Microsoft is replacing approximately 50 news production workers with artificial intelligence (AI), according to reports.
Approximately 50 employees who work producing news for MSN will not have their contracts renewed, as their jobs will now be handled by AI. According to The Seattle Times, the move only impacts contractors working through staffing agencies. Full-time, in-house employees will evidently keep their jobs.
Much of the “work involves using algorithms to identify trending news stories from dozens of publishing partners and to help optimize the content by rewriting headlines or adding better accompanying photographs or slide shows.”
AI has been replacing jobs in many industries, with news and writing being one of the latest impacted by the new technology.
With a good few years of history (and a heavy advertising presence on YouTube), Squarespace is becoming an increasingly popular platform for creating and managing websites. Below, we’ll be giving you a broad look at what Squarespace is, what it can do, and provide a basic introduction on how to get started using it. Enjoy!... View Article
Our mission since 2005 is to publish content to help ecommerce merchants. What follows are the 10 most popular articles that we published in May 2020. Articles from early in the month are more likely to make the list than later ones.
Instagram is a hotspot for building an audience and selling products. Each image caption allows up to 2,200 characters, or roughly 300 words. In this article, I'll discuss posts and captions that drive sales on Instagram.
“In this environment, digital transformation is more important than ever,” says VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger. “If you think of it only a few percentages of employees worked from home before this (pandemic). Now it’s 97 percent. Given the length and challenges that people faced this doesn’t go away.”
Pat Gelsinger, CEO of VMware, discusses how the pandemic has accelerated digital transformation and dramatically increased the work from home trend for enterprise companies:
Digital Transformation Is More Important Than Ever
In this environment, digital transformation is more important than ever. If you think of it only a few percentages of employees worked from home before this (pandemic). Now it’s 97 percent. Given the length and challenges that people faced this doesn’t go away. We are going to be here for the next two years where the majority of workforces, a substantial portion, are going to be work from home distributed workforce.
In the face of that IT and technology are more important not less. Sometimes it takes a decade to make a week of progress and sometimes a week gives you a decade of progress. All of a sudden, education, healthcare, and work from home are making huge steps forward. That’s what gives us the view that long-term tech is going to be stronger and software and cloud will be stronger yet than the overall economic environment.
Work From Home Is The New Normal
For VMWare, we were 20 percent work from home. I expect as we continue in this environment we will end up in at 50 to 60 percent over time. I don’t think we are atypical. We’re doubling and tripling the amount of work from home. When you think about that distributed workforce, essentially you go from 100 or 200 sites depending on the size of your company to 10,000 or 20,000 sites.
When you think about every home becoming a new worksite they need to be managed, connected, and productive. They need to be secure. They need good quality and bandwidth. Then they need capacity. That’s where VMWare cloud comes in. That’s our business continuity focus for the future.
We don’t see ourselves as atypical here. This is the new normal. We’re excited to see these transformations happening across the industry and we’re making good progress with customers around the globe.
Every CIO Is Adjusting Their Priorities
We used to generate new projects with POC’s and being face to face with customers. The salesmen always liked to shoulder up with the potential customer. We have to make adjustments. Every CIO is also adjusting their priorities due to this radical shift of a distributed workforce and the new demands that are being placed on them.
Digital Transformation Is More Important Than Ever, Says VMWare CEO Pat Gelsinger
Since shelter-in-place rules were enacted, the way people use the internet has changed. They’re consuming more media and increasing web research and browsing.
Paid search strategy is not one-size-fits-all. Each vertical must be treated differently, as some industries like ecommerce have seen improved performance while others have seen a declined performance.
A pandemic is not the time to cut ad budget. Instead, investing in advertising now should pay dividends when the market normalizes.
Ensure your ad copy isappropriate for the landscape. That means even going back to a campaign that started before the pandemic to update any language that isn’t applicable to the current landscape.
Marketers must stay flexible and agile during this time and monitor what’s working or not working and creating a quick plan to adjust.
When COVID-19 began spreading across the U.S., marketers scrambled to figure out how to respond. Sudden work-from-home mandates, cancelled business trips, postponed conferences and frozen budgets threw a wrench into usual expectations and plans. Users’ needs and online behaviours have changed in tandem, forcing marketers to meet them on their new terms.
Search is more important than ever now because people are spending almost all of their time at home and online, consuming media, researching, browsing and shopping. According to Forbes, total internet hits have surged by 50% to 70% with people under lockdown, while 32% of people say they are spending longer on social media. Hours spent in non-gaming apps are up as people turn to TikTok, WhatsApp, Instagram and Twitter to keep entertained, connected and informed. To stay relevant in these turbulent times, it’s imperative that marketers maintain their paid search presence while adjusting to the needs of the moment.
Vary strategy by vertical
While no industry is immune from the impact of coronavirus, businesses are affected differently and should adapt their paid search strategies accordingly. Industries like B2B and ecommerce have seen improved performance, while industries like travel and healthcare have struggled with poor results.
