Mediaboss Marketing

In January, multiple outlets published articles discussing whether 2020 would signal the end of the webinar. But now, mere months and a global pandemic later, live virtual events have become one of the most critical tools in a marketers arsenal.

The content marketing webinar is beginning to receive significant chunks of budget once reserved for live events, such as trade shows and conferences. But what hasnt changed in the past few months is one simple fact: The idea of the webinar has grown a little, well, stale.

The internet is brimming with thousands of webinars that are so dull and mind-numbing, theyre likely to put viewers to sleep rather than drive conversions. And given that high-quality webinars arent always cheap or easy to produce, promote, and host, its understandable to wonder whether you should invest in these events or find somewhere else to spend your extra budget.

But heres the thing: Webinars still work. And the fact that there are so many subpar ones puts you at a greater advantage to stand out with engaging and entertaining webinars. Heres why webinars are worth the time and money, as well as a few tips for getting the biggest return on your investment.

Photo attribution: cottonbro on Pexels.

If youre on the fence about getting into the webinar game, consider how much value they could bring to your organization. From driving sales enablement to user engagement, here are some of the reasons why webinars are good for business.

They demonstrate your internal expertise: A content marketing webinar is an excellent place to showcase your brands knowledge and talent. They allow you to flaunt your subject matter experts and establish your team members as industry thought leaders.

They cultivate high-quality leads: In a survey of 678 marketing and sales leaders by InsideSales.com, seventy-three percent of respondents called webinars one of the best ways to generate high-quality leads. After all, if someone is willing to give you 30 minutes to a full hour of their time, and they find the content in your webinar useful and compelling, theres a good chance that their needs align with the solutions or services you provide.

They let you engage directly with your audience: One of my most-loved quarantine activities has been watching my favorite musicians play live shows from their homes. Why? Because it makes me feel connected to them and their music in a more profound way than I would from just listening to their records or watching a prerecorded set. Engaging with people in real time allows your brand to foster more authentic relationships. Furthermore, by leveraging a live Q&A, you can interact directly with your audience and learn more about their needs and pain points.

They let you repurpose content: You know all that great content you developed for a conference that got canceled? Or that fantastic e-book you published? And what about that well-researched blog series youre so proud of? A webinar is an excellent platform for repurposing content and ensuring it reaches a broader audience and achieves the ROI you had in mind.

They have two lives: Because webinars live twicefirst, when they go live and second, when theyre shared as on-demand resources on your websitethey can generate value for long stretches of time. Although watching a prerecorded webinar eliminates the interactivity element, it allows busy professionals to access valuable information at times that are convenient for them.

You dont want to produce webinars that are boring or, worse, too general or too vague to offer any real value to your viewers. Here are several ways you can boost the effectiveness of your webinars and ensure theyre well worth your audiences time.

The reason why op-eds spread like wildfire across social media is that people love dipping their toes into controversy. To dial into this tendency, choose an industry trend or popular topic. Then, share your opinion during a webinar or bring in a second speaker with an opposing viewpoint. Just be sure to use relevant and factually sound data to back up your argument. After all, theres plenty of misinformation on the internet these days, and simply adding to the noise can hurt your brands credibility.

Make sure your content is relevant to your audience and has messaging thats tailored to them. Discuss topics through the lens of their challenges and pain points, and share solutions that they can actually take advantage of.

The time and day of the week when you host your content marketing webinar can make or break your attendance rates. Fifty-five percent of top-performing webinars are held on Wednesdays or Thursdays, according to a 2019 report from ON24, and the best time to run a webinar is 11 a.m. PST.

Start by creating a simple landing page with a user-friendly form. Then, consider running paid ads on your most active platforms, sending emails to relevant subscribers, and including a CTA on blog posts and your homepage. Be sure to send reminders as the webinar date draws closer to reduce no-shows and encourage last-minute registrations.

