3 Reasons Twitter Needed Its Best Ever Update

The Rise And Recent Fall Of Twitter

Twitter has been given a great new update and I for one think it’s long overdue. The original concept of Twitter was to keep it short and sweet and this was a massive success in the beginning with the platform swiftly becoming one of the world’s most used social media channels. Recently however Twitter has seen itself fall behind in terms of growth compared to Facebook, What’s App, Instagram & WeChat.

Reasons For The Update

1 – Content Is Still King

Messenger Apps have become huge in the last few years but most people use them to do the simple thing they were designed to do. Facebook Messenger and What’s App have all brought in new features but they are not the problem for Twitter. Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram have all improved the way we view their content and allow us to manipulate that content in many ways. The problem with Twitter was that you were limited in the ways you could present your content and often had to cut out important text, mentions, pictures or links. Now with most of these not counted as part of your 140 characters you can have your planned content and present it in a much better way with more mentions, hashtags and visuals to help drive engagement and spark conversations.

2 – Video, Images and GIFs

Ok so in case you’ve been on Mars where even the Curiosity Rover is a social media superstar you might not know that it’s all about visuals these days with live video exploding onto the scene, Instagram copying Snapchat and Images and GIFs being used to increase social shares and engagement. Before now if we used any of these on Twitter we were very limited as to what else we could add to our tweet. Not any more which means we are now more likely to use them and also still have room to add whatever else we like to help with a call to action or simply boost engagement. They’ve allowed live video for a while now through Periscope and don’t seem to be as restrictive with how much you use it unlike Facebook.

3 – Engagement & Conversation

If you’ve ever been involved in a conversation on twitter with multiple parties involved then you’ll know that it can be frustrating when you want to reply to the whole group and go a step further by adding a GIF, Image or Link only to find yourself over the character count. The only solutions were to either omit some of the original participants or just forget the idea of adding anything visual or otherwise which brought you over the 140 characters. Now adding @usernames will not count towards your 140 and all @ tweets can be seen by everyone and not just the person mentioned. This should be a great boost to conversations which have been somewhat lacking or more of a private affair.

Can this new change save twitter and see it start to grow again or is more needed? I’d love to hear your opinion so let me know what you think in the comments below.

iOS 10 Gets Released Today but Don’t Download It Just Yet!

By Gavin Lawlor

iOS 10 gets its official release today. It’s been available for a few months as a beta release and has a number of exciting new features. Here’s just some of the changes to look forward to:

Write it yourself.

Send a message in your own handwriting. Your friends will see it animate, just as ink flows on paper.

Let’s celebrate.

Say things like “Happy Birthday!” or “Congratulations!” with animations that take over the entire screen.

Stickers.

Slap them on top of bubbles, dress up a photo, or even put one on another sticker. Available in the new App Store for iMessage.

Home smart home.

The new Home app lets you turn on lights, unlock doors and even raise your window blinds — all at once if you like.

Your past, beautifully presented.

The Photos app can help you rediscover cherished memories — like a weekend hike or your baby’s first birthday — and even create beautiful films out of them.

Raise to wake.

Simply pick up your iPhone to wake it up. Your notifications will be there waiting for you.

So it looks like Apple are really going for a lot of visual upgrades and a few others that most users will be wanting to try out as soon as possible. But owners of older iPhones really should consider going without the upgrade. Devices like the iPhone 5 and older will certainly struggle to run the new features which is designed with far more powerful iPhones in mind. The 5S may be better than the lesser 5 models but iOS 10 might still slow your device down. Another factor which most likely will come into play is battery life with the new software usually resulting in a higher demand for power meaning your phone will be slower and need to be charged more often.

The best thing to do with these new releases is usually to give it a few days until the reports start to come in. Wait and see how it is affecting other users with the same model iPhone or iPad and then decide if it’s worth the effort. Don’t forget it’s a lot more difficult to change back to the iOS 9 or whatever other software you were previously running and there’s nothing more annoying than a slow poorly performing smart phone when you’re trying to perform important tasks.

So just remember that it’s not the end of the world if you don’t have the latest iPhone and can’t try out the new features. If you do have a suitable phone like the iPhone 7 or a newer model iPad and decide to jump right in then let us know what you think and if you’re enjoying the experience.

5 Tech Essentials To Pack For The Ultimate Music Festival Experience

So Ireland’s biggest and best music festival takes place this weekend. I am of course referring to Electric Picnic. So as you’ll know if you’re a festival veteran it takes a bit of planning and a lot of stamina to keep the fire burning for 3 days and nights. No sleep, dodgy toilets, dodgy food and enough alcohol to start a pop up bar from your tent.

Well as a long time festival goer I felt it was my duty to help you have a more pleasant zen like experience and of course not hold back on the partying. That’s what we’re all here for really, right? So I’ve put together a list of the best festival tech to help you get through the weekend like a big ravey Bear Gryls.

1 – Smart Phone

Ok so it’s not rocket science but this basically helps you find your friends, see who’s playing when & where, record the whole experience for social media to let everyone know you have a much better life than them. And most importantly to take the phone number of the new love of your life who’s name you’ll forget the next morning. 