The fact that healthcare is struggling may seem paradoxical, given the overwhelming need for healthcare services right now. While hospitals are busy with COVID-19 patients, people who don’t have the virus are avoiding medical centres, hospitals, and non-essential medical services like bariatric surgery and physical therapy.
Users are shifting their searches for their healthcare needs.Notably, people under shelter-in-place orders are seeking to receive care while staying in their homes. eMarketer published data from CivicScience which found that between February and March 2020, the number of U.S. adults who reported intent to use telemedicine rose from 18% to 30%. As a result, healthcare providers have to switch their offerings – along with their messaging – to emphasize virtual and telehealth services. The same is true for many restaurants as they pivot to pick up or delivery only.
The situation is different for B2B companies
The situation is different for B2B companies, which have longer sales cycles. While businesses like restaurants are worried about running out of money now, B2B companies are concerned about how they’ll fare months and, in some cases, years from now. The instinct may be to cut down on marketing budgets to save money, but extreme changes in paid search strategies can have long-lasting effects on performance. During this time, it’s important B2B companies continue filling the funnel and building brand awareness to alleviate large sales gaps that can occur later in the year.
Financial service-related searches are surging
Financial service-related searches are surging right now as people explore their options for economic relief like loans. Many companies in this space are smartly increasing their ad spending and shifting the bulk of it toward campaigns that push their best performing service lines. The same is true for ecommerce companies, especially those that sell household products and cleaning supplies,loungewear, cooking equipment, workout gear and entertainment items like board games and puzzles. Shares of Hasbro, for instance, have soared. For these companies, the adjustment is less about the offerings and more about the messaging.
Don’t stop advertising when times are tough
There are universal principles for how to optimize paid search strategies that apply to marketers in every industry. The first is not to neglect paid search, even during difficult times. The World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) recently ran a survey which found 81% of large advertisers deferred planned ad campaigns and cutting budgets due to the coronavirus pandemic. Of those surveyed, 57% said they had decreased budgets greatly or somewhat due to the virus outbreak; however, cutting out advertising or marketing completely can make the road to recovery more challenging.
Experts advise not to stop advertising during a downturn. Evidence from recent economic downturns like the 2008 housing crash show that companies come out stronger in the end if they continue investing in brand awareness. According to Google, “Even in categories where consumers have pulled back spending right now, creating a branding impact now will have a halo and pay dividends when the market normalizes. Research and historical examples of economic downturn have shown this to work.” It’s important to keep investing in your brand and branded keywords, regardless of industry. The last thing an organization wants is competitors monetizing on branded search results.
Every cent counts these days. Not only is paid search cost-effective with a low barrier to entry, but it also enables companies to be extremely agile. A company can get a campaign up and running pretty quickly, run tests, collect data and easily alter the messaging as things change day-to-day. Marketers can also see the results of engagement, click-through rates and conversions in real time, so they know whether their investment is paying off. COVID-19 is an unprecedented situation, so testing and learning are critical during this volatile time in the market.
Best practices for paid search
For any marketer thinking about how to adjust during COVID-19, here are a few best practices for how to optimize paid search.
1. Pivot messaging
Messaging needs to be both accurate and appropriate for the current landscape. Confirm that messaging is updated with current business hours and offerings, and revise CTAs away from messages like “Visit in-store.”
2. Keep an eye on the tone of messaging
Is your copy appropriate or empathetic? An ad for booking a vacation package could feel out-of-touch. Customers will be turned off by companies that seem like they are trying to profit or gain from the pandemic, so craft communication to focus more on brand identity and values. Businesses can also use marketing to let customers know how they are responding to the pandemic. A construction firm or ecommerce company could talk about safety practices for workers, for example.
3. Adapt offerings to what your customers need
As mentioned above, healthcare companies are moving to telehealth, restaurants are moving to pick up, delivery and B2B companies are repurposing content planned for conferences into virtual webinars. Marketers should be connecting with customers virtually to let them know how you are supporting them.
4. Adapt your strategy to your customers’ changing digital behaviour
During the quarantine, desktop usage has increased. Conversely, the rise of remote work conditions and people being less on-the-go has caused mobile search traffic to decline by nearly 25%. We’ve all become accustomed to a mobile-first world, but given the predominance of desktop, it’s especially important to ensure all search ads and landing pages are optimized for both mobile and desktop.
Move fast
This pandemic has caused so much of what used to be normal out of the window. Whereas before, marketers might have used a multiphase process for developing campaigns that involved planning and back-and-forth and feedback, now they have to act fast to keep up with the rapidly changing world. Marketers need to craft campaigns that are affordable, cost-effective and agile – and that means paid search.
As marketing and advertising professionals, we’re all trying to figure this out together as we go. There is no roadmap or rules, but there’s no doubt that staying flexible and using this time to connect with customers is a smart strategy.