Your work isnt done when the webinar is a wrap. After the event, send thank you emails to registrants with a recording of the webinar as soon as you can. Depending on the topic of the webinar and where registrants fall in the buyers journey, this may also be a good time to pass leads off to sales so they can begin working their magic.

Right now, webinars are having a moment. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, theyre one of the best methods your brand can use to connect with its audience in an engaging and interactive way. By following the tips above, you can ensure that your next content marketing webinar drives conversions and helps solidify you as an industry authority.

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Featured photo attribution: Ketut Subiyanto on Pexels.

Read more here:
How to Host a Standout Content Marketing WebinarAnd Why They're Worth Your Investment - The Content Standard by Skyword

During council comments at their meeting Tuesday, Silver City town councilors addressed two recent demonstrations in Silver City, a June 5 Black Lives Matter protest that drew around 450 people to Gough Park, and a June 19 support law enforcement rally in which more than 100 vehicles and nearly a dozen Cowboys for Trump on horseback paraded up Bullard Street.

I attended the rally to support our law enforcement, District 3 Councilor Jose Ray said. I was very impressed with the people who showed up there elderly and younger generations. We have to support our law enforcement, even though some people dont like em; but thats neither here nor there.

Ray also gave thanks to U.S. Forest Service personnel who are fighting two fires burning in the Gila National Forest north of Silver City, and encouraged visitors to the forest to clean up after themselves.

Be sure and pack it in and pack it out, he said, adding, God bless America.

District 4 Councilor Guadalupe Cano, who again had internet connectivity issues that made it difficult to hear some of her comments during Tuesdays online meeting, also addressed the recent demonstrations.

I attended both the Black Lives Matter protest rally and also the law enforcement appreciation rally, and I want to thank Chief [Fred] Portillo and the Silver City Police Department. They did an excellent job both evenings, making sure that those that gathered were peaceful. Everyone seemed to be OK and get along very well, despite things in the community being a little bit charged.

Police oversight

Cano then turned to an incident involving the Police Department that was filmed in Gough Park on the afternoon of Sunday, June 14.

A lot of times, you see things on social media, and just assume something has happened, Cano said, addressing Portillo. Thank you for clarifying things and making that [information] available to the community; you did an excellent job of making the community aware of what was happening.

The cellphone video, which caused an uproar on Facebook, shows two teenagers lying face down on the grass, being detained by a Silver City police officer who has his Taser drawn. The two boys allegedly got into a fight while playing with a larger group of kids, and the officer broke up the fight by using what both the officer and Portillo characterized as a show of force. The department determined no actual use of force came into play, since the officer said he never pointed the nonlethal weapon directly at the boys.

Town Manager Alex Brown told councilors that he and Mayor Ken Ladner had gotten a lot of inquiries about the towns use-of-force policy. Not negative comments, just inquiries about the policy.

The mayor and I thought it might be a good idea to get out in front of this and get correct information out there, and we talked about appointing an advisory committee of interested residents to help, Brown continued. But I started talking to Chief Portillo, and he was getting the same requests, and actually got a request from a group of people who want to review the policies and look at them together.

Brown suggested it might be a good idea to model a police advisory and policy review committee on a committee that was formed from an interested group a couple of years ago which assessed whether first responders in Silver City were overusing sirens on emergency vehicles. The group concluded that first responders were justified in their use of sirens, and that, on average, Silver Citians experience eight siren events each day.

The siren group actually ended up being advocates for emergency services, Brown added, turning to the police chief for more details.

Portillo announced that a policy review committee is already being formed, and was set to pick up a copy of the departments existing handbook Wednesday.

Theres an individual that reached out to the Police Department and town, and they are in the beginning stages of forming a type of citizens advisory committee, Portillo said. The individual is Andy Payne, and their main goal is to get some ideas from the public.

I got with my staff, and told them that the officers out in the field are the ones that we want to be part of it, so that way they can try to help educate the committee, and get the information out there and be more transparent, Portillo explained, adding that based on the conversation he had with Payne, the goal seems to be more public relations and building that bridge for communication. Its in the beginning stages, but thats the direction were heading.

