And then we had a bit of a falling out. Suddenly you changed — you seemed a bit distant. All you talked about was politics. Things started to feel a little forced, inauthentic. I wasn’t sure if I could trust you, and I had to take a break.

According to the latest Pew Research Study, I’m not the only one. After the PR mess that was the Cambridge Analytica scandal, many Facebook users expressed that they, too, took a break from the social media platform, with 26% of those surveyed saying they deleted the app from their phones. Yet, for those of us who are marketers or business owners, Facebook has remained a necessary tool: there is no other platform that provides so much exposure for such minimal cost. At the end of June 2018, Facebook had 2.23 billion monthly active users — a pronounced increase from last June, when Facebook reported 2.01 billion monthly active users. With 74% of users visiting Facebook at least once per day, the platform still provides incomparable opportunity to broadcast the mission and services of your brand.

So the question becomes: What is Facebook doing to gain back the trust of the consumers we hope to reach? And, how will these actions impact business for everybody?

Well, the answer to both questions is: a lot, it turns out. Since last June, when the company launched its “Closer Together” campaign, Facebook has made a series of moves that are decidedly focused on building community, forging trust, making business more personal, and restoring the founding core principles that launched the social media behemoth. From boosting the power of groups and amplifying their admin’s voices, to the Community Boost program investing in digital skills for local small businesses, to the changes in the News Feed algorithm to ranking person to person interactions higher than person to page interactions, Facebook is clearly hedging their bets on community… and whether or not that will ultimately help or hinder business posts still remains to be seen.

But one announcement the company recently made offers a bit more insight into how businesses might thrive in this new Facebook landscape. On August 6, 2018, Facebook announced a move to make recommendations more prominent on business pages, foregoing the traditional 5-star review system the platform had previously utilized. Before, customers were asked to give a business a star rating from 1-5, and no context was required. Now, users are asked a simple yes or no question: “Do you recommend this business?” After answering yes or no, they are prompted with a text box, and asked to provide specific feedback before the recommendation is posted. The change from reviews to recommendations was presented as a simple bullet point within a larger announcement, but the move created quite a stir within the digital marketing community.

Reviews and reputation management have been an increasingly important component of digital marketing strategy for the last few years.

A high number of 4- or 5- star reviews sends important signals of trust and authority to search engines, making it more likely that a frequently and positively reviewed business will jump to the top of the search engine results. In fact, in a 2017 Local SEO Ranking Factors report on the variables influencing local search results, the number of reviews was second only to number of organic rankings. Which means: small, local businesses especially have come to rely upon the traditional 5-star review system for their SEO success.

Furthermore, many companies depend on automated tools for review tracking and aggregation — a system that will undoubtedly have to adapt in light of Facebook’s change. So, it is not surprising, then, that Facebook’s quiet announcement has caused a stir for those of us invested in small business.

But despite the uncertainty surrounding the effect Facebook’s switch will have on reviews marketing, there are some key takeaways from this move, and those leading up to it:

1. Facebook wants to be less transactional and more communal. What is the difference between reviews and recommendations, in short? Reviews are given person-to-business. Recommendations are given person-to-person. To succeed in marketing your business on Facebook today, you must shine a spotlight on the human elements of your business with content that features your people, your culture, your values, and your involvement in the community as a whole.
2. Facebook wants reviews to be more authentic. The new recommendation system will bring the hammer down on fake reviews. It is no longer possible to leave a star ranking with no text. Not only do recommendations require feedback, but rich endorsements offer the opportunity for more robust recommendations. What does this mean to your business? Take a look at the keyword prompts that are served up with rich endorsements and keep them in mind with every customer service interaction.
3. Facebook wants to start a conversation. Asking for a recommendation is a lot easier than asking someone to review your business. It feels less formal, and more aligned with the consumer behavior of our generation. When I need to buy a new pair of jeans or find a new daycare, I look to my most trusted friends for recommendations. And, most of the time, I follow their advice.
4. The first and most important piece of any marketing strategy is customer service. The best way for your business to get seen on Facebook? Commit to making your customer’s in-person experience as positive and engaging as your digital experience. Get involved in your local community. Become the thing that people talk about — in a good way. Create loyalty and make your customers vocal ambassadors of your brand.

Considering these changes, the marketer in me expects there will be a shift in how businesses promote and advertise their services on Facebook, and there will surely be a small learning curve as we adapt our marketing practices. But the everyday Facebook junkie in me is relieved to see the platform that defined a decade evolve to embrace a more personal, trustworthy, and authentic experience.

Saralyn Ward is the Marketing and Communications Manager for Page 1 Solutions in Lakewood, CO. She writes regularly on both marketing and parenting and hopes that someday her skills of persuasion — honed in marketing — will actually work on toddlers. Find her on Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook.

The post Facebook Recommendations Vs. Reviews appeared first on HER Magazine ™.

