Mediaboss Marketing

The possibility of a TikTok ban is inching closer to becoming a reality at this point. On Tuesday, the Senate passed the bill that would bar the social media platform from operating in the U.S. unless ByteDance, its Chinese parent company, sells its stake.

Next stop: President Joe Bidens desk, where its expected to be signed. That said, it could still be a lengthy process to find a buyer and could lead to a legal fight. TikToks golden goose is its algorithm, which China likely wont sell off as part of any deal and thus, calling into question what exactly a buyer would get in purchasing the platform. In the meantime, it shrouds the social media stratosphere in another layer of uncertainty as marketers are faced with the threat of losing a segment of their digital audiences. It begs the question: In todays social landscape, do brands ever own their audiences?

The answer is no, according to three agency executives who say its time to start exploring contingency plans that dont hinge on any of the walled gardens of social media titans like Meta, X or TikTok. Looking for the next frontier, some are pointing toward the fediverse.

Related Insights

Essentially, the fediverse upends the walled garden nature of todays landscape, allowing users from different platforms and services to interact with one another without creating individual accounts for each platform.

Everything is becoming more segmented and its hard to really get an understanding of whos really seeing your content, and how these people are interacting with it, said Shatesha Scales-Flanigan, supervisor of paid social at Rain the Growth Agency. Now, more than ever, she added, brands need a place where consumers can find them, even if social platforms go away.

Social media platforms have become fundamentally unstable places to build audiences, says Nilesh Ashra, CEO of OK Tomorrow, a consultancy. TikTok is just the latest platform subject to changes, similar to Elon Musks takeover of X (formerly Twitter) last year.

What this represents is another clear sign that as a brand, you cant only invest in a single platform that isnt yours, Ashra said.

A few players have already bought into the idea of diversifying to become less dependent on the social media behemoths. The most notable of said players is Meta, which finally made good on its promise to launch Threads into the fediverse last month. Its a beta experience, but it means that users can share their Threads post to others platforms using the same ActivityPub-compliant servers that Threads is hosted on, like Mastodon. ActivityPub powers and enables platforms like Threads and Mastodon to operate within the greater fediverse.

Meanwhile, newsletter platform Ghost adopted ActivityPub earlier this week, following Flipboard, a news and social network aggregation platform, which has also entered the fediverse, making content available to anyone on federated social networks like Mastodon and Threads, earlier this month.

Our goal is if youre on Flipboard, youre in the fediverse, said Mike McCue, Flipboard CEO and co-founder. Like others, McCue said its becoming increasingly important to invest in the next iteration of the web. Per McCue, social media could be likened to a toll both where content creators, brands and publishers alike, dont really own their audience. They rent their audience. Sure, its yet another platform to build out, but, Its your own last place to build a presence and itll always be yours, he added.

Vox Medias technology news publication The Verge says it also has plans to federate its own site to have more ownership over its content and audience, according to The Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel.

You want to bet on that bet on people who are building new things, solving new problems, who are excited about finding a new version of this internet, he said.

While publishers and social platforms themselves aim to be first-movers, its been a tougher sell for marketers who are more concerned with return on investment than anything else, agencies say.

Theyre already present on so many different social media platforms, and this would be another one to add to that list, Martin Pagh Ludvigsen, director of creative tech and AI at Goodby Silverstein & Partners, said in an email. Theres no real sense of energy of FOMO (fear of missing out) in the fediverse right now, he said. The fediverse doesnt solve any immediate business problems for any of the agencys clients and its more difficult to understand than say Instagram or TikTok. But that could change if the ban on TikTok comes to fruition.

That should be an opportunity for brands to join whatever platforms will come in to fill the void left behind by TikTok, he said.

Senior media reporter Sara Guaglione contributed to this report.

Link:
As TikTok ban threatens stability in social media ecosystem, some brands settle into the fediverse - Digiday

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Business automation software automates repetitive and mundane tasks in a wide variety of business processes, including invoicing, marketing, customer service, data entry, customer communication, and workflow management.

Business automation software helps reduce manual errors and allows businesses to focus on more important tasks that require human intervention. In our review of the best business automation software, we analyzed the top-rated tools to help you find the best automation solution for your organization.