2 – Power Pack

So you’ve brought your smart phone but you’re gonna want to power up that bad boy! Don’t forget your power pack. Some of these are great and will fully charge the likes of an iPhone 6 but you get what you pay for so make sure to do a bit of research before buying. A good one will set you back about €15 and I find TK Max a great place to get one. This can also save you having to leave your phone in to charge. Just leave the power park in instead and you still have your phone to snapchat, what’s app and selfie your way to social media stardom. 

3 – Portable Speaker

Let’s face it, you’ll be at your tent a lot more than you planned to be. Especially if you’re with a group. There’s always one person who’s difficult to ‘motivate’. No tent party is complete without tunes and your phone speaker just won’t cut it! You can pick up some great mini speakers for under €50 and most are now Bluetooth. Make sure it’s fully charged and if you can get one that also takes batteries, then even better. Party On!

4 – Headlamp / Torch

Yes your phone most likely has a torch but it’s not going to be as good as a proper torch or headlamp and you’re gonna want to preserve your battery. You will also have to get up to use the loo in the middle of the night after all that delicious booze. It gets dark so anything that can help drunken sleepy you from demolishing your tent or someone else’s as you negotiate your way is a must. 

5 – Selfie Stick

If you don’t mind looking like a bit of a tool now and then accept no substitute! Love em or hate em you just can’t deny that the selfie stick is here to stay. Unless you’re a Jedi master it can be tricky trying to capture the perfect selfie moment without one and they are great for crowd shots as the stick will give you the extra elevation you need. Just don’t be that person who videos the whole performance on your phone while blocking everyone else’s view! You’re here to have fun and not make yet another YouTube video that nobody will watch!

So there it is. That’s all you need to get yourself through the weekend and make life a little easier for yourself. Unfortunately there’s no tech I know of that’ll help you get over the inevitable fear but that’s not gonna happen until you’re home so make the most of it and just go an have the time of your life. I know I will!

Content, SEO, PPC, Social Media & Analytics. What to do after you build your website.

 

SEO

“SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” It is the process of getting traffic from the “free,” “organic,” “editorial” or “natural” search results on search engines.

All major search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo have primary search results, where web pages and other content such as videos or local listings are shown and ranked based on what the search engine considers most relevant to users. Payment isn’t involved, as it is with paid search ads.”

(Search Engine Land, 2016)

(Search Engine Land, 2016)

In order to optimize the website for search engines you should take a number of steps to improve SEO.

Key Word / Key Phrase Research

(Google Adwords, 2016)

Keywords and key phrase research is important for the site’s Title tags and Meta Description Tags.

For this we have conducted some keyword research using Google AdWords’ keyword planner.

We must be careful here to avoid keyword stuffing. Google penalizes sites that overdo the keywords in the title and meta description tags so best practice is to stick to the recommended length for each.

Title Tags

 This is how a title tag looks in the HTML

(Kiss Metrics, 2016)

Each title tag should be between 60 and 80 characters. Google recommends 65.

To help with this we have used a title tag checker which is available online.

(ezlocal.com, 2016)

As can be seen from the image above our title tag for the Connect page is the perfect length of 65 characters for Google’s guidelines.

Any more or less than this and the page will not rank as well. 

Meta Description Tags

This is how the Meta Description Tag looks in HTML
.

(kissmetrics.com, 2016)

While the Meta Description tag does not necessarily help with SEO rankings it is very helpful to users when viewing the SERPs as it displays a description of what your site is about.

This is how the Meta Description Tag looks in the SERP.

(Moz.com, 2016)

Using a free online Meta Description tag checker, we were able to optimize our Home page Meta Description tag.

(Moz.com, 2016)

By keeping our Meta Description under 155 characters we can ensure that it doesn’t get shortened on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) and the viewer can see the full description.

Headers

Headers can help a search engine spider navigate your page and find content but according to Google’s latest advice they only give a slight boost to SEO.

Headers are a way to include keywords but should be used sparingly with only one H1 header per page and a limited amount of words per tag to avoid stuffing.

Other elements on the page should use H2 and H3 headers at least but it is possible to use anything up to H6.

Image Name & Alt Tags

Alt tags are important for SEO. Each image used on your website should be given an alt tag.

The keywords used for these alt tags are important and should provide a good description of the image and use good keywords.

Here is an example of the use of an alt tag from a website’s HTML. The alt tag has been highlighted in red.

<a><img class=”mainimage” src=”images/devices.jpg” width=”100%”

height=”400″ alt=”Media Devices”></a><br>

This will help search engines find images for their image search based on the keywords used.

Links

Internal links should link every page on the website to each other and the best way to do this is by having a link to each page in the navigation bar which is contained in each page header. Use this method to link each page internally.

External links are links from your site to another domain and also from another domain to your site. Each link should be checked to make sure it isn’t broken as this can lead to a lowering of your site’s SEO rank.

Include a number of external links to sites which help to rank well including Google+, WordPress, Google Maps and a number of other social media sites.

We can set up external links from most of these back to our website and this helps the ranking more than links from the site to these other domains.

