A Content Marketer with hands-on experience in various niches. Skilled in writing blog content, website content, SEO content, and various forms of marketing collaterals. Editing/Proofreading form an inseparable part of my job profile.
In addition, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Social Media Optimization (SMO) are the areas in which I have moderate proficiency.
I hold a Bachelor of Engineering (BE) in Electronics and Communications.
The adoption of digital technologies has allowed for heated growth in the field of marketing. Firms are using various automation tools in order to reach their target customers in a more personalized way. Marketing Clouds and Sales Clouds offer the means to reach potential customers, nurture and engage them, and ultimately convert them into paying customers. Their functions are not limited to this and extend to providing after-sales support too.
To begin with, let us understand what we mean by Marketing Cloud and Sales Cloud.
What is a Marketing Cloud?
A Marketing Cloud is a CRM for marketers to help them create and manage marketing relationships and campaigns with customers. It is a platform designed to deliver relevant and personalized customer journeys across multiple channels and devices. It helps marketers nurture a profitable relationship with buyers across all phases of the journey by helping them deliver the right messages at the right time.
A Marketing Cloud contains a variety of integrated solutions to manage numerous aspects of the customer journey including social media, email marketing, mobile marketing, advertising, data analysis, content creation, and management. Marketing Clouds guide customers across their journeys with brands, by covering and recording every interaction and engagement.
What is a Sales Cloud?
A Sales Cloud is a platform that brings together all customer information under one hood. The integrated platform contains Business Analytics, Marketing, Lead Generation, Sales, Contracts, Campaigns, Customer Service, and a lot more. In addition, it has thousands of tools and apps for various other sales functions.
Sales Clouds help companies offer personalized buying experiences to their customers and empower sales reps to work faster and more efficiently. It is a CRM platform that supports Marketing, Sales, and Customer Support teams in both the B2B and B2C contexts.
So, How Do Marketing Cloud and Sales Cloud Differ?
B2B or B2C?
While the Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a platform on its own, Pardot is aligned with Sales Cloud and is available as an integration with the Marketing Cloud.
The major difference between the two is the type of businesses that use them. While Salesforce Marketing Cloud caters to and is best suited for B2C companies, Pardot is most suitable for B2B companies. B2B2C firms can use either or both, depending on their requirements. However, this is not a hard and fast rule and companies need to assess their requirements before selecting a solution.
Quite often, any one of these (or both of them together) can be a good fit for both B2B and B2C campaigns. However, on a regular day, a B2B company that sends out scheduled email campaigns and makes use of drip campaigns is a typical Pardot user. On the other hand, a B2C firm sending out scheduled email campaigns and using drip automation programs in addition to more specific email services such as triggered emails and transactional emails makes for an ideal Marketing Cloud client.
Features Available
Some of the features included in the Salesforce Marketing Cloud are Email Marketing, Journey Builder, CDP, Website Tracking, Predictive Intelligence, Advertising and Social Media Marketing, Mobile Marketing, etc.
Pardot packs in some solid tools in the form of Multi-touch Email campaigns, Sales Intelligence, Lead management, Prospect Lifecycle Report, Google Analytics Connector, SEO, SMM, etc.
While Pardot has a lower price point, Salesforce Marketing Cloud is relatively costlier with no public pricing.
Some of the alternatives to the Salesforce Marketing Cloud are:
AI can help any firm perk up its decision-making process and by helping the sales team with better lead-scoring, forecasting, and pipeline management, among various others. Gartner had predicted way back in 2018 that 70% of customer experiences in the future will be fuelled by machine learning and AI. This is a clear indication of an upcoming surge in the application of AI in sales.
How Can AI Improve Sales?
1. Build pipeline easily
Salespeople can use AI tools to their advantage to build and fill their pipeline fast. These tools can find new leads from an existing database and can also help obtain the right contact information of your prospects. InsideSales, LeadCrunch, Pipeliner, FreshSales, and LinkedIn Sales Navigator are some of the best in the area.
2. Increase in the number of leads and appointments
Most of the time-consuming tasks in the pursuit of lead generation can be automated, thanks to Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. Salespeople can collect customer information, take orders, and prepare contracts easily. In this way, establishing a connection with leads, lead qualification, following up with them, and maintaining relationships with prospects take much less investment in terms of the time required. Quite naturally, AI-driven tools will only help generate more leads in much less time. McKinsey reported that AI adoption has almost doubled the number of leads and appointments.
Copper, HubSpot, Conversica, Node, and Pardot are some of the most famous names out there that can help the cause.
3. Decrease in call times
AI apps and tools can take over the task of initiating conversations with prospects way before sales reps hop on a call to understand their requirements. This results in a significant reduction in the call times as the broad requirements of the clients are known well in advance. Apps like Gong and Chorus record and transcribe customer calls to help sales leaders with expert analytical assessments to make meaningful investments and profitable business decisions.
Sales teams leveraging AI in their operations see a drop in call times by as much as 60-70%, as per a study by McKinsey.
4. Automation to close deals faster
With AI-aided tools and software at the helm, salespeople spend 40% less time on clerical tasks, leaving them more time to build relationships and focus on selling! Salesforce, Pardot, MailChimp, Helm, Zapier, etc. have enabled sales teams with the right tools at various levels of interactions to cut down the time and labor involved. When sales teams emphasize more on the bottom-of-the-funnel operations, the immediate effect – fast closures!
5. Engagement with a human touch at crucial touchpoints
While a major chunk of the client-customer interaction will be automated in the next few years, there’s a chance the human touch may be left-out in the process. But this has to be borne in mind that even in the age of intelligent automation, the human touch is the home run!