Brianna Desmet is Media specialist at digital and demand gen agency, R2i.
There are over 1,500 domain extensions available today, including specialized extensions for numerous industries, interests, and website types. They all tell users something different about your site. So why do you need the .com domain? Do you really need it at all? This guide will explore the benefits of using a .com domain, along with... View Article
Meningitis due to an allergic reaction has kept me from being with you for several weeks, but it’s left me with some lessons to share. We’re going to talk about disaster preparedness, the concept of fairness, and how aggressive actions create risk but may be worth it.
The planning phase of search engine optimization involves identifying a strategy and roadmap to reach your goals. The process can be daunting. This post is the third installment in my “SEO How-to” series.
No one wants their emails to wind up in the spam folder.
But did you know some of the most common reasons emails go to spam are also the most preventable?
AWeber’s CEO and Founder Tom Kulzer joined The Hustle & Flowchart podcast to share his top tips for entrepreneurs — including how to dodge the spam folder and improve your email deliverability.
Here are his top 3 tips:
1. Encourage interaction and engagement.
Have human conversations over email. Start a conversation with your subscribers by encouraging them to reply with their thoughts about a question or with feedback.
“Have a genuine reason for your audience to reply to your email. And make sure that if they do reply, you don’t send a canned response. Engage with people — they’re people,” said Kulzer.
Plus, Kulzer cautions that lack of engagement over time can indicate to internet service providers — like Yahoo!, Gmail, or Outlook — that your audience isn’t interested in your content.
“While you might have your audience’s permission to email them, they may not have opened a message from you in a while. The longer your contacts go without engaging with your emails, the more likely it is to have an impact on whether internet service providers deliver your messages to the spam folder.”
Running a re-engagement campaign will let you get a sense of who is truly interested in keeping in touch — and who’s not. Look at your stats, and clear your list if they’re truly not active subscribers.
There’s no reason to use link shortener services in emails.
Tom explains, “Many people use link shorteners to make the link look cleaner in an email. But if you have a visible URL in your emails — shortened or not — email service providers are going to rewrite the link behind the scenes so that the sender can track click through rates.
This rewritten link and the redirect can be a sign that the message is fraudulent and is more likely to be sent to spam.”
An easy fix? Link words in your email, rather than including the full link address or using link shorteners. Use language such as ‘click here to contact customer support,’ or ‘read more here.’ Not only will it help you avoid the spam folder, it will look better, too.
3.Set expectations before people subscribe.
On your email sign up form, tell people exactly what they’ll receive as subscribers before they join your list.
“One of the most common reasons emails land in the spam folder happens before you even press send,” said Kulzer. “On your sign up form, explain how often your subscribers are going to hear from you, what they’re going to get, and what they’ll receive after delivering the lead magnet you promised in your form.”
By setting expectations with your audience up front, they’ll be less likely to mark you as spam because they know exactly what to expect.
Want to learn more about avoiding the spam folder — and how your email service provider impacts deliverability? Kulzer dives deep into the topic of email deliverability — and provides some technical insight — on the Hustle & Flowchart Podcast below.
This week, Robert Rose ponders an economic bounce back (and what you should be doing now), talks with an “unapologetic marketing truth teller,” and more. Continue reading →
The ACLU has filed a lawsuit in Illinois against facial recognition firm Clearview AI.
Clearview AI made headlines when it was discovered the firm was scraping millions of websites, including the major social media platforms, to amass a database of billions of photos to pair with its facial recognition software. The company claimed it only made its service available to law enforcement and security personnel, but it was later discovered that was a lie. The company had also let friends and investors use its software for personal interests.
In addition, Clearview has expanded internationally, including making deals with authoritarian regimes. To make matters even worse, there has been at least one instance where the company appeared to be monitoring law enforcement searches and using that information to dissuade police from talking with the press about Clearview.
The ACLU has had enough and filed a lawsuit in the state of Illinois. Illinois is the perfect state to file the suit in, as it has strict Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) legislation that has already been successfully used in court.
In its lawsuit, the ACLU and companies joining it, “are asking the court to order Clearview to delete faceprints gathered from Illinois residents without their consent and cease capturing new faceprints unless they comply with BIPA consent procedures. Until such remedies are implemented, Clearview’s egregious violations of privacy pose a disastrous threat and affront to our rights.”
Here’s to hoping the ACLU is successful in suing Clearview AI into oblivion.
YouTube is in hot water over claims it engaged in censorship on behalf of the Chinese government.
In a letter to Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, Senator Josh Hawley asked for an explanation about the alleged censorship. YouTube has explained the censorship occurred as a result of an error in its enforcement system, but has provided very little information beyond that. Understandably, the explanation is doing little to ease people’s concerns.