Content

Content is probably the most important element for our SEO as it allows us to optimize our website without having to rely on external links from other domains and can actually lead to the website content being shared and the creation of external links from other sources.

It’s important for content to use relevant keywords and phrases and have an appropriate keyword and key phrase density.

Content should also be fresh and use trending topics in order to boost page rank.

So here are examples of some of the suggested phrases and words we will use in order to improve our content.

(google adwords, 2016)

It is important that the content is appealing and the use of keywords and phrases is not enough. Good quality content should engage the visitor and make them return to the site and share your content.

Social Media

While it’s still unclear as to how much Social Links affect SEO rankings it is still important to have them as for many visitors it might be a gateway to your website and lead to increased traffic, conversions, content sharing and external link building.

Google + is seen as one of the more important social media sites to link to and from.

Future Direction

It’s never a good idea to build a website and just sit back and relax. The best websites are constantly updated and this can have a number of benefits. In this section we have outlined under a number of headings the best strategy for how the website should be maintained and updated.

Layout

A fresh layout is important for a number of reasons. Firstly, the site should always look up to date and stay in touch with the latest UI design trends. Visitors to the site will be looking to see what kind of things are being done in media and for The Digital Dub the website is the best chance to make a great first impression.

Pages should be given a fresh new look on a regular basis. Once the site is optimized for mobile and tablet devices we should check how it looks on all platforms and devices regularly.

SEO & Content Review

It’s also important to constantly review SEO and Content on the website. For Digital Dub media our future plans include white hat link building from trusted and high ranking external sources, incorporating a blog page into the site, optimizing for mobile and tablet devices, optimize our URLs, Use HTTPS to ensure a safe connection for visitors, optimize our load speed for each page.

Our Blog is probably the most important aspect from a content perspective and if it’s fresh, relevant and interesting it should help drive traffic to the site and keep visitors engaged while improving the website ranking. It should also help with link building from other sources which also helps our SEO rank.

Website Promotion

Once the website goes live there are a number of ways we can promote it to drive awareness, traffic, engagement and return visits.

Obviously our SEO will be important for this as it can gain us good ranking in the organic search results.

There are however some more immediate and effective methods we can employ in order to get faster results.

We can promote the site on social media. The more channels we use and the more we engage our target market on social media the better change we have of them visiting our website. We need to share relevant content that will engage and give potential clients a sense of what we are about.

We can use an email marketing campaign to promote the website. Email marketing is still a relevant and highly effective way of promoting any business or product.

PPC, Display & Paid Social

Paid media is a very fast and efficient way of promoting any business or brand. You can experiment with each of these in future as a way to promote the website.

Here are some examples of the different types of paid media ads we can use.

(Paid Social Ad) (Facebook.com, 2016)

 

(PPC Ads) (google.ie, 2016)

(Display Ads) (Joe.ie, 2016)

Analytics

For your website’s future plans Analytics are one of the most important factors to ensure the success of the website and we need to measure what needs to be added or changed and implement changes based on the findings.

Google Analytics is a great free tool that we can use to gain some great valuable insights.

We plan to set up a free account as soon as the website goes live.

(Adventure Travel News, 2012)

Each account has three levels known as a properties and for our account The Digital Dub Media website will be our first “Property”

Our other properties will be The Digital Dub Blog page and the Mobile Version of the website.

We must ensure to include the GA tracking code into our HTML for each property we want to measure.

The most important things we plan to measure are as follows:

1. Site Traffic

Here we plan to measure both total visits and unique visits. Each metric will give us an insight into a variety of factors.

When measuring total visits, it can give us a chance to see if our promotion of the site is working.

If we run a certain campaign or create and promote a new blog post and we see a spike in traffic after this, it tells us that our efforts to drive traffic are working.

When we look at unique visits it can tell us if the same people are returning to the site numerous times. This should tell us if our content is good enough so that people want to visit the site numerous times as they find our content engaging.

2. Referrals

We plan to measure referrals in order to see where traffic to our website is coming from. This is a great way to gauge how successful each method of site promotion has been for us.

It will show us if traffic came from Organic search, Social Media, PPC, Display Ads, Paid Social, Mobile or Tablet devices, Blogs or from external links on other websites.

We will then decide if a certain method is working or if we need to step it up or drop it altogether.

We can also use this tool to help build relationships with other sources who are linking to our website and form an ongoing bond by returning the favor.

3. Bounce Rate & Exit Rate

Bounce rate is measured by the amount of visitors who leave before exploring the site. This should give us an idea of how well our home page or landing page is performing. If the bounce rate is high, we will need to improve things in order to engage visitors and give them a better UX.

Exit rate is measured by the amount of visitors exit at a certain point or page. If we find it is high at a certain point or page, we will need to work on that specific part of the website.

4. Conversions

(Louis, 2016)

Our conversions will include sign up to our newsletter. Filling out the contact form, reading or visiting our blog, clicking on any of the links we have provided, visiting our social media pages from the site and use of internal links to navigate the site.

Measuring this will also tell us if we are engaging visitors and if we need to improve or amend any of our site’s CTAs.

