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Getting bored in those Zoom meetings? It might be time to switch it up (and be annoying to your favorite co-workers). Whether you know it or not, Zoom has a feature which is essentially a virtual greenscreen that pops up behind you. And yes, you can even upload your own pictures. Key Takeaways
🛠 Behind the Backgrounds The mechanics of virtual backgrounds are not necessarily new to the graphics industry. Similar to technology that has been traditionally used in photo and video for the last several years, backgrounds are based off of 2 main technologies. Light and color, which can technically be referred to as Contrast Tracking and Chroma Keying, are the basis for those technologies. Contrast tracking is the main method of composition for the Virtual backgrounds in Zoom. In most cases, your face and body are the brightest part of the image during a Zoom call. This is why people tend to disappear into the abyss of virtual nothingness when they move away from the camera! There is no longer enough contrast between you and your (real) background for tracking. Chroma keying is the secondary method of composition for the Virtual backgrounds in Zoom. You’ve probably heard of using green screens, which is what Chroma Keying can be based off of. “Chroma” meaning color, literally means “Color Keying”. Keying is a term in post-production meaning to replace one piece of image data with another. In this case? Switch the green pixels from green to your fabulous ocean background image. Zoom has a toggle in the software that allows you to say “I have a greenscreen” in which the software will switch its tracking method. ⭐️ Take it to Hollywood Now that you know more about how Zoom technically works, it’s time to make yourself look good. One of the first things many people forget about when it comes to Zoom calls isn't even about the background, it’s about you. Yes, you, smile more! Showing your expression via video conferencing is a surefire way to engage with your callers more than a background would. Once you get the smiling out of the way, it’s time to find some light. Natural lightning is the best every single time. This isn't only true for Zoom calls, but movies, pictures, and even architecture all thrive in natural lighting. If that’s not an option, do your best to make sure the space is well lit. 💻 Curate Your Collection Congrats, you’re ready to actually have fun in meetings again! Now, it’s time to choose your background and upload your favorites. Both Zoom and Google Meet allow you to upload pictures and even blur them out. For Zoom: Start by logging in/opening Zoom on your computer. The the upper right corner, you will see a gear icon. Click the gear to open the main menu. On the left hand side, all of the categories will appear. Select the “Background & Filters” option. You are now free to choose any of the backgrounds Zoom provides, or upload your own by selecting the plus icon. For Google Meet: Start by getting into a meeting either by yourself or with a peer. In the lower right corner, select the 3 dot ellipses. A popup will appear with different options, select Change Background. You will then see a side window open with all of the options Google provides and 4 buttons. The buttons function accordingly: Turn off backgrounds, slightly blur your background, blur your background, and use image from disk. 📄 In Conclusion Virtual backgrounds are a great way to mix things up when it comes time to meet. Upload a picture of your favorite place to feel at home, or an embarrassing picture of a co-worker (within reason…). Virtual backgrounds were made possible by video editing technology that was ingeniously applied to video communication and has been a hit ever since.  📽️ Watch the Full Video on Youtube Quotes“All I did to fix the issue was move to a different spot in the room. If you’re home, I would highly recommend turning on as many lights as you can and getting into some natural light if you have that as an option.” Scott Millard “The number one recommended thing to do is actually have a green screen. It’s totally not necessary, but if the virtual backgrounds are something that's super important to you, go for it." Scott Millard “It’s a great way to show your own personality and style. Even though Dick and I have the same logo, we can still have different backgrounds.” Scott Millard “It’s a great way to close deals. We have actually used logos and assets we have designed for clients as virtual backgrounds during meetings.” Dick Polipnick About the GuestScott Millard Entrepreneur, Artist, and Associate Creative Director at Online Growth Systems Scott is a versatile entrepreneur and designer involved in ventures ranging from Real Estate to Marketing and anything in-between. With project experience encompassing the likes of Film, Photography, Design, Operational Management, Customer Experience and more, Scott is a truly adaptable key component in any industry. With an acute ability to visualize and solve creatively, Scott has brought precise solutions to a multitude of clients and teams regardless of the task at hand. Links MentionedYou May Also Like
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Have you ever tried to interact with your favorite brand, only to hear nothing back? This is the reason community management exists! Whether you do it yourself or hire someone to do it for you, engaging with your audience is critical to gaining a positive reputation, boosting sales, and more. Key Takeaways:
