by an employee rather than company accounts
  • Collectively, employees’ social networks are 10 times larger than corporates’
  • Employee posts generate 800% more engagement than corporate posts — and convert 700% more leads

Now, before you start barking at your co-workers to start sharing every single piece of branded content, gather key stakeholders to develop the purpose and strategy behind this new initiative. Today, we’re going to learn how to do just that in order to create an effective social media employee advocacy program that:

  1. Excites and activates your employees
  2. Builds credibility and authenticity for both employees and the organization

Let’s learn how!

What Is Social Media Employee Advocacy?

Social media employee advocacy is when a company empowers their workers to promote their brand on social media while also positioning themselves as thought leaders within their peer group and industry. Typically, employee advocates will post things to their social media accounts like:

  • Company, team, customer, or individual recognition (awards, features, mentions)
  • Workplace culture and team involvement (i.e. volunteering,  office celebration)
  • Event attendance or exhibition
  • Customer spotlights
  • Service or product announcement/update
  • Relevant thought leadership — whether from the company blog, industry influencer, customer use case, etc.
  • Career opportunities at the company

When employees share news, insights, and shout-outs related to their company, they’re not only cultivating brand awareness on behalf of their employer, they’re also nurturing credibility based on who they are as professionals. (This is especially important for sales professionals — more on that shortly.)

Employee advocacy on social media represents authentic engagement, interest, and professional development in their expertise — not a promotional sounding board for the business. We are all invested in our careers, and part of establishing our personal brand is how we present ourselves on social media. Employee advocacy should amplify this and empower individuals to act as knowledgeable and engaged professionals rather than forcing people to mindlessly copy and paste sales pitches that only serve the company.

When done right, social media employee advocacy is a win-win for employees and organizations alike. The employee is able to bolster their personal brand as a professional while the company gains cost-effective brand awareness to fresh audiences, which leads to increased site traffic, conversions, revenue, and even new talent acquisition!

How to Kickstart Your Employee Advocacy Program

Implementing an employee advocacy program is a marathon — not a sprint. Like I mentioned above, establishing a strategy and purpose early on is essential for gaining maximum interest and involvement. So, without further ado, here’s a 4-step guide for launching your employee advocacy program:

  1. Figure out your goals and objectives for your social media employee advocacy program — and be specific. What metrics are you measuring? What do you want to accomplish (other than something vague like “get more brand awareness”)? How does this play into your overall social media strategy? You’ll want to have a clear understanding of what you and the company expect for this employee advocacy program before jumping into launch-mode.
  2. Become familiar with the social media tool you’ll be using to promote employee advocacy so that you can help onboard your peers. Take advantage of any training resources at your disposal, and work with your account manager/customer success representative to get the most out of its functionality. This will help you communicate how-to’s and also recognize any limitations within the platform.

  1. Determine which department will have the greatest impact and benefit the most as social media employee advocates (*HINT: It’s Sales), train them how to use the software, and develop a regular sharing cadence. Once this team is fully onboarded and participating, move to other impactful departments, such as your leadership and marketing teams.

(Why Sales? Because their role and methodology has completely transformed within the past decade. While technology obviously plays a major role in closing the deal, authentic connections remain the biggest factor in any business relationship. Engaging on social with a salesperson is fun and personal than a cold call, and it creates a foundation for those initial sales calls because the prospect will now recognize the name and brand. It’s no surprise that sales professionals who use social media in their daily activities achieve 78% more sales than those who don’t, right?)

  1. Create social media content that is authentic and valuable for customers and employees alike. Your staff wants to grow as professionals and become recognized as experts in their field, and sharing useful insights with their industry peers and colleagues helps them do both. 

As you write your social copy, try to gain a little perspective. Account managers want to celebrate customer success rather than tout how your company helped them achieve those wins. Engineering departments are proud of achieving great positioning in product reports and are eager to share their accomplishments. Sales loves to serve as a credible and educational resource for hot leads, which means they might want to share engaging thought leadership content. Social posts that resonate with more employees will prompt more shares, clicks, engagement, and, ultimately, revenue.