Companies like Netflix, Sky News, HuffPost, Warner Brothers, Time Inc., Viacom, Unilever and CBS, use various types of Playbuzz tools – including polls, flip cards, and interactive articles – to increase levels of audience engagement and social shares. Also, Playbuzz recently raised $35 million from The Walt Disney Company and several other investors, which increases the total funding amount to $66 million.

A Work in Progress

Orren spent over nine years as a journalist and editor, primarily in print media. “I felt like my career was just starting to bloom, but the industry around me was going through the opposite process – budget cuts and less room for creativity.” She explains that the magazines she worked for were cutting back on production and employees. “The people I loved working with were being let go, or they were choosing to move on as opportunities for growth and salaries were plateauing, and I could feel that glass ceiling getting closer and closer.” Orren felt she needed to try something different to stay inspired.

“That’s always a terrifying moment for a writer who is passionate about content and storytelling, because you’re not sure your skills and experience will be useful elsewhere.”

But fortunately, she found the perfect fit. “I came across Playbuzz – then a small, early-stage startup with five people, that was looking for a content expert to bring their storytelling platform to life,” Orren says. “Four years later, it’s the best decision I ever made in my career.”

One reason for her excitement: Playbuzz is now an international company with 8 offices worldwide. As a result, the company has an opportunity to gather market perspectives in each of those locations. “Everything we do, we get to test and see how it’s adopted and used across Europe, the U.S., Latin America and in the Middle East.”

Working for an international company also allowed Orren to relocate from Tel Aviv to New York City. “This transition has been a balancing act between knowing when to tone down my ‘Israeli’ tendencies of being very direct and assertive when working in the U.S. market, and actually using these characteristics as an advantage.” And she believes that her outsider’s perspective is priceless in her role as chief storyteller.

The Future of Storytelling

Text and minimal imagery are the standard tools used by most journalists. “Amazingly enough – these are the same options I had as a print journalist, meaning the move to digital, mobile content has hardly changed a thing for many publishers,” she says. But consumption habits have changed. While Orren believes that people are always looking for a great story, she says it has to be delivered in a format they enjoy.

“During my time at Playbuzz, I’ve been able to work with editorial teams at top publishers including ESPN, HuffPost, TIME, VH1 and more, to drive forward innovative storytelling that promotes real audience engagement.” And to save journalism, she says more publishers also need to be more innovative. “They need to adjust to the era of FOMO (fear of missing out) and Snapchat, and understand that readers have a growing amount of content sources to choose from, along with diminishing attention-spans.”

Orren also believes that publishers have to invest time and resources to learn the types of new tools that can provide a more interactive experience for their readers. “For example: asking readers to answer a question, vote on a poll, or click a card to reveal what’s on the other side.” These small elements can make a huge difference. “They make readers feel that you are forming a one-on-one conversation with them, asking for their opinion, versus speaking at them.”

Creating Content That Engages Audiences

Orren laments the fact that most of the content published today hasn’t changed much in the past few decades. “It is text-heavy, with a bold header and an image or two — but if society, the internet, and content consumption have all evolved so much since then, why has the article stayed the same?”

She believes that engaging content has three key elements:

• It has to be visual-first: Images capture our attention. Digestible content must have a strong visual element, which sometimes means instead of a text paragraph, use an image, GIF, or video, or even take a quote and make it more visually prominent. Captivating visuals help guide the reader through key points of a narrative, keeping them on the content journey for a longer time.
• It needs to be interactive: Break long-form narratives into engaging elements that help translate deep, text-heavy stories into immersive ones that are more accessible to readers. That doesn’t mean changing or shortening your original story, it merely means enhancing it.
• It should be data-driven: What do clicks and views really mean when readers may only spend seconds on the page? Focus more on engagement-based KPIs (key performance indicators) such as completion rates, share rates, engagements in-article, comments, etcetera.

Advice for women entrepreneurs

In addition to sharing her story, we also asked Orren if she had any words of wisdom for women entrepreneurs. She favors assertiveness. “Never be quiet: if you want something – ask for it.” For example, if there’s a role in the organization that you want, ask for it, even if you don’t get it – since rejection is actually good for you. “If you don’t ask for it, no one will ever know your aspirations.”

Orren’s second piece of advice should be familiar to regular HER Magazine readers, since it reinforces what several other successful businesswomen have said: resist the urge to behave like one of the guys. “Be who you are and bring that voice to the table.” And Orren’s final tip, and the one she considers most important? “Always be kind and generous to other women.”

The post Playbuzz Chief Storyteller Shachar Orren on the Future of Journalism appeared first on HER Magazine ™.

Of course it’s joke. Right? I mean, everyone says beauty trends can get seriously weird. After all, this is actually not a joke:

But we all draw a line, right? (Er, a squiggly one, at least) There’s got to be a line. I am all for embracing your own beauty, sure, but this nosehair extension thing doesn’t seem like a love-yourself moment. This definitely seems like all the beauty vloggers just got together and coordinated a giant practical joke on all of us lesser, normal-looking plebeians.