Conclusion

Managing your website can be the difference between making it a success or fading away. I hope this guide helps you to get started on the road to the number 1 spot. The rules of content marketing, SEO, PPC and Analytics change all the time. It’s important to study each in more detail on a regular basis.

 

How to optimize your Soundcloud Profile.

This week on The Digital Dub we have a guest blog post from a very good personal friend.

Monopohl is aimed at helping artists in the music industry with Digital Marketing & Social Media and they have some great advice for Soundcloud users.

You can check out the website here:

http://www.monopohl-music.com/home-social-media-services-for-musicians-in-dublin

And their blog here:

http://www.monopohl-music.com/music-marketing-blog-for-start-up-artist-in-dublin

SoundCloud 101

How to optimize your Soundcloud Profile for independent artist in Dublin!

Today’s blogpost is about how to optimize your SoundCloud Profile for independent artist in Dublin.

In order to maximise your reach and get discovered quicker. SoundCloud is a platform that is  focused on allowing users to discover new music, bands in trend and content of people you are connected to. The app is focused on creating a community  and provides a brilliant platform for new acts to get discovered and for music lovers to discover new acts. SoundCloud allows you to share your uploaded tracks with your followers or send to a direct email address. You can embed Dropbox in SoundCloud and receive music from other apps, which makes it easy to move music across different platforms.

And hold your horses….. there is no limit to file-sizes!

You have full control over what is published and you get great insights too. It provides you with stats that show you who has accessed, played, downloaded or commented on your track, as well as the location of your followers. It allows you to engage directly with your fans through comments to promote your work. Another great feature is that you can customize your player to fit the design of your website for example.

So if you haven’t created your SoundCloud Page as an artist yet, maybe you should do it today!

Follow Monopohl on SoundCloud !!

SoundCloud plays are increasing year on year and achieved close to 5 billion plays on the service in May 2015. SoundCloud provides a valuable niche service where it is still optimised for content such as mix tapes & Dj Sets. Numerous known Dj’s or Radio artists use it on a daily basis to publish playlists for their listeners through social media.

Here is a link on how to set up a SoundCloud Page as an artist or as they call it “creator”:

https://on.soundcloud.com/creator-guide/profile

What to look out for when you create and manage your SoundCloud Page:

1. Create a great description with a call to action

• Don’t oversell yourself
• Include your genre or what users can expect from your music
• Include contact information or your booking agency

2. Profile Photo

• Professional & compelling pics that represent you and that attract your audience
• People like to see who is behind the music so it’s nice to show a face from time to time

3. Social Media & Weblinks

• Link back to your social network profiles and also include the links in your Song & Playlist description

4. Titles

• Always include your band name in the title with the name of your song (“Artist name- Song Title”) because when someone adds you to a playlist your band name doesn’t appear in the playlist widget if you have the song title alone
• Always mention guest artists if you collaborated with one

5. Tags – Tag your tracks with as many search options as possible, including

• Moods
• Band location
• Band name
• Genre
• Theme
• Producer
• Studio

– if you tag more than one word, place quotes around the name so it appears in one tag rather than being separated and losing its validity – for example Eagles of Death Metal -> “Eagles of Death Metal” – if you don’t use quotes, then each word would be separated as “Eagles” “of” “death” “Metal”.

6. Single or album art

– If you are releasing a single – have a art cover to make you and your song more memorable – You can check freelancing art designers on
Society6. One of our members has already uploaded some amazing poster designs  – have a look !!!

Alex Pohl Designs

7. Stream or Download

It’s always about give and get – if you give your audience a goodie for free you will probably get greater fan loyalty and a bigger fan base in return. – no need to do it with all of your songs – but choose a single or a song and offer it as a free download for your fans.

8. Song or album playlist description

Description of your sound, contact links to website + Social networks, Links where your fans can buy your music e.g. iTunes, Google or Amazon People go to your
SoundCloud profile to listen to your music.  When they land on your page, they’ll either listen to the first track on top of your feed, or to the one with the most plays and comments. Make sure you are on top of those tracks and have everything we mentioned above included. We hope this helps! If you have questions or feedback you can contact us directly! 

 

Topics: album art, Digital Marketing for Music, free music streaming, Marketing Blogger, Marketing Tools, music marketing, music playlist, Music Promotion, music streaming, search engine marketing,search engine optimization, Soundcloud Profiles, Viral Marketing, Website Optimization

Written by Monopohl1

So if you like what you see here don’t forget to check out Monopohl.

You can check out the website here:

http://www.monopohl-music.com/home-social-media-services-for-musicians-in-dublin

And their blog here:

http://www.monopohl-music.com/music-marketing-blog-for-start-up-artist-in-dublin

5 Technologies Sending Us Plummeting Towards A Dystopian VR World.

Are we plummeting towards a dystopian virtual reality? When did the technological age begin? What can we really say was the first piece of technology in history? 

It is perhaps an argument that has been debated upon before even modern languages or the word technology existed. Did the first human to use a rock for whatever purpose it might have been invent the first piece of technology? Did prehistoric creatures use rocks or sticks to built nests and can we consider that if they did then technology has existed long before humans ever appeared on earth.