Microsoft Power Automate: Best for cloud automation HubSpot: Best for omni-channel marketing automation Brevo: Best for email marketing automation Zoho CRM: Best for lead management ActiveCampaign: Best for marketing automation Hootsuite: Best for social media management SS&C Blue Prism: Best for automating rules-based tasks Zapier: Best for integration automation Workato: Best for workflow automation

Power Automate is part of the Microsoft Power Platform, including Power BI for analytics, Power Apps for building custom applications, and Power Virtual Agents for creating AI chatbots. Together, these tools empower organizations to improve operational efficiency through automation.

Microsoft Power Automate received a perfect score of 5 out of 5 across 4 rating criteria (feature set, ease of use, support, and quality of feature set) thanks to its robust feature set, user-friendly interface, strong support resources, and high-quality functionality. On the cost side, I found the tool affordable for the features it offers the multiple pricing options mean you can choose a plan that fits your organizations budget.

Microsoft Power Automate enables users to automate tasks between various services and applications without the need for coding expertise. With Power Automate, users can create automated workflows to streamline repetitive tasks, trigger actions based on certain events, and integrate disparate systems and data sources. It offers a user-friendly interface that allows users to visually design their workflows using a wide range of pre-built connectors and templates.

HubSpot, a well-known name in business automation and marketing, offers a comprehensive platform that includes tools for CRM, marketing, sales, and customer service.

The platform earned an excellent overall score of 4.6 out of 5, reflects the quality of the automation functionality offered by both HubSpots Sales and Marketing Hubs across key criteria.

HubSpot allows businesses to create and manage marketing campaigns across multiple channels, including email, social media, and website. Users can automate various marketing tasks, personalize messages, track customer interactions, and analyze campaign performance all in one place. This integrated approach helps businesses deliver a cohesive and consistent experience to their customers across many different touch points.

HubSpot Marketing Hub

HubSpot Sales Hub

Though Brevo scores a low mark for cost, it makes up for this by earning a perfect mark across other ranking metrics such as features, ease of use, and customer satisfaction. Users consistently praise Brevo for its powerful capabilities and user-friendly interface. Brevos reliable performance and positive user feedback make it a top choice for those willing to invest in a quality product.

Brevo is a comprehensive marketing and CRM platform, offering various tools and features to help businesses grow and manage customer relationships. It includes modules for email marketing, marketing automation, SMS campaigns, chat, pipeline management, and more.

With Brevo, you can create automated email campaigns, segment your audience, personalize content, and track performance metrics to optimize your email marketing efforts. It offers drip campaigns, trigger-based emails, A/B testing, and more to help you engage with your customers and drive conversions.

Sales Platform

Marketing Platform

Conversations Platform

Zoho stands out for its business automation features. It excels in Salesforce automation, workflow automation, marketing automation, and process management.

Businesses of all sizes can use Zoho CRM to handle customer relationship management activities and improve their overall capability. Zoho CRM helps companies to manage their sales, marketing, and customer support processes. It allows businesses to track customer interactions, automate sales processes, and analyze data to make informed decisions.

Zoho CRM offers lead management, contact management, sales pipeline management, email marketing, and reports and analytics.

With a high score of 4.8 for the feature set, ActiveCampaign provides users with a wide range of capabilities to meet their marketing needs. The platform also earns a strong rating of 4.5 for ease of use, making it accessible to users of all levels of expertise. On the downside, the platform receives a lower score of 2.8 for cost, indicating that it may be a more expensive option for some businesses.

ActiveCampaign offers email marketing, CRM, and automated messaging tools to help businesses create personalized experiences for their customers. It allows businesses to create targeted campaigns, automate repetitive tasks, and track customer interactions.

The platform supports email marketing, SMS, social media advertising, and more, allowing businesses to engage with their audience on multiple channels and touch points. It also provides detailed analytics and reporting features that help businesses track campaign performance, understand customer behavior, and make data-backed decisions to optimize their marketing activities.

Marketing: Email & Marketing Automation

Sales: CRM & Sales Engagement

Bundles: Marketing Automation + Sales CRM

Businesses and social media professionals commonly use Hootsuite to streamline their social media marketing efforts and maintain a consistent online presence. Hootsuite allows users to manage and schedule posts across various social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube.