This is how I imagine that conversation, held at a top-secret beauty vlogger convention, might have gone:

“Hey gret_chen_chen, I think people are taking us beauty vloggers way too seriously.”

“You’re right, masterci2017. We need to do something weird, just to freak them out!”

“LET’S PUT EYELASHES IN OUR NOSE!”

*Everyone at the secret meeting stares nervously at that one girl, who blinks slowly, until she clarifies*:

“Fake eyelashes, guys…”

“OH!” they sigh with relief, “we thought you were saying something weird for a second there!”

And then they all agreed it would be a hilarious joke to stuff fake eyelashes up their noses just to see how many people would take them seriously.

Well, the joke’s gone far enough, ladies. People are taking you seriously. I mean, people are writing and commenting on this like it’s Steven Irwin’s latest biological discovery. Does that mean this is real? I don’t know who to trust anymore.

I don’t mean to sound judgmental, I just sincerely don’t understand it. First of all, it’s rightly been compared to the look of spiders coming out of your nose. And any trend that would creep out Ron Weasley is no good in my book. Second of all, how on earth is that comfortable? Do you use glue? Do they tickle? How do you blow your nose? I have so many questions.

But really, I think fashion may have just imploded upon itself.

The post Are Nosehair Extensions Seriously A Thing? appeared first on HER Magazine ™.

Take Ali Edwards for example, a photographer at heart with 50,000 Instagram followers. When Edwards partnered with Inked Brands, the two collaborated to design the right products she could start sharing on her blog and social channels. A personalized and inspiring collection of memory keeping tools followed and a multi-million-dollar brand was created. In short, April is turning followers into customers.

Entrepreneurs can think of social media as the “sweet spot” of marketing, with 86-percent of women saying they’re more likely to buy a product after engaging with the brand on social media.

So, “going big,” is kind of her motto. She’s been doing just that since 2015, when Inked Brands’ reported annual revenue exceeded $9 million and was named Kentucky’s seventh fastest growing company.

Now, as business is heating up this summer, April has just secured $4 million in venture capital funding with the help of investment firm BIP Capital. The added investment will allow Inked Brands to take on more influencers per year, each with their own sizeable share of the social media community, which will allow for even more exponential growth.

Making it to the table

Raising Series A funding from a venture capitalist was a new process to April, who shares the same humble roots as the entrepreneurs she helps develop.

“A long time ago, I was a blogger,” the Kentucky native said. “Then, a friend asked me to develop products. It was the beginning of solving the problem of micro-influencers.”

The experience, she says, primed her well to grow the business quickly. Making mistakes on her own dime made her that much hungrier to learn what was going to work for her business. She would soon find out that VCs are thinking along the same lines: if they’re going to invest a hefty sum, they want a high return on that investment.

“The revenue was key to getting my foot in the door,” April says of wooing a multi-million-dollar investor.

April had already proven her concept many times over. Then, as VCs consider the size of the market for Inked Brands, they could see high revenue potential.

Knowing what’s out there

From Inked’s Bowling Green office, April describes her close-knit, creative team members as “being out of the hub.” Their culture allows them the peace to let creative juices flow while also putting their head down and “getting to work.”

But entering into BIP Capital’s network of strategic partners, April says she was “pleasantly surprised to see how welcoming people were.”

To forge the right partnership, she says chemistry is key. She recommends to other entrepreneurs looking for funding that they seek out investors who align with their brand’s goals. They may just be surprised at what’s awaiting them.

“I didn’t realize how much money was available to invest in solid ideas and solid people.”

Having patience

Though April is a master at reading the wants and needs of social media audiences, which are often looking for instant gratification, the process of raising VC funding is likely going to be very different for most entrepreneurs.

You won’t have a couple million in the bank as soon as your next Instagram post hits 10k likes.

“Everything takes longer than you think it’s going to take,” she laughs.

So, buckle up and have faith.

The post What one CEO learned by raising $4 million in VC funding appeared first on HER Magazine ™.

Plus, I know what a ‘dial tone’ is, and that completely gives me away if none of the above can convince you of this fact:

I’m old.

At least, in Snapchat years I’m old. I’m practically ancient. But I’ve worked in marketing, golldernit! I’ve written about Instagram and Twitter and social media in general; I coach people on how to build their blog and online followers. I’m one of those people that other people expect to use Snapchat. I should know how to use Snapchat.

And now, finally, I can use Snapchat.

For years this ghostly phenomenon has alluded me, but now I finally think I’ve got it. Or, at least, I’ve got it enough to translate it for anyone else out there who feels as clueless as I once did when faced with that strange, bitmoji-obsessed yellow icon. If you’re running a business, you’ve probably heard time and time again that Snapchat is where all the young’uns are at, and you’d better get on there if you know what’s good for you.

Well, I’ve Snapped to the edge and back, and I have a few stories to tell.