The Do’s and One Big Don’t of Employee Advocacy

Do incorporate the employee advocacy program into onboarding for all new team members. This includes setting them up to use the platform successfully and reviewing company policies as they relate to social media.

Do use a social media tool with a good employee advocacy feature (like Act-On’s Advanced Social Media Module)

Do occasionally encourage friendly competition — especially if there’s a certain event, go-to-market, or piece of content to emphasize. 

Do create content that appeals to different departments outside of Marketing and Sales. If you aren’t sure what they like to share and engage with, ask!

Do set up notification emails for your employee advocates to alert them whenever you post new messages. (Bonus if they can directly share the post from the email!)

Don’t require employees to post to social media. Employee social media accounts are their own, and they should be able to decide if and what they want to share. Some people aren’t active on social media and others are particular about keeping work and personal completely separate — and that’s okay. Encourage your employees to participate, but never make it mandatory.

Improve Your Social Media Employee Advocacy With Act-On’s Advanced Social Media Module

Social media can be a tough nut to crack, especially for smaller B2B companies, which is why employee advocacy is such an important part of any successful social media strategy. If you’re ready to take your social media marketing game to the next level, you should reach out to one of our digital marketing experts to learn more about Act-On’s Advanced Social Media Module.

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Researchers craft AI framework that explains your social media feeds

August 10, 2019   Big Data
 Researchers craft AI framework that explains your social media feeds

Feeds are the cornerstones on which modern music recommenders, news aggregators, and social media platforms are built. If you’re like most people, you spend minutes to hours each day scrolling through songs, clips, articles, questions, public service announcements, and advertisements informed by your interests and preferences. But wouldn’t it be great if the algorithms underpinning feeds (and their recommendations) were a little more transparent?

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Informatics thought so, which is why they investigated a framework — Framework for Activity-Item Relationship Discovery, or FAIRY — that systematically discovers, ranks, and explains the connection between users’ actions and what appears in their social media feeds. It’s described in a paper (“FAIRY: A Framework for Understanding Relationships between Users’ Actions and their Social Feeds“) published on the preprint server Arxiv.org.

“Transparency and explainability are key concerns in the modern world of cognitive overload, filter bubbles, user tracking, and privacy risks,” wrote the paper’s coauthors. “Here, a feed results from an intricate combination of one’s interests, friendship network, her actions on the platform, and external trends … Over time, a user accumulates several thousands of actions that together constitute [their] profile (posts, upvotes, likes, comments, etc.), making it impossible for the user to remember all these details.”

FAIRY attempts to solve this dilemma by creating user-specific interaction graphs using information visible to users. It learns models for predicting relevance and surprisal from real-world social media platform data, and then it leverages learning-to-rank techniques to uncover and rank relationships derived from the graphs.

The features that guide FAIRY are grouped into five sets — user, category, item, path instance, and path pattern — where “path” refers to explanation paths. Users’ influence (e.g., the ratio of followers to followees) is measured as a complement to their activity, as is their engagement with various feed items.

The researchers note that, due to the sheer volume of feed interactions performed by a typical person, graphed entity relationships span from thousands to millions. The aforementioned learn-to-rank approach made them easier to parse by presenting only the top few connections that are either relevant (generally useful as a satisfactory explanation) or surprising (i.e., forgotten or unknown relationships) to users.

In studies, the scientists tasked 20 volunteers to interact with two platforms — Quora and Last.fm — using fresh accounts with five followers each. They spent 20 hours total on at least one of the two services over the course of several sessions, performing a minimum of 12 activities while identifying non-obvious items after scrolling through their entire feed. After each session, the team updated the interaction graphs and selected three non-obvious recommendations per user before mining explanation paths for the feed items.