It also provides features for monitoring social media activity, engaging with followers, and analyzing social media performance through data and analytics. Aside from allowing users to create and schedule posts in advance, it also shows the best time to post suggestions based on data analysis, tracks engagement metrics such as likes, comments, and shares, and provides insights to help optimize social media strategies.

One of Hootsuites standout features is its stellar support (5), providing users with the assistance they need to maximize the platforms capabilities. This high rating underscores the companys commitment to customer satisfaction and ensuring users have the guidance and resources to succeed in their social media marketing efforts.

SS&C Blue Prism earned a moderate score for features and quality of features, a perfect score for ease of use and support, and a poor score for costs, as it lacks pricing visibility. The lack of pricing transparency makes it challenging for potential users to assess the softwares value proposition against their financial resources.

SS&C Blue Prism provides intelligent and robotic process automation (RPA) software solutions. Their tool enables organizations to automate repetitive, rule-based tasks to increase efficiency, productivity, and accuracy. Blue Prisms RPA technology uses software robots to mimic human actions, interacting with applications, systems, and data to perform different tasks. This helps organizations reduce errors and free employees to focus on higher-value work.

A 30-day free trial is available. For your actual pricing, contact the company for a custom quote.

Zapier is a web automation tool that allows users to easily connect different apps and automate workflows without any coding knowledge. It works by creating Zaps, automated workflows connecting two or more apps to automate tasks. Zapier supports thousands of apps and services, making it a versatile tool for streamlining processes and increasing productivity.

Businesses of all sizes can benefit from using Zapier as a business automation tool due to its extensive integration and automation capabilities, allowing for seamless connectivity between different apps and systems.

While Zapier excels in ease of use and support, it falls slightly short in the quality of its feature set, with a score of 2.5 out of 5. This is due to limitations in AI capabilities and assistance in CRM management.

Note that the actual amount you will pay depends on the number of tasks you need to perform monthly.

Workato is an enterprise automation platform that allows organizations to automate workflows and integrate data across various applications. It allows businesses to connect their apps, automate workflows, and optimize business processes. Workato offers over 1,200 pre-built connectors to popular business applications such as Salesforce, Slack, and ServiceNow, allowing for straightforward integration and automation of tasks.

The platform scores high marks in feature set and quality, thanks to its extensive connectors and functionalities, which cater to a wide range of business processes. However, Workato falls short on cost, with a score of 0. The platform lacks pricing transparency and may not be the most cost-effective solution for organizations with limited budgets.

Workato can accelerate various organizational functions, including IT operations, marketing, HR, finance, sales, and more, by automating tasks such as ticket escalation, threat detection and resolution, compliance management, lead management, payroll and benefits processing, sales forecasting, and integration processes.

Contact the company for a custom quote.

When choosing the best business automation software, carefully consider your specific needs. Assess your current business processes and identify areas that could benefit from automation. Look for software that offers features and functionalities that align with these needs, such as workflow automation, task management, data integration, and reporting capabilities.

Our review analyzed various software that fit the needs of different user categories to help you determine the best option for your business. Key factors to consider are ease of use, affordability, feature set, and customer support. Opt for intuitive and user-friendly software, as this will encourage adoption and maximize the benefits of automation. Evaluate the pricing structure to ensure it aligns with your budget and offers good value for the features provided.

We evaluated the best business automation software based on the following criteria:

We allocated 30% of the evaluation criteria to the available features of the software. We looked at the range of automation features offered by each software. Software with a comprehensive set of features scored higher in this category.

We consider the software user-friendly and intuitive for both beginners and advanced users. Software with a simple and easy-to-navigate interface received higher scores in this category.

20% of the evaluation criteria was allocated to the pricing structure of the software. This includes the overall affordability, transparency of pricing, and value for money.

We examined the quality of customer support services provided by the software vendors, including response times, resource availability, and user reviews.

10% of our evaluation criteria was allocated to the overall quality and innovation of the feature set. This includes advanced capabilities such as CRM integration, AI implementation, and predictive analytics.