Others might argue that technology did not exist until humans crafted tools using other tools. Was the wheel the first real piece of technology? Was it the steam engine? Or do we have to wait until we had harnessed the power of electricity?

For me this is when technology began.

A 2000 year old artefact discovered in Sumerian ruins and known as the Baghdad Battery is thought by some to be the first device to use electricity. The device is thought to have been used for electroplating and resembles many more modern and similar devices. Others argue that it was merely used to store scrolls and also resembles other items from the time which serve this purpose.

The first modern device to use electricity was the relay which was invented by Joseph Henry in 1835. It was later used for the telegraph by Morse who’s code enabled the device to be used for communication. The smartphone of its time. Although it was unable to send cat memes it was an amazing achievement and the telegraph network allowed communication almost instantaneously between vast distances.

Whatever your thoughts or definition of technology not many will argue that we are now in the midst of a technological revolution thanks largely in part to the telegraph of today, The Internet. The Internet has heralded not only a new era of communication and innovation but has given us the ability to share ideas and discoveries almost instantaneously from the moment they happen right into the palm of our hands via our smartphones. We can learn and research in seconds, hours or days what previously might have taken years thanks to higher than ever compute power and big data. Yet for many of us it’s more important that someone likes our Instagram photo. In fact as I write this I’m thinking forward and wondering will anyone actually read it or like it when I share it on my blog and post it to social media. I’m sure even the greatest minds in history wondered the same when they introduced their theories and inventions to the world.

The rate at which we are producing technology and pushing the boundaries of what we can achieve seems to be relentless. I read most of the bigger tech blogs like Tech Crunch and articles from the likes of Guardian Tech, Mashable and other major publications on a daily basis yet it’s impossible to be a complete authority on technology as it’s such a vast topic. However there are signs of a future where technology might completely take over our lives and leave us living in a strange dystopian world the likes of which we have only previously imagined in movies like Terminator, The Matrix, Total Recall or Wall-E. 

The way in which science fiction becomes science fact has become a familiar occurrence. Don’t get me wrong I’m a massive tech fan and I love the way people like Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos and many others are making it possible to have electric self driving cars, solar powered homes, smart phones and cloud technology to name but a few of the amazing things we have developed over the past decade or so. I also love the Internet, social media, games consoles, Netflix and Spotify. But more and more they are all being connected. We use our Facebook profiles to log in to everything. We can share everything on social media at a single click and not just to a single account. We share to multiple accounts at the same time using connected apps on our smartphones and then we can see who read it, their age and where they live. We have become obsessed with data and then when that wasn’t enough, along came big data. We’re obsessed with what we do with this big data and how it can be used to influence us into buying a certain can of peas instead of a rival brand’s can of peas.

So all of that is fine in my opinion but what next for human evolution and the technology we create. Have we come to a point where we are no longer evolving because we can now just use machines and computers to do all the hard work both mentally and physically? What happens when it’s not just our smartphones and social media that are connected to each other but more and more of our every day lives become connected to technology in some way.

Let’s look at some of the things we see now that may cause this shift in the not so distant future.

1 – Virtual Reality

Ok so VR has been around a long time but when we saw it first emerge it was expensive and scary to some. Now we see it being developed by companies such as the Facebook owned Oculus and Sony for their new PlayStation VR. What once was a distant dream has become a reality and the thought of entering the gaming world and being fully immersed in it is a really exciting prospect. 

And it’s not just headsets but gloves where touch sensors give us the sensation of physically interacting with the virtual world and whole physical environments where the player roams around a warehouse which has been set up with crude basic walls or barriers that are transformed into jungles or distant planets. We can battle aliens, enemy soldiers and chase them in for through these specially adapted spaces. Or we can choose to do the same from the comfort of our own home without having to break a sweat. We can even go online, check our email, shop, update our social media using our eyes or fingers to navigate around the new cyber web.

Sporting events could benefit greatly from VR as fans can be given a virtual seat in an already sold out stadium. They can Interact with the crowd who may be physically at the game of watching from their apartment in Japan or Australia. These virtual tickets could be sold by the likes of Real Madrid, The L.A. Lakers,or by networks like Sky Sports.

2 – The Internet Of Things

So we have our smartphones connected to social media, we can use them to stream music, send emails etc. But now they can become much more as IOT technology will allow us to control almost everything we own. We already have apps to set up our TV boxes to record a certain show or play a YouTube video over wifi but we have only begun to scratch the surface of what we can connect and do. Smart fridges can do our shopping for us when we run out of certain items. We can operate the lights and heating in our homes from anywhere as long as we have Internet access. We can summon our car from the garage and have it park itself outside the front door and our house alarm can send us live video to our smartphones and alert us in case of a burglary.