In his letter to Pichai, Hawley says “that Google engineers may have changed the algorithms on YouTube to automatically censor certain criticisms of the Chinese Communist Party. In particular, Google engineers appear to have altered YouTube code to automatically block the Chinese terms for “communist bandit” and “50-cent party”—the latter term referring to a division of the Chinese Communist Party whose purpose is deflecting criticism from the Party by using sockpuppet accounts to spread online propaganda. These reports follow in the wake of Google’s purported ‘mis’-translation last year of the phrase ‘I am sad to see Hong Kong become part of China’ to ‘I am happy to see Hong Kong become part of China.’”
Senator Hawley gave Pichai till June 12 to respond. It remains to be seen if Google will provide concrete information on the issue.
Imagine you’re an ecommerce business using landing pages to sell sweaters for miniature pigs. Recently, you’ve done a round of A/B testing—adding a little more oink to your calls to action, let’s say—and tweaked your social ad targeting to reach the hardcore piggy people on Instagram.
After all your optimization efforts, your landing pages now convert at 3.57%.
But actually…even if it’s a big improvement against your personal baseline, how do you know you should stop there? How do you know that your hard-earned conversion rate is worth celebrating? Heck, how would you even know if a 30% conversion rate is any good for pages in your industry? (Maybe everyone’s getting a fat return off of pig sweaters but you.)
It’s hard to be confident in the numbers when you don’t know how everybody else is doing. Doubt settles in. Maybe you’re missing out on reaching your conversion potential without even knowing it.
Well, we feel your pain. That’s why, at Unbounce, we’re on a continuing mission to answer the big question for you. It’s the one we hear time and again from our customers:
“What’s a good, bad, or average conversion rate for my landing pages?”
That’s where industry benchmarks come in—and that’s why we’re thrilled to bring you a fresh (and free) new version of our Conversion Benchmark Report.
Benchmarks can energize your digital marketing strategy in three big ways:
They’re a form of competitive intelligence. They help you identify gaps between your performance and what the rest of your industry considers to be a good conversion rate.
Our benchmarks reveal data-supported best practices, and you’ll waste less time and traffic testing unproven optimizations that our machine learning analysis shows don’t necessarily work.
They help you build a culture of continuous improvement in your organization. It’s harder for your marketing team to be happy with “just okay” if they’re seeing something to strive for.
Sure, some folks like to pooh-pooh industry benchmarking—“Why should I care how other marketers are converting? Why don’t I just focus on how I’m doing?”—but they’re your best window into what success really looks like. Going forward blindly, when you could have both eyes on the prize, is just silly.
Oh, and these benchmarks were generated with help from an honest-to-goodness AI crunching millions of conversions, so the results are far more reliable than the anecdotal best practices often found online. As part of the Unbounce Conversion Intelligence approach to digital marketing, these machine-derived insights help you pair your hard-earned expertise with AI to create the highest-converting campaigns of your career.
Introducing the 2020 Conversion Benchmark Report
This year’s Conversion Benchmark Report uses machine learning to assist our data team in analyzing 186.9 million visits to 34,132 Unbounce-built landing pages. In terms of sample size, we analyzed more visits to these pages than the populations of Canada, Hong Kong, Mexico, Laos, and Ireland combined.
For full context, the previous (2017) version of this report was also built on machine learning insights, but in three years we’ve refined our approach to provide tons more real, proprietary customer data to feed the machine. Now we have even better, more reliable outputs—as well as a few new ways to break down our findings, like by conversion goal. (These are boundaries we’re going to keep pushing, too.)
But what kind of info does the report contain? For one thing, you’ll find median conversion rates broken down to 16 key industries. In many cases, we’ve got wide enough sample sizes to sort them into subcategories too, so you can see how your brother’s pest control service measures up against your sister’s HVAC company. (Or how your uncle’s cybersecurity software converts against your great aunt’s cloud accounting platform.)
The Conversion Benchmark Report includes 16 industries broken down into dozens of subcategories.
Why do we report on median instead of average (mean)? Our goal is to provide you with a realistic picture of where you stand, so this year’s report lists median conversion rates as our measure of central tendency instead of the mean. We found this reduces the impact of outliers (like pages that convert five times better than the rest) on the final benchmarks.
Not clear enough? Then imagine you want to find out, on average, how many eyes people have. The median tells us they have two eyes. According to the mean, though, they have slightly less than two. Because outliers (people with one or fewer eyes) bring that number down.
Both these measures are correct, but which one would you prefer to rely on if your business is selling sunglasses?
What if your industry doesn’t appear in the report? For this year’s report, we’ve tried to be even more representative. With machine learning helping us to sort thousands of landing pages in a logical way, we’ve increased the number of industries covered from 10 to 16, and we’ve even added subcategories whenever sample sizes allow.
If you still don’t see yourself represented, though, compare your conversion rates to industries with similar audiences and conversion goals. While we don’t actually recommend comparisons between very unrelated industries (except for fun), let your judgment be your guide.
