Mediaboss Marketing

What kind of social media and traditional and online marketing make sense for your business? How can small businesses thrive in local, state, and global markets? A free workshop on marketing, social media and branding for small businesses will be held on Thursday, March 9 from 9:30 to 11 a.m. at the Lincoln County Regional Planning Commission office, 297 Bath Road in Wiscasset.

The workshop will feature DreamLocal Digital founder Shannon Kinney, Kris Folsom, marketing and communications director for Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens, Bill Card, economic development specialist for the Maine Small Business Administration, and Jaimie Logan, governor's account executive with the Maine Department of Economic and Community Development.

Kinney is founder and client success officer at Dream Local Digital. She has over 20 years of experience in the development of successful Internet products, online sales and marketing strategies. She has worked on the teams developing successful Internet brands such ascars.com, careerbuilder.com, and over 60 online media properties for newspapers in the U.S. and Canada. Prior to that, she spent over 10 years in media sales and sales management in Maine. Kinney has served more than 40,000 small businesses in online marketing workshops. She been recognized as a Woman to Watch by Maine Biz, and as a Local Digital Innovator by the Local Media Association.

Folsom has a passion for branding, strategic planning, and marketing metrics. Since arriving at the Gardens in 2011, annual visitation has increased from 87,000 to 188,000 guests and Facebook followers have climbed from 5,000 to 30,000. Kris attributes this to having a fantastic product but also to utilizing her marketing efforts to harness the power of word of mouth advertising to achieve organizational goals.

This session is free of charge and is presented in conjunction with the Small Business Development Center and the Lincoln County Regional Planning Commission. The snow date is Friday, March 10.

To register, please go to http://www.lcrpc.org or call 882-5983.

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Small businesses and social media: finding the right marketing strategies - Wiscasset Newspaper

Market research firm eMarketer projects that 70.4 million Americans will use Snapchat in 2017, up from its June prediction of 66.6 million users.

According to eMarketer, this year will see a rise in users aged between 45 and 54 (6.4% compared with the previously projected 4.2%) while projections for users 24 and younger have been decreased. Between 2015 and 2016, the numberof 25-34 year old Snapchat users increased by 48.3% but this year it will decrease to just 13.9%.

That means that, this year, 8 million Snapchat users will be over the age of 45, accounting for just over 11% of the total U.S. user base. This group is projected to make up 12.2% of the app's users in 2018 and 13.3% by 2019. Last year, just 9% of Snapchat's American users were over the age of 45, and in 2015 it was 5.6%.

So what is behind the adoption of Snapchat by older users? According to eMarketer analyst Jaimie Chung it has a lot to do with content.

"The platform has multiple partnerships with television networks for mini episodes," Ms. Chung said. "Meanwhile, the younger groups are less likely to add Snapchat when Instagram Stories can fulfill their broadcasting needs."

Brands are also turning to Snapchat to reach target audiences "at eye level", according to Snaplytics' survey. Almost half (48.8%) of brands use Snapchat, and that figure is expected to rise to over 70% by the end of the 2017. In particular, videos are becoming an increasingly popular Snapchat format for brands. Just over six in 10 (61%) of brand content on Snapchat is video, up 5% from Q1 2016. Furthermore, brands are being more consistent with content posting. On average, brands post twice a week and completion rates in Q4 2016 (the number of people who view an entire Snapchat Story) rose to 88% from 84% the previous quarter.

Tags: research, social media, trends

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Older users getting snappy with Shapchat - Social Marketing ... - BizReport

Measurement is the key to business success. Unless you monitor your companys performance and key marketing metrics, theres no way to identify the components in your strategy that need to be replaced, removed, or optimized. Its also important to closely track the impact of new strategies to see if theyre worth keeping.

However, making data-driven decisions is easier said than done. First of all, you need to have robust and cost-effective measurement platforms that generate an ideal ROI. Secondly, you need to know what to do with the information you gather.

When it comes to digital marketing and online businesses, below are the top seven tools you should use for actionable analytics:

Lets start with the platform that everyone knows. For most online marketers and businesses, Google Analytics is the go-to platform for obtaining data on advertising and marketing. It lets you understand your audience, traffic acquisition channels, conversions, and the overall performance of your web content.