A business automation tool is software that helps automate various business processes and tasks. These tools can automate repetitive tasks, manage workflows, improve efficiency, and reduce human errors in business operations.

Standard features of business automation tools include workflow automation, task automation, document management, data integration, reporting and analytics, scheduling and reminders, collaboration tools, CRM integration, and customizable templates for various business processes.

By leveraging automation tools effectively, businesses can free up valuable time and resources, allowing employees to focus on strategic and high-value tasks. The key to success is identifying the best software that aligns with your business objectives and workflow processes and making sure that your chosen solution can scale with time.

Whether automating sales and marketing processes, managing customer relationships, or optimizing supply chain operations, investing in the right business automation software can be a game-changer for organizations looking to drive growth.

For a full portrait of the AI vendors serving a wide array of business needs, read our in-depth guide:150+ Top AI Companies

Follow this link:
9 Best Business Automation Software in 2024 - eWeek

Concerns that the Chinese government could access sensitive user data through the short-form video app TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, have prompted the U.S. government to pass legislation banning the social media platform unless it is sold to a government-approved buyer.

President Biden on Wednesday signed into law legislation that gives ByteDance up to a year to divest from TikTok after the U.S. Senate approved it on Tuesday night.

Heres why the pressure has been ratcheted up on TikTok.

Lawmakers and regulators in the West have increasingly expressed concern that TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, may put sensitive user data, like location information, into the hands of the Chinese government. They have pointed to laws that allow the Chinese government to secretly demand data from Chinese companies and citizens for intelligence-gathering operations.

They are also worried that China could use TikToks content recommendations to fuel misinformation, a concern that has escalated in the United States during the Israel-Hamas war and the presidential election. Critics say that TikTok has fueled the spread of antisemitism.

TikTok has long denied such allegations and has tried to distance itself from ByteDance, which is considered to be one of the worlds most highly valued start-ups.

Yes, India did in 2020, costing ByteDance one of its biggest markets. The government there cracked down on hundreds of Chinese-owned apps, claiming in part that they were secretly transmitting users data to foreign servers.

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Why the U.S. Is Forcing TikTok to Be Sold or Banned - The New York Times

The upgrade is for 2011 to 2021 models with turn-to-start ignition systems.

ST. LOUIS KIA owners have continued to fall victim to theft and break-ins across the country and an effort in St. Louis will work to help this weekend.

The manufacturer will hold drive-through clinics to install free anti-theft software on some models.

These pop-up clinics have become common as thieves continue to break into KIAs that use a steel key and "turn-to-start" ignition system.

Fueled by a social media trend, the theft rate of certain Kias and Hyundais increased by 1,000% between 2020 and 2023, according to the Highway Loss Data Institute.

'It's horrible. It's horrible. We work hard for these cars, and this happens," said Toni Little John, who was first in line for the repairs on Friday.

It takes technicians 30 minutes to install software on the vehicle. That'll essentially stop it from starting if your locked car gets broken into or stolen without the key.

Capt. Harry Dilworth of the Ferguson Police Department said the department receives dozens of reports about stolen Kias and Hyundais every month.

"I'm glad to see the auto manufacturers getting out there and being proactive," the police captain said.

Dilworth added that in addition to increasing patrols in hard-hit areas and watching out for suspicious activity, the police department has given out wheel locks to people in the Ferguson area and is teaching the public how to use them.

"The last probably year or so, we've probably given out close to 200 wheel locks. We're working on getting more," he added.

KIA owners who attend the clinic also walk away with wheel locks.

Here are the impacted Kia models:

View post:
KIA installs free anti-theft software this weekend in St. Louis area - KSDK.com

The best survey tools make it simple and easy to gather feedback from customers, to help improve services and provide business insights.

Best survey tool of 2024: Quick menu

There are always ways to improve your business products or services, but knowing how and in what way can be difficult to know. Choices that may seem intuitive within the business can seem alien and off-putting to customers, so it's important to ensure any significant changes are tested first.

Additionally, while it's easy to imagine that customers want the lowest price over every over consideration, more likely they will pay more for a better experience - a key mantra of Apple.

There may also be better ways in which to handle customers, or learn further interests to potentially cross-sell into. All of which is moot if you don't have a way to properly gauge and measure what customers want.