B2B buyers tend to do a lot of research before even interacting with a brand digitally, but at some point or the other, they need to talk to a human. Thankfully, tools such as RingDNA, Chorus.ai, CallRail, Gong, etc, have been built to help provide the desired human touch to the interactions, while presenting sales teams with much-needed foresight into the sales cycle.
The human v/s digital debate is here to stay, but the need for human interaction at crucial touchpoints of a B2B sales cycle remains uncontested.
Have you ever come across a person who corrects you by telling you “it’s neighbour, not neighbor”? Or that “it’s a lift, not an elevator”? You might have studied those words in your books and have been saying “neighbor” and “elevator” all your life, but now this jerk comes up to tell you that you are wrong! You would be totally convinced you are the person speaking correct English, but the other person doesn’t retract either!
So, who is correct?
Are there multiple accepted spellings and terminologies in the same language? Can parts of speech be twisted to suit speakers of different regions? The collective answer is yes! People in the UK and USA have some minor differences in spelling, pronunciation, and even grammar at places. Of course, the accent is different too. And while the people in the UK speak English, they refer to American English as just “American”, and not “English”. But we’ll leave that fight and discussion for some other day.
Today, we are going to talk about the UK and US styles of the English language and have a look at the major differences between them. Even though they differ mostly in pronunciations and a few spellings most of the time, the differences are remarkable and the sentence structure changes at times too.
But First, How Did Everything Start?
In 1828, Noah Webster published “An American Dictionary of the English Language” in a bid to standardise spellings in the English language. He was frustrated with the use of words that didn’t actually sound like they were spelt and wanted to give them a proper phonetic touch. Prior to that, multiple variants of the same words were in use in different parts of the English-speaking world. Even though the dictionary couldn’t revolutionise the process in the UK, it significantly impacted the way words were spelt in the US. The shortening of the most prominent words by removal of the “u” was a result of the efforts of Noah Webster who even paid up the publishers to use his spellings. So, “colour” became “color“, “neighbour” became “neighbor”, “armour” became “armor”, and so on for the natives of the US.
This is to be noted that Webster didn’t invent all these spellings himself. He just tried to popularise some spellings; a few of them worked, but many didn’t. He did try to invent a few spellings himself but failed to promote them.
The most common difference in the spellings is the shortened words in US English. For instance, “labour” in UK is “labor” in US, “honour” in UK is “honor” in US, “mould” in UK is “mold” in US, etc.
I believe the Americans are lazy with their spelling. They tend to cut short the spellings wherever they find convenient. For example, what the British refer to as “dialogue”, “monologue”, and “analogue” are simply “dialog”, “monolog”, and “analog” to the Americans. By the way, “catalogue” and “catalog” work just fine for the US. They have done just the same with many words ending with “ed”, “ing”, “er”, and “est”. For example “cancelled”, “counselling”, “traveller”, and “cruellest” are used in British English, while “canceled”, “counseling”, “traveler” and “cruelest” form the spellings for the same words respectively in American English. Similarly, US English cuts down the “e” from many words when adding suffixes. So, While British people write “ageing”, “likeable” and “routeing”, their US counterparts prefer “aging”, “likable” and “routing”. “Lovable”, “believable”, “curable”, “notable”, etc. are some spellings that are acceptable in both the UK and US versions of the language.
Many of the words that contain “ae” or “oe” in British English are spelt with just an “e” in US English. For example, “anaemia”, “paediatric”, and “oestrogen” in UK English are “anemia”, “pediatric”, and “estrogen” in US English.
Here again, there are exceptions. Words like “aesthetics” and “archaeology” can be spelt both ways in US English. And words like “encyclopaedia”, “foetus”, etc. can be spelt both ways in British English.
But again, there are some words that are spelt otherwise; British English actually drops some letters! For example, “enrol”, “enthral”, “appal”, “skilful”, and “instalment”, etc. are the accepted spellings in the UK style while “enroll”, “enthrall”, “appall”, and “skillful” make up the US style.
b. -ise/-yse or -ize/-yze? Which One Do I Use?
The British use the suffix “ise/yse” wherever required, while the Americans use “ize/yze”. Thus, “specialise”, “standardise”, “catalyse”, “hydrolyse”, etc. are commonly used in the UK style of writing, while the US style makes use of “specialize”, “standardize”, “catalyse”, “hydrolyze” respectively.
Another confusion that often arises is with the words ending with “ce” and “se”. Variants of the same words with both these suffixes are used interchangeably and it’s confusing at times to identify the part of speech and the correct variant to be used in a certain situation. Keep in mind, words ending with “ce” are nouns, like “advice”, “device”, “licence”, “practice” and words ending with “se” are verbs, e.g., “advise”, “devise”, “license”, and “practise”. But in US English, they use license and practice as both noun and verb. Gets me tangled at times! But wait, there’s more! The British use “defence” and “offence”, while the Americans spell them “defense” and “offense”, but the derivatives “defensive” and “offensive” are accepted in both the variants of English.
d. Is it Centre or Center?
Other than just these words, another prominent difference is in the words ending with “er” and “re”. While the British use “metre”, “litre”, “calibre”, “theatre”, etc., the US versions of the same words are “meter”, “liter”, “caliber”, and “theater” respectively. But again, words with the suffix “meter” are the same in both variants, like “barometer”, “pentameter”, “thermometer”, etc.
Interesting fact: Many of the words ending with “er” were once spelt with “re” once. Examples are “December”, “member”, “disaster”, “chapter”, and a lot more.
Now, there are many exceptions here too, which shouldn’t come as a surprise!
Words like “anger”, “mother”, and “danger” end with “er” in the British version of the language too, while the words like “acre”, “massacre”, and “mediocre” are the permitted forms in the US English as well. These words are the same in both UK and US vocabulary.