📚 The Basics of Engagement and Management Chances are you have done engagement yourself, but you didn't even realize it! Community management is the same as audience engagement, and it can be roughly defined as ‘interacting with your active audience through comments, messages, replies, and more.’ Community management is incredibly important to your profiles and business as it shows consumers you can be trusted, you care, have quality work, and more. If you asked a store clerk a question, and they didn’t respond, would you even end up buying from that store? 📤 Start the Conversation It’s important to realize that only a small percentage of your audience will naturally engage without being prompted to. Think about it, nearly all content you see never has over a few thousand comments or replies - no matter how many millions of views it has. Start by taking simple steps like asking your audience to comment, and leaving your own comment at the top of the section. Ask a prompting question to make your audience feel like they are heard! Examples: “Have you used this product before? What did you think?” or, “Tell me your 3 favorite ______, GO!” Make sure whenever possible that your comments are pinned and liked, as this will get a higher chance for your audience to see it. 🏆 Reward your Community Community management is important in and of itself, but you want to leverage the benefits to their maximum potential. The easiest and most surefire way to increase your conversion with management is to offer incentives to active audience members. When engaging, attach sales offers and direct links to the end of your replies. In doing so, you will be removing any barriers to the customer from buying. 📄 In Conclusion Community management is key to the success of your social media accounts and ultimately your business. It provides a way for consumers to get in touch with you, and trust that what you have to offer is high quality and readily available. Engagement provides additional conversion opportunities with the offer of coupons, direct links, and sales!  📽️ Watch the Full Video on Youtube Quotes“This is one of the most powerful services you can do when it comes to social media.” Dick Polipnick “It keeps people involved, it keeps people engaged, and it keeps people interested in your business.” Dick Polipnick “Just as what a store associate does for brick and mortar businesses, community management does for online businesses.” Dick Polipnick “If someone asks a question regarding a product and you don’t give a valid answer, you have a ZERO percent chance of closing that sale.” Dick Polipnick About the HostDick Polipnick Serial Entrepreneur, Founder, and CEO of Online Growth Systems Dick Polipnick is the Founder of Online Growth Systems, a media company that helps big-name brands turn their e-commerce businesses to profit and advises high-growth, venture-backed startups. The National Federation of Independent Business named him a top "Young Entrepreneur of the Year", AdFed listed him on "32 Under 32", and he's been featured on and collaborated with Business.com, Nickelodeon Studios, World Wide Fund for Nature, Clean Energy Resource, and more. In addition to being a speaker and an entrepreneur, Dick is the host of The Dick Polipnick Show- where he interviews top 1% achievers and creates digital content including blogs, videos, podcasts, and a newsletter called "The #Growther's Digest. Links MentionedYou May Also LikeYou’ve probably seen it before. You go to search for your favorite business on Google, and a big information box comes up on the side of the search results! Fortunately, that box is just the beginning of what’s possible when it comes to advertising your business. Welcome to search engine listings. Key Takeaways
🔎 Search Engines and Listings: The Basics Before leveraging the power of search engine listing management, it’s important to understand how they work. In a nutshell, search engines were built and designed to show people what they want. Read that again, “what they want”. So, because listings live within search engines, they follow the same rule. Understanding that this is the basis of how search engines work is key to understanding why optimization is so important (check out this SEO article for more). It is also for this reason that your competitors could be beating you! 🥇Beat Your Competitors If someone searches for, “Hardware store near me” and a big name brand listing shows up instead of a small business, it’s because users are more likely to be looking for the big name brand. The same applies to your business. If you aren't the most popular in town, don’t worry. There are a lot of options that could help you rank higher, but we are going to focus on listings. The easiest place to start is with Google. Do you have Google My Business set up? Do you have a location on Google Maps within Google My Business? Having a profile set up and validated will help Google rank you higher than competitors, especially if they haven’t done it yet. The same goes for all search engines. 🔋 The Options are Endless The first step to creating search engine listings is to get active in search engines in the first place. This typically means building a website or profile, and if you don’t have either one of those in the 21st century, you may have bigger issues. As mentioned above, Google is a great place to start, but there are plenty of other options. Check out this comprehensive list below! Most of these platforms have a similar process during the setup phase! Google My Business Google Maps (The same as Google Business) Bing Places Yahoo Foursquare Yelp Yellow Pages Trust Pilot 📄 In Conclusion Search engine listing management is a powerful concept when used to its full extent. It allows your customers to have a higher level of access to your business, and the information they need to interact with it. Search engines help place your listings, and there is a wide range of engines available including Google, Yelp, Bing, and more.  Quotes“A search engine is things like Bing, Google, Yahoo, really anything that you can search online.” Dick Polipnick “Listings are businesses, pages, blog posts, and items listed within a search engine.” Dick Polipnick About the HostDick Polipnick Serial Entrepreneur, Founder, and CEO of Online Growth Systems Guest Profile: Dick Polipnick is the Founder of Online Growth Systems, a media company that helps big-name brands turn their e-commerce businesses to profit and advises high-growth, venture-backed startups. The National Federation of Independent Business named him a top "Young Entrepreneur of the Year", AdFed listed him on "32 Under 32", and he's been featured on and collaborated with Business.com, Nickelodeon Studios, World Wide Fund for Nature, Clean Energy Resource, and more. Links MentionedYou May Also LikeWith the current state of social media, it can be a daunting task to hold your audience's attention for more than two seconds. Luckily, content creation has made it easier than ever before to increase audience retention, engagement, and even conversion. Ranging from a simple blog post to a complex short-film, here is what you need to know about today’s state of content. Key Takeaways 🎬 What content creation actually is, 🏆Who owns custom content and how copywriting works, and ⚖️How to create captivating content. 