A note on COVID-19. The conversion data in this report comes from 2019, so we realize it shows norms that have been disrupted for some vulnerable industries—like travel, events and leisure, restaurants, and medical practitioners. These benchmarks show what you can expect in stable periods, and they provide insights about how your visitors typically behave (and why they convert). We hope they’ll help you set up your digital campaigns for success—and inspire your rebound.
If you face uncertainty, though, please also check out the COVID-19 Small Business Care Package for a roundup of useful resources to help lessen the impact on your business.
Below, I go into more detail about the findings and insights we’ve been able to pull from them. But if you’ve got an itchy mouse-finger, you can jump right into the Conversion Benchmark Report now. (It’ll open in a new tab.)
Going beyond the benchmarks
Benchmarks are tremendously helpful, for all the reasons I talked about above. (If you work for an agency, you know this already. They’re a baller way of showing the value of what you do—and helping clients determine their true conversion potential.)
How do I best communicate with my target audience?
In copywriting circles, the received wisdom is that clarity comes above all else. If you’re looking to put up the fewest hurdles possible between audience and offer, it can make sense to keep your vocabulary basic and your sentences tight and untangled.
Our data, however, complicates this equation. Is simple always better? Nope. It turns out that different industries tend to convert more often at different reading levels (and some see weaker relationships between conversion rates and readability than others).
There are even cases in which it’s good to sound sophisticated. B2B companies offering lead-gen consulting or instruction, for instance, appear to benefit from more challenging language. We see a drop in conversion rates as pages become easier to understand. (Frankly, that’s not what we expected.)
When it comes to reading ease, pages for lead-gen consultants appear to benefit from being harder to read.
Our machine learning analysis enabled us to look at copy from 34 thousand pages. Each page is assigned a Flesch reading ease score based on the average number of syllables per word and words per sentence. More syllables and more words means more…harder.
Here’s roughly how the scoring breaks down:
What’s the perf word length for my landing pages?
While it’s true that shorter pages tend to convert better, many industries have sweet spots that break the rule—which means, if you’re going to create a long-form landing page, you should go this long. This is especially true in the wild territories beyond 200 words, where unexpected correlations between length and conversion rate have led many a marketer astray.
At what length do landing pages for family services convert best? The graph provides answers.
Depending on your offer and industry, you may find that you need to use more words to get your point across, but graphs like the one above can let you know what’s ideal. For family services, that’s 300-500 words (if you can’t get it shorter than 150 words). For other industries, it can be more or less. Whatever the case, creating variants based on our findings can definitely be a good candidate for A/B testing or Smart Traffic.
What emotions might relate to better conversion rates?
You likely know in your gut that people’s feelings can impact their decision to buy, but which ones actually drive conversions on your landing pages? To find out, we ran an ML-powered sentiment analysis that looked at emotion-associated words that might relate to healthy conversion rates—and which might even be slowing you down.
(Spoiler: using trust words isn’t always advisable. “Trust us.”)
For SaaS, the concentration of anticipation words on a landing page correlates with its conversion rate.
When it comes to SaaS conversions, for instance, it turns out that language that conveys anticipation (words like gradual, highest, improve, and launch) sometimes correlates with better conversion rates. Or, to put it another way: as we find more of these words, we also often tend to see better conversion performance.
You can explore this example, and many others, in the report.
A good conversion rate is one you can improve upon.
When it comes down to brass tacks, all this benchmarking is valuable insofar as you can use it to build a better conversion machine from what you learn. How do you do it?
Explore the insights in this report. The report is broken down into 16 industries. How are your landing pages stacking up against the baseline? Are you way out ahead? Are you falling behind? Start with your industry, sure, but take a look at others too. There may be insights that are worth exploring outside your own arena.
Apply the data learnings to your own campaigns. Create a variant (or more than one variant) of your page that applies some of the insights we’ve provided. For example, you might dial down the jargon until you hit the optimal Flesch reading score. (You can use the free readability formula tool here to test it for yourself.)
Optimize and test. Keep in mind that data analysis reveals trends and tendencies rather than absolutes. You’re making informed decisions when you apply these learnings, but testing is still your best way to confirm. Run A/B tests or, if you’re short on the time or traffic to do so, just publish your variants and turn on Smart Traffic in the Unbounce Builder. It’ll use machine learning to automatically decide which variant is right for which visitors, and it’s otherwise hands-off. (If you’re looking for more ideas on how to build variants, I’d recommend this post from Garrett too.)
In short, this year’s report uses ML to identify opportunities you simply couldn’t spot without the processing power of a machine. Optimizing your pages doesn’t have to be aspirational. We believe this is the future of digital marketing—and, going forward, you’re going to see more and more efforts like this from Unbounce to help you enhance the skills you already have. (If you’re curious about what else we have planned, you can read more about our push to bring you Conversion Intelligence.)