Whenever the French style of pronunciation is used in words ending with “re”, (/rə/ rather than /ə(r)/), they stay the same in the US English. For example, “genre”, “oeuvre”, and “double entendre” are acceptable in US English because of their pronunciation. It should be noted that some words are acceptable with the “re” ending even though they are not pronounced like “genre” and other words in the league, for instance, “cadre”, “macabre”, “timbre”, etc.
There are many more spellings that vary wrt to the region they are being used in. There are many other aspects that differentiate the British and American variants of the English Language.
Watch out for the second part of this article to know how British and US English vary in terms of abbreviations, acronyms, and punctuation.
Flash Sales, Discount Codes, Free Samples and the sorts are among the various common incentives that have proven to work well in the B2C segment. But in B2B sales, it’s quite different story.
Similar incentives do not necessarily help accelerate the B2B sales process because purchases are based on very specific requirements and thorough research by multiple stakeholders, with no real scope for any impulse buying.
Change in B2B Buying Conditions
B2B buyers have evolved in recent years. Most research products/services online from dozens of vendors before even contacting or (willing to be) contacted by a seller. This leads to longer sales cycles and the winners eventually are the brands with strong content strategies and sales enablement practices in place.
Time and again, many companies have gone the extra mile to come up with innovative marketing and sales ideas to increase their brand awareness and boost sales at the same time. While a few such sales campaigns failed miserably, many others were blockbuster hits.
Let’s have a look at some that made some positive impact.
Top 5 B2B Marketing/Sales Campaigns
Shopify – “Let’s Make You a Business”
Shopify, a company that provides cloud-based, multi-channel e-commerce solutions for small businesses, came out with a series of images and videos spread across social media, TV, posters, and billboards, calling out potential businesses to start with their ideas. The campaign featured quirky captions and thoughtful videos, effective enough to ring a bell in the minds of the “to-be” business owners.
The online customer interaction platform – Drift, came up with a rather unusual movement in May 2017. It advocated getting rid of lead capture forms. Not only did it preach the idea of using live chat option to generate leads in place of the traditional lead forms, the company actually went on to officially announce the month of May as #NoForms month.
Drift had been relying solely on other alternate methods of lead generation for a year and opened up its entire pool of gated content assets to everyone for a month!
The highlight of the campaign was that 63% of visitors who opened the chatbox on the company’s pricing page initiated a conversation with a sales executive, while the typical email campaigns (with email addresses collected from lead forms) generated a click rate of 2-3%.
Now that’s what we call “leading by example.”
Upwork – “Hey World”
Humor has been a time-tested ingredient for thousands of brands in the B2C segment for as long as advertising came into being. But does it prove to be as useful when the buyers are C-suite executives exhibiting utmost seriousness from every angle of their behavior and attire? Upwork decided to test this out.
In what would have been a complete disaster of a campaign otherwise, Upwork introduced a bold campaign by creating a series of short punchy videos, each intended for a different celebrity or firm, wherein it pitched the various types of freelancers available with the platform.
Upwork had (in the campaign videos) freelance Mechanical Engineers for NASA, Customer Support Reps for Amazon, Social Media Strategists for the President, and the list just went on! Making use of famous names and tagging celebrities really helped the campaign go viral; imagine the sales numbers afterwards! They even had a Personal Assistant available for Elon Musk (such a busy man!); I’ll check if he actually got the message.
Marketing Dynamix – Transmission + Dropbox
Dropbox partnered with marketing agency Transmission to help the firm with its lead generation efforts. The target audience for Transmission consisted of marketers, of course! Dropbox found out that personality clashes and communication hiccups were the primary reasons for project delays on part of the marketing teams. And thus, a solution was created – Marketing Dynamix, a personality assessment tool for marketers to understand their team.
The campaign was run extensively on major social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat, and YouTube, in the form of images, GIFs, and short videos. The result -> 29:1 ROI!
You just did, Dropbox!
Carpathia – Enterprise Referral Program
Most of the referral programs we know of are consumer-facing. But, in any scenario, you are still selling to people!
Carpathia, a cloud-based platform offering managed hosting and IT infrastructure to businesses proved to the world that referral programs can be valuable strategies in B2B sales too. The firm facilitated easy registrations to its referral program and the partners got access to tons of case studies, whitepapers, and sales tools. Carpathia also leveraged social proof extensively to turn the campaign into a major success.
Now that you have a business, how do you sell your products or services to customers?
How do you educate your customers about your services and solutions? Do you even know who your customers are, and where you could find a good number of potential buyers in a marketplace? If not, read on!
This article will give you an idea of the concept of Lead Generation and the various ways of generating leads.
First Things First – What or Who is a Lead?
A lead is a person who has indicated an interest in your offerings (product or service) in some way, shape, or form. A lead is a prospect that can turn into a paying customer in the future, on the condition that marketing and sales teams tune in their magic.
What is Lead Generation?
As per HubSpot, Lead Generation is “The process of attracting and converting strangers and prospects into someone who has indicated interest in your company’s product or service. Some examples of lead generators are job applications, blog posts, coupons, live events, and online content.”
“Lead Generation describes the Marketing process of stimulating and capturing interest in a product or service for the purpose of developing a Sales pipeline,” says Marketo.
According to TechTarget, “Lead generation is the use of a computer program, a database, the internet, or a specialized service to obtain or receive information for the purpose of expanding the scope of a business, increasing Sales revenues, looking for a job or for new clients or conducting specialized research. Leads can consist of the names and addresses (or e-mail addresses) of individuals, corporations, institutions or agencies. Lists of leads can be gathered or filtered from targeted databases such as telephone and Internet directories.”
