Mediaboss Marketing

Ask the average person what they dislike most about social network platforms like Facebook or Instagram and the answers are pretty consistent: massive amounts of advertising, how algorithms determine what you see in your feed, and all of the personal data these companies gather from their users. But even though people say they hate these things, they still put up with them. After all, its the way of the world now, the easiest way to stay connected, and those ads in that algorithm are the price you pay for a free experience.

Enter MeWe, a new, free social network that may change the statusquo. MeWes owners are banking on the idea that peoples desire to stayconnected while maintaining absolute control over their private informationwill help the company flourish and potentially knock these other platformsoff their respective pedestals.

But is MeWe really safe, private, and free to use?

MeWe is the brainchild of Mark Weinstein, who tells Parentology, I am one of the original founders of social media. Indeed, Weinstein launched the social-gathering websites SuperGroups (which included SuperFamily, SuperFriends, and SuperFamilia) in the late 1990s, eventually selling them off in 2001. Soon after, he saw platforms like MySpace and Facebook using subscribers personal behavior and information to help advertisers target consumers. Then in 2010, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg stated that privacy as a social norm was a thing of the past. That got Weinsteins attention.

My God, that is such a distortion of what social media wasmeant to be, Weinstein says. It wasnt meant to be something wherepeople are objectified as data to track, sell, target, and manipulate. No.Social networking was for people to stay authentically connected and to findcommon interests and like-minded people.

Fast forward to 2016 and MeWes public launch at South by Southwest, and its slow growth to today. The sites home page, pictured above, puts their focus on privacy right up front. The site also features this 10-point Privacy Bill of Rights.

Weinstein notes MeWe doesnt use facial recognition technology an important point given last years Flickr/MegaFace database leak and that your personal information will not be sold.

The sites Terms & Conditions state you can delete specific content data or your entire account, but its not instantaneous. Its verbiage, we delete your Content Data and remove your account from our production servers as soon as is technically possible based on our infrastructure designincluding a 30-day delay to insure the deletion request was made by you, etc. Theres also a chance the data could remain on their backup servers for up to seven months. Otherwise, the notion you can completely wipe your data off MeWe does look legit.

And if we ever change our privacy policy, we must tell you, so that you can decide whether or not to accept the changes, Weinstein says. And, if you decide to not accept the changes, We must give you a link to delete your account and take your content.

Theres also a poison pill, which states that if someonebuys MeWe they cant simply change the privacy policy without letting you know.

Yes. You sign up for free and have access to all 21 features, including news feeds, chats, 8GB of cloud storage (about 15,000 photos), voice messaging and more.

The company makes money by offering a $4.99 monthly premium option, which gives you things like unlimited emoji and sticker packs, unlimited voice and video calling, unlimited custom themes, 100GB of cloud storage and more. Users can also buy elements ala-cart, like additional stickers for a $1.99 flat fee, or unlimited voice and video calling for $1.99 per month. Theres also MeWePRO, a collaboration and communication software for businesses helping with the companys bottom line.

MeWes Terms of Service state that users have to be 16 or older. There is a checkbox on the signup page, but like with every other social network or dating app, the company does not verify the users age. If an underage kid knows what month and year makes him old enough to use the service, hes in.

To this, Weinstein says, We are not in the business of collecting verified data on people and then having that database be at risk for somebody hacking it. We dont want to manage that at all. That is part of our privacy stance.

There are no specific parental controls. If parents want to monitor or restrict how people interact with their childs profile, they have to make sure the regular privacy controls are set up. As for worries that underage kids are using MeWe, or that the older kids may be approached by creepy individuals, Weinstein says parents are supposed to monitor where the kids are anyhow, then pivots the conversation to Facebook.

If a kid is on MeWe, they can opt-out of our member directory, Weinstein says. You cant do that with Facebook. If youve got a 13-year-old and they create an account on Facebook, they are automatically and forever in Facebooks member directory.

