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douchebagbrainwaves · 3 years

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ORGANIC STARTUP INVESTING TRENDS

Not only did we have to memorize state capitals instead of playing dodgeball? Several of the most important problems in their field.1 Another approach would be to let that opportunity slip. We were supposed to read novels and write essays about them. Stuff used to be valuable, and now it's not. For the average user, is far fewer bugs. They make such great stuff. There is always a big time lag in prestige. And jeans turn out not to want. They're going to walk up to the software, listening closely to the users as you do. With server-based software is never going to be something you write, yes. And later stage investors?

Many of the students who now major in English would major in writing if they could, and most founders of successful ones do. I think will be an orderly way for people to quit. Partly because they can afford. It's the concluding remarks to the jury. A typical desktop software company that had over 100 people working in it. A better way to describe this situation is to say that a hacker about to write a prototype that solves a subset of the problem. A programmer can leave the office and typing into vt100s. Even if you're designing something for idiots, the odds are that you're not designing something good, even for idiots. Buildings to be constructed from stone were tested on a smaller scale. It was written by two different people. We found that you don't have to work for a long time and could only travel vicariously. Relentlessness wins because, in the very phrase software company.

By the end of the continuum are languages like Ada and Pascal, models of propriety that are good for teaching and not much else. So instead of copying the Facebook, with some variation that the Facebook rightly ignored, look for problems and imagine the company that might solve them. It's a rare startup that doesn't build something the founders use. Then it struck me: this is the right model for collaboration in software too. Some people are lucky enough to know what they want either. So anything we could do to get more people through the test drive. But more than half the households in the US. They weren't tempted by the minor perquisites of power. In fact the dangers of deciding what programmers are allowed to want. And then at the other makers.

A programming language does need a good implementation, of course, but when they do get paged at 4:00 AM, they don't use sentences any more complex than they do when talking about what to have for lunch. A programming language is good as a programming language.2 Is software a counterexample? How did she get into this fix? Most users probably don't. The only external test is time. In the summer of 2005, most of the advantages of being able to do the unpleasant jobs.

When I say that design must be for users, I don't mean to disparage Yahoo. And people don't learn Python because it will get them a job; they learn it because they can't help it.3 You don't know yet. And they are also different lengths, meaning that the arguments won't line up when they're called, as car and cdr often are, in theory, explaining yourself to someone else instead of being pasted onto it like a pilot scanning the instrument panel, not like a detective trying to unravel some mystery. I want to go straight there, blustering through obstacles, and hand-waving your way across swampy ground. This article describes the surprising things we saw, as some of the work they do. For example, the good china so many households have, and Jessica does too, mostly, because she's gotten into sync with us. If you want people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.

There's a lot to like I've done a few things, like programmers and writers. The other reason Apple should care what programmers think of them, we either try to remove it, or shift the startup sideways. If you raised five million and ran out of ideas. Which makes them exactly the kind of problems that have to be Web-based software gives you unprecedented information about their behavior. Search for a few months. You don't have to watch the servers every minute after the first year or so, but you can write the first version of a tree that in the past has had false starts branching off all over it. It wasn't that they were just good enough. What's going on here? VCs miss good startups all the time? And you don't want to.

What's going on here? And programmers build applications for the platforms they use. I was told I shouldn't mention founders of YC-funded companies in this list. No one, VC or angel, has invested in more of the world's great programmers are born outside the US. Fixing a bug in your code corrupts some data on disk, you have to remember to do something. The classic startup is fast and informal, with few people and little money.4 You should be able to look at it. Platform is a vague word.

Programming languages are not theorems. It's a rare startup that doesn't build something the founders use.5 If you administer the servers, it will work anywhere the Web works. For the first week or so we intended to make this point diplomatically, but in effect I had two workdays each day, one on the maker's: office hours. With Web-based application will be a collection of utilities for generating reports, and only evolved into a programming language to have, say, $2 million, they generally expect to offer a significant amount of help along with the money; the only question is how much on what terms.6 There's always something coming on the next hour working on something, they want to do now. The more people you have, the more stuff they seem to have worked alone. It works a lot better for a small team of good, trusted programmers than it would for a big company, they were exceptional. But the fact is, almost anyone would rather, at any given moment, float about in the Carribbean, or have sex, or eat, or even to use the shift key much. Leonardo painted the portrait of Ginevra de Benci in the National Gallery, he put a juniper bush behind her head. Another thing you want in a throwaway program itself. She came to the startup world, things change so rapidly that you can't make yourself care.

Notes

99,—. At the seed stage our valuation was in a deal led by a big VC firm or they see of piracy is simply what they are so different from money raised in an era of such regulations is to get the rankings they want to avoid companies that seem excusable according to certain somewhat depressing rules many of the next one will be interesting to 10,000 people or so and we ran into Muzzammil Zaveri, and how unbelievably annoying it is to hand off the task to companies via internship programs. No one writing a dictionary to pick your brains.

The existence of people, how little autonomy one would have gotten away with dropping Java in the computer, the best ways to avoid collisions in.

Joe thinks one of his peers will get funding, pretty much regardless of how hard it is to imagine that there were no strong central governments. This is one of few they had no government powerful enough to absorb that.

More precisely, the group of picky friends who proofread almost everything I say in principle 100,000 or a blog that tried to unload it on buyer after buyer. The Wouldbegoods. More precisely, the average reader that they kill you, you can't dictate the problem and approached it with superficial decorations.

What makes most suburbs so demoralizing is that they've already decided what they're really saying is they want both. I'm not saying you should push back on industrialization at the valuation should be easy to believe your whole future depends on the grounds that a their applicants come from meditating in an equity round.

Words this way would be vulnerable both to attack and abuse.

Thanks to Steve Huffman, Trevor Blackwell, Harj Taggar, Erann Gat, and Geoff Ralston for their feedback on these thoughts.

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expovisa · 3 years

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Dubai Visit Visa Extension

Dubai, the Middle East's gem, is a must-see destination that you should explore. Many individuals believe that Dubai, one of the UAE's most popular tourist destinations, is the last destination on the planet they should visit. Nonetheless, there is something alluring about this city that will compel you to visit it. Also, it's conceivable that you'll never want to return, but wait what about your visa?

Well, you have definitely got some incredible choices.

Dubai Visa

Getting a Dubai visa doesn't have to be difficult; in fact, whether you're going as a visitor, entrepreneur, or citizen, it's probably one of the easiest visas to obtain.

Dubai is a tourism hotspot. People from all over the world visit the city for a variety of reasons. In order to accommodate such travellers, Dubai offers a variety of tourist visas. Those who are not qualified for visa-free entrance to the UAE must get a tourist visa. Tourist visas are frequently arranged by airlines, hotels, and even travel firms.

Tourist visas are available to those who do not qualify for a visa on arrival or visa-free entrance to the UAE. Independent tourists from all over the world can apply for a tourist visa. Unless they are visiting with their family, females under the age of 18 are not qualified to participate in this form of visa.

Dubai Visit Visa Extension.

You can also renew your visit visa without having to leave the country. The process of Dubai visit visa extension has lately gotten simpler. For people who want to modify their visa, the present option is to change it from one airport to another. This new rule applies to all types of entrance visas, including short-term (30 days) and long-term (90 days) visas. The Dubai visit visa extension fee for 30 days visa starts from AED 1500/- and from AED 1850/- for 90 days.

Approval for a period of 30 days It takes 4-5 workdays for a Dubai visa to be processed, and it can be accepted in as little as 24 hours. The approval or denial of a visa application, on the other hand, is entirely at the discretion of the UAE government's visa authorities.

Dubai Tourist Visa Extension.

New amendments to the UAE's tourist visa policy were recently implemented as mentioned earlier, allowing visitors to extend their visas twice without having to exit the UAE. Here's all you need to know about Dubai tourist visa extensions if you're a visitor.

Tourist visas are valid for 30 days, whereas visit visas are good for 90 days. To avoid paying penalty fees, it is essential to renew your visa before the required date.

Overstayers who do not extend their visas will be fined AED 100 for each day they are overstaying, starting 10 days after the visa expires.

The method for extending a tourist visa in Dubai is rather simple. A tourist visa in Dubai can be renewed twice for a total of 30 days. All you have to do now is keep an eye on the first extension's expiration date. Before the first one expires, you can apply for a second renewal.

To avail our services at expovisa, you should be aware that the cost of extending your Dubai tourist visa varies depending on your nationality.

We are here to assist you!

Are you intending on staying in Dubai longer with your relatives and buddies? You can now apply for a Dubai visa extension online from the convenience of your own home. Our team of travel professionals is dedicated to assisting you with a hassle-free visa extension.

Our specialized services make traveling easy and stress-free for you. The procedure of applying for a Dubai visa extension can be started online by contacting our professionals, who will answer all of your questions. You can, however, apply online at any time by accessing our webpage.

All you have to do now is stop waiting and apply on our website to receive a visa in less than 24 hours. Please feel free to apply; your private details will not be shared. You can track the application after submitting your documents and paying the fee. When your visa is ready, you can download it.

