Ransomware is the average content marketer’s nightmare. Not only will it lock down your computer bringing your busy work day to a screeching halt, it will pester you for a long time. The annoying part about that constant pestering is the demand – not a pleasant request – for payment in the form of cryptocurrency to unlock or restore your computer. It could very well put a solid crimp in an otherwise great day of curating content for your clients.

What Can You Do To Prevent This From Happening?

You’ve likely heard this before but you are going to hear it again. Be careful what sites you download your relevant content from. For content marketers this is a huge red flag. You use public sources. Probably some of those sources have been targeted by hackers who have fed the malware and ransomware into their system. You now have to pay a lot more attention to what you are doing online because virtually any website is a target and that increases the risk.

However, you do have some options available to you. You’ve heard of preventative measures, right? Well, because content marketers search for information from several different websites, you really should take a closer look at the protection you have in place with your computer. We’re talking antivirus programs. But, in order for them to be effective, you have to keep them up-to-date and current. Frequent updates include protection from malware.

It’s also very likely you’ve heard this piece of advice as well. Keep backing up your computer. But when you do a back up, make sure it is stored on an external drive to prevent an infected computer from passing the virus on to the data that you’ll be backing up. In fact, regular back ups are a good practice to get into anyway because computers do crap out on their own over time. A recent backup means little data recovery downtime when clients are waiting.

Another great way to save you from having to resort to taking an unscheduled day or two off from serving your clients because of an infection is to tighten up your local network firewall. This reduces the access a ransomware virus can get into your system. Plus, if you use current and up-to-date software and programs, many of them have additional safeguards that make them difficult to hack into. A weak spot is all a computer virus needs to take hold.

Is your operating system current? If not, there is potential of a weakness developing that will provide an opening for an attack. For content marketers, time is money and the last thing you need is ransomware shutting you out of your computer for the rest of the day or a few days. Can you imagine? Malware has little if any respect for deadlines and tight budgets and this is very likely where it becomes the biggest pain in the butt. Update your O/S and avoid this.

What To Do If Your Computer Is Infected

Do not, under any circumstances, pay the ransom. If you need a good reason, do the math. How much content do you have to post for your clients to make back a ransom demand of say, $300 USD? Don’t fall for it. Instead of forking over a ransom payment, seek data recovery services. That’s because data infected by ransomware with encryption can sometimes be decrypted, according to ADRS (Aesonlabs Data Recovery Systems) experts.

Secondly, disconnect the infected computer or computers from your local network and the internet so they can be cleaned. Third, seek the advice of an IT support team if you have no clue where you are and what to do with your now deaf and mute computer. As frustrating as it may be to be part way through your client list and your computer locks you out, it is important to stay calm. Data recovery is still possible regardless of what the demands are.

The next thing you should do is pull out your most recent backup. You did do one, right? Well, assuming you did, restore your computer with the back up to wipe out the virus. If you happen to be providing content for high profile clients, it may be wise to have them contact a law enforcement agency to inform them of the cyber attack. The police may not be able to do much about it, but they will record your data so your attack becomes part of a future statistic.

Ransomware Can Really Wreck Your Day

Content creation and curation is tough enough with all the fake websites out there. You spend enough time weeding through them in search of reputable sources for your clients. What you don’t need it ransomware shutting you down because it will have an impact on your earning capacity until your computer data recovery is complete. Use common sense, be careful, keep your software, O/S and antivirus programs current and back up so you’ll be able to survive an attack.

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This portion of the internet lurks beneath our visible and encrypted websites that are indexed by major search engines like Google and Bing. The technical aspects of how the dark web operates allow users to leave minimal trace of their likes and search history, their purchases, or their location.

Of course, for this reason, the dark web is a place where a lot of illegal activities going on, but there are also plenty of legitimate consumers, and marketers/retailers would like to access such customers. According to Dark Web News, this subsection of the internet that’s not accessible by traditional means—i.e., conventional web browsers and search engines—carries enormous potential for anyone who wants to communicate anonymously.

In this way, marketers can harness the power of the dark web to gain insights into the needs and wants of current and prospective customers. They can use it as a market research tool, gathering data to inform stronger messaging in marketing their product or service.