🎬 What is Content Creation? Content creation can be defined as taking an idea, or other pieces of information, and synthesizing it into something an audience can view or interact with, oftentimes, to target a specific customer or audience profile. Content creation may mean something different to your business than, say, your friend’s business. There are many different types of content leverage, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. These include written content, photo content, video content, design/ar-based content, and more. 🏆 Create Winning Content Winning content can be relatively agreed upon as engaging, visually appealing, thought-provoking, relatable, and entertaining. Of course, it’s nearly impossible to produce content that checks all of these boxes, but the right balance is more than achievable. Yes, you can do it! Before creating your winning content, prompt yourself with a few of these guideline questions. Audience: Who is my audience? > What are their interests? > Why are they following in the first place? > What would they like to see? Brand: What does my brand stand for? > What is my brand recognized for? > How can I visually express its values? Relevant Information: What statistics or information can I use to grab the attention of my audience? > What information will enhance my content? > What information will detract from my content? SEO: What are currently trending topics? > What are the most searched keywords related to my information? > How can I tailor my content to these guidelines for searchability? ⚖️ Good Artists Copy, Great Artists Steal Unless you have been directly affected by copyright infringement and licensing, you may have not stopped twice to think about it. After all, creative assets are just art, right? Good artists copy, great artists steal? Well, not exactly. A majority (actually all, unless otherwise specified) of the files you have used before from Google Images, videos downloaded from YouTube, music and podcasts listened to, all have original creators. News flash: most of those creators don’t want to be starving artists! So, enter licensing and copyrighting. Without going into too much detail, make sure whatever you are using when creating your content has a legal connection to you or your business. Do you need to buy a license? Is it stated that it’s royalty-free? Is it not available for distribution at all? We are not your lawyer, so we don’t know, but we would recommend taking this part seriously. 📄 In Conclusion Content creation is becoming more and more prevalent as time goes on. It’s engaging and keeps your audience entertained or informed. Written content, photo content, video content, and design/art-based content provide a range of options for you to choose from. Just remember to consult your legal professional sometime during your creative process!  Quotes“At the end of the day, content creation is when you take something from scratch and create it for the purpose of targeting a specific customer.” “Make sure you clarify copyrights and ownership of content when sending a contract” “Depending on the agency, they may retain rights to certain images, but at the end of the day it’s content that’s original.” “Somebody out there is either going to like a video or dislike a video. Know what your target customers like and dislike and then use content creation to target those customers.” About the HostDick Polipnick Serial Entrepreneur, Founder, and CEO of Online Growth Systems Dick Polipnick is the Founder of Online Growth Systems, a media company that helps big-name brands turn their e-commerce businesses to profit and advises high-growth, venture-backed startups. The National Federation of Independent Business named him a top "Young Entrepreneur of the Year", AdFed listed him on "32 Under 32", and he's been featured on and collaborated with Business.com, Nickelodeon Studios, World Wide Fund for Nature, Clean Energy Resource, and more. In addition to being a speaker and an entrepreneur, Dick is the host of The Dick Polipnick Show- where he interviews top 1% achievers and creates digital content including blogs, videos, podcasts, and a newsletter called "The #Growther's Digest." Links MentionedYou May Also LikeHave you ever ran an advertisement that didn’t work? Or maybe you had an advertisement work, but it was sheer luck? Chances are, it was missing retargeting capabilities! In today’s episode, you’ll learn why retargeting ads are so important and what you can do to start using them. Key Takeaways
🎯 What are Retargeting Ads? By definition, retargeting ads are, well… Ads that can retarget! Compared to normal advertisements, they are much more efficient, accurate, and predictable. How do they work? Similar to normal advertisements, retargeting ads need a desired outcome. For example, let’s say a car dealership wants customers to visit their location. The dealership could utilize normal advertising like a billboard, or they could run a retargeting ad through Facebook. Check out how they stack up against each other below! Normal Ad: Customers see the billboard, and there's a small chance they take any further action. Retargeting Ad: Customers casually visit the dealership’s website, then leave. At this point, there is still a small chance they take any further action; however, after they leave, they go browse Facebook, and a custom advertisement for the dealership is shown to them. This same ad may be shown multiple times until the point the customer seriously considers visiting! 