In a series of tests, the researchers found that FAIRY outperformed three relationship mining baselines on the task of predicting what users considered relevant and surprising explanations. They attribute its success to a “powerful” information network representation of the user’s sphere of influence and the learning-to-rank approach, and they say that the work represents the first step toward a goal of improving transparency with respect to social media feeds.

“[I]dentifying explanatory relationships between the users’ online behavior … and the feed items they receive is useful for at least three reasons: (i) they can convince the user of their relevance … (ii) they can point the user toward … a course of action to avoid seeing more of certain kinds of items, and (iii) [they could serve as] a proxy that the users could find plausible,” wrote the coauthors. “For example, if Alice sees a post on making bombs in her feed when she herself is unaware of any explicit connection to such, she might be highly curious as to what she might have done to create such an association.”

In the future, the team plans to implement FAIRY as a browser plugin and to investigate further the effects of users’ activities across multiple platforms.

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Sport businesses become digital media companies in the digital media revolution

July 2, 2019   CRM News and Info

Stephen Bourke is one of my favorite sports industry powerhouses. He is a thought leader par excellence who has his pulse on both the industry he serves and the world at large. He is great at not only finding whatever discontinuities exist — where the sports industry lags after the world or vice versa — but also, at least for the sports industry, he is great at resolving them. In this piece he goes through what sports businesses are becoming and, in some cases, have become. It is no longer a matter of just putting the teams on the field and meeting the ticket and food needs at the stadium. It’s now an exciting and daunting transformation for the teams and their businesses to become digital media companies.

One more thing: SEAT is coming up July 14-16 in Daytona Beach. For those of you who don’t know, SEAT which stands for Sports Entertainment Alliance in Technology, is an organization of technology buyers on the business and IT side in senior positions in the sports world.  Each year there is a conference that pulls together all the disparate teams and leagues at the pro and even the college level.  It is unique and if you are a technology company who’s technology is being used by teams and leagues it would be very smart of you to show your support for the industry using your stuff by being there. Last year, I called out five teams for their lack of support of the sports industry in this post. This year two of them represented. Three apparently not, though I will find out finally at the conference. Who are the two smart ones? Who do I have to call out again? Watch for it post SEAT.

I’ll let Stephen take it away from here. He’s a permanent fixture in this column.

Introduction

Digital media is now a feature of any product or service because that is what consumers expect. Society is now in the midst of an increasingly complex digital media revolution. What makes this time so challenging is that many of the shifts are being driven by the voice of the market rather than industries which have historically led major economic transformations. 

For instance, the emergence of competitive gaming and esports organically grew out of the groundswell of interest that people have for video games while the current popularity of Instagram as the social platform to see and be seen is also a function of people power.

Prior to the digital era, traditional enterprises set the tone of supply and demand by offering consumers products along with some advertising to create brand awareness and attract buyers.

Now, with the range of digital and social media options that we all have at our fingertips, organizations need to understand where the attention of their audience is moving to. While people of all ages are part of the connected generation, Millennials and now Gen Z are at the forefront of business determinations about how to remain relevant.

Following is how Peter Gruber, LA Dodgers owner, describes the digital media challenge for the team’s newly appointed CEO Tucker Kain to USA Today — it could also be a mission statement for other organizations:

He has to find a way furiously to curate new audiences at the young level and connect with them. He has to go out hunting where the elephants are. He has to speak their language because the new generation of fans consume games in a different way.

It’s not so much people interested in the statistics of baseball, but Fortnite, League of Legends, Snapchat, Instagram, Pinterest, the immediacy of the environment, the gamification, fantasy, gambling and the social aspects of the narrative.

I previously wrote here about Why Sport is One of the Most Disrupted Industries and with the pace of change now in the digital media space, the era of disruption continues to accelerate for sports business. 

Due to the special attachment that sport and sports stars hold in society, all commercial or emotionally-invested participants are now content producers in the industry. This includes the teams, leagues, broadcasters, media outlets, fans themselves and now athletes are even their own version of media companies.