In the simplest of words, Lead Generation is a process that identifies probable customers for your business, gets them to show interest in your offerings, and collects useful data. The data can be in the form of names, e-mail IDs, phone numbers, or firm’s name, etc. These pieces of information can then be used to contact the prospects, educate them, and nurture them to be able to qualify them as Sales Qualified Leads (SQL). The SQLs can then be passed on to the Sales team for further follow-ups and for converting them into customers.
So, if 1000 people visit your website and 100 of them submit their details via a pop-up or registration link, these 100 can be classified as leads as they have shown interest in one or other of your products/services. If you meet 200 people at a conference and 50 of them share their visiting cards or just their phone numbers, those 50 are leads for your business who need engaging and nurturing to be converted into customers in the near future.
Various Channels of Lead Generation
Basically, there are two channels of Lead Generation – Inbound and Outbound.
Inbound Lead Generation is the process of helping potential customers find your company—often before they are even looking to make a purchase—and then turning that early awareness into brand preference, and ultimately, into leads and revenue.
Inbound Lead Generation involves constructive means of educating customers with a well-planned content strategy. Here, you drive them to find your business by means of quality content and SEO, websites, blogs, social media, e-mails, and webinars.
Outbound Lead Generation, on the other hand, involves reaching out to the masses that may or may not be interested in your offering. The most common methods of Outbound Marketing include display ads, direct e-mail, PPC ads, events, and content syndication.
Now, you must be thinking about how e-mails fall into both categories! While Email Marketing is mostly considered an outbound activity, it actually falls into both channels. Email Marketing can be used to reach out to leads that have previously opted-in for your blog updates or registered for a product demo; e-mailing them is part of an inbound marketing campaign. But buying a database of leads from a third party and mass e-mailing is an outbound method which is more spammy and generic. No wonder Outbound leads cost 39% more than inbound leads.
IDG carried out a survey to ascertain which methods of Lead Generation worked best for companies. It was found that websites, conferences/trade shows, and email marketing proved to be the best channels of communication, while print advertising and direct mail performed the worst.
As part of your Lead Generation efforts, it is necessary to keep track of a few metrics that matter to your business. Some of the common Lead Generation metrics that companies track include:
Performance Metrics:
Click Through Rate (CTR) – This tells you how many visitors are clicking on a link in your ad creative, landing page, or e-mail.
Conversion Rate – A measure of how many visitors are performing a specific intended action like filling out a form, opting in for blog updates, product demos, etc.
Return on Investment (ROI) – It is a measure of how much money you have made with an initial investment. E.g., if you make $18 off each lead, and had initially invested $10 on acquiring per lead, your ROI will be 80%
Time to Conversion – The time taken to convert a visitor into a verified lead.
Cost Metrics: Cost per Click (CPC), Cost per Mille (CPM), and Cost per Lead are the three most important metrics that fall under this category. They provide insights into the amount you are spending in acquiring each click via a paid advertising campaign or if you are buying impressions via display ads.
The average cost of a B2B sales lead differs by industry. Healthcare leads cost the highest ($60/lead) followed by business/finance ($43/lead). Leads for Marketing products/services and technology are at the low end ($32/lead and $31/lead respectively).
Channel Metrics: Are you getting most of the traffic by website SEO, PPC ads, or social media? Channel metrics provide insights into the performance of various channels/media employed for your Lead Generation efforts. So, checking for metrics like Lead Generation rate by channel and Month-to-date (MTD) channel goals is vital for marketers to optimize their spending on campaigns.
As a result of tracking channel metrics, you would be able to decide which channels to invest more resources in order to attain better ROI.
Here are some additional resources that you may find relevant:
While looking for a job change, I came across many opportunities on various job boards. I did connect with numerous recruiters and talked to them about the state of the talent pool nowadays. I got to know that while unemployment rates are hovering at an all-time high, companies are struggling to find top talent. Seems like there is some kind of disconnect between the two. As a job-seeker, you need to brush up on your skills, but what can you do as a recruiter? Here are some ways recruitment teams can gear up their recruitment games.
5 Ways to Improve Recruitment Strategy and Hire Best Talent
1. Go Digital, Go Mobile
Do you think career sites and job boards are things of the past? Forbes says 79% of candidates look for jobs on the Internet. Also, social media and recruiting go hand-in-hand. Candidates now employ social media to get notified about possible job openings. Then they proceed with their research and application process. Furthermore, being mobile-ready with regard to your career site is extremely important.
Consider candidates as your customers. Stay connected, engage prospects, and delight them; and their positive reviews will further help you with your employer branding. 55% of job seekers abandon applications after reading negative reviews online. Companies need to address these concerns too. Furthermore, taking the digital path also helps you tap into the passive talent pool who are not really looking for a job at the moment, but might consider it in the near future.
2. Invest in HR Software
Candidates who are satisfied with their experience are twice as likely to join the hiring organization compared to unsatisfied candidates. Not only this, but they are also more likely to provide recommendations even if they do not receive a job offer. 67% of organizations using a top-class recruitment solution experience a consistent candidate experience, reports iCIMS. In addition, having proper HR software signifies candidate screening and talent acquisition are valuable to the company.
Furthermore, recruitment analytics has a crucial role to play. Using data analytics and metrics is still a new trend in recruiting. But to become a data-driven recruiter, tracking and measuring some key metrics becomes crucial. Metrics like source of hire, time to hire, retention rates, cost per hire, etc. should be measured. And there are various types of HR software packages to automate administrative tasks, optimize the hiring process, foster communication, and improve the employee experience. There are various HCM, HRIS, and payroll management software to help you here!