*Picks up pen with wrinkly, gnarled knuckles…and begins to write*

1. Ask your friendly neighborhood teenager. This is how it begins. I don’t mean to disappoint you by starting my article with the advice to ask someone else, but the thing is, I’m still old. No matter how much I practice and research, I will never have the prowess of a teen Snapper. These kids are truly and completely the experts when it comes to this unconscionable little app. They get it. They get it on a level that we absolutely never will. So eat some humble pie, find the friendliest tween you know, and ask them for a tutorial. I spoke to three, of three different ages, so I could understand how to navigate the counterintuitive space. Because:
2. Navigation is weirdly confusing. I honestly don’t understand why I can never remember that swiping left will take me to Stories. I think it’s partially because, when you open the app, you immediately see your own face — so, you know, if it’s early enough in the morning that can be pretty alarming. But for your own reference:
   1. Swiping LEFT takes you to Stories, where you can add a Story (a Snap visible to anyone who follows you). That’s also where you’ll be able to see your friends’ stories, or the big fancy brand stories from places like Vogue and Buzzfeed.
   2. Swiping RIGHT takes you to your contacts/messages, where you add individual snaps (private messages/photos/videos to individual people).
   3. Swiping UP takes you to Memories. That’s where you can save your own (and, obviously, only your own) Snaps and Stories for later perusing and reuse. Kind of like a glorified camera roll, but it definitely comes in handy.
   4. Swiping DOWN takes you to your profile info, including your name, Snapcode, and Snapchat Score. Yes, there are scores involved. Which leads me to an important but confusing point:
3. Don’t worry about your Snapchat score. Seriously. Don’t worry about it. As a brand, the number you’ll want to keep an eye on is the number of viewers on your Stories. Get that number higher and it won’t matter what your ‘score’ is. Besides, Snapchat has been notoriously cryptic about how those scores are calculated and what benefit they have — if any. What we do know is that the more you use the app, the higher your score is, so basically it’s just an internal way to motivate users to stay active. But you’ll want to be doing that anyway, because the most important thing to remember about Snapchat is…
4. Have fun. Snapchat’s designed for teenagers, not for brands. Teens like to have fun. They like to draw on their photos and chat with tons of people and write funny captions. If you already have a huge following, you can use Snapchat to connect with those folks, but if you’re expecting to grow from within the app? Your only chance is to sincerely enjoy yourself. Play. Be creative. Make silly stories and follow other people’s silly stories to get inspiration. This awesome artist now works full-time on Snapchat because she does such a great job doodling on her own photos! That doesn’t come from some huge strategic move; that comes from having lots of fun and being focused on what you enjoy.

Social media began as a way to connect with friends and have fun while doing it. Of all the apps, it seems Snapchat’s the one remaining most true to that purpose. They’re not here to help your business grow; they’re here to stay engaged with their legion of millennial users. Which means, if you really want to maximize your time on the app, you’ve got to start thinking like a millennial user.  

Good luck, and Godspeed. Oh, and add me: username “heatherrwalters.” I’m trying to get my score up. 

The post Snapchat For Old People appeared first on HER Magazine ™.

But ‘social media,’ unfortunately, is a bit of a vague concept — and getting more vague by the week. If you have limited resources, you won’t be able to manage twenty different profiles, and that’s okay. Instead, focus on just one platform; become a rockstar there to get the full benefit. Twitter is one of the ancient houses (in social media time); a behemoth that, if your target demographic lives there, can be indispensable to your bottom line.

How, you ask? Well, once you’ve established a bio, a pic, and a respectable handle, there are a few strategies that can help you stand out from the pack.

1. Find Your People. Twitter is the inventor of the hashtag, and its users happily tag on a daily basis. This is incredibly useful when you’re trying to find your target audience — all you have to do is find the hashtags they’re using. For example, if you’re a yoga studio in Seattle, click on the #SeattleYoga hashtag to find a bunch of yogis in Seattle. Like, follow, and reply to their posts and, before you know it, you’re growing your own audience of Seattle-based yoga enthusiasts!
2. Customer Service. A lot of brands are using Twitter as their customer service home base, and it’s incredibly effective. If a client has an issue with your product and tweets about it, you can simply tweet back and connect with them to resolve the issue. In a day and age when too many people are pulling away from the ‘time-consuming’ nature of email in favor of more immediate means of communication, Twitter is basically king. Sure, you’ve got to be careful — don’t let yourself get baited into a Twitter war. The brand never wins in those situations, trust me. But if you’re honestly trying to help your customers, Twitter can be a great place to authentically connect and offer support.
3. Grab Some Media Attention. Has anyone been following the Wendy’s Twitter feed recently? Because whoever took over their account is seriously (and hilariously) savage. From openly comparing their competitors to garbage, to brutal mockery of the fools who criticize them, Wendy’s has garnered the praise and adoration of anyone who loves sarcasm and shock value. Considering their main demographic is mostly broke college students, this is a very effective marketing technique, and a great practice for any business on Twitter. Find your target demographic. Discover what they love. Then figure out how you can be exactly that; establish your voice and stay consistent. People will notice and, if you did your research, you’ll draw in your ideal customer.
4. Build Your Following. The more active you are on Twitter, the more you engage with your target audience, the more your audience will grow. Engaging is really the key here. Assuming you have an amazing profile (great pic, compelling bio, fantastic content), you still have to be discovered. Those followers have to find you. This is where engaging comes in: Using hashtags, or perhaps the ‘follower’ list of a competitor, go through tweets from your target audience and favorite, retweet, reply, and follow. Get involved, completely on brand, of course. Then, when they see your name in their notifications, they just might click ‘Follow.’
5. Share coupons and deals! Any content marketing you do is ultimately for the purpose of leading to sales, right? So don’t forget to direct your followers to your product! Eat24’s Twitter strategy is an excellent case study: not only to they have a specific brand voice, engage in customer service through Twitter, and actually create funny content, but they’re releasing a coupon every weekend for $2 off. If you tweet at them asking about it, they tell you the coupon! What a way to engage your customers, right? That keeps your followers close, builds trust in your audience, motivates others to follow you, and (best of all) drives sales!

