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Ad Tech

Shaping the way of digital advertising

Written by Alex Martinez on Digilah (Tech Thought Leadership)

The relationship that people have with the consumption of content in digital platforms is constantly changing.

As an audience, our needs change, the way we consume information and what we expect from the online experience when we enter a website or an app. The truth is that as digital consumers we are increasingly demanding.

All the parts that make up the digital world make a great effort to adapt to these demands.

One of these is to provide a pleasant online experience. What factors can determine this? A well-worked UX (user experience), and that the user finds advertisements according to their interests.

It is on this last point that we decided to work in order to contribute our technological value.

Five years ago, together with Ricard Luquero and Pablo Salinas, we founded Adpone, an advertising technology company with a very clear mission: to shape the future of advertising with in-house technology to achieve high performance.

We developed a technology that is little known to most people: a solution that places premium brand ads on websites from all over the world.

This solution meets the needs of digital players so that they can continue to offer their audiences free and quality content.

What are website owners and advertisers looking for? Let’s break it down.

Publishers want to make the most out of their traffic.

By monetizing advertising inventory

The vast majority of websites generate income through advertising. This can be done in different ways, but it is usually done by placing banners or videos in the body of the website.

By ensuring a great online experience

Journalists and content creators make a great effort to generate original and quality content, and to position it organically in search engines. All this, to build trust in their audiences and make them want to return to the website.

For this to be possible -and at the same time profitable- the advertising they show must be consistent with each content.

Advertisers seek to make good impressions.

By reaching their target audiences

Every advertising campaign has at least two parts. The first is to design compelling creative content. The second, to implement this campaign by placing the ads on websites according to their content. This used to be done intuitively, now it is done through advertising technology.

By placing their content in the right place

Context matters. Let’s imagine that a user is reading a news story about the use of toxic fertilizers in soy production and suddenly a banner of a brand of soy-containing veggie burgers appears. Obviously the impression of the brand will not be positive.

Agencies like Adpone are responsible for placing the ads in the right context.

In short, providing a pleasant online experience, having a profitable website and providing adequate advertisements is possible thanks to adtech companies.

At Adpone, we sum it up as #impressionsmatter.

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Digi Tech

Who Wants To Be a (Digital) Millionaire?

Written by Wendy Scott on Digilah (Tech Thought Leadership)

I do.

If you recognize the reference to the Frank Sinatra/Celeste Holm song from the 1956 film, High Society, you are probably a Boomer like me. So what business does a fifty-nine-year-old have wanting to be a digital anything, let alone a digital millionaire?

I didn’t grow up with tech. We didn’t even have a landline at home. I took my ‘O’ Levels in 1978, which was the first year in the UK we were allowed to take calculators into exams. I struggle with tech, and I say ‘interweb’ to annoy the kids.

But what I do have is at least forty years of leadership and learning & development knowledge that I can share online. And technology has made it possible for me to make money doing that.

What the heck is a digital millionaire?

Otherwise known as a digital entrepreneur or content creator, it’s someone who sells digital products online such as templates, books, or courses. It’s also possible to sell membership newsletters, coaching, and exclusive coaching groups called masterminds.

How it all works

I’ve spent the last eighteen months reading, doing courses, and attending webinars to find out how to be a content creator, and as far as I can tell, this is what digital millionaires do:

Step One – Create online content – whether you create a blog, an Instagram post, a podcast, or articles, put free content online.

I write articles on Medium, a writing platform anyone can post on. When people read an article, the author gets a small amount of the reader’s membership fee.

Medium writers share articles on FB, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Quora, and Pinterest.

Step Two – Collect email addresses – Followers on Instagram or other social media are useful, but you’d have to start again if the platform disappears. The trick is to collect the email addresses of people that like your work. The list can’t disappear overnight, and you use the list to send newsletters and sell your products.

I’ve just started an email newsletter that goes out weekly and contains free links to my training, leadership and dating articles.

It’s said that successful online creators make one dollar a month income from each email subscriber.

I’m using convertkit for my list; They provide helpful resources, such as an online creator community, online tutorials, and live zoom tutorials.

Step Three – Give free content to your email list – Email your list once a week and give them valuable content for free. Content could be an article in the body of the email, sources you have found helpful, book recommendations, templates, short email courses, short video courses, or access to an exclusive podcast episode.