3. AI in Recruiting
Unilever adopted an AI-driven college hire candidate sorting and assessment method. The system uses LinkedIn profiles instead of job-seekers’ resumes. Next, AI comes into play. It selects the best prospects from the available pool. After that, it uses a series of online games to further assess them and narrow down the field. The next process is using recorded video interviews that assess facial expressions, among many other pointers. The candidates are called in for a final, in-person interview only after these procedures are completed.
The application of AI in recruiting saves time. You can reach out to candidates via automated messages; chatbots can be used to reply to their queries and schedule interviews. AI-driven software/tools screen them for defined criteria. Needless to mention, without any scope of bias. And the hiring team will only need to communicate in person after all these formalities are completed and it is established that the prospects are the perfect matches indeed.
4. Incorporate VR Videos
Videos have proven to have a high impact on prospects. They show the culture of the company and reveal the excitement of working there. However, virtual reality clearly outperforms traditional videos. The British Army and General Mills are already using Virtual Reality headsets to show a much higher level of excitement, realism, and detail to build their employer brand and to excite prospects. Using VR also affirms that the company is abreast of the latest happenings in the field of technology and that it will offer enormous growth to its employees. VR is helpful at later stages too when it comes to the training, learning, and development of the candidates.
5. Make the Application Process Simpler
Lastly, the application process for the candidates needs to be smooth. Application abandonment is possibly the biggest undetected leak in the recruitment funnel. Sadly, not many companies look into the matter. The idea is to ask the right questions in a short and crisp way. Tedious or long-winded application forms put people off. Drop-off can be high on digital applications that ask too many (irrelevant) questions. Abandonment rates can be sometimes as high as 95%. HR personnel need to make sure the application process is simple so as to generate and maintain interest.
It all boils down to making use of the latest technology available to reach and engage the right candidates. It is high time HR managers upgrade their recruiting strategies for good. AI and ML are on the rise today and can help modern recruiters with their hiring and recruiting needs. As a consequence, the process will only get faster, smoother, and more reliable.
Even before broadband was introduced, people started anticipating its revolutionary effects in the field of workplace collaboration. And broadband delivered on its expectations too. Live Video meetings, instant document sharing, and webinars – these may not appear to be extraordinary facilities today, but they were not so common earlier.
With the dawn of the 5G era in the digital age, the stakes are higher. We are talking about modernized, data-driven digital workplaces with high data rates, low latency, and enhanced security features, much better than the current 4G/LTE standards. In the future, workplaces won’t be defined by physical locations and new applications will spring up that will catalyze collaboration in ways unheard of today. Experts and analysts predict numerous positive changes in the years to come.
To Begin With, Let’s First Understand What 5G Is
Making its way to India this year, 5G is wireless broadband based on the 802.11ac standard that represents the fifth generation of mobile cellular networks and promises speeds 10 to 20 times faster than the 4G cellular networks. Ericsson projected in a report that there will be 1.5 billion 5G subscriptions for enhanced mobile broadband in the period ranging from 2020-2024. Also, 55% of mobile subscriptions in North America are expected to be for 5G in 2024.
As per Gartner, 5G is “the next-generation cellular standard after 4G. It has been defined across several global standards bodies, including the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), 3GPP and ETSI. The official ITU specification, International Mobile Telecommunications-2020, targets maximum downlink and uplink throughputs of 20 Gbps and 10 Gbps, respectively; latency below 5 ms endpoint to RAN; and massive scalability, although initial deployments may be less ambitious. New system architecture includes core network slicing and edge computing.”
From 1G to 5G – The Evolution
1G came into being in the early 1980s as the first-ever mode of mass mobile communication. It facilitated calls between mobile devices.
2G followed 1G in 1991. It used digital encryption in place of analog signals. It thus offered greater security than the first-generation mobile and had the added provision for data services that allowed sending SMS messages to other mobile users. 2.5G and 2.75G succeeded 2G with slight modifications in the next few years.
3G was introduced in 2003 and brought in the ultimate mobile revolution. New prospects came into existence. Higher data speeds allowed easy access to Video content, albeit accompanied by buffering, and innovation of applications in many fields. Users could browse the internet on mobile devices and share multimedia content. GPS-location tracking was enabled in 3G.
Then came 4G in 2009 that took the ship further up a notch. Streaming speeds were faster and consumers got access to high-definition content for the first time. It continues to deliver deep web functionalities to smartphones.
5G is currently in its initial stages. It will completely transform the world of mobile connectivity. It will not just be an update, but a complete overhaul of the previous generations of network standards, Forbes says. The changes between 4G and 5G will be much more significant than that between 3G and 4G. The ITU-R has defined three main uses for 5G. They are Enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB), Ultra-Reliable Low Latency Communications (URLLC), and Massive Machine Type Communications (mMTC)
5G will create an integrated infrastructure that will connect buildings, transport, and utilities. It will have a huge impact on various industries that will be at an advantage owing to the raised standards of connectivity, and the overall economy will gain from it. Self-driving cars, robots performing medical surgeries remotely, and unmanned space explorations – all will get a boost once 5G is in effect.
Workplace collaboration, among various other aspects, will greatly benefit from the arrival of 5G. Let’s see how.
3 Ways 5G Will Reform Workplace Collaboration
Improved Bandwidth will Encourage Connected Enterprises
Mobile access has been important for companies to foster a digital workplace culture. Now, mobile coverage has been on the rise in larger sections of the world, but the fact that many users are still relying on 3G or earlier versions is a hindrance.
In many parts of the emerging world, low bandwidth continues to hamper workplace productivity and collaboration among staff. Even 4G speeds are not always up to the mark. Quite often, workers have to rely on local Wi-Fi network connections to be able to connect and collaborate.