💰 Get Rich Quick: Increasing Your Revenue To put it simply, your revenue is bound to increase significantly just from using retargeting ads. The possibilities for who you want to target and what you want to target them for are limitless. Want to target previous customers who have only bought your most expensive product? Done. Want to only target corporate executives that work at a Fortune 500 company and have searched for a particular keyword in the last three days? Done. The advantage of having the ability to select the timing of the ad based on the behavior of the viewer cannot be stressed enough! 🗺 How to Get Started and Where to Go Okay, you’re convinced. So, how do you get started as easily as possible? If you don’t want to hire a professional, there are free courses available like the ones at https://www.facebook.com/business/learn. Start by learning the basics for the platforms you’re interested in. Don't have the time? Hire a professional to install retargeting code into your website, then get rolling. After you have tracking capabilities, determine your goals, and base the advertisements on those goals. You could get more site visitors, readers, sales, or even hire for an open position. 📄 In Conclusion Retargeting advertisements are powerful, flexible, and offer nearly unlimited potential. They work by tracking the behavior of your customers, then strategically displaying ads based on what your customers do. Retargeting ads can increase your revenue nearly overnight with the right campaign and can be installed on your website.  Quotes“I highly recommend hiring someone to install the code on your website or the entire site can crash” Dick Polipnick “If you're starting out I would recommend just doing the retargeting because that alone is going to 10X your dollars” Dick Polipnick “A regular ad is just going out to people that fit a certain description, but retargeting ads go out to people that have visited your website, bought products from you before, or gone to cart and never checked out.” Dick Polipnick “All of them [social media platforms] have different settings that can change how the retargeting works.” Dick Polipnick About the Host Dick Polipnick Serial Entrepreneur, Founder, and CEO of Online Growth Systems Dick Polipnick is the Founder of Online Growth Systems, a media company that helps big-name brands turn their e-commerce businesses to profit and advises high-growth, venture-backed startups. The National Federation of Independent Business named him a top "Young Entrepreneur of the Year", AdFed listed him on "32 Under 32", and he's been featured on and collaborated with Business.com, Nickelodeon Studios, World Wide Fund for Nature, Clean Energy Resource, and more. In addition to being a speaker and an entrepreneur, Dick is the host of The Dick Polipnick Show- where he interviews top 1% achievers and creates digital content including blogs, videos, podcasts, and a newsletter called "The #Growther's Digest. Links MentionedYou May Also LikeHave you ever spent money to advertise your business, but lost it all? Maybe you wanted to sell a product, but it seemed like no one wanted to buy it? Don’t worry, you’re not alone. Millions of advertising dollars are spent every year, but they don’t always have happy endings. Here are some things you’ll learn today to maximize your spending! Key Takeaways
📣 Advertise to YOUR Audience Imagine this... It’s your first day of retirement, and you’re excited to finally have unlimited time to do your favorite things. Maybe you’re about to travel, golf, volunteer, etc. As you go to check your mail, you come across what looks like an advertisement that reads, “Get ready for back to school! 15% off all supplies”. As you sigh in disappointment, the flyer lands in its new home, the recycling bin. Does this story sound familiar to you? We have all been the recipients of poor ad targeting from time to time, but it doesn't have to be that way! When building your strategy, be sure to pay attention to who may be most likely to engage with your product or service. Instead of targeting retirees or using “blanket” direct mail, the flyer from above could have been sent to households with multiple family members under a certain age and within a school district, etc. Demographic information can be found just about anywhere through primary and secondary research. Create surveys, look up census data, and get creative! ⏳ Strategize Frequently If you haven't yet noticed, things change fairly quickly in the 21st century. Because information evolves so quickly (especially online), it’s critical to review your strategy at least once per week, if possible! Some weeks, your strategy may not need to change. Other weeks, your strategy may need to be revised, but it’s unlikely you will need to go for a complete change. Make sure to track metrics that let you know if your strategy is working! More on that here: https://youtu.be/LpJVNZmEkjI. 🎯 Maximize Your Targeting Capabilities In order to have an effective strategy, it’s important to advertise to YOUR audience; however, not every channel allows you to do so. Campaigns using billboards, radio ads, or any other form of traditional advertising often make it difficult to be accurate in your efforts. Instead, opt for social media platforms or search engine programs that allow you to choose the type of demographic you want to target. For example, Facebook produces “lookalike” audiences to help you target the demographic you’re looking for! 📄 In Conclusion It only takes a few simple steps to develop your best advertising strategy yet. First, think about who your true audience is. Will they want your product, or do you just think they will? Make sure to check sources of information to build your target demographic. After you know who your target audience is, be sure to meet on a weekly basis to determine if the strategy is working. The best strategies are the ones that are flexible and follow the trends in association with who the target audience is. Lastly, be sure you are able to actually target! Use platforms or marketing plans that will enable you to reach the maximum number of your target audience. Lastly, track your results; what’s the point of a strategy if you can't see it working?  📽️ Watch the Full Video on YouTube
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