Step Four – Sell your content via your email list – You can sell templates, ebooks, and courses. I’ve seen online courses from $29 US to $3000 US, and some big earners sell masterminds for $10,000 US per year.

Currently, I’m writing an ebook and a course which will be my first digital products.

I use Atticus for my book, Teachable to create my course, and Canva to create the slides and workbooks.

Next tech on the list

A subscription to Later to automatically schedule my posts on social media.

I also use a writing assistant called Jasper.ai and a note-taking tool called RoamResearch.

How I’m finding all the tech

I believe in a growth mindset, so after the screaming, tears, and tech-induced lie-downs with a nice cup of tea, I persevere. Google is my friend. I’m learning very slowly, but each gain I make is a small step forward.

The upside is that I’m enjoying myself while learning about a whole new world. The downside is that none of my friends can understand what I’m talking about and think I’m getting mixed up in an online pyramid scheme scam.

Am I a Digital Millionaire yet?

No. I’ve made a loss with the subscriptions to tech and courses I’ve taken. But I’m having fun, learning heaps, and keeping current with new tech.

And you never know, this time next year I could be a millionaire…

Digital Millionaires I follow: Denise Duffield-Thomas, Jeff Walker, Amy Porterfield, Marie Forleo, and Dr. Benjamin Hardy.

Movers and Shakers on Medium: Tim Denning, Zulie Rane, Ayodeji Awosika, Tom Kueglar, Sean Kearnan, Nicolas Cole, Sinem Gunel.

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Decision Making Tech

Better than Before: Making sense of data in an age of information overload

Written by Ira Gilani Lal  on Digilah (Tech Thought Leadership)

In a 2016 Harvard Business Review article, Scott Anthony shared some insights from a study on S&P 500 companies:

  • 61-year tenure for average firm in 1958 narrowed to 25 years in 1980 – to 18 years in 2012
  • At current churn rate, 75% of the S&P 500 companies will be replaced by 2027

Business leaders commonly refer to the military acronym VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity) to describe the world today. The external environment is changing at a rapid pace and companies cannot afford to be caught off guard. How can companies continue to thrive, in this ever-changing external environment? While there are several challenges, and there are also plenty of opportunities. Deep-rooted assumptions hold us back from unlocking this hidden potential.

Today’s information and digital systems are capable of providing a huge amount of data at the click of a button. Most organizations measure a large number of metrics for each business unit, division, department, employee level etc. The underlying assumption is that the more we measure, better we are! Most senior executives are quite familiar with their local measurements (e.g. tons, units produced, order book, number of subscribers etc.) but are ignorant of the overall financial measurements. 

Everyone in the company should understand financials; it is not just for Accounts or Finance function. In most organizations, the top management team does not have a good understanding of Free Cash Flow. In his book, Conspiracy of Fools, Kurt Eichenwald writes that in 2001, just a month before the collapse of Enron, its chairman Kenneth Lay, CEO Jeffery Skilling, and CFO Andrew Fastow did not know that Enron would run out of cash in a matter of weeks!

Dr. Eli Goldratt, author of the best-selling book The Goal, repeatedly emphasized that “Measurements Drive Behavior!”. The purpose of measurements is to take decisions for corrective actions. At the organization level, a few simple parameters are good enough. Timely data and corrective actions can help individuals to connect the dots and see the big picture.

Most companies review performance monthly. This leads to a significant time lag in getting key data or MIS. We recommend a weekly review mechanism with focus on 3-5 key metrics. The objective of the review is only to take decisions for corrective action. The weekly report should be simple and accurate, leaving no room for analysis paralysis, and facilitating effective decision-making.

Increasing digitization of data across the organization has been a key enabler for running the weekly reviews successfully. Companies that have adapted this methodology, provide a very high degree of focus on getting the reports right first time, as soon as the week ends. Many companies have integrated their digital systems (based on ERP such as SAP, Oracle, Tally, Zoho) and provide simple excel based reports and dashboards which can be accessed across devices such as mobile phones or tablets.