With 5G knocking at the doors with at least 10x the speed available today, enterprises are expecting major reforms in this field. There are going to be some huge impacts because of the role of 5G in workspace collaboration.
New applications will be developed with the latest bandwidth in mind which will allow workers to collaborate better. Automation will lend its hand in cutting out and performing repetitive tasks at much higher speeds. As a result, the talented workforce may be utilized in areas where it’s required more. Teams would be more involved in decision-making rather than committing to daily chores.
A Decentralized Workforce Can Finally Be a Reality
While remote work is already in vogue for the past few years, the idea of having a completely decentralized workforce doesn’t fail to amaze business owners and workers. A company where not all the employees are working from the same office or location but are still connected impeccably is yet a dream. With 5G, this could turn into a reality. Concerns related to bandwidth, latency, security, and connectivity that are currently tied to the existing cellular and Wi-Fi services would be things of the past.
In just a few years, workspace and productivity resources like smart conference rooms, office automation and the integration of AI into everyday office tasks will not just become a norm, but will be taken for granted as we take document sharing, text messaging or accessing the internet today. Of course, the onset of the covid era was another major factor that forced companies to look at remote alternatives, so, the concept is not entirely new. But how 5G enables the future of work is what we are interested in knowing.
Lower Latency Will Power Advanced IoT and AR/VR
4G still contains some inbuilt latency issues. These will go away once 5G comes into existence. Under optimal conditions, 5G latency will range between 1-4 milliseconds. In addition, the enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB) side of 5G will help workers move data at speeds much faster than the current times. The combination of lower latency and high upload/download speeds will help realize the concept of remote, connected workplaces in the true sense, augmented by virtual reality.
The absence of latency from the next-generation communication standard will do away with a lot of inconveniences. In the present-day world, it’s a pain for a worker to attend a meeting in real-time, remotely. 5G will bring in an advanced IoT which could allow real-time collaboration between people and things. It will enable workers to log on to a system, and with the help of AR and VR, attend the meeting in real-time, without any lags, and feel as if he/she is physically present in the same environment as in the meeting. Real-time sync will make remote troubleshooting, remote workplace administration, doctor conferences, and business meetings possible which will save loads of time and commute. Of course, developments in the field of Artificial Intelligence, IoT, and Big Data will go hand-in-hand.
5G in India is still in its nascent stages and the possibilities are endless. The number of 5G connections will reach 1.4 billion by 2025, accounting for 15% of the global mobile industry. The initial cost of infrastructure and hence, of 5G-enabled devices will be high, to begin with. Also, concerns regarding its security are in the minds of tech analysts who believe newer security standards would be required to keep up the pace with 5G. But keeping a close eye on the developments would help. 5G is the next big thing and is going to revolutionize the workplace culture. The whole world is betting on its positive outcomes.
Writing takes a lot of passion, dedication, thinking, and research, among other things. It is one of the very few fields that I believe artificial intelligence would never be able to take over. You can train machines to do a set of tasks, but can’t make them fill a piece of article with emotions – the human touch will always be missing.
Got the point here? Human touch is necessary – whether you are writing for humans or the search engine giants, Google in particular.
Quite often, writers are in a fix when it comes to writing blog articles. Do they talk naturally about the concerns of the audience they are addressing or do they stuff keywords for the search engines to rank their page? It is a common dilemma and many a time, people end up prioritizing the search engines by writing robotic content filled with the keywords they want the page to rank for.
But this is not the right approach, even Google doesn’t like this. Its algorithms keep on changing and updating at regular intervals to reduce spam and promote better content quality.
So what should you do to help the readers with their queries, yet appease Google to rank your pages?
In this article, I’ll tell you how to write an effective blog article that is readable, yet search engine friendly for you to get the required attention from them. It has to be understood that quality content takes time to get up high in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), but stays there for long and fetches large numbers of organic visitors to your blog. So don’t get disheartened if your article is not ranking yet for your most important keywords, take these necessary steps when you write your article and keep promoting it on various social media sites, bookmarking sites, article directories, and other relevant online spaces.
Tips to Write A Human-Readable SEO-Friendly Blog:
We are covering two aspects here, the human side, and the SEO perspective. let’s talk about both separately.
How to Make Your Blog Interesting and Readable for Humans?
1. What’s a decent word count?
No rule binds the word count of a good blog article. But if you want to give some information to your audience, an article has to be detailed enough to cover all the points precisely, but at the same time, not too long to be boring. A detailed blog article of 1500-2000 words is great, but if you do not have too much information to give and want to keep it short-n-sweet, keep it between 600-1000 words.
2. Write short sentences – maximum 20 words per sentence
It is important from the readability point of view to keep your sentences short. Try not to write sentences that are more than 20 words in length. Trim them, and cut them down into multiple sentences if a sentence starts getting longer. Also, don’t add too many semi-colons (;) in your article. Finish the sentence and start a new one in such situations.
For instance, I could have written the last two sentences as this: “Also, don’t add too many semi-colons (;) in your article; finish the sentence and start a new one in such situations.” But instead, I chose to end the first sentence with a period and added the second part as a completely new sentence.
Remember to keep your sentences in a flow and make use of coordinating conjunctions (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so) to show a link between the previous and current sentences.
3. Don’t write too lengthy paragraphs
While the sentences should be short and crisp, the same should be the case with paragraphs. It is advised to keep your paragraphs’ length to around 100 words – a few more, at times, maybe, but not too much. Breaking your long texts into multiple paragraphs makes the whole article easier to read and understand the flow. Here again, it is a good idea to start a new paragraph with a coordinating conjunction to show a correlation between the two paragraphs.