When faced with a Digital Media Revolution…

So, what does an organization in the midst of a digital media revolution do? Well, they become a digital media company. 

And for good reason – Salsify in their 2017 Cracking the Consumer Code report found that 87% of consumers rate product content “extremely” or “very important” when deciding to buy and a year earlier they found that 90% of consumers do their shopping online.

Content that adds value before, during and after purchase should no longer be distinguished separately by the organization from the product, service or experience itself.

In the business of sport, as teams and leagues globalize to expand their audiences and churn out content on a daily basis to extend the game-day to a week-long experience (and the season into a year-round activation), the brand side of teams are becoming digital media companies.

Also: How global sports brands like Real Madrid are learning to think like digital media companies (Business Insider)

Perhaps you work in a B2B environment and think that this content-to-product principle does not apply in your world. Think again. Business consumers make decisions the same as personal consumption decisions. B2B buyers will review product information and reviews, read branded content online and check out the companies social media profile. According to a Brand Gen Report, 95% of B2B customers view content as trustworthy when researching a company. 

In the B2B world, digital media initiatives like McKinsey’s Global Institute, Salesforce Trailblazer Community and Capgemini’s Research help brands to distinguish themselves from their competitors and develop trust in their products.

Digital Media Company Business Model

In another previous guest post, I reflected on how sports business is a microcosm of the broader economy. Continuing on this same theme, following is my business model to explain the strategic process of how sports organizations are becoming digital media companies. This four-phase approach can also offer insights for companies outside of the sports industry.

Digital Media Company Model

Phase One: Prepare

Establish a Social Business: Social media is typically tucked into marketing or communication areas which is logical. At the same time, leadership needs to give the function executive attention which means aligning social metrics to corporate objectives (which more often than not they don’t) as well as a commitment to appropriate levels of talent and technology.

Publish Brave Content: Sports fans follow their team for the value that it provides to their lives, which is the same reason consumers follow brands. Brands need to respect the social aspect of the medium and forego corporate speak. Social media bravery is an outcome of the freedom that leadership provides to their online storytellers to create, innovate and experiment. 

Phase Two: Grow

Reach and Engagement: For any organization’s digital community to become a valuable strategic asset, organic growth through reach and engagement is needed. Maximizing these digital media goals is a process of learning and refinement. Once again, it helps if executives are in the conversation and even better if they are social leaders themselves contributing to brand narrative.  Brands that achieve the best online growth do so because of the agenda and encouragement provided from above.

Phase Three: Analyze

Analytics: In this phase — and in parallel with all others — social media analytics are used to make business decisions. In addition to gaining insights into reach and engagement demographics, sentiment and lifestyle preferences of online followers can be uncovered.

Categorize Digital Assets: Economic analysis establishes the commercial value of digital media assets using a rate card approach to categorizing and costing their value; in sports business, categories can include the team’s podcast, blog, fantasy games, match line-up, MVP, player Q&A, videos and so on.

Also: Barcelona use win over Chelsea to show the power of their Twitter account (Digital Sport)

Phase Four: Commercialize

Investment business case: This is the phase where the team’s investment into its media company model creates its digital revenue stream. This is the business case that moves digital from a cost centre to income generator.

As discussed earlier, since digital content is now part of the product itself, budget for digital media should no longer be considered a cost centre but rather an essential product investment. Digital media amplifies all corporate objectives.

Corporate partners that have invested in becoming a media company of their own are well placed to gain return on investment from digital media activation of their sports sponsorship.

Go-to-market: With categories and rate card defined, rights holders can align their digital assets to existing, and potential, corporate partners based on strategic connection between fan-to-customer profiles, i.e., gained from the Analyze phase. Being well organized with fan data is a gift that keeps giving for teams, leagues and events.