Analytics can provide working data on the customer journey, which can be essentil for providing business insights, but even then the data must be interpreted and customer intentions presumed, so it's always best to try and hear back from the customer directly.

Forms and survey tools are one way in which to do this, and while some of the best CRM software may have feedback options built into them, they aren't always configurable or contain bias that makes it difficult for a customer to provide the feedback they want to give. Similar applies with simple email questionnaires.

Forms allow you to better configure and analyze responses, without having to make the experience so complicated as to put off users giving their feedback.

Here then are the best survey tools, to allow you to reach out to your customers and improve your understanding not just of what they want, but how to deliver a better business experience to them.

We've also highlighted the best business intelligence tools.

Why you can trust TechRadar We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure youre buying the best. Find out more about how we test.

The leading survey tools provider

Free to start

100 expert templates

Can collate online, or on mobile

Has seen successive price hikes

One of the most successful survey solutions around with over 40 million registered customers, SurveyMonkey offers a comprehensive questionnaire building solution and metric analysis tools.

It allows those without any coding skills to create complex question sets and then process the responses easily and efficiently.

You can sign up for free and create a survey within minutes. However, you cant access the data collected in CSV or Excel XLS until youve signed up for a paid option. And the price goes up more if you expect more than 1000 responses per month or want to use any of the sophisticated branching and pipeline features.

A number of pricing tiers are available, with Team Advantage being the cheapest. This allows control over survey sharing, team analysis, shared asset library, custom graphics, as well as easy data exporting.

The next tier, Team Premier, adds features such as benchmarks, industry tools, and multilingual surveys. The Enterprise plan offers extra security and compliance features, as well as admin management and migration as required.

Read our full SurveyMonkey review.

Personalized customer survey tools

Customers love it

Scalable pricing

Excellent customer service

Where other survey tools focus on how complicated a questionnaire can be, or how much data you can extract, Typeform takes a wholly different approach.

Its focus is user interaction, believing that the way to get the best responses is to engage the end user and through that get better responses. The Typeform methodology appears to work well, getting on average four times the completion rate over what the industry considers standard.

Service begins with the Essentials package, which offers a basic range of features. Upgrade to the Professional plan and not only do you get up to 5,000 responses but also unlimited logic jumps as well as conversion tracking and HubSpot integration. However, if paid yearly the Professional plan is discounted.

Each of these is restricted to a single user, though Enterprise deals are available.

Read our full Typeform review.

An easy to use form builder

Easy to use

Inexpensive

Limited technical support

JotForm is an online web and email survey building solution that aims to undercut Typeform while being even easier to use.

A coding-free solution that most marketing people should be able to master quickly and generate the leads or feedback that they need.

In the past 12 years, JotForm has built a customer base of 2 million regular customers, creating forms in 177 countries and 12 languages.

A Start plan is free to use, and offers up to 100 submissions, 100MB of online storage, as well as 5 forms and 1,000 form views. Paid plans - when paid yearly - start with the Bronze and increases monthly submissions to 1,000, and as well as storage space to 1GB, as well as 25 forms and 10,000 views.

The Silver plan introduces HPIAA compliance as well as increasing views to 10,000, storage to 10GB, up to 100 forms, and unlimited views. The Gold plan increases submissions to 100,000, 100GB of storage, and unlimited forms and views.

Read our full JotForm review.

Survey tools with built-in NPS

Integrations

Good support team

NPS solution

AskNicelys unique selling point is that it can collect live information based on the Net Promoter Score (NPS). NPS is an excellent way to gauge the strength of customer relationships for a business, and this tool was designed to track that dynamic.

It also integrates with many customer workflow options that include Salesforce, Hubspot, Slack, Zendesk, MailChimp and Zapier amongst many others.

With these connections, surveys can target specific customer groups, and their reaction to new products and services can be collected to present real-time to live dashboards.

AskNicely used to advertise plans which were expensive but packed with features - however, the website no longer displays pricing information and instead asks for potential customers to contact them directly for a quote.

Read our full AskNicely review.

Simple and affordable survey tools

Very limited template types

Cant easily track users

Many business people dont need anything exotic or complicated. Maybe a simple form to ask their customers if they enjoyed the last seminar and how to make it better is sufficient.