4. Place important information first
Always make it a habit to mention the most important points and facts towards the beginning of the article. The more time you take to introduce the important information, the more the chances of your readers drifting away from your article.
5. Add bullet points
Presenting your content in the form of bullet points or numbered lists helps your readers better grasp and understand the information you want to convey. It is aesthetically pleasing too! So, if you have a long list of information that you want to bring to the notice of your website visitors, better put across a part of the content in the form of bullet points.
Headings are the best ways to entice your readers. Remember how you browse through your Facebook or Instagram feed and then you click on an article just because the headlines are catchy? You want to know more about it because the heading creates curiosity in your mind. Their purpose gets served then and there!
A great heading should provide a lot of information, yet conceal quite a bit for the readers to get curious and read the article to know more. So, imagine a scenario where you want to tell your readers about a great way to earn an enormous amount of money in your free time (I know; a very clichéd and imaginary scenario, but let’s just use it as an example). What are the possible ways you can write a heading for that? Let’s consider a few examples:
“A great way to earn unlimited money”
“Earn money in your free time”
“5 best ways to earn unlimited money”
All these examples seem too mainstream and generic, they won’t attract too many readers to your post. But when you give the same article an exclusive and catchy headline, it kind of works. See these examples:
“You won’t believe how a driver makes $500 in his free time every month”
“Can you believe how much this housewife makes just by using this minor trick?”
“How much money this retired teacher made in a week will blow your minds”
Do you see how these titles build curiosity among the readers? These are some examples of great headings/titles for your blog. Chances are, you might have clicked on such links yourself a few times in the past. Now you can realize those were effective!
Not just the title, there should also be a few sub-titles, headings, and sub-headings in your article that should address different key points of your article and keep your website visitors hooked to the article.
7. Research extensively, provide information, and answer queries
An important aspect of writing anything is research. Do not base your article on your opinions, unless it is really about your opinions. Research on the topic you are addressing, gain as much knowledge as possible on the issue you are writing and then write a kick-ass article for the readers to read, enjoy, and learn. Provide information that they are looking for, answer their queries, and present proofs wherever possible if you are looping in strong facts or statistics.
8. Make it conversational
How will you feel if someone invites you for a chat and then goes on to banter about his/her knowledge or achievements for an entire hour without giving you a chance to speak?
Well, in writing, you can’t talk to your readers in real time, but you can sure make your articles are conversational and engaging. Why not ask questions in between? Share interesting experiences, let them think, and let them wonder! Make your readers feel like they are part of a conversation, not a lecture.
9. Use active voice
Writing your article in an active voice makes it easier for the readers to understand as the sentences are much simpler. So keep in mind, not more than 20% of the sentences in your blog post should be in passive voice for the better of your readers, and ultimately for your blog.
10. Write simple statements; avoid jargon
An important point to note is that not many of the readers that visit your website will be literary geniuses. So do not try to impress the online crowd with complex sentences and jargon that only the professors at Harvard will be able to understand.
Write in a tone that is simple for your target audience to understand. For example, the way of talking to a high school kid would be different from how you converse with a middle-aged person in his late forties. Also, the style of English and meanings of the same words vary from region to region, so always keep in mind who you are addressing with your article.
11. Make a visual impression – add images, infographics, and videos
No one likes to read a boring article filled with text and text everywhere! You should always compliment your blog articles with relevant images, infographics, or videos. Don’t forget to give due credit to the original owners though, if you are taking them from other websites.
The most important factor that helps rank your website and drive traffic to your site is the presence of relevant keywords in your articles. There are many tools to help you find the best-suited keywords for your industry and the keywords that your competitors are using. You can also use those tools to analyze the best possible keywords, their competition, the price you would pay to rank your website for a certain keyword if you go for Google advertising, etc.
In addition, you should also make sure you are not over-using your keywords. Google ranks websites better that have a mix of the main keywords and related words on the pages. Experiment with long-tail keywords, use LSI keywords, and add synonyms of your main keyword for your content to appear natural and fetch better ranks in search engine rankings.
I believe you already have an idea that using too many keywords in your article will ruin it for you. It will do more damage than any good to your website ranking and chances are, you might get penalized by the search engines too. Though there is no strict rule about the percentage of keywords you can use in your text, it is generally advised to keep keywords in the range of 2-3% for the best result.
3. Optimize your title tags
All the titles and subtitles in your article, if optimized properly with relevant keywords, may greatly boost the overall SEO of your site. In simple terms, try to include your main or auxiliary keywords in the titles and subtitles in addition to the body text, and you can expect to see excellent organic traffic. You would also need to include meta descriptions that the search engines will display when your site appears in the search results.
4. Link the article to other articles that are relevant/related to it – internal/external links
Keeping all the articles on your blog inter-connected is good for SEO. So if you are writing an article on Top 10 Bakeries in New York, and you have an article titled How to Make Choco Chip Cookies in 30 Minutes, you should definitely provide the link to the latter somewhere in between, or at the end of the article as a recommendation to the readers. Also, it is good to add some external links in your articles – it may be a link to a stat or fact you are mentioning therein or a link to an article that is similar to what you have written and complements your article.
5. Don’t forget the Alt tags
Alt attributes are required to provide alternative information in the form of text for images, in case the image fails to load on the website visitor’s end because of some reason or the other. Hence, using your keyword as the alt text of an image will serve as an added keyword and will help your site with the SERPs.
The key to writing an effective article that readers will love and search engines will value greatly depends on how you optimize the article for them both. In the end, it should be a standard practice to edit the blog post thoroughly and proofread it for any spelling/grammatical mistakes. In case you would like your visitors to discuss the topic of the blog with you, you should also provide them with an option to comment on your blog or reach you easily via mail or social media.
A leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for 2021, Liferay Digital Experience Platform is available both on-premise and as a PaaS. The firm boasts an extensive global user base of medium and large-scale enterprises. Offering a “single pane of glass” integration, Liferay DXP has everything to bind the business process into a unified digital platform. Unified APIs offer consistent API design and developer experience to bring together APIs from a specific industry under one flexible DXP. Intranets, websites, customer portals, partner portals, and integration platforms provided by Liferay are a class apart from any other provider in this list.
Salesforce
Salesforce Experience Cloud by Salesforce is a SaaS product that offers tech tools around content management, personalization, AI, CDPs, and integrations. Its CRM offers a host of capabilities and is a frontrunner in this field. Salesforce has a huge portfolio of products that are often used in conjunction with its DXP.
Adobe
Adobe’s DXP is called Adobe Experience Cloud and is available on-premise and as a PaaS. It is a feature-rich platform with content management, analytics, personalization, customer data management and campaign management capabilities, taking the overall cost of ownership on the higher side. Though Adobe Experience Cloud is mostly used in B2C environments, B2B is not alien to it either.
Acquia
Termed Acquia Open Digital Experience Platform, Acquia’s DXP encompasses Drupal Cloud and Marketing Cloud. Available as PaaS and SaaS, it has capabilities for content management, personalization, and customer journey management, often strengthened by Drupal’s extensive community of contributors.
Oracle
Oracle’s DXP is called Oracle Customer Experience (CX) and has numerous products under its hood, Oracle Content and Experience, Oracle CX Marketing, and Oracle CX Service being just a few. The UI of Oracle CX has been improved and made user-friendly over time to entertain even the most non-technical of professionals. The product portfolio being so vast, it may, however, baffle many users and increase the cost of investments in its SaaS offerings.
The complete article was originally published on SIDGS blog.
Before getting into how social media recruitment is a great option, let’s get the picture clear first. Why is it even worth going for?
The millennials are tech-savvy, and Gen Z is even savvier. They love staying in the digital world. The average internet user has 5.54 social media accounts. They prefer social media over anything else to engage in discussions and share moments from their day-to-day lives. And it’s not just personal; there are specific sites that cater to professional discussions too. But LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, among various others, have the largest share of active online people. Chances are, your prospects are definitely active on one or more of these sites.
iCIMS reported that posting a job on social media can increase applications by 30-50%. No wonder, 92% of recruiters use social media to find high-quality candidates. Social hiring is already here, and is here to stay!
5 Tips to Uplift your Social Media Recruitment Strategy
1. Build a Community of Like-Minded Individuals
The target audience is the key here. Likes on social media profiles and posts are just vanity metrics. What recruiters need to understand is that they are supposed to build a community of like-minded people. Create and share content that is relevant to what you do and your campaign should see relevant people engaging. Additionally, talk about your company’s culture, benefits, and how much fun it is to work there.
Having a well-polished LinkedIn page serves as an ideal start. 87% of recruiters report using LinkedIn to source candidates. LinkedIn groups are the obvious go-to place. FB and Twitter are behind, but can’t be neglected. 55% and 47% of recruiters use them respectively. In addition, Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat offer some great opportunities too as a larger chunk of the younger generation is active there. Recruiters should leverage those as part of their social media recruiting strategy.
2. Use Videos to Reach the Passive (and Talented) Pool of Candidates
Video is one of the most effective forms of engagement. The Human brain processes visual data 60,000 faster than texts. Social media users engage 10 times more with a video than any other type of content posted. Hosting live videos has immense help when it comes to clearing the queries of the participants. Furthermore, VR videos can provide an even more immersive experience than traditional videos. A great way to enhance employer branding and to increase an online reputation!
The best part about using videos to engage your prospects is the fact that you can reach the passive candidates that aren’t looking for a job change at the moment but may consider it in the near or distant future. This allows recruiters to have a ready database of suitable candidates who can be reached anytime merely by posting updates, or my social media advertising.
Hashtags on social media are great options to reach a specific niche of people. Those related to your industry may be used on a regular basis to reach a particular group of people interested in that topic. For instance, #ArtificiaIIntelligence can be used to target a group that is particularly interested in the field of AI and would like to read/see/watch anything related to it. Similarly, #JobOpening can be used to reach candidates who have followed this hashtag. People following hashtags of these sorts are most probably looking out for jobs or job changes.
It is important to check the reach of any specific hashtag – the number of people following and using it. Too less, and your post might not reach the desired number of people; too many, and it may get lost in a sea of posts. It’s sometimes good to get a bit creative with your hashtags.
4. Involve Employees in Sharing Job Posts and Company Culture
Employee advocacy goes a long way in promoting your work culture. Content shared by employees drives engagement not only in sales but also help with the hiring process. Be it a post related to the products/services being offered by the company, or about a vacant position at the organization, the current employees should be a part of the drive.
5. Use Social Recruiting Software
Using a social recruiting software program may sometimes be the simplest method to reach out to potential candidates. These can be used to schedule job posts and sift through the applications received in order to select those with certain skills. You can use the power of artificial intelligence to automate the responses for pre-defined queries. Jobvite, RecruiterBox, and Lever are some of the forerunners in the field of providing applicant tracking system software for social media recruiters.
In addition to all these pointers, recruiters can also leverage the social media advertising option to further outgrow the reach. The key is to keep tracking the steps taken and engagements obtained. A bit of research is required in order to find the best social platform depending upon the type of industry and preferences of the target crowd. But once it’s established, the ROI will be manifold. Analytics has a key role to play in determining the success of any social media recruitment campaign.