Twitter can be a wild, wild place, but if you know what you’re doing, you can reap wonderful rewards for your business. Just make sure you’re staying on brand, creating great content, engaging with the community, and most importantly: driving customers towards your product.

The post Five Ways To Use Twitter For Your Business appeared first on HER Magazine ™.

Why digital algorithms?

Essentially, the main aim of digital algorithms is to keep consumers on social media platforms longer by showing content that you’ve previously engaged with.  Gone are the days of chronologically presented timelines, and a much more strategic consumer-based enjoyment feed has taken its place.  With Facebook kicking off the strategy-based trend, Instagram following suit and Twitter not far behind, how will you successfully appeal to your audience with these algorithms in place?

Facebook

If you’re using Facebook on a personal or business level, no doubt you’ve noticed a steady loss of response to your content – particularly over the last year.  This isn’t because your friends have all of a sudden started to hate you.  Phew!  More so, their engagement rates have been spread across many pages and platforms.  During an interview with Buffer Social, Michael Stelzner, CEO of Social Media Examiner explains that each Facebook post on a business page is distributed to a select sample group of your following to ‘test’ the engagement that your post will receive.  If it receives nada you can expect that it’s not going to get sent out to other customers from here.  And news flash, this is not what we want. So what can you do to make your Facebook posts more appealing?

Longer Videos

Facebook loves it when you post videos.  By making them longer, they’re more likely to shoot to the top of the feed too.

Original Content

Like any platform, original content reigns supreme.  With a particular emphasis on new and exciting content, aggressive requests of your target audience such as ‘share this’ or ‘comment here’ are frowned upon by Facebook’s bots and will negatively impact your exposure.  Keep your content fresh for your audience and Facebook will tip its hat to you with a more accessible share rate.

Go Live

Even if no one is watching your live feed, it appears that your non-live content is sent to a larger percentage of your target audience. Genius!

Instagram

While the early days saw Instagram posts being viewed in your feed in reverse chronological order, these feed formats are now long gone.  Similarly to Facebook, Instagram is showing consumers content which is being engaged with, as part of their trending digital algorithms.  This means that social media strategies are crucial for the overall success of Instagram accounts.  So what are some actions you can put in place to broaden your insta-horizons?

Hashtags

Michael Aynsley of Hootesuite suggests that using the right hashtags can really bump up your exposure, so it’s worth doing your research.  Check out what your competitors are hashtagging and discover niche tags for your market.  Keep your hashtags relevant to your field and image.  While ‘love’ is one of the most highly used hashtags, having been used over a billion times on Instagram (no kidding, look it up!), Aynsley explains that this will not accurately represent every image you post, or target your specific customer base.

High Quality Imagery

This goes for Facebook too.  Stelzner simplifies the reasons behind this beautifully.  Each platform essentially has inbuilt computers, analyzing your content for quality.  While this has dramatically reduced scam like images, it also means that you don’t want grainy ones on your feed either.

Insights

Mary Blackiston, Content Marketing specialist for SUCCESS agency recommends taking note of which posts are generating the most engagement and then deciphering why this may be.  For example, if one image receives 150 likes and the other is hit with 400 likes – how do these vary?  Are the images vastly different?  Have you introduced new hashtags? Was one caption ridiculously funny and the other inspirational?  Get to the bottom of what your audience is looking for and make note of how you can continue appealing to them consistently.

Tactics and Strategies

While all of this information is important to consider when mastering digital algorithms, there are a variety of ways to increase their effectiveness.  Whether you’re interested in creating leads, making sales or simply gaining more exposure for your brand, personality or business, a strategy is crucial for digital success.