The best thing about Google Analytics is that you dont have to spend a dime to get all the core features. To set it up, you need to integrate it with your content management system, which can be done by generating a tracking ID and embedding it within your websites code.

Once your site is confirmed, you should be able to access real-time information through the Google Analytics dashboard. It breaks down information into four main categories:

Cyfe is a comprehensive analytics platform for businesses with big needs. It lets you study aggregate data across all areas of your business from social media marketing to your company revenue.

Webcast, March 2nd: The Psychology of Designing User Habits with Nir Eyal

The platform works through customizable dashboards that can contain multiple widgets. These cover virtually every aspect of business analytics, including but not limited to blogging, sales, social media, and advertising.

Despite the depth of information you can obtain from Cyfe, you can use the tool for as long as you need for free. You may, however, avail a premium plan that offers additional features, multiple users, and the ability to create an unlimited number of dashboards.

Marketing analytics and business growth are all about numbers. But with Crazy Egg, you can cut through the number crunching and analyze the performance of your website visually with the help of heat maps.

Simply put, heat maps allow you to identify the hot and cold zones of your website. These are page elements that draw or repel your visitors attention. It sounds simple, but it is a more efficient way of formulating data-driven experiences than piecing together information from different platforms.

Another benefit of Crazy Egg is ease-of-use. After signing up for an account, you can get everything ready in your sites end within minutes. The data, however, takes some time to deliver accurate tracking.

Although there are pure social media analytics platforms like Iconosquare, Tailwind, and Followerwonk, an all-in-one social marketing platform like Buffer can provide most businesses with sufficient engagement statistics to boost the experience of followers.

The obvious benefit of using Buffer is that you no longer have to rely on multiple platforms if you leverage different social media networks. Even with a free account, you can monitor up to five different social media pages on Pinterest, Google+, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

In addition to analytics, Buffer allows brands to automate content distribution through a visual editorial calendar. However, the free account only allows you to schedule up to ten posts at a time, which should be enough as long as you know the best times to post content in each network.

All successful companies have adaptive leaders who never stop pursuing growth. With the analytics tools above, you can have a birds-eye view of the online branding, sales, and marketing aspects of your business.

Alan is an SEO specialist and professional marketer. She is working as Chief Content Marketer at an Infographic design agency Infobrandz.com that offers creative and premium visual content solutions to medium to large companies. With over 10 years of experience in marketing for small businesses, She also contributes in other Viewfullprofile

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Rounding Up the Top 4 Marketing Analytics Tools and How to Use Them - Business 2 Community

Books, newspapers, magazines, broadcast media and Internet access are censored in Saudi Arabia.

In 2014, Reporters Without Borders describes the government as "relentless in its censorship of the Saudi media and the Internet",[1] and ranked Saudi Arabia 164th out of 180 countries for freedom of the press.[2]

The Royal Decree On Press and Publications (1982) set up the initial government regulation of Saudi books, newspapers and magazines, as well as all foreign publications sold in the kingdom. In addition to obtaining government permission, the Saudi citizen creating and distributing the content, had to ensure that it did not cause sectarian tension among citizens, or insult the royal family or Islamic values.

In 1992 the "Basic Law of Governance" was enacted as an informal Constitution. Article 39 of the kingdom's "Basic Law of Governance" states that

Mass media and all other vehicles of expression shall employ civil and polite language, contribute towards the education of the nation and strengthen unity. It is prohibited to commit acts leading to disorder and division, affecting the security of the state and its public relations, or undermining human dignity and rights. Details shall be specified in the Law.[3]

The Ministry of Interior has "responsibility for all the Saudi media and other channels of information".[4] The ministry has been called the "main agent of censorship" in the kingdom.[4] It is charged with the `purification` of culture prior to it being permitted circulation to the public. A special unit, the Management of Publications department, "analyzes all publications and issues directives to newspapers and magazines" stating that way in which a given topic must be treated.[4]