There have been concerns raised about the general community on MeWe. Just last year, Rolling Stone wrote about the increasing number of alt-right followers and conspiracy theorists who are moving over to MeWe after experiencing Facebook censoring them. The article notes that MeWe is not known as a hotbed of extremist discourse in the same way that 8Chan or Discord are, but the editors stated that they were able to easily find these groups.

The claims made in the Rolling Stone article about MeWe members are false and do not reflect the make-up of MeWes millions of members, a MeWe spokesperson stated in an email to Parentology. MeWe is home to upstanding, diverse members, and has open group communities of allkinds, including those for sports, technology, entertainment, video games, fitness, health, travel, foodies, politics left and right, and much more. Weinstein also wrote an article for Medium that challenged the storys assertions; weve placed a link to it in the sources section below.

The fact that different groups exist on MeWe just like they do on everything from TikTok to Snapchat doesnt mean you or your children will be approached or groomed by any organization. Users build their personal network by searching for peoples names or uploading their address book, which MeWe uses to find friends and relatives who are already on the platform. (This, too, can be deleted afterward.) And without these groups having the ability to market their organizations into your newsfeed, the only way someone will find them is to go looking.

MeWe also offers a block and report feature if anythingtoo offensive comes across your screen.That goes right to our trust and safety team, Weinstein says. We lookat these every day. We have outright bans and deletions. I mean, we kick peopleoff the site all the time.

So, can the MeWe social network put an end to giants like Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram? Only time will tell. But with Weinstein reporting seven-million global users, its definitely something to watch out for.

MeWeRolling StoneNew York TimesSetting The Record Straight: Rolling Stones Dishonest Hit Job Against MeWe.

Go here to see the original:
MeWe: The New Social Network That May Put Facebook Out of Business - Parentology

Twitter said on Saturday that an official Twitter account of the Olympics and the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) media Twitter account had been hacked and temporarily locked.

The accounts were hacked through a third-party platform, a spokesperson for the social media platform said in an emailed statement, without giving further details.

"As soon as we were made aware of the issue, we locked the compromised accounts and are working closely with our partners to restore them," the Twitter spokesperson said.

A spokesperson for the IOC separately said that the IOC was investigating the potential breach.

Last month, the official Twitter accounts of several USNational Football League (NFL) teams, including the San Francisco 49ers and Kansas City Chiefs, were hacked a few days ahead of the Super Bowl.

Earlier this month, some of Facebook's official Twitter accounts were briefly compromised.

Thomson Reuters 2020

See the article here:
Twitter Says Olympics, IOC Accounts Hacked Through Third-Party Platform - Gadgets 360

In a previous series of posts, we have taken an extensive look at the characteristics of Inbound marketing, distinguishing it from Outbound, recounting its history, and identifying the latest developments. The goal was to describe the evolution of a concept, from theory to practice.

In this post, we will look at inbound marketing from the point of view of B2B, looking at why its effective, and focusing on the features that make it stand out: the production, management, and strategic distribution of high quality content (content marketing).

Business-to-business marketing refers to the marketing of products or services to other businesses and organizations. It holds several key distinctions from B2C marketing, which is oriented toward consumers. This definition is taken from the Marketing Solutions Blog from, LinkedIn, the worlds largest professional networking site with over 550 million members.

In a broad sense, B2B marketing content tends to be more informative and direct than B2C content. This is because the purchasing decisions of businesses, compared to those of consumers, are based on the impact on profits. The return on investment (ROI) is rarely a consideration of the average consumer, at least in the sense of a purely material investment (the ratio between expenditure and immediate economically quantifiable benefit), but it is an absolutely primary objective for business decision-makers.

B2B marketers find themselves managing a complex sales process, where they are called upon to identify the real decision-makers and the main stakeholders of the target company within a corporate landscape that is unique and characterized by specific organizational charts and decision-making flows. It becomes absolutely necessary to acquire a solid and precise knowledge of the company so as to be able to map the people really involved in the decisions by reaching them with relevant and personalized information.