Genuine Community Engagement

By genuinely connecting with your following in the form of likes, comments and sharing posts which are specifically valuable to your target audience, Stelzner assures that this will increase your customer engagement on the other end too.  Your target market and following want to see content that’s going to provide them with value.  Depending on your audience, this may be in the form of inspiration, information or targeted content, which will benefit them directly.  Again, find what your target market is looking for and focus on giving the people what they want!

Call To Action

Give your audience a reason to want to know more about you.  Whether that’s directing them to your website and encouraging them to sign up to your mailing list, downloading a free guide or simply providing them with useful content that they want to share with their friends.  This is a big one.  When your content is shared across platforms by your following, the algorithm gods take this pretty seriously.

Campaign Strategizing

Ultimately, if you use these trending digital algorithms to your advantage, you’ll know that having people simply liking and commenting on your posts isn’t enough.  Yes, you’ve gained access to a targeted following but how do we transfer this to sales, providing your customers with extra information and cementing their interest in you?  By formulating a clear campaign strategy, such as encouraging followers to sign up to your emailing list, download a product or contact you about your services, you are then able to gain access to your following on your terms.  Passive scrolls and likes are a fab way to begin interacting with your target market but once you hold the reins, you can use this to your advantage and really start kicking butt when it comes to getting in touch and forming meaningful relationships with your target audience.

The post How To Master Digital Algorithms appeared first on HER Magazine ™.

• A coding studio where kids use robotics and custom-built apps to learn about electrical circuits.
• A music studio where kids learn how to create and record music and spin records like a DJ.
• A film studio where kids learn filmmaking techniques, in addition to editing videos.
• A fashion studio where kids learn to sew by hand or machine to create shirts, hats, dresses, or whatever they can imagine.
• A bread making studio where kids learn how to mix, knead, rise, add spices, and bake.

But, there’s something else that sets Steve and Kate’s Camp apart from other camps. Mike Saperstine, a partner at Steve & Kate’s Camp, says, “When we ask campers what they like most about the camp, the answer, overwhelmingly, is that they like Steve & Kate’s because they feel free.” While the activities have changed over the course of 38 years, Saperstein says campers continue to love the level of freedom and flexibility offered by the camp.

“The fundamental value of trusting kids to choose for themselves is the single most important part of our camp.” Saperstein says kids tell them that they like having the freedom to make their own choices. “It’s been our observation over 37 years that what is learned through kids experimenting at their own pace while having access to learning tools is profoundly different than going through a lesson plan.”

This type of setting provides a different type of experience. “Children are more invested, more creative, and learn intangible things, like to trust themselves and gain confidence in their ability to figure things out.”

And parents also love the flexibility of Steve & Kate’s compared to traditional camps. “They love the fact that they can buy any number of day passes, use them anytime, and get full automatic refunds for any leftover passes at the end of summer,” Saperstine explains. As a result, kids can be enrolled for a day, a week, a month, or whatever fits the family’s schedule.

Camp activities

This year, Circuit Cubes joins the camp. Nate MacDonald is the president and CEO of Circuit Cubes. He tells HER Magazine, “Circuit Cubes are electronic building blocks that teach kids the basics of circuitry while they are engaged in creative STEM play.” The cubes can be used in a variety of applications. “Kids learn how to complete circuits to light an LED, power a geared motor, and how serial and parallel circuits create different effects in their projects.” Since Circuit Cubes can be integrated with LEGOs, the possibilities are endless.

MacDonald was drawn to Steve & Kate’s because the kids are allowed to explore and be creative. “Kids are completely in charge of what they create while playing with Circuit Cubes, which contributes to the camp’s environment of encouraging the natural ways that kids learn.”

Currently, the kids can use the parts and materials to build four projects:

• The Scribblebot plays with chance and physics to help kids make cool art pieces. They learn to control the bot as they use it, gradually understanding its mechanics while they have fun.
• The hand-cranked flashlight is a sneaky fun way to teach how electricity actually works, as the LED will only turn on when kids spin the wheel in a certain direction; it doesn’t work in both directions. We’ve found that kids will experiment with the different directions to figure out which is the correct way to make their flashlight turn on.
• Our DIY race car project uses all three Cubes (Motor, Battery, and LED) to create a base vehicle chassis that can be modified as the young maker wants depending on his or her imagination that day.
• The gobo spotlight uses an LED Cube and Battery Cube to shine a light through images that kids draw or stencil on themselves. The light can be projected onto a wall — just like when Batman’s ready to save Gotham City!

Macdonald says that Circuit Cubes are ideally for kids between the ages of 5-12, but he’s discovered that regardless of age, everyone seems to enjoy tinkering with them.

The camps are thoughtfully designed for maximum effectiveness. “When choosing activities, we aim to have a balance of indoor, outdoor, mellow and high energy activities,” Saperstine explains. In addition to the 5 creative studios, campers can also choose to participate in indoor and outdoor play like game rooms, blocks, sports, and imaginative play.