During the last two years of the pandemic, there have been lot of uncertainties in supply chain. Moving to a digitally enabled model has allowed these companies to be extremely nimble and agile in their decision making. Several companies have pivoted their business model quickly in order to capitalize on the emerging opportunities in the market. These decisions have been backed by analysis of marketing trends using simple AI and ML based algorithms, dynamic decision making matrix and partnerships across the digital ecosystem.

Technology acceleration has also helped some companies to take specific actions to address business challenges posed by the pandemic. For e.g. to deal with the disruption in logistics, companies have invested in GPS based end to end tracking systems. In manufacturing businesses, use of IOT based sensors has picked up significantly to collect data, and share timely alerts for predictive maintenance.

At Goldratt India, we have been working with Indian companies for over 23 years to help them increase their sales, profit and cash flow by an order of magnitude. Weekly reviews have been the cornerstone of all our engagements. Companies have been able to achieve quantum improvement in performance, just by changing a few metrics and review processes. Some of our learnings are  encapsulated below:

  1. Measure performance weekly instead of monthly
  2. Don’t get stuck in analysis paralysis, focus on corrective actions only
  3. Instead of chasing benchmarks or budgets, always strive to “Better than Before” with respect to own past performance
  4. Monitor plan vs. actual every week: The more our planning improves, the gap between plan vs. actual reduces
  5. Better than Before: Each week, strive to improve upon past 13 week moving average, irrespective of the external environment

Our client JSPL has been practicing these principles for over 5 years and is well on its way to becoming a debt free company. The company has reduced debt by over Rs 25000 crores in the last 4 years.

Short video from the case study presented at TOCICO international conference in USA:

In conversation with Mr. Naveen Jindal, Chairman, JSPL

Categories
Digi Tech

I’m Linda

Written by Linda Wells on Digilah (Tech Thought Leadership)

I am not a tech geek. I am not an academic professor at your local university. I’m just me! and all I want to do is show people what they are eating/drink/consuming and the harm it does and nudge them to pivot to healthy food and drinks, plus increasing their physical activity.

Before the global pandemic happened, I had a small business that did just that – face to face workshops and speaking gigs at conferences, workshops and meetings – all within a few kilometres of where I lived (well, maybe up to 500kms).

Now … My clients are global, some of them 16,500kms away. Why? Because of technology and the digital revolution, we are currently in.

Whilst I ran live workshops on my topic of healthy food, drinks and exercise and I always dreamed of creating online content, making some online courses on a digital platform. The truth is, I didn’t think I was smart enough to do that!!

I am smart in my thought leadership sector (for example I know what artificial numbers 950 and 951 mean and what harm they do to our body … check the closest drink you have on your desk while reading this and see if it includes those), but tech guru: NO. I know how to achieve the goal of 10,000 steps a day, but how to understand the digital world: NO.

When the pandemic hit, I had just moved to another State with no friends, no business contacts, not a member of any business forums or groups and had no work opportunities at all. So, guess what I did?

I decided to put my content online. I searched digital platforms, chose a few to test and ended up subscribing to Thinkific and put my courses online. I made video content. I learnt how to edit the content, how to add to YouTube, how to create the captions etc. I created resources and pdfs for students to download as well.

I used to use all the MS(Microsoft) things, MS Word, MS PowerPoint, MS Excel and had used these for many, many years (I’m not telling you how many as I don’t want to disclosure how old I actually am – haha).

Now I use Google Drive, Google Docs, I use Zoom (doesn’t everyone), I use MS Teams, I create content in Canva, I’ve do email video messages via Loom, I use Mailchimp for my newsletters – I have learnt so much from my digital and technology journey since 2020 – all the while teaching people how to understand what is in discretionary, ultra-processed food and drinks.

I’m Linda from e-RAW.

e-RAW is a digital learning company that helps people transform their lives from consuming ultra-processed food/drinks and risks to their health to the best version of themselves they have ever been. Bonus: they get to pass it on to their family and friends – at home and in the workplace.

In fact, the word ‘discretionary’ wasn’t in my narrative, until I asked a group of smarter people than me on an online Retail Food Environment course from Monash University with me, what word I should use instead of ‘crap food’ to be a little bit kinder. This was on a digital Zoom weekly course roundup and guest speaker gig. So, I learned from my fellow students the word ‘discretionary’ on a tech video helping us with our online course we were studying from our home offices or workplace offices. See how important tech has been, even when it is just in the background!