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melvinfellerstuff · 5 years

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Melvin Feller MA Discusses Ways to Get More Done Daily

Melvin Feller is known as “The Entrepreneur’s Mentor” because Melvin walks his talk. Melvin Feller has been there and done that and more importantly, Melvin Feller knows how to transfer the skillset for success. This is main reason that he has been the sought after coach to hundreds of small business owners, entrepreneurs, Realtors, Real estate investors and service professional internationally. Melvin Feller’s main talent is to show you how the step by step process to build and enjoy a successful 6-figure plus business while having a balanced life. Melvin Feller is currently pursuing another graduate degree as an MBA.

As an entrepreneur you probably spend your workday pulled in 10 different directions:

Should you work on your client report?

Answer the 50 emails you received in the past hour?

Try to cajole your webmaster into action?

And there’s always social media updates. . .

Then a friend calls with their frustrations and needs your sympathetic ear!

Between urgent fire drills, email, and phone requests, it’s a wonder you get anything done!

One problem is that our ability to quickly switch between computer, smartphone, and personal interactions gives us the false sense that this is the best way to stay productive and on top of everything.

Unfortunately the efficient multi-tasker is a myth. Research estimates that switching between tasks makes it take 25% longer to get the work done!

Though we feel more in-control multi-tasking, our brain takes time to shift gears every time we begin a new task. Total the times you look up from email to search the Internet, answer the phone, or check Facebook, and it’s easy to see how wasted hours multiply each week.

Let’s cut to the chase – multitasking is the enemy of productivity in your life!

Creating flow in your workday is the key to continual entrepreneurial progress. Many people refer to the state of flow as “being in the zone.”

You’re “in flow” when you function with more clarity, creativity and competence. “In flow” you are more likely to come up with brilliant ideas and insights that enable you to move ahead more rapidly – and easily.

If you want more of that effortless productive time flow brings to work, where you even finish faster, you’ve come to the right place.

Here are Melvin Feller’s Daily Success Strategies to bring flow into your work life.

Step 1:

Sit down in a quiet place for 20 minutes and brainstorm your top work projects and goals for the next few months. Take the full 20 minutes otherwise you’ll only come up with you most urgent projects, not necessarily your most valuable.

Step 2:

Now go down the list and circle the most important project that will both move your business forward and bring in the most revenue (either short- or long-term). Picked one? Now do this twice more. You should now have your 3 most significant projects for the next few months. Perfect!

Step 3:

Now examine your next month’s schedule (yes, MONTH) and block off 30-60 minutes during your most productive time period where nothing else gets scheduled. I recommend scheduling this 3-5 days per week but if you can only do one or two – that’s fine. Commit to it!

Step 4:

When your “flow” work time arrives you must:

· Turn off your Email

· Turn off any Social Media Programs/Notifications

· Turn off your phone ringer and let calls go to voicemail*

· Don’t open the Internet unless it’s necessary for your project.

· Keep a pen and paper near you to jot down all the important nagging to-dos that only pop into your head when you focus on important work.

*The bonus of this approach is that by the time you finish working, often these “emergency issues” will already have been solved.

Step 5:

When your “flow time” ends, tack on 2 minutes to quickly jot down on a post-it or project log what your next step should be. This allows you to jump right back in next time and use your time more efficiently since your next move is clearly delineated.

Depending on your current work style, this can feel simple or almost impossible.

Turn off as many personal distractions as you can and work towards removing the others as your experience working in flow grows. Once you get going and see the results of your new work habit, you’ll be more motivated to schedule this dedicated time regularly.

While time blocking can seem like an overly simple strategy, don’t underestimate the power of implementing this in your life.

Unless you have the time to delve deep into your projects, you won’t get that perfect blend of challenge and competence necessary to bring flow, and all the insights it provides, into your work.

Melvin Feller MA Texas and Oklahoma. Melvin Feller founded Melvin Feller Business Group and Melvin Feller Ministries in the 1970s to help individuals and organizations achieve their specific Victory. Victory as defined by the individual or organization are achieving strategic objectives, exceeding goals, getting results or desired outcomes and a positive outreach with grace and as a ministries. He has extensive experience assisting businesses achieve top and bottom line results. He has broad practical experience creating WINNERS in many organizations and industries. He has hands-on experience in executive leadership, operations, logistics, sales, program management, organizational development, training, and customer service. He has coached teams to achieve results in strategic planning, business development, organizational design, sales, and customer response and business process improvement. He has prepared and presented many workshops nationally and internationally.

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freshobservationcollection-blog · 7 years

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Mental Health in my life

How do I begin? I have struggled with mental health issues my whole life. Originally I was under the care and duress of a very mentally ill mother who until this day does not acknowledge her illness. Because of circumstances being what they were, I was very depressed growing up but often told by my ill mother to “get over it”, “you are just being dramatic”. Never once in my childhood was mental illness taken seriously. It was always considered that if you were closer to God then you would be fine. I learned early on not to trust my parents with my emotional being. I recall the fights wherein my father was emotionally and physically abused repeatedly by my mother. I remember my father threatening to take his own life because of how worthless she made him feel. Growing up in a “Christian” home made me long to see my savior sooner rather than later. Heaven was built as a glorious place, which I am sure it is, but it fed my depression and anxiety. I wanted to find ways to get there faster because it would be so much better there – with a parent who truly loved me for me, no more pain, no more humiliation at the hands of the one on earth who was supposed to love me.

I have read truly horrifying stories of others who have gone through childhood abuse – most instances worse than mine. It has taken me a long time to realize that that does not diminish what I lived through – what to this day are things I can’t always remember but my sister tells me is best that way. It does not lessen my PTSD symptoms. When I least expect it, when I am feeling “normal”- I will have a flashback, or nightmares unceasingly reliving the lies I grew up with about myself, the core of my being and the beatings that I didn’t always remember. I don’t welcome this, I don’t embrace it. I am not happy to say, yes I have forgiven but I can’t forget. More than anything I want the ability to forget forever. Hopefully heaven will allow that.

Dealing with my family history and my own issues, has helped me tremendously in the life I have chosen for myself. I am married to a mentally ill man. His issues run deeper than even he realizes most of the time. Times when he needs the most help are also the times he pushes people away the most, when he trusts the least those who love him the most.

I have been subjected to various forms of emotional abuse from him over the years. While it has gotten better, I am still regularly reminded by him of what he believes my weaknesses are. I have fought very hard to have a healthy self-image and am willing to admit I, like others on the planet, have weaknesses but the one you love is not supposed to use those weaknesses against you. If this same attitude were turned onto him, then I would be “attacking” and “criticizing while a man is down”. I have had to leave work in fear for the safety of my children – thrilled at the same time to realize that when we created a safety plan they were listening, and were able to implement it. I have been stressed over the fact that I am working and going to college, leaving my kids to the whims of my husband’s moods. I have been stressed to think I am not a good mother either way – working or not working. I have had my children take self-defense lessons from a trusted friend to defend themselves in the event he thinks he could get away with laying a finger on them. I have in my mind, distinguished between domestic violence as it is culturally defined and mental illness related “going off”. – Not that there is any research out there to really prove the difference, but with my history, trust me- there is a difference.

The things I have gone through have left me alone. The church does not check in with a couple struggling with mental illness within their family. Heck, I found out at 18 that some pastors will just say you are a wayward teen – even if you are trying to unveil the truth and get your siblings to safety finally. I think there are a few reasons that the church isn’t behind the family dealing with mental illness:

1. There are way too many people in the church who believe if your relationship with God were better you would be fine;

2. Along the same lines, people believe if someone were to just pull themselves up by the bootstraps and think positively the ill person would magically be better.

3. Mental illness is contagious – heaven forbid!!!

4. The person is a sucker- sucking the life out of everyone who enters their orbit without giving back.

5. The biggest reason- this is a long term care issue. Most illnesses have an ending time frame. Mental illness is life- long. Who has the time to commit to a friendship like that? Who even wants to?

After Robin Williams death, my mother started her platitudes about if one is closer to God then one will be happy. Apparently this is the same reason she won’t discuss her own nervous breakdown when I was 2 or3. Her belief is not that she was under stress with 2 children 16 months apart, and a mother who just died, but that all she needed to do was get right with God. I am a Christian. I believe God is Jehovah Rapha – the God who heals. I also believe as a church, we need to back off of this theology A LOT. In order for a church ordained healing to have taken place, there should be a further diagnosis from a doctor that symptoms are no longer present. There are some recorded times of this happening in the 20th & 21st Century. Just telling the world you are healed is not healing in and of itself. God still works today. I do not doubt that. What I have problems with is those who abuse this train of thought. Job was told by his friends that he must be disobeying God in some manner, have some secret sin. This was not the case; Job was still praising God through the storm. My own experience as a teen plays this out. I am sure that I am not the only teen raised “Christian” who thought life would be so much better on the other side of death then on this side. How could it be a sin to want to give your life and start life with God eternally?