Smart Marketing

As is clear in their job description, marketing professionals regularly analyze content to craft effective ads that can convert visitors into consumers. Most marketers have avoided it entirely, due to its negative reputation and also because they may not be able to understand how it works.

However, smart marketers are willing to give up these reservations and enter the dark web for useful purposes. It can be difficult to build your brand when you are not able to communicate with and gather insights into your target audience within the dark web.

Here are the top things all marketers should know about the dark web.

1. Separate Browser

Normal browsers such as Chrome or Safari cannot access the dark web. It is also not searchable using Google and other search engines. All marketers should know that it can only be accessed with a secure browser, like Tor or The Onion Router.

This toolkit offers securely packaged utilities for accessing the dark web. For using the Tor network, marketers will need the Tor browser. They might also need invitations for accessing .onion domains present on the dark web, which differ from typical domains that exist outside of the dark web such as .com, .edu, .org, and so on.

2. Not Just Illegal Activities

Although this fact tends to be misunderstood by much of the public, a very small percentage of the traffic on the dark web is related to hidden/illegal services and drug markets. As the dark web is highly disorganized, so it is not always possible to find the kind of websites present in it. However, research has shown that dark web users are accessing much more than just websites that carry nefarious and illegal content. Companies researching and analyzing dark websites saw that many of them are mirroring legal sites like social media platforms.

And now those popular websites and platforms are moving into this dark side of the internet as well. Facebook unveiled its own .onion address in 2014, and news sites such as ProPublica and The New York Times have followed suit.

Political parties use these sites for discussions and forums, and many of these communication vehicles contain active communities related to technology or games. These sites are used for privacy rather than for criminality.

3. Knowing your Audience

As a marketer, you have to know your audience and where they move. Go where they go. It is important that you understand the different demographic groups within the dark web. For instance, tech-savvy audiences might move to the dark side of the internet as they place great importance on privacy.

Marketers must try to understand their target audience present on such dark websites, as this is the only way they can gather helpful insights on how those audiences might use the product/service they’re advertising.

4. Plan for a Crisis

Hackers can easily break your marketing walls. Fraud, malware, and hacks are common on the dark web. So, as a marketer, you need to work with cybersecurity personnel to remain safe.

5. Tracking the Dark Web

Tracking the dark web can be very useful for marketers and they cannot afford to ignore it. For instance, before Bitcoin rose to the level of popularity and mainstream acceptance it holds today, the dark web was one of the first places where cryptocurrency made its appearance. There might be many other potential technological breakthroughs making their first appearance on the dark side of the internet

Marketers can get immense value from the dark side of the internet related to services and innovations so that they have a competitive edge.

6. Build Brand Visuals

Dark web users tend to be fond of phrases and acronyms that have an encoded meaning. Communities within the dark web are very creative in nature. As such, you should use strong mnemonics that can act as a visual shortcut for your target audience to notice your brand. This is an important part of your survival kit in the dark web.

7. Get an Alibi for Your Brand

This tip is built on the same principle discussed in the previous point #6—Offer your target audience on the dark web a strong alibi for your brand.

For instance, Formula 1 racing has always been used for advertising tobacco despite the fact that the European Union has banned it from doing so. In response, creative Ferrari marketers designed a clever subliminal messaging campaign to retain Marlboro as an advertiser by painting the brand’s barcode graphics inconspicuously on the Formula 1 racing vehicle.

Marketers can employ the same tactic as they create their messaging for the dark web. This involves nothing but an indirect reference to your brand name. It is bending the rules, but that’s what it takes to be successful on the dark web. Use logos, structures, shapes, and associations as part of the dark web toolkit for representing your brand.

8. Using Reddit

Marketers can use Reddit to know more about the dark web and its user bases. Reddit is being used as a sort of knowledge hub for useful information about dark web topics, transactions, resources, and more.

Reddit also has forums for dark web market users where they can meet buyers, exchange information, and share reviews of various sellers on the dark side of the internet. They also provide advice through these forums regarding safe drops and zones for picking up packages bought on the dark web and how to escape the grip of law enforcement from falling on you.

9. Consumer Shift

Marketers must also realize that more and more consumers are shifting to the dark web. This will spell doom for their predictable marketing strategies. They will not be able to get customer information and will not know how to target them. Analytics will not be accurate with more consumers using the Tor browser and other hidden networks.