Categories
HR Tech

Working reset to “REMOTE FIRST”

Written by JJ Chai on Digilah (Tech Thought Leadership)

Technology and virtual ways of working have made “REMOTE FIRST” way of working possible. The biggest proof being, almost the entire global economy has been able to survive because of this reset.

This new way of working requires some basic rules which every organisation, especially a start-up should follow to keep this sustainable and continuous.

Digital fluency

This may seem obvious, and to some extent, already a requirement for any knowledge industry job today. However, in a “REMOTE FIRST” environment, especially in a start-up, there’s no IT department helpdesk to call to fix up laptop or your microphone. Team members who can figure out how to troubleshoot, reboot or do basic configuration of their technology are much more productive than those who are typically reliant on an ‘IT person’ to fix things.

We see the ability to quickly learn the tech tools, whether collaborative cloud documents (no save to laptop and email please…), chat software or video calls as an important indicator of a successful remote-first employee. These are foundational skills, in some ways more important than even English language fluency.

High empathy

As a team with over 16 different nationalities, with different styles of communication in both written and spoken forms, we need team members who have high levels of empathy. It’s far too easy to misinterpret the tone and intent of messages or annoy others by setting up meetings at odd times of day due to time zone differences. 

We find that people who have a strong sense of empathy (e.g. as a simple indicator, they would indicate both parties’ time zone when scheduling meetings), to be much better adept to dealing with communication challenges and being effective team members in a remote-first environment. Some indicators, like experience with working across time zones, or having been well travelled (with a strong traveller’s point of view, vs a tourist point of view), are good signs in this respect.

Clarity of communication

This is true for any regular organisation but is made even more important in “REMOTE FIRST” organisations. With less opportunities to re-clarify at the water cooler or other interactions in the office, the ability to communicate well in writing and verbally are more important than ever. We appreciate structured communication and concise verbal communication.

The challenge to assess these three characteristics, and also other signals are also made tougher in a video-meeting set up. I do miss the days when I could do the coffee cup interview test. In-person at the office, I’d go with the candidate to the pantry, help get them a cup of beverage, bring them along to the interview room, and observe whether they later offered to help take it back to the pantry or assume ‘someone else would do it’!

We founded Rainforest in the midst of the Covid pandemic in early 2021. As an e-commerce aggregator that buys and builds e-commerce brands, growing the brands globally, we saw an opportunity to make the most of the pandemic situation by going “REMOTE FIRST”, i.e. we predominantly worked remotely, outside of a fixed office environment. As we grew, we took this further, and now have no office at all in any location. Our employees can work from anywhere.

We learnt that while most candidates that applied to us say they are comfortable to be part of a “REMOTE FIRST” team, the above characteristics stood out to be better indicators than others of being a successful “REMOTE FIRST” team member at Rainforest. We continue to look for these three traits to ensure they would thrive in our organisation.

Categories
Digi Tech

OWN YOUR BRAND ON SOCIAL MEDIA TO SUCCEED

Written by Lourd Vijay – Digilah (Thought Leadership)

Founder of LVDS (Lourd Vijay’s Dance Studio)

Hear here if you are not upto reading!

https://open.spotify.com/embed/show/6ukAttNgIccm87g1oHMcWe?utm_source=generator

Social media has very drastically altered the world of business. Every entrepreneur or company has to constantly reinvent themselves to stay afloat; making it a challenge to comprehend the present trends, the ever-changing algorithms, the indecipherable analytics and the sudden upspring of agencies and social media marketers.

For small enterprises like ours that offer niche services like teaching dance, choreographies and performances, and predominantly catering to the hobby-classes market, social media has worked to be both a boon and a bane.

When it comes to delivering great content, dance as an activity and an art form fits perfectly to drive the kind of content that grabs enough attention, likes and follows, but then the big question is “does it bring a brand like ours a measured, tangible outcome?”

We, in the past have had an array of professionals, agencies, freelancers and interns with a social media background who have helped us with our presence but unfortunately the returns and benefits have been dismal. The ad spends have had no valuable outcome as the leads were largely irrelevant and were from a geographical region that wasn’t where we operated within. However, the influx of user-friendly and life-saving tools such as Canva for great creatives, IMovies or Inshot for video edits & Wix for intelligent websites, has lowered our dependence on social media professionals while also empowering us with a better sense of aesthetic. Functional tools such as these are the need of the hour.