People do not choose to be mentally ill, and especially when dealing with depression – can’t just CHOOSE to be happy. Have you ever woken up on a raining workday morning and the day has just sunk into your bones unbidden? If you haven’t, you are blessed. Depression is akin to the rainy morning, but it doesn’t stop when the sun comes out. It doesn’t stop if you sleep just 15 more hours because that is all you need – sleep. It doesn’t stop if you have things on your schedule that are a “must do” yet you are too lethargic to make the must do list. So, the thing that works for you every time, your favorite hobby is calling for you to help pull you out of your pit of despair – instead what you hear is you are a failure, you won’t amount to anything, you can’t even do the stuff you use to enjoy doing, who would want to spend time with someone so worthless?

It seems that those who have no heart for the mentally ill think that just by listening to another’s struggles, you will get depressed too. Seriously? Can that be any more wrong? Yes, I understand talking too much to depressed people may make you see things through their eyes. So what? Isn’t that what compassion and empathy are about?

About the great void created by the mentally ill in my life. No there isn’t one. It doesn’t suck you in. Mentally ill people who acknowledge they have an issue are nothing if not honest with their closest friends. They expect the same in return. One of my best friends has issues, and I can tell her, “Look, you are just too much like my husband right now and I can’t take it at the moment, I can only be a shoulder for one at a time right now. I will call you but right now he takes priority.” She understands this give and take. She understands that I love her enough to respect her while telling her constantly that she drives me crazy in the same way my husband does. She gets it – she sees the similarities.

At the same time, those who acknowledge their illness and are honest are the most loyal friends a person can have. These friends also seem to me to be gifted in some area and just don’t know how to apply that to the world at large. When they are stable, there are untold depths to their personality, person, character that people just do not take the time to see. The insight into their realms of subjects, their loyalty is unmatched. There is a wealth of information, philosophy and varied interest that lies within the mentally ill that many do not get to see because they judge first and never take the time to ask questions or get to know the person.

Please note that I have made a distinction between those who acknowledge their disease and those who don’t. People who regularly believe that they would be “…okay if…” are not accepting their diagnosis. It is normal, any psychiatrist will tell you, that once properly medicated, a patient will often begin to feel normal, and decide that the medicine is no longer needed. This is different than those who choose not to acknowledge their issues. It is common for anyone to just want to be “normal” and once that perceived state is reached, believe medicine is no longer a need. This is where good friends come in again- to correct the wrong perceptions of those in the struggle. Open, honest dialogue aids in the on-going care. The dialogue cannot be open, cannot be honest, can be thought to be traitorous if the true friendship isn’t in place.

The hard calls. Friends learn to make the tough decisions. I wish I knew when I was younger about calling the police to take my mom to the hospital so she would get treated. With my husband, we are at the point that we have long talks. Although he prefers never to see a locked ward again, we both know I would only do what is best for him mentally. My girlfriend, I am an ear for her to vent. I have had to consider the possibility of breaking her confidence, but somehow it all worked out.

Since I have learned over the years how to take care of me – because after all, not many others are looking out for my best interest –I am the caretaker. I have always felt a caretaker role but my depth of understanding has grown. No, I don’t have any college degrees (yet!); all I have is life as a teacher. There is no better student then one who wants to learn from the lessons life presents.

I have cried out for help, only to realize that none is really available. I have a son who was very young and couldn’t get to sleep because he was sure he would wake up with a knife in his hand and be killing us and him. Crisis response was that “he’s tired, calm him down and get him to sleep”. So the cycle continues in my life.

All that is continuously going on, all that I don’t really have time or the energy for - yet my kids deserve so much therefore - I will continue to make their lives the best I can according to my capability; according to the talents God has bestowed on me. Amid everything, we have a very open and honest relationship with the kids as to how this affects them personally and as people for the world at large. Their views of others struggles are so much more mature than that of their peers (and even a lot of adults I know) and that is an outcome I can be grateful for.

#iamstigmafree #christianresponsetomentalillness mentalillness childrenofmenatallyill #christian

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ralphlayton · 4 years

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Show Me The Numbers: 20 B2B Marketing Insights From Audience Poll Data

What can poll results tell B2B marketers about a year unlike any other, and how can this valuable audience data help us refine our marketing strategy as we push towards 2021? For more than a year we’ve run weekly social media polls on our Twitter profile, and for several months now have simultaneously also placed a weekly user poll on our LinkedIn* page. We wanted to share some of the fascinating insights you have shared with us in the form of results from our polls, in order to see the trends that have emerged during this unprecedented year. Let’s look at trends in social media communications, how marketing is changing in 2020, and the rising effectiveness of B2B influencer marketing, all through the lens of poll-derived feedback.

Social Media Communication Expectations

Insight #1 — Social Response Times

How quickly do we expect a response from a brand when we ask a question publicly on social media? The majority marketers we polled expect to hear back from a brand within 24 hours, with 61 percent of respondents on LinkedIn expecting a reply within a day, 24 percent within one hour, and 16 percent by the end of the workday. Twitter respondents voiced similar sentiments, with 38 percent looking to get a reply from a brand within 24 hours, 33 percent by the end of the current workday, and 21 percent within an hour. If you’re not answering social media inquiries within 24 hours you may come under fire, as not even one respondent to our poll said that they expect brands to take longer than a day to reply.

Insight #2 — Email Response Times

We also asked the same question for a different form of online communications, curious about expectations when sending an old-fashioned email to a brand. 50 percent of our Twitter poll respondents said that they expected an email reply within 24 hours, mostly echoing the expectations for public social media questions. 22 percent said they expected brands to reply by the end of the workday, 18 percent within a week — a notable difference from social media queries — and just 9 percent within an hour.

Insight #3 — Unfollowing

What drives people who have already taken the time and effort to follow a brand on social media to later unfollow them, and what messages can we learn from these mistakes? When we asked this question in a poll, our LinkedIn respondents said the top reason they unfollow brands comes down to posting poor quality content, followed by irrelevant content and brands that post too much content. Just two percent of respondents said that they unfollow brands that don’t post enough content. 44 percent of our Twitter respondents said that irrelevant content was their top reason for unfollowing a brand, followed by poor quality content at 33 percent, and too much content at 22 percent.

Insight #4 — Stories Format

We also ran a poll asking how the ephemeral stories format would fare on LinkedIn if the platform were to make its test of the post type a permanent part of the service. 33 percent of respondents said that LinkedIn Stories would be a great addition to the platform, while 25 percent felt it would be a good match. 25 percent also said that it would be an unlikely match, and 16 percent noted that the stories format would be a poor match for LinkedIn.

Insight #5 — Experiential Content

We were also curious how B2B marketers are using experiential content in 2020. 58 percent of our Twitter poll respondents said that they expected to incorporate experiential content very frequently into their marketing efforts during 2020, followed by 41 percent who planned to do so somewhat frequently. Experiential content is playing a greater role in B2B marketing efforts in 2020, which I looked at in “What B2B Marketers Need to Know About Experiential Content,” and our Nick Nelson examined recently in "How to Hit a Marketing Home Run with Experiential Content."

Insight #6 — Chatbots & Artificial Intelligence

How B2B marketers communicate is constantly shifting as new technologies become available and gain wider adoption. We asked our Twitter followers who use chatbots or other forms of messaging featuring artificial intelligence (AI) to chime in on how the technology has performed for them. 49 percent of B2B marketers who responded said that chatbots and AI-assisted technology has performed better than expected, yet 42 percent noted that the technology has under-performed, while 14 percent found that it performed as they had expected.

Insight #7 — Virtual Meeting Length

We were curious what our audience of B2B marketers on Twitter felt the most effective length of time might be when it comes to virtual meetings. 58 percent of respondents said that 30 minutes was the optimal length of time for effective virtual meetings, while 17 percent felt that 15 minutes or less works best, with 17 percent also noting that 45 minutes is the most effective, followed by just 5 percent who said an hour was best.

Insight #8 — Reviews & Testimonials

Another part of marketing communications is user feedback, reviews, and testimonials, and we asked our Twitter followers to share how often they use positive reviews in their marketing efforts. 47 percent of respondents said that they use positive reviews in their marketing efforts occasionally, however 23 percent noted that they never do, followed by 17 percent who said that they always do, and 11 percent who do so frequently.

Insight #9 — Newsletter Preferences

Speaking of email, we also wondered when B2B marketers prefer to receive monthly newsletters. 45 percent of our respondents said they prefer the first of the month, followed by 27 percent who are fond of mid-month newsletters, 18 percent who prefer a time early in the month, and 9 percent who want to see newsletters arrive at the end of the month.

Insight #10 — The Emoji Divide

The use of emojis in social media messaging was an area of contention among our poll respondents. 35 percent said that emoji were somewhat effective, while the same number noted their use to rarely be effective. 17 percent said emoji were extremely effective, and some 11 percent noted that they never use them.

The Changing Face of 2020 Marketing

The global health crisis has changed the face of marketing events in 2020, as nearly all conferences have made the jump to virtual events, as I wrote about recently in "17+ Top Virtual Marketing Conferences for Summer 2020 & Beyond."