10. Awareness of Popular Desires

Tor is now widely available to consumers who want to hide beneath the radar. Users are able to find new ways of hiding their identities. Marketers must realize that they will become more and more disconnected while trying to sell to consumers. They must realize that consumers will protect their information and their intentions and start choosing products more freely, without the interference and influence of marketers.

The message to marketers is that they have to be aware of popular desires. They must focus their attention on the important 4 Ps—the product, the price, the place, and the promotion. They have to make their focus and strategy simpler and focus on the needs of customers.

The chasm between marketers and consumers is widening, and marketers must up their act before it reaches a divorce.

Last Word

The final message is that marketers have a lot to gain by analyzing the dark web and making themselves familiar with its demographics, along with the novel and breaking technologies and innovations being debuted on the dark web.

They can reap excellent fruits by exploring the dark side of the internet, but the important thing is to be cautious while doing so.

The post 10 Things Every Marketer Should Know About the Dark Web appeared first on Relevance.

As compared to traditional marketing, digital marketing refers to the use of methods and channels to get a proper understanding in real-time situations. This means that digital marketing gives businesses the opportunity to assess the performance and effectiveness of their marketing campaigns and make adjustments accordingly. No matter what you are selling, the techniques involved in digital marketing can be applied to any industry. It can provide you with quicker and effective results due to its interactive nature.

Some of the top benefits a business can reap through digital marketing are:

• Measurable results

One of the top reasons why digital marketing has succeeded in surpassing traditional marketing is the fact that it offers measurable results. You cannot measure how many people looked at your billboard in a day or how many people read your flyer before it ended up in the recycler. On the other hand, when you opt for digital marketing strategies, you can get reliable and solid reports with numbers that tell you the how many people checked your email or even clicked on a specific link. This enables you to cut out the excess and focus on areas that give results.

• Flexibility

By nature, traditional marketing has always been generic, but these days, customers are more interested in a personalized and customized journey for satisfying their needs. This is where digital marketing can be incredibly helpful because it enables you to use the preferences and interests of an individual client for sending them a unique marketing message. You can tailor messages for different groups of customers and this kind of personalization is the biggest asset you can get because it makes clients feel special and draws them in. This flexibility has particularly helped financial companies, such as fnbnorcal.com and several others that mainly rely on internet marketing for business.

• Reach a bigger audience

You can get access to a larger and global audience by using digital marketing methods as the internet has made every country accessible. In contrast, traditional marketing is limited to a specific geographical area.

• Low barrier to entry

Perhaps, one of the biggest problems of offline marketing methods like TV ads, billboards, and radio commercials was the fact that they came with huge price tags. This meant that most small businesses couldn’t afford to use them and that gave bigger businesses an edge. The same cannot be said for digital marketing products because you can find them in scalable size for every kind of business. This has definitely increased competition in the market because now every business can reach a larger number of people, regardless of its size.

• Increased conversion rates

It takes only a couple of clicks to convert a customer online. People don’t have to come to your shop or pick up the phone to become customers. Now, they can find out everything about your business and its offerings right from the comfort of their home and can easily be converted into customers, as long as you use the right strategies.

Hence, digital marketing can prove to be very valuable for a business if it is used in the right way.

The post 5 Digital Marketing Benefits That Everyone Should Know appeared first on Relevance.

There’s just one thing that you should know. These days, the competition is a bit stiff. However, this doesn’t mean that there’s no room for newcomers.

Dreaming of becoming a YouTube superstar with millions of subscribers might not be realistic, but a modest goal of having a couple of hundreds to thousands of subscribers is very achievable, especially with Socialboss Youtube views.

According to the tech experts at Cyberogism, the key to success on YouTube involves having a lot of consistency and discipline, plus a bit of luck. And more specifically, you can go further if you manage to avoid a few big mistakes early on.

In this article, we are going to enumerate some of the critical mistakes that you should avoid at all costs if you want to succeed on YouTube.

Mistake #1: Having No Central Theme

If you browse through a lot of YouTube channels, you will see plenty of people uploading random content. For example, a guy uploads a cute cat video, another video of his favorite video game, and then another video of a funny thing that happened at his local shopping mall.

