Archive | July, 2018

Fiat money is a currency without intrinsic value that has been established as money, often by government regulation. Fiat money does not have use value, and has value only because a government maintains its value, or because parties engaging in exchange agree on its value. It was introduced as an alternative to commodity money and representative money. Commodity money is created from a good, often a precious metal such as gold or silver, which has uses other than as a medium of exchange (such a good is called a commodity). Representative money is similar to fiat money, but it represents a claim on a commodity (which can be redeemed to a greater or lesser extent).
The first use of fiat money was recorded in China around 1000 AD. Since then, it has been used by various countries, usually concurrently with commodity currencies. Fiat money started to dominate in the 20th century. Since the decoupling of the US dollar from gold by Richard Nixon in 1971, a system of national fiat currencies has been used globally.
Fiat money has been defined variously as:
Any money declared by a government to be legal tender.
State-issued money which is neither convertible by law to any other thing, nor fixed in value in terms of any objective standard.
Intrinsically valueless money used as money because of government decree.
An intrinsically useless object that serves as a medium of exchange (also known as fiduciary money.)
The term fiat derives from the Latin fiat (“let it be done”) used in the sense of an order, decree or resolution.

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We all make mistakes, errors, blunders and things we really wish we hadn’t done.

Remember the last time you facepalmed?

Yeah, me too.

Let’s see if we can catch the next mistake BEFORE you make it.

And let’s also see if you’re already making one or more of these marketing mistakes.

If you are, you’re not alone.

Targeting Everyone

Who are you targeting with your online marketing campaigns? Everyone with internet access? Everyone who needs to lose weight? Every parent on the planet?

You need to narrow your target market.

If you look at the demographics of your current customers, that will tell you who to target. Don’t make assumptions about the demographics of your customer base. Women do search for sporting goods and men are interested in hair care, for example. Get to know who your customers are and you’ll do a better job of targeting.

Or if you are just starting out in a niche, it gets even easier. You get to decide exactly who you want to target and find out where those people are found.

Not Having a Blog for Your Website

Your website needs a blog, because blogs increase traffic. Businesses with blogs tend to have over 90% more inbound links, which helps you to get found by the search engines.

Blogs also help you to build a relationship with your prospects and customers, while giving you credibility and visibility. You write a post with great info, your prospects see and realize you know what you’re talking about, and they start reading more of your posts. Pretty soon they realize they like you. They trust you. And they buy from you.

Blogs are also a place where you can interact with your customers and prospects. You make a post and they get to respond. Then you get to respond to their comments. You can use your blog to get feedback on ideas and products.

And you can integrate your blog with social media, driving more traffic to your blog and website from social media, while driving visitors to your social media pages for even more interaction.

Lastly, you can share links to all of your blog posts on social media, not just your new posts. This is a great way to keep all of your pages alive.

Not Tracking Return on Investment

Do you know how much money you’re spending on your online marketing strategies and what kind of return you’re getting?

You don’t want to blindly throw money at digital marketing strategies without measuring the return on investment. And if you don’t measure your return on investment, you won’t know how successful (or unsuccessful) your strategy is. The key is to stick to what’s working and modify what’s not working. And to know this, you’ve got to track and measure.

To calculate your return on investment, you’ll first figure out what you’re measuring. It is traffic? Leads? Click-through rates? Conversions? Once you know your campaign goal, you can calculate your ROI.

Take the financial gain and subtract the cost of your investment. Divide that number by the total cost of your investment, and that’s how you calculate return on investment.

Be diligent about tracking ROI on all of your campaigns from here on out, because it’s the only way to see if your strategies are successful.

Not Using Videos

Videos are engaging and capture attention like no other medium. And video content can be a great way to get people to go to your website.

In a recent survey, 43% of people who watched a video in the past month also checked out a website because of a video. 22% said they requested information on a product. And 15% made a purchase – because they saw a video.

Get your own YouTube channel and take advantage of the second highest trafficked website on the internet. Then post your videos on Facebook, and even make 1 minute videos for Instagram. Videos can generate new prospects for you, and ultimately lead to new customers as well.

Forgetting About Mobile Users

Depending on your niche, it’s entirely possible you’re getting more visitors from mobile devices than laptops and computers. This is exactly why your website needs to be optimized for mobile devices.

50% of people say they will use a company less often if the website isn’t mobile friendly, even if they like the brand. 48% of people think you don’t care about them if your website isn’t optimized for mobile users.

And because 90% of time on mobile is spent in apps, you may want to consider making a mobile application for your business. But even if you’re not going to create an app, you’ll want to at least make certain your site is mobile friendly. Not sure if it is? Pull out your phone and check right now.

Having a Slow Website

Slow websites drive visitors away. You work hard to get people to your website – why send them away before they even get to see it?