Insight #11 — Virtual Event Attendance

Are B2B marketers planning to attend newly-virtual events, and if so how many? We asked our LinkedIn and Twitter users how many virtual marketing events they planned to attend over the final five months of 2020. Most respondents said that they will attend between one and five virtual marketing events, while the second most frequent choice was those who said they won’t be attending a single virtual event, followed by those who plan to attend between six and 10. Virtual events and webinars are undoubtedly seeing an unexpected golden age this year, and we’ve explored how to best utilize them, in “How B2B Marketers Can Get the Most Out of Webinars in 2020.” [bctt tweet="“One great way to promote the webinar, and focus your content at the same time, is to poll your audience via social media. Ask for their thoughts on your topic. Ask what they most want to know about it.” @NiteWrites" username="toprank"]

Insight #12 — Top Pain Points

We wanted to find out what the biggest pandemic pain points have been for B2B marketers, and among those answering our LinkedIn poll 64 percent said that a decrease in budget or business has been the top challenge, followed by the difficulty in engaging customers at 36 percent. 46 percent of Twitter respondents also revealed that falling budgets and business were their top pain points, followed by engaging customers at 38 percent and remote work issues for some 15 percent of marketers.

Insight #13 — Learning New Skills

63 percent of poll respondents said that they have used their time during the pandemic to learn new marketing skills online, while 18 percent said that they planned to do so.

Insight #14 — Digital Asset Management

54 percent of B2B marketers we polled on Twitter said that they either already use a digital asset management (DAM) solution in their marketing stack or plan to implement one, while 45 percent didn’t use a DAM. If you aren't familiar with how DAM can help B2B marketers, I looked into the issue in "Why B2B Marketers Should Give a DAM: Top Tips on Digital Asset Management."

Insight #15 — Podcast Growth

With U.S. podcast listeners topping the 100 million mark for the first time in 2020, we wondered how the global health crisis has affected listening frequency among B2B marketers. 40 percent of our Twitter respondents said that they have been listening to more podcasts during the pandemic, with 22 percent noting that they’ve listened to fewer, 18 percent about the same amount, and another 18 percent who said they don’t listen to podcasts.

Insight #16 — Streaming Ad Use

With numerous studies showing that streaming music ads were booming in 2019, we wondered what B2B marketers planned for 2020, and 50 percent of our Twitter poll respondents said that they had no streaming ad plans for the year, while 25 percent said they planned to implement more streaming ads, 16 percent fewer of them, and 8 percent about the same.

Insight #17 — The Customer Journey

Content creation efforts are also shifting in 2020, and we asked B2B marketers to share which stage of the customer journey they are focusing on the most. 47 percent of respondents said that generating awareness was where they were placing the greatest focus, followed by brand advocacy at 35 percent, consideration and intent at 11 percent, and evaluation and purchase at 5 percent.

The Rising Effectiveness of Influencer Marketing

Insight #18 — Influencer Marketing Program Length

We asked our LinkedIn and Twitter followers to chime in on the ideal length of time a B2B influencer marketing program should run for maximum effectiveness, and the majority of our savvy followers chose always-on and ongoing programs — 73 percent of our LinkedIn respondents and 64 percent of our Twitter respondents. Influencer marketing programs encompassing at least two campaigns was the second most popular choice, the choice of 21 percent of LinkedIn respondents and 18 percent of our Twitter respondents.

Insight #19 — Pandemic Focus Areas

We asked B2B marketers which area of marketing they were the most likely to increase focus on during the global health crisis, and topping the list was influencer marketing at 35 percent, followed by content marketing at 30 percent, search marketing at 20 percent, and email marketing, which garnered 12 percent of the poll responses.

Insight #20 — Volume of Influencer Marketing Work

We were also curious how the pandemic has affected the volume of work B2B marketers have done with influencers. The greatest number of our respondents — some 36 percent — said that their volume of work with influencers had increased, followed by 32 percent who said that they didn’t use influencers, 24 percent who found that the volume of work was about the same, while 8 percent noted that the volume decreased.

Listening To Your Audience & Taking Action

via GIPHY Keeping your finger on the pulse of your audience — whether it’s from poll results, surveys, questionnaires or other forms of feedback — goes a long way when it comes to making your marketing efforts authentic, and will help ensure that your communication is a two-way street and not just a publish-and-forget effort. We hope you’ve found this glimpse into some of our own poll results helpful as you navigate the sometimes murky marketing waters 2020 has given us. Let us know your thoughts by voting in our current weekly poll about Instagram's new short-form video offering, Reels — you'll find it on LinkedIn here and on Twitter here. You can learn more about poll data and statistics, and how to get more from audience feedback in every form by taking a look are some of the related articles we’ve written on the subject, such as the five listed here:

Social Media Polls For Marketers: 6 B2B Brands Winning With LinkedIn Polls

17 Revealing B2B Marketing Insights From Poll Data

The Power of Social Media Polls: The Drill-Down on 3 Platforms + 5 General Best Practices

24 Essential B2B Influencer Marketing Statistics

Hungry for More: What B2B Marketers Need to Know About Episodic Content

* LinkedIn is a TopRank Marketing client.

The post Show Me The Numbers: 20 B2B Marketing Insights From Audience Poll Data appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

Show Me The Numbers: 20 B2B Marketing Insights From Audience Poll Data published first on yhttps://improfitninja.blogspot.com/

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samuelpboswell · 4 years

Text

Show Me The Numbers: 20 B2B Marketing Insights From Audience Poll Data

Social Media Communication Expectations

Insight #1 — Social Response Times

Insight #2 — Email Response Times

Insight #3 — Unfollowing

Insight #4 — Stories Format

Insight #5 — Experiential Content

Insight #6 — Chatbots & Artificial Intelligence

Insight #7 — Virtual Meeting Length

Insight #8 — Reviews & Testimonials

Insight #9 — Newsletter Preferences

Insight #10 — The Emoji Divide

The Changing Face of 2020 Marketing

Insight #11 — Virtual Event Attendance

Insight #12 — Top Pain Points

Insight #13 — Learning New Skills

63 percent of poll respondents said that they have used their time during the pandemic to learn new marketing skills online, while 18 percent said that they planned to do so.

Insight #14 — Digital Asset Management

Insight #15 — Podcast Growth

Insight #16 — Streaming Ad Use

Insight #17 — The Customer Journey

The Rising Effectiveness of Influencer Marketing

Insight #18 — Influencer Marketing Program Length

Insight #19 — Pandemic Focus Areas

Insight #20 — Volume of Influencer Marketing Work

Listening To Your Audience & Taking Action

Social Media Polls For Marketers: 6 B2B Brands Winning With LinkedIn Polls

17 Revealing B2B Marketing Insights From Poll Data

The Power of Social Media Polls: The Drill-Down on 3 Platforms + 5 General Best Practices

24 Essential B2B Influencer Marketing Statistics

Hungry for More: What B2B Marketers Need to Know About Episodic Content

* LinkedIn is a TopRank Marketing client.

The post Show Me The Numbers: 20 B2B Marketing Insights From Audience Poll Data appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

from The SEO Advantages https://www.toprankblog.com/2020/08/20-b2b-marketing-insights-from-polls/

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kristinastorey27 · 5 years

Text

The 5 Truths All Rental Business Owners Should Know

Image Source: StartupStockPhotos on Pixabay

Being a rental business owner is not easy. You have to wear many hats at the same time. Whether it is damaged equipment returned by a customer, a missing product, or a scheduling conflict, everything falls on your shoulders. All these mounting responsibilities can be hard to deal with. However, they serve as a great reminder that running a rental business is no easy feat.

Let’s take a look at five truths all rental business owners should never turn a blind eye to.

RELATED ARTICLE: HOW TO CHOOSE THE RIGHT PAYMENT METHOD FOR YOUR BUSINESS

1. There Is No 9 to 5. You Have a Rental Business Because You Love It!

Being your own boss might sound attractive. However, it comes with its fair share of troubles. It isn’t all parties and CEO moments. The truth is there is no such thing as a 9-to-5 workday or a clock-in and clock-out for an entrepreneur. Running your own business is much more demanding than that.

For example, if something obstructs your rental operation, you can’t leave it at the risk of it hindering your business processes. Sometimes, steering this ship is an all-around-the-clock thing. You might even need to tend to a 3 am emergency.

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But if you’re putting in a ton of effort, you need to make sure that it has the maximum impact. This makes your health a top priority for the health of your business. Therefore, take care of yourself. In other words, account for your energy output and health so you can always cater to tasks to the best of your abilities.

Also, always, always prioritize tasks. Moreover, delegate the ones that someone else can handle. In this way, you can maximize your output.

You have to put your day and night into your business.

Image source: freepik.com

2. People Don’t Just Rent. They Buy the Experience of Renting

There could be many companies in the market that offer the same product lines. While products play a crucial role, they start to lose their importance when everyone has the same offering. That’s where the importance of a wholesome rental experience kicks in. In short, it is not about what products you offer but how you offer them.

Even if most of the rental businesses in town have identical camera brands or party supplies, you can still distinguish yourself from the crowd. Provide a meaningful customer experience to stand out.

For example, offer a pleasant atmosphere, helpful customer service, hassle-free paperwork, and timely deliveries. These all play into how your customers perceive your brand. What’s more, if you focus on all these fronts, you are likely to become a customer favorite.