My experience has made it very evident that organic growth is the only way forward in an industry like ours. Which means we need to churn out great content every single day. Our quest, hence, is to answer this sole question – “What is great content?”

Over time we have built a better hit-ratio for the kind of content we post. The turnaround time to interact with our followers has also improved drastically and our costs have reduced leading to faster and better ROI(Return on Investment).  This has obviously come at the cost of some preliminary investment in terms of time and resources. The effort seems to have paid off for now, which we hope continues until Metaverse decides to throw us off with new algorithm alterations.

Therefore, my learning’s from building my business through social media has been:

  • Look beyond vanity metrics, clearly stating your KPIs
  • Use reports and analytics to see what is working and what is not on a regular basis
  • Most important own your brand, personality and tone

Being optimistic, we hope to overcome the setbacks Covid has caused and evolve into a national brand and an enterprise that operates across varied geographies. The graduation to being a national brand would enable us to hire the brightest minds from the social media industry who can drive up value from the word ‘go’.

Until then, Canva is the tool for survival.

Categories
Digi Tech

Leveraging Instagram for Small Business

Written By Shoni Duesling – Digilah (Thought Leadership)

Life Coach at https://www.instagram.com/twelveinchesaway/

With 1.3 billion users, Instagram is the second most popular social media platform behind Facebook, making it one of the most effective tools to help small businesses grow their brand. While its high number of users means that small businesses can reach more people, Instagram’s visual nature offers a great potential for building strong brand identity and brand loyalty.

How to leverage Instagram

So, how can you leverage Instagram for your small business?

Capitalise on the Visual

Potential clients will form an opinion on your business after just one look at your Instagram feed. That is why it is vital to communicate your brand identity as clearly as possible. To do this, you first need to get clear on your branding. Choosing a look and feel you want to communicate is the first step, after which you can choose a cohesive design consisting of your colour scheme, fonts, icons and/or images that align with your look and feel. Once you have done this, start posting! You can post tips, quotes, diagrams, photos, videos, basically any content that communicates clear and important messages to your community. A great way to build brand loyalty is by letting people know who is behind the brand; so, post photos or videos of you and your team. You can also use Instagram Stories (posts that disappear after 24 hours) to share announcements, tips, or behind-the-scenes snippets of what is happening in your business. Regardless of your strategy, create a cohesive look for your brand and capitalise on the visual.

Engage With Your Community

The more you engage with your community, the better. Engagement increases brand loyalty and it allows you to open up a two-way conversation so that you can better understand and serve your community. One means of engagement is to include a call to action in your feed posts. A call to action could be asking people to click the link in your bio, asking a question they can answer in the comments, or asking them to like, share or save the post. Another way to engage is to greet new followers. Take a moment to message each new follower. You are building a business, but you are also building a community with other human beings – take advantage of the opportunity to connect with them. Yet another way to engage is through the built-in engagement tools in Instagram stories. You can create polls, quizzes, or ask questions. Once you have posted a story, save it as a highlight so that it will permanently show on your feed for old and new visitors alike. Engaging with your community is one of the most enjoyable and beneficial things you can do for your small business.

Collaborate!

Reach more people with your business by collaborating with Instagram’s IG Live feature. This feature allows you to live stream for up to 4 hours either on your own or with other businesses, past clients, or whoever would be relevant to your community. One benefit of IG Live collaborations is that you get to engage with your community in real-time as they type in questions or answers to your questions. A second benefit is that you and the person you are collaborating with can share your expertise on your products and/or services in depth. Third, your sharing can build brand loyalty, as your community gets to know you and the person you are collaborating with through a longer video. Lastly, both you and the person you are collaborating with will likely gain new followers from each other’s communities.

At the end of the IG Live, you can share it in your stories and tag the person you collaborated with and (if you are the one who hosted the video) you can save it to your page for future viewers. So, think of one person you could collaborate with and reach out to them.

Over to You

So now it is over to you. Instagram is one of the best platforms to use for your small business. Through capitalising on the visual, engaging with your community, and collaborating with others, you will be on your way to establishing a clear brand and creating a community who will support your growing business for years to come.