In addition to the regular offerings, Steve and Kate’s also springs a few surprises on the campers. “Each day, we bring out special equipment meant to dazzle the kids and give them a chance to play with the equipment they may not otherwise get to play with,” Saperstine explains.   “In our line up, we have things like Zorbs (inflatable hamster wheels), water slides, inflatable soccer stadiums and Actev smart-kart (go-karts).”

Mentorship program

Steve & Kate’s also has a mentorship program for kids that are too old to be campers, but too young to serve as counselors. Saperstine says they wanted to understand what teenagers considered to be important, and discovered that they wanted the camp experiences, but also wanted to develop leadership and other skills. “So, we developed a mentorship program in which teens get mentored by our counselors on some of the important lessons in being a good leader like empathy and understanding various situations.”

The teens help younger campers, which provides an opportunity to practice what they’ve learned. But, Saperstine says, “Their days are wide open though, so whenever they want to make a beat with their friends in the music studio, they are welcome to at any time!”

The post Possibly the Coolest Summer Camp Ever for Young Girls appeared first on HER Magazine ™.

It feel so robotic right?

Automation in marketing requires certain finesse so it doesn’t come across as robotic and stilted.

The idea of automation is to remove the work that needs to be done by human hands. And sometimes, when it comes to your marketing – automation can be seen as the enemy.

But it doesn’t have to be – and quite frankly, it’s just the opposite if done correctly.

Fundamentally, marketing is how potential customers interact with your brand or product so it’s important that your marketing is infused with emotion.

Building out marketing campaigns takes time. Social media, cold calls, email marketing. It will take hours and hours of work before leads even start rolling in, and you will constantly be tweaking your strategy.

So let’s start with this simple concept.

Email Marketing Automation. It’s a great way to turn your potential customers into warm leads who will eventually become customers.

“How do I do it?” You’re not the first to ask, so don’t feel silly.

Here’s the official definition: email automation is the process by which a company or agency creates an email sequence in order to move customers from an email opt-in to a purchase in a timely fashion.

There are a number of different ways to set these up using different types of software – everything from MailChimp to ConvertKit and sophisticated software like InfusionSoft. What system you use depends on the stage of your business.

The benefits of email automation are boundless, but there are a few key reasons why email automation is worth every penny invested.

INCREASE REVENUE

Show us a business owner that doesn’t want to make more money and we’ll give you $1,000 (disclaimer: we will not actually give you $1,000). That was said for effect.

Increasing revenue is an important part of growing your business and keeping the wheels moving. Research has shown that companies which use automation in their lead generation process saw a 10 per cent increase in revenue over a period of 6 to 9 months.

Automated sequences, or drip campaigns, often receive a higher open rate and click through rate. The more frequently someone sees your promotion, the more likely they are to buy into your product or service.

Having a series of emails gives you a better chance to making sales at various points of the sequence.

REDUCE YOUR MARKETING COSTS

Large marketing teams have long been a staple in corporate offices. For smaller businesses, it’s nearly impossible to have a marketing team capable of generating leads every day.

What is possible, however, is to have one person helping you work on your marketing on a need-by-need basis. This is how most small companies reach the capability to scale.

Having one person create various email sequences for various campaigns that you’re running in your business is a fool-proof way to cut the time spent on marketing efforts, and ergo, the cost.

This money can then be re-invested in other aspects of your business’ marketing to try and create a broad-base lead generation solution.

According to Forrester Research, using email automation creates 50% more sales-ready leads at 33% less of a cost.

OPPORTUNITY TO ANALYZE

When more time is invested in planning and setting emails up as an automated response, it leaves your team or yourself, more time to actually analyze the results of the emails.

The best marketing tactics or plans, come from careful analysis of results from previous campaigns.

Giving yourself time to look over results and understand them, means you can find iterations of your marketing plan that can produce even better results in the future.

Make sure that you’re using a system that allows detailed reporting so that you can really see what’s happening in your marketing strategy.

IMPROVES WORKFLOW

Marketing is a big kettle of fish – there is so much to get done in so few hours.

Automation serves a huge role in improving workflow in the marketing team so that leads are being generated without a huge amount of work. There’s nothing better than a well-oiled marketing machine that works on its own and takes the burden off the team.

MORE SPACE FOR CREATIVITY

This may be the most important aspect of setting up an automated email marketing system.

Taking time out of the input process means that the marketing person or team has more time to create, to think and to postulate.

Out of these moments, the best marketing tactics are born.

Most brilliant ideas sometimes come when watching television or reading a book. By fostering creativity, you have the potential to produce million-dollar campaigns.

So set yourself a challenge – create a series of automated emails and see what it does for your sales.

The post 5 reasons to automate your emails appeared first on HER Magazine ™.

Annual wages can start at $85,000 and climb well over $100,000. A new study by Accenture and Girls Who Code – a national non-profit organization dedicated to closing the gender gap in technology – reveals that by 2025, the number of jobs created in this sector will be three times the national average.

The demand is there. The wages are competitive yet there are just not that many women in computer science right now.