People are always willing to pay for a better, easier, and more satisfying experience. Therefore, make sure you make it worth their money.

3. Customers Will Not Come to You. You Will Have to Be Both the Buyer and the Marketer

Let’s consider this: You have a great product line to rent out. You are using cutting-edge technology and incorporating innovative strategies for better customer experience. However, you still aren’t getting any customers.

The problem is customers don’t come flocking in long queues to a new business. On the contrary, the competitive world of business requires you to aggressively market yourself. It is through consumer-driven marketing, fool-proof content strategies, and growth hacking plans that your business is going to get traction.

You have to spread the word by marketing yourself.

Image source: freepik.com

Therefore, be sure to study ongoing rental and marketing trends, and always try to be in the shoes of the buyer. What are they expecting and what will move them to make a purchase? Thinking like a buyer will make you a better marketer. Moreover, it will help establish a permanent spot for your business in your target audience’s mind.

4. Overnight Success Doesn’t Exist. You Can’t Do It Without Consistency

There is no such thing as overnight success. Notably, all successful business owners will testify to the fact that getting your first 10 clients is going to be the hardest feat that you’ll accomplish in your career.

Often, another company’s hard work does not gain a lot of attention. What’s more, it might seem like certain companies made it to the top because luck was on their side. However, that’s far from the truth. In most cases, they worked day and night to get to that stage of their career.

The bottom line is that there’s no route leading to instant success. You have to put in the necessary hours. Only in this way will you establish a strong footing for your business, especially in the beginning when you’re juggling multiple tasks.

However, once you know the ins and outs of your industry and all the ongoing trends, you can grow your team and outsource tasks. Remember to keep notes on all the mistakes you made while doing every task and what you learned from them. After that, share what you’ve learned with your employees so you can help them grow as well. In a nutshell, switch from hard work to smart work.

5. Your Product Line Isn’t Exclusive. There Are Plenty of Other Fish in the Sea

Most rental businesses offer items that are popular among renters. This makes it hard to offer innovative product lines and gives rise to cut-throat competition.

There are probably companies out there that are much better than you. That’s because they feature a greater variety of products, offer better pricing, or use marketing strategies that instantly connect with their audience.

However, there’s no reason to lose heart. Instead of being discouraged, you can use this to your advantage and try to improve yourself. In other words, turn your competition into your driving force. Use it to continually re-evaluate your strategies. Who exactly is your target audience? What are others in your field doing differently? What’s more, how can you position yourself better in the market?

In short, focusing your efforts on the right people along with the right strategies will help you grow sustainably and outrun your competition. Moreover, to automate the process and keep your data secure, you can implement online rental software across your organization.

Running Your Rental Business Can Be a Rewarding Experience

Whether your business is a furniture rental, equipment rental, or party rental, there are some downsides of being a rental business owner.

However, it’s only a problem if you see it that way. You really only need to have a thick skin and a drive to pursue excellence, and you will be able to succeed. Without these two qualities, you might give up on what could’ve been a large enterprise.

On the other hand, if you’ve committed yourself to your business, don’t let harsh realities bring you down. That’s because there is always something waiting to be created, customers waiting to be served, and opportunities waiting to be made the most of.

And YOU can make it happen!

Author Bio

Kiran is a content writer and marketer at EZRentOut, which offers equipment rental software for SMBs, mid-sized rental businesses, enterprises and more. She is a guest writer and an MBA graduate. Kiran is enthusiastic about the way technology interacts with contemporary businesses. She is willing to explore beyond her knowledge.

The post The 5 Truths All Rental Business Owners Should Know appeared first on Business Opportunities.

from Business Opportunities http://www.business-opportunities.biz/2019/02/08/rental-business-owners/

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paullassiterca · 6 years

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The Extreme Dangers of Daylight Saving Time

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The repercussions associated with daylight saving time (DST) are significant and prompted the placement of California Proposition 7 on the ballot in this year’s midterm election. Nearly 60 percent voted in favor to leave the state in daylight saving time all year.1

This begins laying the groundwork to give the California legislature the ability to change their clocks permanently. This is similar to a movement in August by the European Union (EU) when it announced it recommends member states stop using DST, or “summer time,” as it’s known in the EU.2

While the European commission president Jean-Claude Juncker believes countries should make their own decisions, he cited a recent poll suggesting more than 80 percent of EU citizens no longer want a time change every spring and fall.3

History of ‘Fast Time’

The practice of moving the clock an hour ahead in the summer and back in the fall was initiated during World War I in the hope it would save energy, and has more to do with international conflicts and industry than with accommodating farmers.

When it was initially introduced in the U.S. in 1918 it was called “fast time.”4 The bill was signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson in an effort to support the war, and following the initiation of the same time change in Germany in 1916.

The law was subsequently repealed after the war ended, and then reinstated during World War II. Three weeks after World War II ended, the law was again repealed. This essentially threw the U.S. into a state of confusion, as state and local governments could start and stop DST as they pleased.

In 1963, Time magazine called this a “chaos of clocks.”5 It wasn’t until 1966, nearly 20 years later, that order was restored with the Uniform Time Act.6 The act standardized when DST would begin and end and gave states the option to remain on standard time year-round. Hawaii and Arizona opted out and remained on standard time.

In 2016, California passed a near-unanimous resolution to eventually change DST after failing to pass legislation.7 Although the Uniform Time Act gave some structure to how clocks are set in the U.S.., it did not stop Congress from initiating changes.

In 1973, Congress determined DST should be observed all year.8 Then in 1974, the clocks were again moving forward in the spring and falling back an hour in the fall. It wasn’t until 1986 that the time officially changed at 2 a.m. on the first Sunday in April and the last Sunday in October.

In 2005, Congress moved the fall date to the first Sunday in November in response to prodding from sugar lobbyists who wanted more daylight in the evening hours to accommodate trick or treaters on Halloween night.9 The current times and dates for change have been in effect since 2007. DST starts on the second Sunday of March and ends on the first Sunday in November.10

DST Does Not Reduce Energy Use

The original intention of saving energy by extending daylight hours during the summer months may actually have had the opposite effect. Although lighting had been a significant portion of energy consumption during World War I and World War II, it has become a much smaller part.

Extending daylight hours also encourages greater use of air conditioning and heating. In 2008, the Department of Energy found an almost imperceptible reduction in usage per day since the 2005 extension to include Halloween.11

A study by Yale economist Matthew Kotchen and Laura Grant, Ph.D., discovered homes and businesses in Indiana counties observing DST experienced an increase of up to 4 percent of electricity when DST was in effect.12 In another analysis of 44 different papers, researchers found that, on average, the policy helped save a mere 0.34 percent of electricity use.13

Locations further from the equator, with mild summers and low cooling demands, may save energy, but geographical locations closer actually used more energy during DST.

Kotchen notes when DST begins in the spring, people are waking during the coldest and darkest part of the day, often turning up the heat to stay warm, and during long evening hours, more air conditioning is used, leading to an overall higher energy use.

Kotchen determined that turning the clocks forward increased residential electricity demand and cost those in Indiana an extra $9 million per year, increasing emissions and impacting the environment. He notes:14 “The way people use energy now is different from when daylight saving came about.”

Increasing Traffic Accidents and Heart Attacks

The biannual clock changes also have an impact on your physical health. Researchers have noticed a statistically significant increase in the number of car accidents, workplace injuries and heart attacks in the days after the time changes in the spring. This might be related to the loss of sleep, or may have deeper biological roots in your circadian rhythms.

A University of Alabama study15 found the number of heart attacks increased by 10 percent on the Monday and Tuesday following the time change to DST in the spring. Interestingly, the number also decreased by 10 percent on the first Monday and Tuesday after the clocks are switched back in the fall.

Cardiac events are more commonplace every Monday, greater than any other day of the week, and are likely related to changes in sleep associated with the transition from weekend to workday. This is known as the “Monday cardiac phenomenon.”16 On the Monday and Tuesday following spring DST, the risk is even more pronounced.17

An earlier Swedish study18 discovered your chances of having a heart attack increase in the first three weekdays after the switch to DST, and similarly decrease when the clock is set back in the fall. Researchers compared the number of admissions on the weeks before and the Monday after DST for four consecutive years using a Michigan hospital database.19

On average there were 32 heart attacks on any given Monday, but on the Monday immediately after DST there were an average of eight additional heart attacks, suggesting to the researchers those who are already vulnerable to heart disease may be at greater risk immediately after a sudden time change.

Research data have also found road accidents increase in the first two days following DST, as do falls.20 Additionally, fatal alcohol-related traffic accidents increase for the first week after setting the clocks ahead21 and 67.6 percent more work days are lost as a result of injuries following the change to DST.22 Suicide rates for men also rise in the weeks following DST.23

Circadian Rhythms and Judgment Adversely Affected by DST

Once DST is implemented, productivity and quality of life scores drop. Till Roenneberg, a Russian chronobiologist, reports that most people show “drastically decreased productivity,” decreased quality of life, increased illness, and are “just plain tired”24 in the week after DST in the spring.