Payne is a retired teacher and farmer, who emphasized to the Daily Press that the group on behalf of which he reached out to the chief has no leader.

After an email went out, we had a Zoom meeting, and I just happened to be the one that made the contact with the department, Payne said. Its a group of people who want to find out a little more about how our Police Department works, and the chief was helpful in getting us information. What are our Police Departments policies? Nobody really knows what the policies are. Were hoping to work with the police, if we need to work with the police on anything, and so far, the chief has been very willing to share information.

Cano asked if others might be included in the process.

Since were giving one group access to you in that way, I would say any group in town that wanted to approach the chief and talk about the policies and offer suggestions they should have access, Ladner said.

Portillo agreed.

Brown told the Daily Press that anyone interested in reviewing the departments policies should contact Portillo directly. The non-emergency number for the Silver City Police Department is 538-3723, and Portillos email is fporti llo@silvercitymail.com.

Tourism during COVID-19

Sunny 505 President Joanie Griffin apprised councilors about the current status of tourism in Silver City and Grant County. The company, which provides marketing services for both the town and the county, has more or less suspended its advertising campaigns in outside markets like Tucson, and anticipates the states COVID-19 restrictions will fundamentally alter the types of attractions the company will promote in the future.

Its a dicey situation, she said. Currently, the [New Mexico] Tourism Department has gone dark on all advertising for tourism, as has the town. We are taking our lead from the Governors Office and the Tourism Department. At this time, its really not safe to have tourists coming en masse, despite the loss of visitor dollars Silver City relies on.

Right now, we are promoting Silver City through our earned media outreach unpaid media coverage through our electronic newsletter, and posting on social media, Griffin said.

She said that when she gets word from the state that its safe to start advertising, we will ramp up our advertising with a safety-first message. She explained that Sunny 505 wont be promoting Silver City as a destination for festivals like the Blues Fest or mass gatherings like the Tour of the Gila, but rather will be highlighting outdoor activities like hiking, cycling and camping that can be enjoyed while social distancing.

We certainly will not be showing festivals with lots of groups of people, and if we show people dining, we will show them social distancing, Griffin continued, showing an advertisement featuring a lone woman rock climbing. All our ads will look like this photo here, or of families enjoying the outdoors.

Griffin also said that when she does get the green light to advertise again, all marketing materials will emphasize mask-wearing, social distancing and COVID-safe practices.

This is the new normal, she said, adding that grant money and funding from the state that was to be used this spring and summer will still be accessible and may even be increased by the state in the future. We have a nice account waiting.

GEOFFREY PLANT

Excerpt from:
Silver council welcomes review of police policies - Silver City Daily Press and Independent

For the widest possible and mobile Internet coverage, wireless communications are essential. But due to the open nature of wireless transmissions, information security is a unique issue of challenge. The widely deployed methods for information security are based on digital encryption, which in turn requires two or more legitimate parties to share a secret key.

The distribution of a secrecy key via zero-distance physical contact is inconvenient in general and impossible in situations where too little time is available. The conventional solution to this challenge is to use the public-key infrastructure, or PKI, for secret key distribution. Yet, PKI is based on computational hardness of factoring, for example, which is known to be increasingly threatened by quantum computing. Some predictions suggest that such a threat could become a reality within 15 years.

In order to provide Internet coverage for every possible spot on the planet, such as remote islands and mountains, a low-orbiting satellite communication network is rapidly being developed. A satellite can transmit or receive streams of digital information to or from terrestrial stations. But the geographical exposure of these streams is large and easily prone to eavesdropping. For applications such as satellite communications, how can we guarantee information security even if quantum computers become readily available in the near future?

Yingbo Huas Lab of Signals, Systems and Networks in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, which has been supported in part by Army, has aimed to develop reliable and secure transmission, or RESET, schemes for future wireless networks. RESET guarantees that the secret information is not only received reliably by legitimate receiver but also secure from eavesdropper with any channel superiority.