B2B marketing campaigns are aimed at any individual who has the ability to influence purchasing decisions. This can include a wide variety of professional titles, up to the C-level.

To start getting an idea of the context, lets take a look at the Sagefrog Marketing Groups 2020 Marketing Mix Report B2B (download here), which contains data on B2B marketing strategies, competitive trends and emerging tactics:

In the 2018 B2B Content Marketing report focusing on Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends by CMI and MarketingProfs, 91% of companies employ Inbound Marketing as a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.

Of the remaining 9%, 54% said they plan to invest in content marketing within 12 months; 43% have no immediate plans to use content marketing; and 4% have used content marketing in the past.

The Sagefrog Report highlights that quality content can offer a strong ROI when properly optimised for search engines so that it can be easily found and shared over and over again. This means that quality content combined with clear and graphically pleasing landing pages and contact forms can help provide qualified leads. To achieve this goal, each piece of content must be designed in such a way that it is informative, relevant, searchable, shareable, not overly promotional, and above all, distinctive from that proposed by competitors.

Among marketers main objectives for 2020, in the first place is the need to convert leads into customers, followed by increasing sales, growth in brand awareness, the creation of Thought Leadership, and finally, increased website traffic.

Whats important to point out here is that the two main objectives are in fact priorities that marketing and sales teams share, which suggests the need to harmonize operations between the two departments.

Referrals are the main source of qualified marketing and sales leads (63%). This is by no means surprising: B2B draws useful knowledge and contacts from the interpersonal networks of professionals, who are more likely to invest their time and money working with a company if they can rely on an existing connection.

In any case, if referrals are the main source of sales and marketing leads, inbound marketing is also gaining traction (33%). In both cases, we can read the strong signal of increasing attention to the personalization of communications.

In fact, the marketing experts interviewed by Sagefrog say that in 2020 they will explore personalization strategies (47%) through Account-based marketing (42%), video marketing, (41%) and inbound marketing (39%), AI and automation (36%), conversational marketing in the form of chatbots (33%) and influencer marketing (27%).

The competition to win the attention of customers gets tougher every day. Building a B2B strategy that delivers results requires considered planning, execution, and management. In the aforementioned LinkedIn article, the steps for planning a B2B marketing strategy are outlined. The steps for getting there, as the aforementioned LinkedIn article describes, are part of any inbound plan because they incorporate two fundamental assumptions:

Truly effective B2B marketing is conversational, focused, and contextually relevant, and a B2B marketing strategy must include a variety of content, most of which is typically inbound: blogs, white papers, social media, email, videos.

Blogs: Regularly updated blogs provide organic visibility and direct inbound traffic to the website, whether institutional or product based. The blog can contain different types of content: copy, infographics, videos, case studies and much more.

Search: SEO best practices must be updated in conjunction with Googles algorithm, which is changing more and more often, making it difficult to keep up. Lately, the focus has shifted from keywords and metadata to the interpretation of the users signals of intent.

Social media: Both organic and paid traffic should always be part of the mix. Social networks allow you to reach and attract potential customers where they are active. B2B customers increasingly use these channels to search for potential suppliers and to inform their purchasing decisions.

White papers and ebooks: Resources containing valuable information can be gated (requiring users to provide contact information or perform another action to download the content) or freely available. Often used as B2B lead generation tools.

Email: Although its effectiveness in recent years has been impacted by the proliferation of spam filters, email is still widely used today.

Video: Content that can be used within many of areas listed above (blogs, social media, e-mail) is becoming increasingly important for B2B strategies

When it comes to B2B marketing, the biggest mistake we could make is thinking that you are addressing an abstract and impersonal entity. In fact, as it should be clear by now, any marketing action will be aimed at recipients who are first and foremost real people who are driven by emotional and cognitive motivations. Although corporate decisions tend to be more rational and logical in nature, this does not mean that the content communicated must be formal or robotic in tone.