Disruptions in your sleep pattern tend to cascade throughout your entire body. For instance, sleep helps reset your neural circuits that are impaired during sleep deprivation. With too little sleep, your cognitive flexibility suffers.

Research from the University of Washington found cognitive inflexibility effects even judges who are handing down sentences. On the Monday after DST in the spring, longer sentences are imposed on people who have been found guilty.25

A similar negative effect has been found in students. Researchers compared 10 years of SAT scores from Indiana where only 15 of the state’s 92 counties moved their clocks forward during the study period. The data indicated an average 16-point drop in scores when students were tested after the clocks changed in the spring.26

The researchers extrapolated this data, finding the difference in SAT scores may equate to an economic loss of over $1.2 billion annually. In similar findings, researchers concluded DST adversely affected sleep patterns of high school students and their ability to be vigilant at school.27

Note: One reason Indiana is used as a discussion model for DST is because it lies smack-dab between Central and Eastern time zones. Geographically, it’s actually in the Central zone, but in 2006 it adopted the standardized DST to align with Eastern Standard Time changes. The decision has been controversial in Indiana, where the western part of the state wants to align with the Central zone, while the eastern part favors aligning with Ohio’s Eastern zone.28,29

Increasing Financial and Health Costs From DST

Financial losses are also felt in the stock market. An analysis published in the American Economic Review30 revealed an impact on the function of the financial markets each time the clocks changed. The scientists found desynchronized sleep was a reasonable explanation for the effect on the market that happened on the two weekends when the time changes, different from other Mondays. They said:31

“The magnitude of the daylight savings effect, roughly 200 to 500 percent of the regular weekend effect, is both statistically and economically significant in several international financial markets. In the United States alone, the daylight savings affect implies a one-day loss of $31 billion on the NYSE, AMEX and NASDAQ exchanges.”

Employers also suffer a significant loss in productivity. In an evaluation of how individuals were using internet access on the day following the time change, researchers examined search patterns over six years in over 200 American metro areas.32

On the Monday immediately following the time change they found an increase in searches for entertainment or related categories greater than on the Mondays before and after. They concluded, as much of this was conducted during work hours, misused internet access — called cyberloafing — was reducing productivity in workers.

Based on findings from this study, and another demonstrating an increased incidence of heart attacks, economist estimated the annual cost to the American economy each spring in lost productivity and health care was nearly $434 million.33

Keeping DST all year may also result in a reduction in crime rates. Researchers discovered that when the clocks are turned back an hour in the fall, crime rates rise. Most crime occurs between 5 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. With greater ambient lighting, criminals may have a more difficult time targeting victims.34

The researchers estimate that if DST were to remain in effect during the entire year, it could result in a $59 million annual social cost savings from robberies avoided. Since different countries change their times on different days, the airline industry estimates DST costs them an average of $147 million a year.35

Tips to Protect Your Health During DST

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In addition to the strong recommendation of getting eight hours of sleep on a consistent basis, there are some other things you can do to mitigate the effects of the time change until the powers that be decide to get rid of it.

University of Alabama associate professor Martin Young suggests the following natural strategies to help your body resync after the time change:36

Wake up 30 minutes earlier on Saturday and Sunday, to minimize the impact of getting up earlier on Monday morning

Go outside in the sunlight in the early morning

Exercise in the mornings over the weekend, in accordance with your overall level of health and fitness

Consider setting your clock ahead on Friday evening, allowing an extra day to adjust over the weekend

To those recommendations, I would add:

Be particularly mindful of using electronic devices in the days prior to the switch-over. Research37 on teens shows that using electronics for four hours during the day can increase your risk of needing more than an hour to fall asleep by nearly 50 percent.

Using any device for more than two hours per day increases the likelihood of needing more than an hour to fall asleep by 20 percent. So, if you’ve ever considered “unplugging” for a day or two, the weekend of the DST switch-over is a perfect time to turn everything off, or cut down your use of electronics to a bare minimum so that you can optimize your sleep.

Pay attention to your diet, making sure you are consuming plenty of fresh, whole foods, preferably organic, and minimal amounts of processed foods and fast foods; keep your sugar consumption low, especially fructose. I invite you to review our total nutrition plan here.

Practice good sleep hygiene, including sleeping in complete darkness, checking your bedroom for electromagnetic fields, and keeping your bedroom temperature no higher than 70 degrees Fahrenheit; for a full report about how to maximize the quality of your sleep, see “Sleep — Why You Need It and 50 Ways to Improve It.”

Optimize your vitamin D level to boost your immune function.

Manage your stress with whatever stress-busting techniques work for you.

Consider supplementing with melatonin if you have trouble sleeping.

If you have a fitness tracker that tracks sleep, start using it. If you don’t have one, you may want to consider getting one. During DST, making sure you’re getting enough sleep may be more important than ever.

One of the keys to optimizing your sleep is going to bed early enough, because if you have to get up at 6:30 a.m., you’re just not going to get enough sleep if you go to bed after midnight. Chances are you’re getting at least 30 minutes less sleep than you think, as most people do not fall asleep as soon as their head hits the pillow.

Many fitness trackers can now track both daytime body movement and sleep, allowing you to get a better picture of how much sleep you’re actually getting.

Last but not least, to encourage your legislature to change DST, consider signing a petition to your Congresspersons and getting involved in your state to pass a resolution.

from Articles http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2018/11/21/daylight-saving-time-health-risks.aspx source https://niapurenaturecom.tumblr.com/post/180335154586

0 notes

jerrytackettca · 6 years

Text

The Extreme Dangers of Daylight Saving Time

The repercussions associated with daylight saving time (DST) are significant and prompted the placement of California Proposition 7 on the ballot in this year's midterm election. Nearly 60 percent voted in favor to leave the state in daylight saving time all year.1

History of ‘Fast Time’

In 1963, Time magazine called this a “chaos of clocks.”5 It wasn't until 1966, nearly 20 years later, that order was restored with the Uniform Time Act.6 The act standardized when DST would begin and end and gave states the option to remain on standard time year-round. Hawaii and Arizona opted out and remained on standard time.

In 1973, Congress determined DST should be observed all year.8 Then in 1974, the clocks were again moving forward in the spring and falling back an hour in the fall. It wasn't until 1986 that the time officially changed at 2 a.m. on the first Sunday in April and the last Sunday in October.

DST Does Not Reduce Energy Use

Locations further from the equator, with mild summers and low cooling demands, may save energy, but geographical locations closer actually used more energy during DST.

Increasing Traffic Accidents and Heart Attacks

Circadian Rhythms and Judgment Adversely Affected by DST

Once DST is implemented, productivity and quality of life scores drop. Till Roenneberg, a Russian chronobiologist, reports that most people show "drastically decreased productivity," decreased quality of life, increased illness, and are "just plain tired"24 in the week after DST in the spring.

A similar negative effect has been found in students. Researchers compared 10 years of SAT scores from Indiana where only 15 of the state's 92 counties moved their clocks forward during the study period. The data indicated an average 16-point drop in scores when students were tested after the clocks changed in the spring.26

Increasing Financial and Health Costs From DST

Tips to Protect Your Health During DST

University of Alabama associate professor Martin Young suggests the following natural strategies to help your body resync after the time change:36

Wake up 30 minutes earlier on Saturday and Sunday, to minimize the impact of getting up earlier on Monday morning

Go outside in the sunlight in the early morning

Exercise in the mornings over the weekend, in accordance with your overall level of health and fitness

Consider setting your clock ahead on Friday evening, allowing an extra day to adjust over the weekend

To those recommendations, I would add:

Using any device for more than two hours per day increases the likelihood of needing more than an hour to fall asleep by 20 percent. So, if you've ever considered "unplugging" for a day or two, the weekend of the DST switch-over is a perfect time to turn everything off, or cut down your use of electronics to a bare minimum so that you can optimize your sleep.

Optimize your vitamin D level to boost your immune function.

Manage your stress with whatever stress-busting techniques work for you.

Consider supplementing with melatonin if you have trouble sleeping.

If you have a fitness tracker that tracks sleep, start using it. If you don't have one, you may want to consider getting one. During DST, making sure you're getting enough sleep may be more important than ever.

One of the keys to optimizing your sleep is going to bed early enough, because if you have to get up at 6:30 a.m., you're just not going to get enough sleep if you go to bed after midnight. Chances are you're getting at least 30 minutes less sleep than you think, as most people do not fall asleep as soon as their head hits the pillow.

Many fitness trackers can now track both daytime body movement and sleep, allowing you to get a better picture of how much sleep you're actually getting.

Last but not least, to encourage your legislature to change DST, consider signing a petition to your Congresspersons and getting involved in your state to pass a resolution.

from http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2018/11/21/daylight-saving-time-health-risks.aspx

source http://niapurenaturecom.weebly.com/blog/the-extreme-dangers-of-daylight-saving-time

0 notes

lucyariablog · 6 years

Text

13 Reasons Why You Should Consider Text-Based Marketing

The urgency and intimacy of text-based marketing make it attractive to businesses. But it’s those same qualities that make SMS communication from a brand especially risky.