Activation: Finally, co-creation of digital content between sport rights holders and sponsoring brands creates a virtuous cycle to round out this digital media company business model. The unique alliance between a team and each of its partners offers new storytelling angles for mutual benefit. Return to Phase One – Brave Content and repeat.

See: 

Organization Revolution meets Digital Media Revolution

The quality of an organization’s digital content is an external reflection of its internal values, collaborative processes and commitment to market. This makes transformation an all-of-enterprise responsibility to meet the digital media revolution head-on.

FIFA and its 2018 World Cup held in Russia offer a high profile output of digital transformation and how digital media enhances the product itself. 

“2018 will be FIFA’s year of digital revolution as we develop a worldwide digital future to engage and interact with fans.” – Gianni Infantino,  FIFA President, Dubai International Sports Conference, December 2017

Through use of the word “revolution,” FIFA’s president declared the organization’s transformation to be an urgent internal movement focused on fan engagement. Terminology matters; FC Bayern Munich calls its ‘FC Bayern Digital 4.0′ and declares it to be its most important initiative after the team itself.  

FIFA’s revolution shone threw in the governing body’s most important moment of the year — the 2018 FIFA World Cup. The event achieved its highest online levels with more than 750 billion engagements across all digital platforms including 25 million followers playing World Cup fantasy and interactive games.

FIFA’s World Cup digital media success was built on four pillars of engagement; Inform — Entertain — Connect — Support, reinforced by the use of images and videos to match fan consumption preferences.

Inform

Since around only 1% of fans were in attendance at the World Cup, FIFA ensured that the other 99% of followers were also kept informed about all elements of the event. For example, FIFA assigned 32 reporters (one per team) to cover all of the action including a blog report of each match delivered in 16 languages. They owned match reporting responsibilities to compete against the international media scrum that was also covering the action.

Entertain

Given the popularity of FIFA’s digital media presence during the World Cup, it was important to create interactive touch points for fans to immerse themselves more deeply in the experience regardless of where in the world they were. 

FIFA’s Online Fan Zone included gamified options that they blended with corporate partners to create mutual value for fans and brands alike. Games included the Hyundai Match Predictor, McDonald’s Fantasy Game, Wanda Bracket Challenge and Hisense Fan Dream Team. In exchange for their digital play, fans traded personal data with sponsoring partners.

everyone is a content producer Sport businesses become digital media companies in the digital media revolution

Connect

FIFA created the campaign ShareIt! to generate excitement and reflect the value that it placed on user generated content as the purest form of engagement in this age of sharing.  

Its #FIFAStadiumDJ twitter poll to develop a shortlist of songs to play in World Cup stadiums received more than three million votes and was the most retweeted FIFA tweet of all time. It was also the third most popular poll ever held on Twitter. Interestingly, the campaign itself had nothing to do with World Cup action which reveals the benefit of creating engaging content around a product to unify its online community.

Support

FIFA purposefully ensured that its online presence was based on community management principles rather than one-way broadcast communications. For instance, FIFA increased its responsiveness compared to previous events through customer service outlets on social media.

Overall, FIFA’s social voice had a decidedly personal feel which can be difficult for events to achieve due to their temporary nature. Its humanist style was reflective of FIFA’s fan-first commitment, pre-planning and revolutionary leadership.

Author’s Note: In September 2019, I will launch a new concept in digital transformation knowledge to elevate sports business careers and organizations. Having delivered the only industry specific program on this topic to some of the most recognizable rights holders on the planet, this new format will offer unrivaled access and value for the sports industry. Follow or connect with me on LinkedIn for updates.

__________________________________________________

Note: If you are interested in participating in the CRM Watchlist 2020, please email me at paul-greenberg3@the56group.com and ask for registration form. Remember, you will have to qualify to participate. There are criteria. Also, if you are interested in reading my new book on customer engagement, The Commonwealth of Self-Interest: Business Success through Customer Engagement (2019), please click here.

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