Whether you sell pig sweaters, chicken harnesses, or something altogether more practical—are you confident enough to swagger into your next meeting, snap your suspenders, fire those finger-guns in your boss’s direction, and let everyone know about your team’s big win? “Soooooooo-ie!”
Following ongoing issues with its decision to include Huawei in part of its 5G network, Britain is now interested in creating a 5G alliance to counter China.
The US has banned Huawei over allegations it serves as part of Beijing’s spying apparatus. US officials have gone on to wage an intense campaign to convince its allies to do the same.
The US’ closest ally, the UK, attempted to work out a compromise solution wherein Huawei would be allowed to participate in the country’s 5G network in a limited role. That move has caused the US to reevaluate military and intelligence assets in the UK. It’s the US’ latest move, however, to cut off Huawei’s chip supplies that may have forced the UK to reconsider its decision.
According to the Times of London, British officials may be prepared to go farther, “seeking to forge an alliance of ten democracies to create alternative suppliers of 5G equipment and other technologies to avoid relying on China.
“New concerns about Huawei, the Chinese telecoms giant, have increased the urgency of the plan after security officials began a review into its involvement in the mobile network upgrade.”
It’s probably a safe bet the UK will be able to drum up the necessary support for a proposed alliance.
The makers of Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) have discovered a serious issue in the latest version of macOS that affects the creation of bootable backups.
According to CCC’s Mike Bombich, Apple changed something in the chflags() system call. As a result, when trying to initialize a bootable backup, it exits with a success exit status, but actually fails. Unfortunately, it does not generate an error code when it fails, as it should.
Bombich makes it clear this issue has no impact on existing backup drives or the startup drive, but only the process of creating a new bootable drive. Fortunately, CCC has a plan in place.
“Last year at Apple’s Developer Conference, Apple suggested that backup software should use Apple’s ‘Apple Software Restore’ (ASR) for cloning APFS volume groups,” writes Bombich. “Initially I dismissed this – I shouldn’t have to use Apple’s black-box utility to do my job, I prefer to take full responsibility for my backups. Anticipating a world in which Apple continues to restrict access to APFS rather than grant it, though, we decided to invest a fair amount of time evaluating this functionality, and we’ve been beta testing it for the last 8 months. I don’t like to lean on ASR for general backups because it has some shortcomings and doesn’t give any insight into its internal activity (e.g. files copied, errors encountered), but in this very narrowly-defined case, we can leverage Apple’s proprietary utility just to establish bootable backups. We posted a beta last Sunday with new UI around this functionality, and we intend to continue producing bootable backups by leveraging ASR for the initial backup.”
As Bombich points out, there is no way of knowing if this change was intentional, in an effort on Apple’s part to force developers to use ASR and not use firmlinks. If so, at least CCC is prepared. If not, a fix should be forthcoming.
Google has announced the release of Android Studio 4.0, its IDE for creating Android applications.
The new version of Android Studio includes a number of significant improvements over previous versions.
“Some highlights of Android Studio 4.0 include a new Motion Editor to help bring your apps to life, a Build Analyzer to investigate causes for slower build times, and Java 8 language APIs you can use regardless of your app’s minimum API level,” writes Adarsh Fernando, Product Manager. “Based on your feedback, we’ve also overhauled the CPU Profiler user interface to provide a more intuitive workflow and easier side-by-side analysis of thread activity. And the improved Layout Inspector now provides live data of your app’s UI, so you can easily debug exactly what’s being shown on the device.”
The new version of Android Studio has a number of other improvements, including smart editor features, clangd support for C++ and improvements derived from IntelliJ IDEA 2019.3 and 2019.3.3 releases.
Android Studio 4.0 is a big improvement and should be a welcome upgrade for Android developers.
President Trump signed an executive order targeting social media giants, following a spat with Twitter.
Once the darling of the president, and his preferred platform for connecting with his supporters, the social media company drew his ire when it fact-checked him Tuesday on two of his tweets. In one of the tweets in question, Trump claimed “there is NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-In Ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent,” prompting Twitter to pair the tweet with a link to more information about mail-in ballots.
As a result, Trump claimed the company is stifling free speech and has signed an executive order designed to weaken the protections social media and like companies enjoy.
The order is unlikely to have any real impact, at least for the time being. In case after case, the courts have so far refused to side with individuals who have claimed social media is biased against them.
At the same, the situation could help stifle innovation. Recent years have not been easy for social media companies, with them alternately being accused of not doing enough to curb offensive hate speech and then having a president issue an executive order when they fact-check his posts.
With that kind of ‘rock and the hard place’ situation, it may give some entrepreneurs pause before focusing on the field, or trying to create the next great thing in social media.
Trump signed an executive order aimed at legal protections for companies like Facebook and Twitter after a warning label was put on a Trump tweet.Read More
It has been two months since we started the lockdown in the U.K. It seems longer. One thing has occurred during the lockdown that I did not predict but is obvious in hindsight: There has been an explosion of small internet businesses.