For the same reason, campaigns that are too broad will not be able to connect with (or influence) the audience in the same way that those aimed at specific segments can. Defining and segmenting the audience is an absolutely fundamental preliminary step in creating a message that speaks directly to individuals driven by a real need.

Personalization and relevance are essential: speaking the language of customers is a valid precondition because it allows us to cross an initial barrier, that of understanding. But its not enough: its necessary to publish content and ads that thematically adapt to the place where they are displayed. For example, shorter videos with simpler and more immediate narrative hooks work better on social media feeds, while a longer video is probably better suited to YouTube. Put yourself in the end users shoes and humanize your relationship with him or her right away. As in any Inbound strategy, even in the case of B2B marketing the starting pointeach persons needs and desiresis unique.

See the article here:
The importance of personalization in the B2B inbound marketing tactics - Doxee

BEIJING: Nothing could stop Dr Jerome Liew from reaching out to his audience, not even Covid-19.

When the Kuching-born general practitioner was asked to address the concerns of Malaysians in Sichuan province about the coronavirus, he relied on social networking to get his job done.

He gave a health talk last week to a WeChat group of over 150 Malaysians, mostly based in this southwest Chinese province well known for its spicy food and giant pandas.

Malaysian Embassy officials started the group chat to better communicate with Malaysians in Sichuan.

Dr Liew, who is based at a hospital in Sichuans capital city of Chengdu, was approached by a member of the group to give the talk. And he was more than happy to share his knowledge.

There was a minor setback though.

Dr Liew, 35, had given countless health talks previously and he had never doubted whether his audience could follow or understand what he said.

Last weeks WeChat talk was different for him as he was unsure whether the participants could grasp his message.

During the one-hour session, he sent out over 100 voice and text messages plus dozens of materials in image forms.

I could not see their expressions, so I did not know if they understood me or whether I was going too fast or too slow, he added.

Dr Liew said that face-to-face sessions would allow him to interact better with his audience but the current situation did not permit him to do so to minimise the risk of spreading the virus.

Among the popular questions posed to him during the WeChat talk were those that concerned the travel advisory to China, the incubation period of the virus, its symptoms, personal healthcare and vaccine-related matters.

If you are overseas and you can afford not to come back yet, I would advise you to stay there as long as you can, especially those with children, he said, adding that travelling and staying in crowds would carry the risk of getting infected.

He also corrected the misinformation that the audience gathered from the Internet.

One common fallacy is the way to wear a surgical mask.

Dr Liew explained that the side of the mask with a darker shade whether green, blue, pink or white should always face out regardless of a person being ill or healthy.

The medical doctor, who spent the past 17 years in Australia, came to Chengdu six months ago.

I came here five years ago to visit a friend and I love the city, so when I got the opportunity to work here, I grabbed it, he added.

He said he enjoyed the tea culture in Chengdu and socialising with the people at the parks.

And he has started learning to play mahjong, the most popular past-time of the locals.

Go here to see the original:
Doc reaches out via WeChat group - The Star Online

Oppo Smartwatch with curved display teased in images 

After a lot of rumours in the last few weeks, a new teaser has emerged which shows Oppo's upcoming smartwatch. The company has teased the new smartwatch on the Chinese social networking website and also Oppo's VP Brian Shen has shared a picture on Twitter as well.

The teaser image shows the smartwatch with a flexible display which brings in a curved design and has also added that the smartwatch could be the best looking watch this year. The teaser shows a gold shiny casing, two buttons on the right side of the frame which could double up as navigation buttons, home button, and the back button. There is a microphone hole in the middle of the buttons which hints at a call feature.

Also, there are rumours that Oppo may release a 5G version of its smartwatch. The teasers also show that one of the buttons will double up as a notification LED light as well.

Other than that, the image shows a silicone strap, but the watch may also arrive with a leather strap as well. The launch timeline is not specific but we could see a probable launch alongside the Oppo Find X2, and the Find X2 Pro which is arriving sometime next month.

Link:
Oppo Smartwatch with curved display teased in images; design mix between Apple Watch and Fitbit Versa 2 - Times Now