3 – Autonomous Vehicles

We have all seen the Google self driving cars and the Tesla autopilot function in action and more and more our cars are connected to the Internet and have become masterpieces of technology. We have also seen some downsides however with cars being hacked and some very isolated incidents of crashes involving self driving cars. The first autonomous vehicle I had the pleasure to work with was in a distribution centre in Dublin all the way back in the year 2000. It was a simple pallet truck which was used to transport one pallet at a time from the end of the manufacturing line to the warehouse. A simple yet highly effective machine which worked 24/7 except when it needed to recharge which it also took it upon itself to do at every opportunity available.

But this machine for me gave a glimpse of things to come. Recently a number of truck manufacturers including DAF Trucks, Daimler, IVECO, MAN, Scania, and Volvo drove a fleet of autonomous trucks in convoy across Europe. The vehicles were not only driven autonomously but in sync with each other which is known as platooning. This is to reduce drag and save fuel. The experiment was a success and the trucks all arrived safely at their destination.

Private Self driving cars are fine but when we start to see taxi, truck and bus drivers being replaced should we be worried? My father was a truck driver and has since retired but what should have happened to our family if he’d not been able to make a career and successful business out of it? Let’s not also forget Amazon and their use of drones to deliver packages. What next? Pizza delivery drones? Why stop there?

Deliveroo drones.

4 – Artificial Intelligence

I’m just going to jump right in here. How long will we wait before we see a song written by a machine at number one in the charts? Gotta be better than the Eurovision at least right? Companies such Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, IBM and entrepreneurs like Elon Musk are all heralding AI as the next big thing and all are investing heavily.

Musk has invested in Open AI which the tech genius says will help us all avoiding a fate like that of the Terminator movies and the development of the likes of Skynet which could wipe us all out if it gets too big for its boots.

5 – Biotechnology & Implants

We’ve all heard of 3D printing but the next step in our existence may be a bit more complex than printing a hand tool which was emailed to us. This actually happened on The ISS. When International Space Station Commander Barry Wilmore needed a wrench, NASA “e-mailed” him one. And their 3-D printer built it.

But now we live in a world where amputees can be given bionic limbs that not only function but are controlled by implants in the wearers brain and can actually enable them to feel objects. If we look further to the future we will have the ability to print body parts using cells taken from our bodies and transformed into veins, arteries and eventuality hearts, lungs and who knows what else?

Nanotechnology will also play a major factor in this biotech revolution and implants may become common for whoever wants one. This can give us the ability to control our environment using just our thoughts. Possibly even communicate with each other without the need for smartphones.

If it all seems a bit overwhelming then perhaps it is? Should we fear the future? In my opinion yes we should and we should fear it more than we seem to and make the changes now that will prevent the human race breaking into two separate species. One which struggles for food, jobs, water, money, homes on a scale the likes of which we haven’t seen before. Unfortunately this species of human will be in the majority. 

So what of the others?

The other species of human will be the elite wealthy and will not even be aware of the other species. They will live in a cyber world constantly wearing VR glasses or implants which will have become much more ergonomic and even tailored to the individual. So much so that they will be virtually invisible and connected to touch sensors or even brain implants that give the sensation of touch without the need for any type of physical stimulus to any other part of our body. They will be constantly connected to social media, instant messaging and able to communicate through thought with someone on the other side of the planet. Or maybe even with someone on Mars.

They will have a virtual version of themselves in cyberspace that’s used for their profiles and able to tailor this avatar in online cyber shops that sell the latest fashions all of which are versions of today’s high street designer brands who have also moved into cyberspace.

The commute to the office may not be necessary but journeys will be made in autonomous luxury cars with the occupants still immersed in their cyber world and unaware of the large autonomous trucks that follow closely and in synchronisation with every other vehicle on the road.

The family home will be solar powered with every device connected to the web, the family’s home VR private network and possibly their implants. Robot butlers will deliver a cold beer from the fridge because you thought about it and executed the command. The fridge will order more beer online when it sees that that there are just a few left and you like to have at least 4 at all times. It will do this for all groceries following a pre determined set of instructions or responding to certain on the spot demands. A drone will immediately be dispatched with the required items which will automatically be paid for and put into their proper place once delivered.

Entertainment will be almost limitless with interactive movies and virtual bands playing live in the home. Recreations of classic live performances by artists living or long dead can make it seem like we’re centre stage at a classic venue or that the band are in our living room.

Stadiums will be packed not with athletes but instead with gamers or drone pilots locked in battle as crowds cheer on their heroes. Other viewers will immerse themselves in the action while wearing their VR headsets at home and viewing the action live as they take their virtual seat in a sold out stadium.

Those who can afford these luxuries may also have the luxury of living longer thanks to advanced biotechnology and the ageing process might well be slowed down allowing better sight, hearing, physical ability and general health. Not that they will use these as much as we do now.

But now comes the really scary part. None of this might matter if AI has used all of the big data we are now collecting and become more intelligent than we could’ve previously imagined. Learned how to learn more and more efficiently and give itself capabilities we were too primitive to even contemplate. Could our technology be used against us? Self driving cars, smart machines, the Internet, cyberspace all turned against us without us even knowing as AI plays its stealth moves to defeat us while all the time pretending to be our friend. A move that would see less resistance as an expert hand that was played until we serve no further purpose. A Terminator or Matrix scenario.