A draft of President Trump’s executive order to prevent online censorship of political speech has been leaked online. The timing of the order was prompted by Twitter “fact-checking” a Trump tweet about the pitfalls and potential for voter fraud implicit in many vote-by-mail proposals. However, Twitter, Facebook, and Google have long been accused of censoring political speech by conservatives.
Many people who have faced censorship or closure of accounts have complained for years to the government for help to no avail. This executive order would end liability protection for popular platforms like Twitter, YouTube, Google, and Facebook if they take actions against certain favored political speech, and in effect, according to the order, become a publisher instead of an unbiased platform of user-generated content.
Highlights From the Executive Order
The emergence and growth of online platforms in recent years raises important questions about applying the ideals of the First Amendment to modern communications technology. Today, many Americans follow the news, stay in touch with friends and family, and share their views on current events through social media and other online platforms. As a result, these platforms function in many ways as the 21st-century equivalent of the public square.
In a country that has long-cherished the freedom of expression, we cannot allow a limited number of online platforms to hand-pick the speech that Americans may access and convey online. This practice is un-American and anti-democratic. When large powerful social media companies censor opinions with which they disagree they excercise a dangerous power.
Online platforms, however, are engaging in selective censorship that is hurting our national discourse. Tens of thousands of Americans have reported, among other troubling behaviors, online platforms “flagging” content as inappropriate, even though it does not violate any stated terms of service; making unannounced and unexplained changes to policies that have the effect of disfavoring certain viewpoints; and deleting content and entire accounts with no warning, no rationale, and no recourse.
Protections Against Arbitrary Restrictions: It is the policy of the United States to foster clear, nondiscriminatory ground rules promoting free and open debate on the Internet. Prominent among those rules is the immunity from liability created by section 230(c) of the Communications Decency Act. It is the policy of the United States that the scope of the immunity should be clarified.
Section 230(c) was designed to address court decisions from the early days of the Internet holding that an online platform that engaged in any editing or restriction of content posted by others thereby became itself a “publisher” of the content and could be liable for torts like defamation. As the title of section 230(c) makes clear, the provision is intended to provide liability “protection” to a provider of an interactive computer service (such as an online platform like Twitter) that engages in ‘Good Samaritan’ blocking of content when the provider deems the content obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable.
When an interactive computer service provider removes or restricts access to content and its actions do not meet the criteria of subparagraph (c) (2) (A), it is engaged in editorial content. By making itself an editor of content outside the protections of subparagraph (c) (2) (A), such a provider forfeits any protection from being deemed a “publisher or speaker” under subsection 230(c)(1), which properly applies only to a provider that merely provides a platform for content supplied by others. It is the policy of the United States that all departments and agencies should apply section 230(c) according to the interpretation set out in this section.
Michele Frolla is a travel and language blogger at The Intrepid Guide. She earns a living from affiliate commissions, advertising revenue, and working with tourism boards to promote destinations.
Unfortunately, when the world stopped traveling, affiliate income and ad revenue for bloggers in the travel industry stopped too. But for Frolla, COVID-19 has been a blessing in disguise. "It has forced my hand to do something that I've wanted to do for a long time," says Frolla.
Frolla always wanted to launch a language program to teach her audience new languages. To help her decide if this was the right direction to take her business, Frolla turned to her email marketing platform and email subscribers.
It turns out her audience is as interested in language as the destination where the language is spoken.
So she launched a new language program using email marketing for every step of the process.
Here’s how she did it.
Build your email list to protect yourself from the unknown
Frolla learned the hard way, as did many in the travel industry, that things can change overnight.
The World Travel and Tourism Council is projecting a global loss of 100 million jobs and $2.7 trillion in revenue due to COVID-19. And Statista forecasts that global revenue for the travel and tourism industry will be down 34.7% in 2020.
Explore new revenue opportunities
The COVID-19 experience led Frolla to take a good look at her business and consider how she could continue earning money that’s not dependent on travel, advertising revenue, or social media platforms.
As a travel and language blogger, Frolla's previous revenue sources had included income from affiliate commissions, advertising revenue, and working with tourism boards to promote destinations. Unfortunately, when the world stopped traveling, Frolla's affiliate income and ad revenue from the travel industry stopped too.
That’s why she decided to investigate the option of creating a language education program. With a program like this, she could continue to provide value and a service to her audience — even when they can’t travel.
"I can sell my language products. My audience can purchase the product and use it when they're commuting, at home, or traveling. It's something that I'm quite passionate about and makes sense with the way things have been for the tourism industry the past few months, "says Frolla.
To promote her new language program, Frolla knew she would need a larger email list.
Frolla used 2 tools to grow her email list and welcome new subscribers.