While YouTube won’t stop you from uploading such content, you probably shouldn’t expect to gain massive success in having no central theme dominating your channel. The main reason why this doesn’t work is that you have no clear target audience.

What you want to do is first define your target audience and create or upload videos that will appeal to your intended viewers. You can even use YouTube’s analytics dashboard to gather data on who is watching your videos.

In time, your YouTube channel is going to be associated with a specific genre whether it’s funny cat videos or your favorite video game.

Ultimately, the end goal is for your channel to be the first thing that comes to a user’s mind when they think of a specific content category. You can only achieve this by having a YouTube channel that has a clear focus.

Mistake #2: Unoriginal Content

If you search for YouTube tips on the internet, it’s just a matter of time before you’ll receive advice that says that in order to have more views, copy the YouTube metadata of videos that have already a lot of views and place the content on your own video.

While this advice might work on some levels, there’s something that you should know: it’s applicable if you are only trying to get more views for your videos, which makes it a favorite tactic among spammers.

However, if you want to establish a channel for yourself or your company, spamming isn’t exactly the smart way of doing things.

Furthermore, you are going to annoy the established YouTube influencers. Some might even take it personally and drive other viewers away from your channel. This is something you want to avoid at all costs, as YouTube influencers can greatly help your cause—which brings us to the next common mistake.

Mistake #3: Not Collaborating with Other YouTubers

If you upload consistently and with a focused theme, some of your videos will start receiving a couple of views. If you are lucky, some will even get a couple of thousand views. However, if you really want to skyrocket your channel views and subscribers, then one of the best ways to do that is by collaborating with established YouTube channels.

The easy way of doing things is simply by paying YouTube influencers to mention your channel. However, this can be very costly, and you may not have the budget. Thankfully, there’s another way.

What you can do is trade services, which also means that you may have to develop a skill and be good at it. For example, if you have a channel about 3D artwork and 3D how-tos, then you can simply collaborate with a YouTube influencer that focuses on making videos about playing unique instruments.

You can approach them and tell them that you can make them a good 3D intro for their videos. In return, you ask them to mention your YouTube channel.

If you get lucky and the influencer has subscribers that are in the vicinity of the hundred thousand, your channel will be exposed to a lot of people in a very short time amount of time.

Mistake #4: Not Deploying a CTA

CTA is short for “Call To Action.” It’s a common marketing tactic that guides the prospect into taking the next step. So, what does CTA have to do with your YouTube channel? Let’s step back a bit.

Imagine this scenario: A YouTube viewer randomly drops into your channel and checks out one video. After the video ends, what’s the most likely scenario? In most cases, the user will start looking for other related videos and will eventually leave your video and channel.

You just missed an opportunity to convert that one viewer into a subscriber. What you could have done is to employ a CTA tactic.

While there are plenty of ways to employ CTA messages, the most basic thing you can do is to add “Please don’t forget to subscribe” or “If you enjoyed this video, please hit the subscribe button below” at the end of every video. If you really want to get creative, you can use hyperlinks or recommend one of your related videos.

Mistake #5: Not Immersing Yourself in the Community

A lot of aspiring “YouTubers” do not immerse themselves. What we mean by this is not watching other videos to check out the competition. If you are not going to watch other videos, how can you provide something better when you don’t know what can be done better in the first place?

Think of it as doing research. You’d want to check out other YouTube channels that are similar to yours. Ask these questions: What’s their latest popular video? Can you do something better? Is there something missing in a popular video that you can expound on in your own video?

Immersing yourself allows you to react quickly and keep up with the demands of viewers across the platform.

If you are just starting out on the platform, you probably have a lot of videos to watch. A bonus is to interact with the content you see—post a comment, ask the audience questions, and, ultimately, get yourself involved in the YouTube community you want to become a part of.

The post 5 Things You Should Know About YouTube appeared first on Relevance.

SVG or Scalable Vector Graphic is an XML language and used for animations and creating images in the web designing process. They are created using a list of coordinates on the X and Y axis. The plotted coordinates are joined together by using a set of instructions and applying the same on the SVG generated. This helps create the shapes and images that can be combined together to create a stunning graphic.

The popularity of SVG is skyrocketing in the digital world with its usage reaching dramatic levels. There are many reasons why designers and developers are being attracted to SVG and giving it preference over the more regular JPEG, PNG and GIF formats.