Truly intelligent AI would surely be capable of the latter. A switch from our own VR world to one created by our new rulers or ruler. Would the elite even blink as the switch was made in the middle of their 4th straight hour of virtual golf. 

Could those with implants have their brains hacked? Could VR be used to hypnotise and turn us against each other? Has the almighty returned to finally judge us? 

Have we finally created a true God?

7 Killer Tools To Growth Hack Your Startup’s Social Media Presence

For many startups having a strong social media presence might be a priority in the beginning. You might think that managing your social media presence and channels is one of the easier tasks when it comes to growth hacking your startup. The odd Facebook post here and a tweet now and then should be enough right?

Wrong!

Most startups operate on a very tight budget so even finding the time to post on social media can become a struggle. Most startups will make the mistake of just using social media to sell or post news of their latest offers etc. This can be quite boring for social media users.

Social media is all about engagement. If it’s done right it can level the playing field between startups and established businesses who operate on a much larger budget. Social media should be treated as your first line of attack as it will quite often be the way potential customers first learn of your business. It’s your chance to let them know who you are, what you do and also to make a great and lasting first impression.

Finding the right content or even creating your own can take time but it’s important that you do this. For startups it’s a chance to gain followers and engagement because for unknown brands or businesses this is the biggest social media challenge.

“If you build it they will come” but only if they like what you build! In a sea of quality content it’s hard to stand out and find time to escape from more urgent business matters. Time is a huge factor in social media engagement and not just finding time but also finding the right time! When you post on social media makes a big difference and different channels have different ‘Best Times’ to post. Many of these tools can help you post at the best time but also schedule your posts so that you don’t even have to be online at the time. Here’s a list of my favourite tools to help you manage your social media presence. I use my iPhone to manage while on the go usually so I should mention that these are all available as iOS apps, android apps and also as desktop versions.

1- Hootsuite

Hootsuite is my go to app for managing my social media channels. It’s free to use for up three channels. You can create an account and I find it best for posting to Facebook, Facebook pages, Twitter and LinkedIn. You can curate your content in the app and post right away or schedule it for the optimal time. You can choose to post to multiple channels at the same time or vary your posting time between channels. You can also share an article direct from safari or many other news feeds like feedly or flipboard. Use the provided headline, change to your own, add some hashtags and away you go.

https://hootsuite.com

2- Buffer

Buffer is quite similar to Hootsuite however it has an advantage as it allows you to post to a LinkedIn or Google+ company profile. You can schedule and add up to four channels for free and post right away, at a suggested time or pick your own customised time. You can post to your startup’s Facebook page, Twitter account, Google+ company page and LinkedIn company page. I find this particularly useful as the LinkedIn mobile app does not allow you to post to a business page which I find really annoying.

https://buffer.com

3- Crowdfire

Crowdfire is a useful tool for Twitter and Instagram. It’s best features come into action when you start to gain followers. You can sent an automatic private message to each new follower and this can be used to share links to other social media channels of to your website. This practice might not appeal to many as it’s quite impersonal but it’s not Crowdfire’s only useful feature. You can also see who doesn’t follow you back or who has unfollowed you and this can be useful when you need to trim down your account, especially on Twitter.

https://www.crowdfireapp.com

4- Feedly

Feedly is a great tool for sourcing great content. You can set up your account and customise your news feed so that only your chosen blogs, websites and news channels show up. You can categorise your news feed into different feeds and browse each feed separately or all at once. Each day your feed will refresh itself with all the latest relevant stories and these can be shared directly from the app using individual social media links or to multiple channels using the likes of Hootsuite or Buffer.

https://feedly.com/i/welcome

5- IFTTT

IFTTT stands for ‘If This, Then That’. It works by allowing you to set up relationships called ‘recipies’ between your social media accounts and other accounts like google drive, feedly and many more. You could set up a relationship between Instagram and Tumblr so that any image you post on Instagram will also post to Tumblr. It’s an excellent tool that can save you a lot of time and the amount of channels you can use and recipies you can set up are seemingly endless.

https://ifttt.com

6- Twitshot

Twitshot is an excellent tool for Twitter. It allows you to post an article and headline but will also provide an image from that article. You can crop the image so that it appears as the optimal size in your Twitter feed. You can also search for another article related to the tweet and use that instead. You can choose to post right away or to schedule your tweet.

http://www.twitshot.com

7- Repost

Repost is a great tool for Instagram. It’s a very simple yet effective tool of sharing photos on Instagram without creating your own content. It’s pretty much an instagram version of a retweet. You find a photo you like that’s related to the message you want to send to your Instagram followers and just repost it. The app will give credit to the original poster and also allow you to copy and paste the original image caption including any hashtags used.

http://repostapp.com

Using these tools will help you find time to engage in other important aspects of your startup’s rise to the top. They will also help you gain followers, tell your story, find like mined people, engage your audience and monitor success. I hope you find them as useful as I have and that they give you time to grow your business and social media presence.

I’m happy to help with any questions and I hope you enjoyed reading this post.