1. A landing page
When Frolla first created her travel blog, she knew that email marketing was important. She chose AWeber because she wanted to go with a platform that was going to grow with her. "I'm getting my head around the incredible power of the tool," says Frolla.
Frolla has found that landing pages created with AWeber’s Landing Page Builder are an awesome way to grow a list by being able to share specific information. She drives traffic to her landing page from her social media, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.
"The landing page was easy to set up. I decided to direct traffic to a certain landing page to get my language and travel tips, as opposed to having pop-ups all the time or having a sign up form that might not get seen," says Frolla.
2. Automated email campaigns
After someone enters their contact information on your sign up form or landing page, you should immediately send an automated email to welcome them to your email list. This is exactly what Frolla does with AWeber’s email automation platform Campaigns.
Frolla welcomes subscribers to her list, includes links to some of her most popular content, and sets expectations on how often she will communicate with subscribers.
Your email list is an excellent way to gather product feedback.
Frolla uses email marketing to identify users and provide feedback before she launched her product.
Recruit your most loyal followers to test your product.
Frolla recruited some of her most loyal subscribers to be part of a testing team for her new product. Via email, she sent them a form to apply to be a part of her testing team. It allowed her to get real user experiences to improve her course.
Don't forget to ask for testimonials.
She also was able to get testimonials from her testing team Frolla uses the testimonials in all of her promotional materials as social proof of its impact.
Promote your product to your list
Frolla announced to her entire email list and on social media that she had a new course coming to create some buzz around the launch.
Giveaways can get your audience’s attention.
Frolla gave away two free courses as part of the launch. In the email, she made it super easy to enter the giveaway by including a link to enter.
Explain why you’re passionate about your product
A lot of your audience may purchase the product because of the creator as much as the content. While it is essential to detail the features and benefits of your product, don't forget to tell your audience why this product is important to you.
How to get other people to promote your product
The power of email is magnified when you can get others to promote your product using their own email list. You should never buy an email list. But you can extend your reach when influencers or affiliates promote your product to their own lists.
Extend your reach by creating an affiliate relationship with influencers.
An affiliate arrangement can be a win-win situation for everyone if done right.
It helps you quickly grow your audience by introducing you and your product to a whole new group of people. You can set up your affiliate program so that you and your affiliate both earn a percentage of revenue every time someone purchases your product. The affiliate, or influencer, will receive a commission for each product they sell.
How Frolla created her affiliate group
Frolla reached out to people in the language community — bloggers that she knows and trusts and bloggers who know and trust Frolla.
The communication Frolla sent was straightforward. She would send an email or message on social media and say: "Hey, I've got this course coming out. Would you help me promote it?"
If Frolla received confirmation that they were open to promote her product, she would send them a link to a Google form so they could provide details to set them up as an affiliate.
Expand your affiliate group beyond your network.
Frolla also expanded her outreach to people she did not personally know. With the Facebook community administrator's permission, she posted in private Facebook groups and asked the group members if they would like to become an affiliate.
She also reached out to content creators of courses Frolla had previously signed up for or taken. Since she was familiar with their class, she could be sure they created quality content and had an audience with similar interests to Frolla’s own audience.
Make it easy for your affiliates to promote your product.
Frolla uses a course creation platform (Teachable) that makes it easy for customers to purchase her product and for affiliates to get their commission. There are several platforms available, so make sure the platform that you are considering integrates with the tools you are already using — like AWeber.
Frolla includes bonuses that are exclusive to her product and only available for a limited time, so there is an urgency to take action.
Frolla also sends her affiliates a product launch kit that includes:
Social media banners for FaceBook, Twitter, and Instagram.
A sequence of six emails for her affiliates to customize to their audience.
Product information.
A list of benefits of being an affiliate.
The retail price.
The commission percentages that affiliates earn.
Launch dates.
Pro tip: Make the process as easy as possible for your affiliates. Do all the heavy lifting for your affiliates so they can focus on promoting your product.
Send email swipe copy to your affiliates.
To make it ridiculously easy for affiliates to promote your product or services, send them email swipe copy. They can quickly customize the email content and send it to their list.
Frolla sends her affiliates a document containing a 6-part email sequence. She includes email copy and images of the product. She recommends that each affiliate adapts the emails to their own voice.
Here’s what the email sequence covers:
Email 1: Introduction to course
Email 2: Benefits of learning italian
Email 3: Frequently asked questions about Intrepid Italian
Email 4: What people say about Intrepid Italian (testimonials)
Email 5: Creates urgency. (24 hours left to buy)
Email 6: Final warning. (2 hours left to buy)
Try AWeber and start growing your business online.
You’ll get everything Frolla uses to grow her own business online — including sign up forms, newsletters, and landing pages.
Here’s the bet that we’re making for our future and we hope you’ll come along with us.
We believe that we should see it as our job to better match your customer’s needs at that moment with a landing page that can answer their question well.…