Your visitors will abandon your site if it takes too long to load. If you need to spend more money for faster web hosting, then do it.

Every second counts and you cannot afford to lose customers.

Not Offering Discounts to Your Best Customers

Frankly, I think you should offer coupons and discounts to everyone from time to time. This way people who are on the fence may jump in, order, and realize they love your products.

But you should at the very least be offering discounts to your current customers. They deserve to be rewarded for patronizing you.

When you bring out a new product, offer it to them at a discount. Ask nicely for feedback and testimonials, and you’ll likely to get both. The feedback can be key to tweaking your product and making it even better. And the testimonials can earn you many more sales in the future.

Shunning Social Media

I’m surprised by the number of marketers who still avoid social media. It doesn’t cost you anything to make a Facebook, Twitter or Instagram account. And it is a great way to interact with your customers at low or no cost to you.

You can use social media for brand building, interactivity, buzz building, consumer insights, enhanced marketing effectiveness and broad reach. And because your customers are on these platforms, you need to be on them as well. In fact, 81% of people in the US have a social media profile.

When you do create your profiles, don’t buy followers. If you get caught, you’ll lose your reputation. Plus, it looks darn suspicious if you have 10,000 followers and not a single one of them engages with your content.

Not Commenting on Blogs

This applies to your own blogs and other blogs, too. On your own blog, you should engage with readers by answering their comments. Your subscribers will be surprised and pleased. And in return they will begin commenting more often. Plus, blog comments help with SEO to rank higher and get found by more traffic.

Keep your comments appropriate and professional at all times. And don’t forget to comment on other people’s blogs, too. It’s a way to subtly promote your own brand.

Your comments should be natural and informative to establish your credibility and likeability. Remember to use your full name and your face avatar, as well.

Not Guest Blogging

Why would you want to go to the trouble of writing an entire post of great content, just to post it on someone else’s website?

Three reasons:

First, you get exposed to an entirely new audience who may not have even heard of you. And yes, some of them will click your link and go to your website to grab your free lead magnet, thus joining your list. And some of those folks will become your customers.

Second, you’ll create a connection with a peer in your niche. And you never know what can happen if you continue to grow this relationship – it could eventually become very fruitful.

Third, because you can link back to your website or blog, you’ll be improving your SEO by increasing your domain authority.

How many of these mistakes are you guilty of? No worries, because now you can take action, get busy and correct them. Just pick one for now to work on, and when that’s in motion, you can begin working on the second one. No need to feel overwhelmed if you have several of these to do. Remember, inch by inch it’s a cinch.

The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, a Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal is a 2009 book by Ben Mezrich about the founding of Facebook, adapted by Columbia Pictures for the 2010 film The Social Network. Co-founder Eduardo Saverin served as Mezrich’s main consultant, although Mark Zuckerberg declined to speak with him while the book was being researched. After Zuckerberg and Saverin settled their lawsuit, Saverin broke off contact with the author.

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Robert Kakaha (born March 5, 1970) (also known as Bob Zilla) is the bassist for the American rock band Hush Money, best known as the former bassist for heavy metal band Damageplan and heavy metal supergroup Hellyeah.

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Facebook is a social networking service launched on February 4, 2004. It was founded by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommate and fellow Harvard University student Eduardo Saverin. The website’s membership was initially limited by the founders to Harvard students, but was expanded to other colleges in the Boston area, the Ivy League, and gradually most universities in the United States and Canada, corporations, and by September 2006, to everyone with a valid email address along with an age requirement of being 13 and older.

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RTA may refer to:

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Criticism of Facebook relates to how Facebook’s market dominance have led to international media coverage and significant reporting of its shortcomings. Notable issues include Internet privacy, such as its use of a widespread “like” button on third-party websites tracking users, possible indefinite records of user information, automatic facial recognition software, and its role in the workplace, including employer-employee account disclosure.
The use of Facebook can have psychological effects, including feelings of jealousy and stress, a lack of attention, and social media addiction, in some cases comparable to drug addiction.
Facebook’s company tactics have also received prominent coverage, including electricity usage, tax avoidance, real-name user requirement policies, censorship, and its involvement in the United States PRISM surveillance program.
Due to allowing users to publish material by themselves, Facebook has come under scrutiny for the amount of freedom it gives users, including copyright and intellectual property infringement, hate speech, incitement of rape and terrorism, fake news, Facebook murder, crimes and violent incidents live-streamed through its Facebook Live functionality.
Facebook has been banned by several governments, including Syria, China, and Iran.
The company has also been subject to multiple litigation cases over the years, with its most prominent case concerning allegations that CEO Mark Zuckerberg broke an oral contract with Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra to build the then-named “HarvardConnection” social network in 2004, instead allegedly opting to steal the idea and code to launch Facebook months before HarvardConnection began. The original lawsuit was eventually settled in 2009, with Facebook paying approximately $20 million in cash and 1.25 million shares. A new lawsuit in 2011 was dismissed. Some critics make predictions of Facebook’s end based on the problems which they identify.