In particular, Huas Lab has developed a physical layer encryption method that could be immune to the threat of quantum computing. They are actively engaged in further research of this and other related methods.

For the physical layer encryption proposed by Huas lab, only partial information is extracted from randomized matrices such as the principal singular vector of each matrix modulated by secret physical feature approximately shared by legitimate parties. The principal singular vector of a matrix is not a reversible function of the matrix. This seems to suggest that a quantum computer is unable to perform a task that is rather easy on a classical computer. If this is true, then the physical layer encryption should be immune from attacks via quantum computing. Unlike the number theory based encryption methods which are vulnerable to quantum attacks, Huas physical layer encryption is based on continuous encryption functions that are still yet to be developed.

See the article here:
Better encryption for wireless privacy at the dawn of quantum computing - UC Riverside

By making use of the 'spooky' laws behind quantum entanglement, physicists think have found a way to make information leap between a pair of electrons separated by distance.

Teleporting fundamental states between photonsmassless particles of light is quickly becoming old news, a trick we are still learning to exploit in computing and encrypted communications technology.

But what the latest research has achieved is quantum teleportation between particles of matter electrons something that could help connect quantum computing with the more traditional electronic kind.

"We provide evidence for 'entanglement swapping,' in which we create entanglement between two electrons even though the particles never interact, and 'quantum gate teleportation,' a potentially useful technique for quantum computing using teleportation," says physicist John Nichol from the University of Rochester in New York.

"Our work shows that this can be done even without photons."

Entanglement is physics jargon for what seems like a pretty straightforward concept.

If you buy a pair of shoes from a shop and leave one behind, you'll automatically know which foot it belongs to the moment you get home. The shoes are in a manner of speaking entangled.

If the shopkeeper randomly pulls out its matching partner when you return, you'll think they either remembered your sale, made a lucky guess, or were perhaps a little 'spooky' in their prediction.

The real weirdness arises when we imagine your lonely shoe as being both left and right at the same time, at least until you look at it. At that very moment, the shoe's partner back at the shop also snaps into shape, as if your sneaky peek teleported across that distance.

It's a kind of serendipitous exchange that Einstein felt was a little too spooky for comfort. Nearly a century after physicists raised the possibility, we now know teleportation between entangled particles is how the Universe works on a fundamental level.

While it's not exactly a Star Trek-type teleportation that could beam whole objects across space, the mathematics describing this information jump are mighty useful in carrying out special kinds of calculations in computing.

Typical computer logic is made up of a binary language of bits, labelled either 1s and 0s. Quantum computing is built with qubits that can occupy both states at once providing far greater possibilities that classical technology can't touch.

The problem is the Universe is like a big jumble of shoes, all threatening to turn your delicate game of 'guess which foot' into a nightmare gamble the moment any qubit interacts with its environment.

Manipulating photons to transmit their entangled states is made easier thanks to the fact they can be quickly separated at light speed over huge distances through a vacuum or down an optical fibre.

But separating entangled masses such as pairs of electrons is more of a challenge, given their clunky interactions as they bounce along are almost certain to ruin their mathematically pure quantum state.

It's a challenge well worth the effort, though.

"Individual electrons are promising qubits because they interact very easily with each other, and individual electron qubits in semiconductors are also scalable," saysNichol.

"Reliably creating long-distance interactions between electrons is essential for quantum computing."

To achieve it, the team of physicists and engineers took advantage of some strange fine print in the laws that govern the ways the fundamental particles making up atoms and molecules hold their place.

Any two electrons that share the same quantum spin state can't occupy the same spot in space. But there is a bit of a loophole that says nearby electrons can swap their spins, almost as if your feet could swap shoes if you bring them close enough.

The researchers had previously shownthat this exchange can be manipulated without needing to move the electrons at all, presenting a potential method for teleportation.