For them, the free to use Google Forms is a perfectly adequate tool that requires little skill or experience to use, and is available for free as a personal edition or as part of the G Suite for business platform.

Responses are stored automatically into Google Sheets, allowing them to be easily transferred to an Excel spreadsheet or a database later.

The key weakness of Google Forms is that unless recipients have a Google Account and are willing to log in with it, they can fill out a survey multiple times.

As it is free before you spend big, it might be worth seeing if it will do enough, or at least hint what bought product features you might want.

Read our full Google Forms review.

A jack of all trades of form creation

User-friendly

Flexible solution

Formstack is a good example of a survey product with a very wide remit. The online form tool allows the creation of sophisticated surveys and their responses to be data harvested. But it can also be used for straightforward customer feedback panels on websites and social media.

Many companies use it to process leads and analyze their rate of conversion by integrating it into other sales management solutions. It works with MailChimp to enable targeted information gathering and feedback from existing customer databases.

As a survey tool, it works well enough, though it doesnt have the templates that some competitor products offer.

Costing has four levels; Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum. The Bronze package offers a single user solution with basic forms and no application integration. At the other end of this scale, the Platinum plan has a multi-user license with the scope for multiple forms and thousands of submissions per month.

Read our full Formstack review.

We've listed the best online form builders.

This section was authored by...

Rasto Ivanic, co-founder and CEO at GroupSolver

A major difference between traditional market research platforms and the latest generation of online surveys is the amount of information they can extract from open-ended questions and unstructured language data. Such data is critical for capturing the kinds of free-flowing thoughts from the respondent that yield the most relevant customer insights. Online surveys that use artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP) have streamlined delivery of these kinds of high-value insights and make them available immediately, without any post-processing or further data manipulation.

Historically, to hear the voice of customer at scale, researchers have asked closed-ended multiple-choice questionsin surveysrather than open-ended ones. The former is easier to tabulate than having to read and organize free-text answers, but it dramatically reduces the depth of the resulting data. As an example, a streaming musicservicewanted to understand consumer behavior but could only glean minimal information by using traditional close-ended survey approach. Only when the companyconverted the surveyto open-ended questions about why respondents listened to music could itstart describing their customers in more meaningful behavioral and attitudinal terms rangingfrom the deeply spiritual (I connect with God through music) to the practical and behavioral (Music allows me to focus while Im working).

Without AI technology,projects like this music survey with 10,000 participants might requiredaysof manual data review, cleaningand organizing and still come up short on insights.In contrast, the next generation online surveys use AI and NLP to automatically perform a first-pass clean-up of text answers, in real time.Some platforms even userespondents collective intelligenceto furthervalidateandclassify language data by interacting with it while it is being collected. Within a few minutes, researchers have a treasure trove of unfiltered and organic sentiments in respondents own voice, and in real-time.

An important added benefit of such a gamified interactive process is that respondents enjoyit more. More engaged and attentive respondents in turn result in higher-quality responses. Furthermore, the statistically validated qualitative data can be used in quantitativemodels,such asnet promoter score (NPS), segmentation, or pricingstudies, wherenatural text datacan nowbecome categorical variables in quantitative models.

The combination of AI and NLP technologies that smartly integrate into online surveys is making lasting inroads into the traditional market research toolkit. They are moving the insights industry toward free-flowing natural conversations with respondents, at speed and at scale. This is creating an opportunity for researchers to integrate unstructured customer data more directly into insights and statistical models that support them.

When deciding which survey tool to download and use, first consider what your actual needs are, as sometimes free platforms may only provide basic options, so if you need to use advanced tools you may find a paid platform is much more worthwhile. Additionally, higher-end software can really cater for every need, so do ensure you have a good idea of which features you think you may require in your surveys.

To test for the best survey tools we first set up an account with the relevant platform, then tested the service to see how our surveys could be used for different purposes and in different situations. The aim was to push each survey platform to see how useful its basic tools were and also how easy it was to get to grips with any more advanced tools.

Read how we test, rate, and review products on TechRadar.

We've also featured the best customer experience tools.

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Best survey tool of 2024 - TechRadar