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Someone clicks on your website link and magically they’re transported to your site, right?

Well, no. It’s a lot more complicated than that, with hundreds of requests instantly pinged around the world to bring the text and images to your visitor’s screen.

In fact, there is so much going on in those few short seconds, that there is a LOT that can go wrong – and frequently does.

And a slow website is BAD news for you.

It can cost you thousands of visitors and conversions, not to mention all the lost revenue.

If you’re Amazon, a one second delay can cost $1.6 billion annually.

That’s how much speed matters on the internet.

First, let’s test your website to see how fast it’s loading.

And remember, this is just one snapshot in time. You really should test your site numerous times over the course of a day and even a week to truly get a good look at what’s happening.

Pingdom will test and analyze the load time of your page.

And if you sign up, it will continue to test your site every minute.

tools.pingdom.com/

Now let’s take a look at what might be slowing your site down.

Slow Server Performance

When someone clicks on your website link, their browser sends a ping to your server. But if your server doesn’t quickly answer that ping, then it will take longer for your site to load.

Cheap hosting usually gives you a shared server, which means you’re sharing space and resources with countless other websites.

If your site is slow, it’s probably waiting in line to get out the door and to your visitor’s screen.

Distant Server Location

Long distance calls take longer to connect because information has to physically travel to get where it’s going.

Think of it moving through cables, transmitting over satellites and so forth.

A similar thing happens when someone clicks on your site.

If your server is based in the US, then when someone in China clicks on your website, the information has to travel halfway around the world to request access to the server, and then your website information has to travel all the way back again to load it to your visitor’s screen.

Whew.

Honking Big Images and Files

Remember dial-up? Images loaded a bit at a time.

The same thing is still happening today, only faster. If you have a lot of complex files on your page, it’s going to take longer to load than a simple page of plain text.

Pay attention to file formats. Browsers can load GIF, PNG and JPG images quickly, but heavy formats such as BMP and TIFF will take longer.

Excess Code

Yup, if you have a lot of code, your site will be slower.

Try not to clog your site up with excess coding and Javascript.

Text Graphics

If you’re using images to display text, your site will be slower.

It’s better to use a regular font whenever possible.

Too Many File Requests

Again, big elements take longer to load. And it’s not just size, but also quantity that matters.

Every image, every social sharing button and every piece of your website requires a different file request to load.

If your page has 50 files and 50 people are trying to load your site at once, that’s 2,500 simultaneous file requests.

You can see why websites crash if traffic gets out of hand.

An Excess of Traffic

You’ve seen this one happen – A lot of traffic is sent to a website, and it slows down. Send enough traffic, and it could crash.

Your server can only handle so many requests at one time. The more requests there are, the slower your website gets.

Yes, it’s tough to be popular.

Redirects

You walk to the gate at the airport, only to find out the gate has been changed to one on the other side of the airport. So, now you’ve got to walk all the way over there.

A redirect is like that. It’s like loading a page twice, and you want to avoid that whenever possible.

Outdated CMS

If you’re using WordPress (or Drupal or Wix) to manage your site, then you’ve probably noticed regular popups asking you to install updates or new versions of the software.

Updates are good – kinks have been worked out and speed has often been increased. Be sure to install the latest version of all software and plugins to load your site faster and more smoothly.

Too Many Plugins

This is for WordPress users. If you’ve got a ton of plugins, then you’ve got a ton of file requests with CSS files and Javascript to load.

This is more stuff that has to be transmitted to get your site to your visitor’s screen, which again will slow things down. Only use plugins you absolutely, positively need.

Bottom Line: 47% of people expect a page to load in 2 seconds or less. If your site is taking longer than that, you’re losing views.

The world’s busiest airports by passenger traffic are measured by total passengers (data from Airports Council International), defined as passengers enplaned plus passengers deplaned plus direct-transit passengers. Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport has been the world’s busiest airport every year since 2000; with all airports combined London has the world’s busiest city airport system by passenger count. As of 2017, seven countries have at least two airports in the top 50; the United States of America has 15, Greater China has 10, and the United Kingdom, Japan, Germany, India and Spain have two airports each.

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The Facebook Effect is a book by David Kirkpatrick and published by Simon & Schuster. It describes the history of Facebook and its social implications.
The Facebook Effect is a book by David Kirkpatrick and published by Simon & Schuster. It describes the history of Facebook and its social implications.
The book was shortlisted for the 2010 Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award.

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