Data from the National Center for Educational Statistics shows 37% of undergraduate computer science students were women in 1984. By 2014, roughly 18% of students were women.

This means women used to dominate the computing field. So what happened?

Telle Whitney, President and CEO of the Anita Borg Institute, credits the movie, “Hidden Figures” for helping to draw attention to this issue.

“I enjoyed the movie and its story on perseverance and ultimate success,” Whitney tells HER Magazine in an interview.

“In the early age of computer science, computers were considered clerical work, so women were often recruited.”

When she was a young computer scientist, Whitney was surrounded by women. “In fact, my first programming teacher was a woman, and women graduate students were very common – at this time, companies were desperate to find anyone with math skills.”

Seismic Shift

However, during the 1980s, the personal computer grained popularity and computer science became mainstream. According to Wendy DuBow, a senior researcher and the Director of Evaluation at the National Center for Women & Information Technology, the perception began to change. It was no longer an industry dominated by women; it was an industry for men.

“In the popular imagination, men began to be directly associated with computer science expertise and skills – even though historically women, black and white, had been the “computers,” she says.

And DuBow believes this had an impact on the perception, recruitment, and acceptance of more women in the field.

“In general, masculinizing an occupation has often been an effective strategy for ‘professionalizing’ or artificially raising the status of that occupation,” DuBow tells HER Magazine, “In addition, men have a greater tendency to go into high-paying professions, which computing came to be.”

It’s a change that Whitney witnessed first-hand. “As computer science departments grew and the field became more prestigious, the industry looked to other engineering disciplines, which consisted of mostly men.”

And this sentiment is echoed by Jane Chappell, Vice President of Global Intelligence Solutions at Raytheon. “The shift taking women away from computer science, to me, came about as it became viewed as a more mainstream field grouped with math, science and engineering – all traditionally male-dominated fields.”

For Chappell – who majored in computer science years ago, and now leads a technology and innovation company that specializes in cybersecurity, defense, and civil government – the shift is cause for concern.

Even for the women who were already in the field, career advancement moved at a snail’s pace – when it moved at all. “The societal bias against women in any field being in high-earning, top leadership positions permeated this rapidly growing profession,” says DuBow, who adds, “The societal bias against women of color holding positions of power in an influential, high-paying industry is even more inhibiting.”

Leveling the Playing Field

So how do we get more women back into computer science?

“We can reverse this gender shift by encouraging educational institutions to support change within their organizations, so that women have the chance to learn about and create technology, ultimately increasing presence and participation of women in computer science,” says Whitney.

And some schools are taking the lead in this area.

Leah Busque graduated from Sweet Briar in 2001 with a degree in math and computer science. She is the Founder, former CEO and current executive chairwoman of the service networking site TaskRabbit, and also serves on Sweet Briar’s board of directors. Busque tells HER magazine that although there’s been a decline in the number of women receiving computer science degrees, some schools have experienced an enrollment increase.

“Both Stanford University and Harvey Mudd College are examples of institutions that have gone against this trend and are making real headway against these numbers,” says Busque.

“Maria Klawe, President of HMC, has made it a personal focus of hers to drive more women and minorities into CS degrees at the college – she achieved this through multiple tactics, including reconstructing curriculum and utilizing nontraditional recruitment strategies for high school applicants.”

And Busque says her own school, Sweet Briar, has been inspired by these institutions and is committed to increasing the number of women in the technology industry. “We are positioned uniquely: because we are solely dedicated to the education of women, we can be at the forefront of driving positive change in these numbers.”

Sweet Briar recently created its computer science program from the ground up. “We’re utilizing proven strategies at other schools, and also incorporating our own best practices around the integration of liberal arts, fostering community, and incorporating social impact components into the classroom,” says Busque.

She also believes that the importance of positive role models cannot be overemphasized.

“Role models have always been an important influence in my life and career, because you can’t be what you can’t see,” says Busque. “Creating this program means continuing to graduate many more accomplished leaders for the next generation to be inspired by, and this is an important way we can change these numbers over time.”

Programs like Sweet Briar’s and those at Stanford and Harvey Mudd help to change the notion that computer science is only for men.

“One problem that has existed for decades is the false notion that girls aren’t supposed to be good in math and science – and unfortunately, I know from talking with my students that such negative societal influences still exist to this day,” says Stephen R. Wassell, Sweet Briar’s Computer Science Program Director.

He tells HER Magazine, “Of course, our students and graduates in STEM fields completely dispel this myth on a regular basis.”

It appears that the number of women in computer science declined, primarily, based on the perception of what these professionals should look like.

However, Rachael Stedman, Engineering Manager at Lever, tells HER Magazine, “Today, I think we strive for something different – not just changing the perception of the job of a software engineer, etcetera, but actually changing the way we think about gender and race, no longer using gender and race as boxes that define what jobs we can and cannot do.”

The post Why We Need More Women in Computer Science appeared first on HER Magazine ™.