According to the Encyclopedia of Censorship

There is no precensorship of publications but if any material goes against a directive, or more generally qualifies as `impure`, the department will check it and notify the minister of information, who decides in what way and to what extent the publication and its employees are to be punished. The main effect of this system has been to impose on journalists rigorous self- censorship.[4]

Saudi Arabia directs all international Internet traffic through a proxy farm located in King Abdulaziz City for Science & Technology. A content filter is implemented there, based on software by Secure Computing.[5] Since October 2006, the Communications and Information Technology Commission (CITC) has been handling the DNS structure and filtering in Saudi Arabia in the place of KACST. Additionally, a number of sites are blocked according to two lists maintained by the Internet Services Unit (ISU):[6] one containing "immoral" (mostly pornographic or supportive of LGBT-rights) sites and sites promoting Shia Ideology, the others based on directions from a security committee run by the Ministry of Interior (including sites critical of the Saudi government). An interesting feature of this system is that citizens are encouraged to actively report "immoral" sites (mostly adult and pornographic) for blocking, using a provided web form, available on the government's website.

The initial legal basis for content filtering is the resolution by Council of Ministers dated 12 February 2001.[7] According to a study carried out in 2004 by the Open Net Initiative "the most aggressive censorship focused on pornography, drug use, gambling, religious conversion of Muslims, and filtering circumvention tools."[5]

This resolution was subsequently modified and expanded into The Anti-Cyber Crime Law (2007). Article 6 of this royal decree makes it a crime to produce, possess, distribute, transmit or store Internet content or a computer program that involves gambling, human trafficking, pornography or anything deemed to be against Islam, public morals or public order.

On 11 July 2006 the Saudi government blocked access to Wikipedia and Google Translate, which was being used to bypass the filters on the blocked sites by translating them.[8][9]

In 2011, the Saudi government introduced new Internet rules and regulations that require all online newspapers and bloggers to obtain a special license from the Ministry of Culture and Information.[10] The Communications and Information Technology Commission (CITC) is responsible for regulating the Internet and for hosting a firewall which blocks access to thousands of websites, mainly due to sexual and political content. Many articles from the English and Arabic Wikipedia projects are censored in Saudi Arabia with no given explanation.

As of 2014, Saudi Arabia has plans to regulate local companies producing input for YouTube. The General Authority for Audiovisual Media, a recently formed watchdog, will issue a public declaration to regulate the work of YouTube channels. They plan to censor material that is "terrorist" in nature which according to the proposed rule will be any content that "disturbs public order, shakes the security of society, or subjects its national unity to danger, or obstructs the primary system of rule or harms the reputation of the state".[11][12][13]

Any speech or public demonstration that is deemed to be immoral or critical of the government, especially the royal family, can lead to imprisonment or corporal punishment.

Saudi and foreign newspapers and magazines, including advertising, are strictly controlled by censorship officials to remove content that is offensive. Newspapers and magazines must not offend or criticize the Wahabi Muslims and especially The Royal family, Wahabi government officials or government version of Islamic morality.

Censorship of foreign newspapers and magazines tends to focus on content of sexual nature.[14] Nudity and pornography are illegal in the kingdom and this can extend to inking out public displays or affection like hugging and kissing, the uncovered arms and legs of women and men or anything deemed to be promoting "sexual immorality", such as adultery, fornication, sodomy or homosexuality. Even advertising for driving classes for women is banned, in keep with the ban in the kingdom.

In 1994, all Saudi women magazines were banned by the Ministry of Information. This move was considered to be related to the pressures of the religious establishment or ulema. After this ban, nineteen of twenty-four magazines closed down since their major revenue was advertisement earnings paid by the Saudi companies.[15]

Public cinemas have been illegal since the 1980s when conservative clerics deemed cinemas to be a waste of time and a corrupting influence.