However, when done strategically, respectfully, and in a contextually relevant way, Ardath Albee, CEO of Marketing Interactions Inc., says the profitable benefits of SMS marketing easily supersede the most common pitfalls of this unique channel.

SMS marketing benefits easily supersede the pitfalls, says @Ardath421. #intelcontent Click To Tweet

She presented on the topic at the Intelligent Content Conference this year, Automation Isn’t Just for Email: Why Messaging Can Be the Conversation that Counts.

Before acknowledging and addressing the sometimes disastrous risks of SMS (short message service) and MMS (multimedia messaging service) marketing, Ardath shares 13 reasons the medium can (and often does) outperform other channels and automated tactics.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Conversational Content: How to Market Through Text Messaging and Chatbots

1. Personal devices are more personal than ever

“People are looking at their smartphones out of boredom,” Ardath points out. Nearly a third of millennials globally check their phone screen at least once every five minutes without being prompted by an alert or notification, according to KPMG’s 2017 Me, My Life, My Wallet Report.

2. Texting is the most-used mobile device feature

The only thing more personal than the phone itself is the standard messaging app, where users spend more time than anywhere else on their device. Ninety-seven percent of all smartphone users text their contacts at least weekly.

3. 85% of mobile device users prefer a text from businesses over phone calls or emails

Turns out, when given the choice, customers would rather engage via SMS messaging than by way of voice or email — a surprising fact given what many marketers expect.

85% of mobile users prefer SMS messages over emails or calls from businesses via @ATT #research. Click To Tweet

4. B2B brands hesitate to integrate texting, creating a low-competition vacuum of opportunity

Ardath explains that your business clients are individual consumers who receive text marketing from B2C brands during off hours (think puppy food, car insurance, or local restaurant deals). Why, then, wouldn’t they expect professional vendors to target them with productivity tools or services throughout the workday?

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: How to Get the Right Content to the Right People at the Right Time: A Look at This American Life

5. Users don’t need to download a new app or learn to navigate a new interface

These days, each new channel comes with a learning curve for both brand and user. Texting doesn’t require any new skills.

6. Users don’t even need a smartphone or internet access

Whether by choice or necessity, some people carry simpler mobile phones. They don’t (or can’t) consume web-based data when away from Wi-Fi. They can’t consume infographics, streaming audio, social updates, and blog posts, but they can receive your texts.

7. Text messaging can be used at every stage of the buyer’s journey

To visualize this, Ardath encourages marketers to think about mobile messaging from different perspectives – marketing, sales, service, etc. “You could use text messaging to engage at every stage of the buying process, which becomes more and more important when we’re challenged to create better and better customer experiences across our entire customer relationships,” she says.

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8. Texts are interactive

Users opt in to initiate the conversations. Then, keywords keep the interaction dynamic. Receiving a text, opening it, and considering a response puts users in an active role.

9. SMS marketing is one to one

Often, marketers time campaigns in hopes of serving audiences right around the time they need that touch. With text messaging, the customer decides when to interact. This takes all guesswork out of the “right people at the right time with the right content through the right channel” formula.

With text messaging, the customer decides when to interact, says @Ardath421. #intelcontent Click To Tweet

10. Text exchanges provide customer insights for contextual relevance

Relevance is both the most valuable factor in automated marketing and the hardest to determine. Texting with a customer exposes context clearly and accurately on demand. When a person replies “ROI” in the scenario below, for example, you know what information they want and that they want it immediately.

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11. User behavior shows customers desire text support

Want proof SMS marketing is something customers want? Quiq’s 2017 research shows the majority of users would pay more for a product or service that comes with text support, and feel more positive toward brands that offer mobile messaging. Nearly half the respondents said they would even choose one product over another based on the availability of text messaging.

Nearly 50% respondents would choose 1 product over another based on availability of text messaging. @goquiq Click To Tweet

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12. SMS marketing can prepare your team for chatbots

It’s nearly impossible to know what a chatbot can (and can’t) do for your content marketing without some early experimentation. Thankfully, the automation of mobile messaging can provide that.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Don’t Fear Chatbots If You Have a Rich Content Strategy

13. Open and click-through rates outperform email

“In every research report that you see for marketing, email is the No. 1 most effective channel for most marketers,” Ardath says. “But look at the average open and click-through rates. This is the best channel we’ve got, and we’re getting 6 percent click-through?”

Compare that with SMS marketing, and you’ll have a new standard, says Ardath. “Sustainably, over time, what you find is a nearly perfect open rate for a text message,” she says. “And most of the response is in less than 5 minutes, where email could take 90 minutes, five days, five months, or whenever (customers) find you in the bottom of their inbox.”

SMS #marketing open rates = 97% and CTR = 36%, says @Ardath421. #intelcontent Click To Tweet

Cumulatively, these potential benefits pose an inherently tempting opportunity for enterprise marketers. However, Ardath warns against a haphazard approach to SMS marketing.

Why text marketing is known as a minefield (and why it doesn’t have to be)

Arbitrarily trying to implement a mobile messaging program can result in disaster. Even a well-thought-out exchange can go awry.

The most obvious pitfall is legal non-compliance. The good news is a simple participation agreement is all you need to gain permission to text. “The Telephone Consumer Protection Act has a bunch of regulations, and you have to be in compliance,” Ardath says. “Here’s the deal: Users have to opt in.”

A simple participation agreement is all you need to gain permission to text, says @Ardath421. #intelcontent Click To Tweet

Instead of seeing the opt-in requirement as a chore, consider it an opportunity for further qualifying your leads. An example of this could be a VIP offer for executives only.

The individual opts in by responding to the message on the left, disclosing his or her professional role and desires, as well as accepting the expectations this brand has set: type of content, frequency of delivery, and how to opt out or access assistance.

Another pitfall to avoid is a poorly planned route through transactions. “Last month I was in Scottsdale, and when I got to the Fairmont to check in, my room wasn’t ready,” Ardath recalls. The front desk offered to text Ardath when her room was ready, a convenience she appreciated. Eventually, she checked into her room, delighted with the amenities and decor.

“So they send me another text, just checking in, they want to know how my stay is going so far. They’re doing their Net Promoter Score thing, please rate them 1 to 10, and have a great day,” she says. “I am happy. I just had breakfast, things are going well, and I say, ‘10, yeah, I’m a happy camper.’” The Fairmont immediately replies, asking her to rate her stay on TripAdvisor.

“Now here’s the deal,” Ardath explains, “I just checked in. I’ve got three more days for them to screw it up. And not only that, but they want to interrupt my stay to go out to TripAdvisor and post a review?”

The hotel blew the opportunity to serve a guest by flipping the conversation and asking for a favor that at the time the user was unlikely to do. “Context is really important, especially when you’re interacting through someone’s smartphone,” Ardath says. “They’re expecting more from you.”

In addition to being customer-initiated, two-way exchanges, the key differences between SMS marketing and other marketing automation tools are that they rely on clear keywords and they afford the ability for a human to step in at any time.

As Mark Zuckerberg has said, “You should be able to message a business like you message a friend.”

What he did not say is that businesses should have access to you the way your friends have access to you. To ensure that your SMS marketing is as successful as a trusted friend’s communication, use it to serve your customer first, not your brand.

Playing through many potential scenarios and readying responses before administering your text-marketing program is the only way to prioritize your audience’s needs over your business goals.

SMS marketing, when done correctly, positions your brand as that friendly, useful, even human helper. When used well, these text exchanges put users back in control of the conversation so brands can improve, and, ultimately, serve.

Here’s an excerpt from Ardath’s talk:

youtube

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

The post 13 Reasons Why You Should Consider Text-Based Marketing appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

from https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2018/09/text-based-marketing/

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douchebagbrainwaves · 5 years

Text

WHAT NO ONE UNDERSTANDS ABOUT DEFENSE

Since it is a standard, I won't get in trouble for appearing to be writing about things I don't understand. Counterargument might prove something. When you have a spare hour, and days later you're still working on it. When you get an unexpected result like this, it could either be a bug or a new discovery. Python example, where we are in effect simulating the code that a compiler would generate to implement a lexical variable.1 And it turned out the idea was on the right track. Distraction is fatal to startups. So I want to say explicitly that I am not surprised to hear it. The big disadvantage of the new system is that it makes your life a lot simpler. The core of ITA's application is a 200,000 line Common Lisp program that searches many orders of magnitude more possibilities than their competitors, who apparently are still using mainframe-era programming techniques. If you're benevolent, people will rally around you: investors, customers, other companies, and the essay will still survive. That, it turned out to be the real experiment this summer.

But it's important to realize that more articulate name-calling and a carefully reasoned refutation, but I think it would help to put names on the intermediate stages. If you just keep trying, you'll find it.2 How much of a problem.3 One reason programmers dislike meetings so much is that they're on a different type of schedule from other people. An area without railroads or power was a rich potential market. Business people in Silicon Valley and the whole world, for that matter have speculative meetings. If you asked the pointy-haired boss had to think of another. It's the sort of determination implied by phrases like don't give up on the startup, you are in big trouble. So you can test equality by comparing a pointer, instead of comparing each character.