How to Growth Hack your startup’s Facebook page. (A Guide For Beginners)

Well 2016 is off to a flying start and I’ve just 4 months until I hopefully successfully complete my degree. The Digital Dub is pretty much a part of this and I’ve started this blog as part of my digital media tools module. Blogging is a new experience for me and I’m enjoying the challenge so far. I’m hoping to update my blog more often this year and I’m also going to try to keep the subject matters and content relevant and up to date.

Social media for me is somewhat less of a challenge. I’ve always enjoyed the social aspect of it ever since I first opened a Facebook account many moons ago. In September of 2015 I started running the social media accounts for a jobs website startup called EmployMe.ie . It was a great chance to gain some valuable experience as a social media marketer.

  

I started out with a Facebook page and attempted to gain followers through friends, family and friends of friends by sharing our first status on my personal page and asking others to share it on as well. I also invited everyone who I had as a friend on my personal page. This went well and we were able to gain around 500 followers almost instantly. Gaining more followers after this was a more difficult process so we had to come up with another plan. One obvious way was to pay Facebook to promote the page and also to boost some posts.

We decided to run a competition for an Apple Watch or iPod touch. The winner could choose their prize. We asked our followers to like, share, tag some friends and we  tagged them all in the post announcing the competition. This gave us some great engagement from our followers and their friends but we also decided to boost the competition post and targeted everyone living in Ireland of working age who we felt were an obvious target segment for a jobs website.

By the end of the competition we had almost doubled our followers and we’re just shy of the 1000 mark. This also gave us some good exposure and engagement as well as ensuring that our other posts had a greater reach.

As the social media content manager it was my job to source material. I felt the content should be relevant to the page but should also be current and interesting. Now in fairness recruitment, HR and other related topics are not the most interesting in the world so I thought I’d have my work cut out while trying to source content.  At first it was a bit tricky as I was new to the recruitment / jobseekers world but once I got to know some of the more popular and interesting websites and blogs things got a bit easier. I also tried to post the odd witty post just to keep things a bit more lighthearted. This method seems to work quite well for most successful businesses on social media or in more traditional advertising so I thought it could work for us too.

Another method I tried for gaining followers on Facebook was to join some of the many job related groups from Ireland. This also proved successful for gaining followers and engagement and the added bonus here is that you can promote your business page to non followers without the need for paid social ads.

One annoying feature of Facebook is that when you try to share a post with a link it will only share the link in the post and not the original post with a link to the EmployMe.ie business page. One way around this is to post a photo related to the article or comment you want to make and share. Once there is a photo in the post the whole post is shared as it is when someone decides to share it. You can also share the post as a link bug I find this ineffective and not very visualty appealing.

By using these methods I was able to grow the page to over 2000 followers with the 2nd thousand all coming organically without the use of paid ads.

For my latest post I’ve tried both methods simultaneously to see what would happen. I’ve targeted the usual groups organically and also targeted those of working age in Ireland.

As you can see from the screen shot taken  after two days the organic reach is 1002 and the paid reach is only a around a third of this at 356.

Facebook do make it much more difficult to get post engagement these days with their limiting of the reach to page followers but by using the methods I’ve outlined above you can beat this quite successfully without spending a penny.

When we examine the same post on its last day almost a week later there are some strange results.

 As we can see the paid reach has increased significantly as expected but what’s strange is that the figures given for the organic reach have decreased by 21. This would cause me to question the accuracy of Facebook’s analytics. 

The organic reach will usually be high at the start if you’re posting to groups as explained but this still limits your audience to group members so it’s beneficial to post to as many groups as you can. My advice however is not to do this too often as it may become annoying to group members and might result in you being removed from the group. It’s also advisable to post only to groups related to your profession or what you’re trying to sell. Don’t just go for random groups with the highest number of group members. 

The advantage of the paid ads is that they allow you to target your audience in a number of different ways and will gain impressions for their duration unlike posting to groups which usually just gains most impressions at the time the post is made. The ad above was targeted at people living in Ireland and of working age. I also used a number of key words which I’ve posted below: 

 

There’s also a range of data analytics available to review your ad and see where and when it performs well or not so well. Below I’ve posted some screen shots of these analytics.

Audience by age:

  Total Reach & Costs:

Audience by geographic location: 

  
Audience by gender:  
 

As you can see there’s some useful information there to help you choose your strategy for your next paid ads or even who to target organically using the methods outlined. 

Once you get your page up and running you will start to get likes, shares and comments. You need to be patient as it can take time but they will come. This will depend on the quality of your content and some posts will be more popular than others. It’s also important to remember to post at the right times. I find Buffer and Hootsuite excellent tools for scheduling your posts and they can be used to post automatically at specified times while you take care of other important business matters. Just remember to check your page whenever you can as it’s important to engage with your followers once the comments start to appear. It can also be benifical to post based on breaking events outside of your scheduled post times.

Another great way to growth hack your Facebook page is to post links to it online from other social media sites like Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and Google +. More about this and these other social media platforms in my next blog. Anyway thanks as always for reading my blog. I hope you find these techniques helpful and I’m happy to help anyone with any questions they might have regarding this topic or any other social media related issues.