This latest advance helps bring the process closer to technological reality, overcoming hurdles that would connect quantum weirdness with existing computing technology.

"We provide evidence for 'entanglement swapping,' in which we create entanglement between two electrons even though the particles never interact, and 'quantum gate teleportation,' a potentially useful technique for quantum computing using teleportation," says Nichol.

"Our work shows that this can be done even without photons."

Of course, we're still some way off replacing photons with electrons for this kind of quantum information transfer. The researchers haven't gone as far as measuring the states of electrons themselves, meaning there could still be all kinds of interference to iron out.

But having strong evidence of the possibility of teleportation between electrons is an encouraging sign of the possibilities open to future engineers.

This research was published in Nature Communications.

More here:
Physicists Just Quantum Teleported Information Between Particles of Matter - ScienceAlert

Ed Heinbockel, president and chief executive officer of SavantX, said hes excited about how a powerful new generation of quantum computers can bring practical solutions to industries such as trucking and cargo transport.

With quantum computing, Im very keen on this, because Im a firm believer that its a step change technology, Heinbockel said. Its going to rewrite the way that we live and the way we work.

Heinbockel referred to recent breakthroughs such as Googles quantum supremacy, a demonstration where a programmable quantum processor solved a problem that no classical computer could feasibly solve.

In October 2019, Googles quantum processor, named Sycamore, performed a computation in 200 seconds that would have taken the worlds fastest supercomputer 10,000 years to solve, according to Google.

Jackson, Wyoming-based SavantX also recently formed a partnership with D-Wave Systems Inc., a Burnaby, Canada-based company that develops and offers quantum computing systems, software and services.

With D-Waves quantum services, SavantX has begun offering its Hyper Optimization Nodal Efficiency (HONE) technology to solve optimization problems to customers such as the Pier 300 container terminal project at the Port of Los Angeles.

The project, which began last year, is a partnership between SavantX, Blume Global and Fenix Marine Services. The projects goal is to optimize logistics on the spacing and placement of shipping containers to better integrate with inbound trucks and freight trains. The Pier 300 site handles 1.2 million container lifts per year.

With Pier 300, when do you need trucks at the pier and when and how do you get them scheduled optimally?, Heinbockel said. So the appointing part of it is very important and that is a facet of HONE technology.

Heinbockel added, Were very excited about the Pier 300 project, because HONE is a generalized technology. Then its a question of what other systems can we optimize? In all modes of transportation, the winners are going to be those that can minimize the energy in the systems; energy reduction. Thats all about optimization.

Heinbockel co-founded SavantX in 2015 with David Ostby, the companys chief science officer. SavantX offers data collection and visualization tools for industries ranging from healthcare to nuclear energy to transportation.

Heinbockel also recently announced SavantX will be relocating its corporate research headquarters to Santa Fe, New Mexico. The new center, which could eventually include 100 employees, will be focused on the companys HONE technology and customizing it for individual clients.

Heinbockel said SavantX has been talking to trucking, transportation and aviation companies about how HONE can help solve issues such as driver retention and optimizing schedules.

One of the problems Ive been hearing consistently from trucking companies is that they hire somebody. The HR department tells the new employee well have you home every Thursday night, Heinbockel said. Then you get onto a Friday night or Saturday, and [the driver] is still not home.

Heinbockel said if quantum computing and HONE can be used to help trucking companies with driver retention, and that it will make a lot of companies happy.

Heinbockel said cross-border operations could use HONE to understand what the flow patterns are like for commercial trucks crossing through different ports at various times of the day.

You would optimize your trucking flow based on when those lax periods were at those various ports, or you could ask yourself, is it cheaper for me to send a truck 100 miles out of the way to another port, knowing that it can get right through that port without having to sit for two or three hours in queue, Heinbockel said.

Click for more FreightWaves articles byNoi Mahoney.

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Tech company uses quantum computers to help shipping and trucking industries - FreightWaves