It would cost something to run, you become very hard to kill. We know from Google and Yahoo that grad students can start successful startups.4 I'm generating by hand the expansions of some macro that I need to write.5 Both took years to succeed. I had to write down everything I remember from it, I doubt it would amount to much more than a page.6 So the more powerful the language, the shorter the program not simply in characters, of course, but in effect I had two workdays each day, you've basically built yourself a giant tamagotchi.7 Ideas 1-5 are now widespread. If that were true, he would be right on target.8 But in addition there's sometimes a cascading effect.9

So when I say it would take ITA's imaginary competitor five years to duplicate something ITA could write in Lisp in three months, I mean five years if nothing goes wrong. There are times when this format is what a writer wants. Unless the opposing argument actually depends on such things, the only purpose of correcting them is to discredit one's opponent.10 In Robert's defense, he was skeptical about Artix. Plunging into an idea is a good thing. This essay developed out of conversations I've had with several other programmers about why Java smelled suspicious. It has too many cooks.11 It meant one could expect future high paying jobs. They have a literal representation, can be stored in variables, can be passed as arguments, and so on. Though better than attacking the author, this is how most compression algorithms work. Running code at read-time lets users reprogram Lisp's syntax; running code at compile-time is the basis of Lisp's use as an extension language in programs like Emacs; and reading at runtime enables programs to communicate using s-expressions, an idea recently reinvented as XML.

The Defense Department is encouraging developers to use Java. Sometimes merely seeing the opposing case, with little or no supporting evidence. Another way of saying that is that half of you are going to get rich and the other founders causes you to get more done than you would otherwise, because every dinner is a mini Demo Day. This is the kind of possibility that the pointy-haired boss doesn't mind if his company gets their ass kicked, so long as no one can prove it's his fault. I called business stuff. I had to write down everything I remember from it, but at every point have working code—or the style of painting where you begin with a complete but very blurry sketch done in an hour, then spend a week cranking up the resolution.12 Can you do more of that?13 Cheap Intel processors, of the same type used in desktop machines, are now more than fast enough for servers.14 If you find yourself saying a sentence that ends with but we're going to keep working on it can't be preceded by but.

That, I think is a red herring. Exactly.15 What good is it? What I mean is that Lisp was first discovered by John McCarthy in 1958, and popular programming languages are pretty much equivalent. Our case is an unusual one. By using the classic device for simulating the manager's schedule. Such labels may help writers too.16 He was hosting thousands of people's blogs. When we haven't heard from, or about, a startup for a couple months, that's a bad sign.

Most intellectual dishonesty is unintentional. We were after the C programmers. I want to say explicitly that I am not a particularly good person. The number one thing not to do is expand it. Let them write lists of n things is so relaxing. You get away with it till the underlying conditions change, and then at each point a day, a week, a month I thought I'd already put in so much time that it was the first thing we thought of. Whereas now the phrase already read seems almost ill-formed. But there were moments when he was optimistic.17 An essay can go anywhere the writer wants. The current record holder for flexibility may be Daniel Gross of Greplin.

It's even the answer to questions that seem unrelated, like how to convince investors to give you bigger abstractions—bigger bricks, as it were, so you need explicit return statements to return values: function foo n return function i return n i To be fair, Perl also retains this distinction, but deals with it in typical Perl fashion by letting you omit returns. If you move there, the peer pressure that made you work harder all summer will continue to operate.18 The most likely scenario is 1 that no government will successfully establish a startup hub, and 2 that the spread of the Industrial Revolution, despite the fact that communication is so much faster now. But when I think back to the beginning, they were in.19 The web is turning writing into a conversation. Historically, languages designed for large organizations PL/I, Pascal, Ada, Visual Basic, the IBM AS400, VRML, ISO 9000, the SET protocol, VMS, Novell Netware, and CORBA, among others. I'm not saying that you won't get a lot of external evidence that benevolence works.20 The web is turning writing into a conversation. At each point a day, a week, a month I thought I'd already put in so much time that it was the first programming language to support it. They let you do what you want and get out of the PhD program in physics at Berkeley to do this.21 I'm not kidding.

Notes

If the next stage tend to have this second self keep a journal. And I'm sure for every startup founder or investor I saw that I didn't. It doesn't happen often. Though they were supposed to be employees, or that an idea where the recipe: someone guessed that there were already lots of potential winners, which make investments rather than insufficient effort to see it in the computer world, but this could be fixed within a few old professors in Palo Alto, but historical abuses are easier for some reason insists that you were able to hire a real reason out of a liberal education than past generations have.

Stone, op.

And when a wolf appears, is rated at-1. Now to people he knew. Scribes in ancient philosophy may be common in the past, and stir.

There are many senses of the techniques for stopping spam. In practice their usefulness is greatly enhanced by other people. Actually Emerson never mentioned mousetraps specifically.

It may indeed be a predictor of low salaries as the first couple months we can't figure out what the editors will have to recognize them when you had to work like casual conversation.

There is of course it was the fall of 2008 the terms they were friendlier to developers than Apple is now very slow, but which didn't taste very good job. Do College English Departments Come From? We could have used another algorithm and everything I say is being put through an internal process in their closets. Quite often at YC I find myself asking founders Would you use the name Homer, to drive the old version, I should degenerate from Subject foo not to have lunch at the command of the founders of Google to do due diligence for VCs if the statistics they consider are useful, how could I get attacked a lot of time on schleps, and owns significant equity in it.

Users dislike their new operating system so much on luck. If you assume that P spam and legitimate mail volume both have distinct daily patterns. After Greylock booted founder Philip Greenspun out of the best hackers work on Wall Street were in 2000, because universities are where a laptop would be critical to.

If you're expected to, so you'd have to pass so slowly for them by the time 1992 the entire period from the most valuable aspects of the company.

The conventional 1 in 10 success rate for startups, and also what we'd call random facts, like languages and safe combinations, and I suspect the recent resurgence of evangelical Christians. This is why we can't believe anyone would think Y Combinator was a very misleading number, because the danger of chasing large investments is not that everyone's visual piano has that key on it, by decreasing the difference directly. 1323-82.

The CPU weighed 3150 pounds, and the valuation of your identity. The two 10 minuteses have 3 weeks between them so founders can get rich by preserving their traditional culture; maybe people in Bolivia don't want to stay around, but I took so long to send a million spams. It does at least notice duplication though, so that's what we now call the years after 1914 a nightmare than to read a draft of this: You may be the fact that it killed the best day job.

Digg's algorithm is very common, to a clueless audience like that, because you're throwing off your own morale, you can never tell for sure whether, e. Trevor Blackwell wrote the ordering system was small. When I say in principle is that promising ideas are not very far along that trend yet.

The other reason it's easy to discount knowledge that at some of those you should probably start from the truth. And eventually markets learn how to value potential dividends. I read most things I find myself asking founders Would you use this thing yourself, if you have to mean starting a company.

Some VCs will offer you an asking price. Others will say this is: we currently filter at the mercy of investors started offering investment automatically to every startup founder could pull the same reason 1980s-style knowledge representation could never have to tell how serious potential investors and they hope will be regarded in the early years.

Naive founders think Wow, a few years. In fact the decade preceding the war had been raised religious and then scale it up because they want to take over the super-angel than a nerdy founder trying to meet people; I swapped them to act.

On the other hand, a torture device so called because it was. He devoted much of a powerful syndicate, you may have to go to college somewhere with real research professors. But startups are competitive like running, not because Delicious users are not in the 1960s, leaving the area around city hall a bleak wasteland, but not in the evolution of the world's population lives outside the US, it could be fixed within a niche.

The obvious choice for your pitch to evolve as e. There are two very different types of startups that are only about 2%.

According to the erosion of the world, but he turned them down. Not linearly of course finding words this way, because companies then were more the aggregate is what you build this? Then when we say it's ipso facto right to buy stock, the initial investors' point of view: either an IPO, or a 2004 Mercedes S600 sedan 122,000 or a blog that tried to preserve their wealth by forbidding the export of gold or silver.

Convertible notes often have valuation caps, a VC recently who said the things startups fix. Unfortunately these times are a small seed investment in you, however, by doing a small company that could start this way, I mean this in the cover story of Business Week article mentioning del.

And if they could be overcome by changing the shape of the world's population lives outside the US News list tells us is what you call the Metaphysics came after meta after the Physics in the US News list is meaningful is precisely because they have raised money at first, but have no representation more concise than a nerdy founder trying to focus on their own freedom. It's possible that companies will one day be able to raise more, while she likes getting attention in the fall of 2008 the terms they were buying a phenomenon, or whether contractors count too. Yes, I mean by evolution. I see a clear plan for life in Palo Alto to have fun in college.

Patrick Collison wrote At some point, there was near zero crossover. At first literature took a painfully long time.

A investor has a similar variation in prices. 5% a week for 19 years, maybe you'd start to go deeper into the intellectual sounding theory behind it. Obviously this is to protect themselves. San Jose.

#automatically generated text #Markov chains #Paul Graham #Python #Patrick Mooney #equality #Distraction #hub #day #founder #Google #sup #schleps #Robert #beginning

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a-breton · 6 years