High Scalability

Scalability is definitely one of the most attractive features of SVG. It can be set to any required width and it will scale without the quality being compromised. For designers this is a huge plus as it can save time as they generally have to create images for mobile, tablet and desktop versions. SVG can be used in both web and print media as it is independent of resolution.

Enhanced Loading Time

It is a myth that SVG file sizes are larger. It is not. It is much smaller that bitmapped alternatives. This can boost loading times significantly and improve the performance of websites. Pages can load even more quickly as with SVG, the number of HTTP requests come down as SVG remains embedded in the HTML of a web page and does not use any external location.

Document Object Model

SVG is a Document Object Model (DOM) just like an iframe. When the browser renders the page, SVG is positioned within the DOM. SPG can be developed on a canvas of the desired size and displayed in the browser in any required size which makes creating responsive content easy and convenient. Editing SVG on DOM is also easy.

Supplement Custom Styles

You can add custom styles to your documents with SVG. These include classes and IDs. You can also edit features such as color, dimensions, and opacity of the various elements. The editing task can be carried out on all browsers.

[optin-monster slug=”pgjqsvqgglwxr38advft” followrules=”true”]

Customized Animation

You can create custom animations of page elements with SVG. These include color transitions, adding rotations, growing and shrinking content and fade in/fade out among others. These animations are now routinely used in web design.

Better Browser Support

SVG works in all the popularly used browsers which work to the benefit of those who have to deal with a range of different browsing systems.

Search Engine Friendly

As SVG can be used in the <img> format, the filename used can be descriptive and with ALT text, search engines will be able to crawl the page better and boost website rankings.

In short, yes, SVG images are easier to scan and are easier for search engines to navigate through (they can be indexed by crawlers); however, they aren’t always easy to create without the use of advanced coding skills or tools.

For web designers, SVG animation creator has thrown a new wrench into their strategies, especially for web designers who work closely with marketing managers and have been looking for new and innovative ways to decrease image sizes and eliminate blurry photos once and for all.

When thinking about basic programming languages used in web design, it’s important to note that Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) offers a handful of benefits to all websites out there.

SVG is a XML-based vector image format that is, of course, always formed by text. Unlike other types of image formats like PNG or GIF, SVG has several features that are good for SEO.

Search engines, as the changes of Google ranking factors showed us many-many times during the past several years, prefer websites that are aesthetically pleasing and responsive. When it comes to images, they usually tend to increase page load times and make responsiveness difficult, but not SVG. SVG is formed by vectors, which means that it’s scalable, looks good on any device, and has no pixel limitation. Because it’s text-based (or code-based, as we prefer to say), it has a smaller size than other image formats and it’s a lot easier for search engines to load them.

SVG allows three types of graphic objects: vector graphic shapes, bitmap images, and text. Graphical objects can be grouped, styled, transformed, and composited into rendered objects; therefore, it gives you the opportunity to draw images that are complicated and have them easily rendered to fit your website.

If you are looking for one more reason to choose SVG over PNG, JPG, or GIF, it’s important to know that SVG images can contain hyperlinks to other documents, using XLink. What could be more important when it comes to SEO strategies than links and link building? Even though SEO experts prefer links that are directing to their own website, it’s also important to offer relevant and helpful links to the readers. Search engines understand the importance of a link for a user and actually reward useful link structures on a website.

Despite the fact that SVG can be used in many ways on a website (images, illustrations, icons, and so on), the most popular use of SVG images is actually website logos. There has been a lot of debate about the pros and cons of SVG over icon fonts, but according to a recent Huffington Post article, it has been proven that some of the best web development sites are those who use animated SVG logos. In case you didn’t know, SVG content can be animated using built-in animation elements such as <animate>, <animateMotion> and <animateColor>.

Business logos are often ignored by website visitors, especially when it’s an unknown and relatively new brand, but animated logos usually gain more attention than static ones and play a huge part in building brand awareness.

SVG logos can be easily edited and actually help in lowering the amount of distortion often associated with other image formats that have been previously edited.

What other ways have you found SVG images to be helpful in your 2020 SEO strategies? Leave your comments below and let us know so we can share the information with others.

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