In 2007, permission was granted to two hotels to screen American children's films, to celebrate the end of Ramadan. That following year the first Saudi film festival took place.[16]

Television and radio news, educational and entertainment programming is subjected to government censorship and control. Live television broadcasting on government-owned national TV stations was briefly suspended in 2008 after disgruntled callers on a live show on Al-Ikhbariya news channel displayed discontent with the latest governmental salary increases and made critical remarks of some Saudi officials. The minister of Culture and Information then fired the network's director, Muhammad Al-Tunsy, and replaced him with one of his personal assistants. The minister also formed a censorship committee of which the approval would be required prior to airing any program or inviting any guests on national television stations. The legal status of satellite receivers is in something of a grey area.[17]

In 1994, the government banned ownership of satellite television receivers but throughout the 1990s, an increasingly large percentage of the population bought a satellite receiver and subscribed to various programming packages. Despite the ban, the Saudi government was, generally, willing to tolerate satellite television as long as the programming content was not pornographic, critical of the Saudi government or Islam.[17]

In the 2000s, the Saudi government launched its own satellite stations and expressed a desire to work with other governments in the region to develop common censorship guidelines and restrictions.[18]

In 2005, the two-part episode of American Dad! named "Stan of Arabia" was banned by the Saudi government. The English daily ArabNews published an article that accused the series of "a particularly brutal portrayal of Saudis and Saudi Arabia"; although some of what was being shown, such as intolerance of homosexuality as well as the ban of alcohol, was true. As a result, the two-part episode was banned in Saudi Arabia, although the rest of the TV series itself can still be seen.[19]

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Censorship in Saudi Arabia - Wikipedia

Photo from Womens March on Washington

Following the Womens March on Washington and its sister marches around the world, Chinese women were noticeably absent from the international media spotlights. This is because street protests and demonstrations that promote falsehoods are illegal in China, and the Chinese government has a history of cracking down and retaliating against public events and figures that bring light to gender inequality.

While the Chinese governments restriction of public protests and demonstrations is nothing new, over the past few years, China has been slowly increasing its censorship of feminist media and publications. For example, in 2015, the imprisonment by the government of the Feminist Five, a group of vocal Chinese womens rights activists, made headlines and led to an international outcry, leading to their subsequent release. The members of the group had been detained for distributing pamphlets about sexual harassment on March 8, International Womens Day.

This event from last year also mirrors a recent attack on feminist press. Just last week, a Chinese feminist social media account run on Weibo, a Twitter-like platform, was suspended for a month after it re-posted news about a strike taking place in the United States to honor International Womens Day. The account, Feminist Voices, which is one of the most popular in the nation with 80,000 followers, has temporarily moved to a different name. Citizens reacted with anger and fear on social media, warning of the threat to general civil liberties and to womens groups who want to remain outspoken against U.S. President Donald Trump and on gender equality issues.

However, besides high-profile cases such as this, the more insidious censorship and oppression of female artists and writers in China who dedicate their lives to the production of pieces that will inform and illuminate a worldwide audience has remained less publicized throughout the last year.

Consider the film Hooligan Sparrow, which was on this years short list for the Oscars category of feature length documentary. The director, Nanfu Wang, captured the story of Ye Haiyan, one of the most prominent womens rights activists in China. Ye and seven other activists risked arrest for publicly protesting against the outcome of a child rape case in Hainan involving a government official. Wang filmed undercover and smuggled the footage out of the country. The documentary was also nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival.

Before the announcements of the final Oscar nominees, local authorities shut off all of Yes utilities and Internet from her apartment on the outskirts of Beijing. The film was not ultimately included in the nominee list; if it had been, Ye would have had an extremely difficult time remaining in China and most likely would have had to leave the country somehow, though the government confiscated her passport in 2014. Ye is now facing eviction, and her daughter is not allowed to enroll in school because of Yes political activities.

The film is strictly prohibited from being shown within China but has garnered international acclaim. Wang and Chinese organizations have worked to plan underground screenings of the film domestically, risking government backlash.

Though the Chinese government supposedly supports the promotion of gender equality, it views any press or publicity that reveals a less-than-stellar status quo of womens rights as a threat to its order and stability. Working in these unfavorable conditions, Chinese feminists have increased efforts and are looking to forge alliances with other womens rights activists in the United States and beyond in order to foster international awareness. Journalists and activists such as Lu Pin, who is New York-based, have founded organizations such as the Chinese Feminism Collective that promotes the communication of Chinese feminism to Western nations.

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Chinese Censorship of Feminism - Daily Trojan Online