RankBrain is a machine learning system that Google developed. It was designed to help Google understand how the search engine should rank pages. RankBrain is the third most important factor in ranking a page after links and content.
RankBrain has been used since October 2015, but it was only publicly announced in 2016. RankBrain is an artificial intelligence algorithm that helps Google understand what users are searching for and what webpages are about, allowing it to rank webpages better.
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Harvard Business School professor Dr. Eliyahu Goldratt coined Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). KPIs are a set of key measurements that are used to gauge how well an organization is performing.
KPIs help managers understand how their team or organization is doing and where they can improve. They also help to make the company more efficient and profitable by identifying areas that need improvement.
AI can create content that is more authentic and will be more impactful. AI writing assistants can generate content at scale, which is something that copywriters cannot do. They also help with writer’s block. Reducing the workload means that the selected skill sets in a writer’s toolkit are put to better use. AI is also making it easier for writers to find a good editor by generating relevant emails and publishing them.
The reasons behind the change from human-generated content to AI-generated content vary. Some of these reasons include:- Reduction in cost and efficiency- Creation of more authentic and impactful content with fewer errors- non-plagiarism- More efficient use of resources by using the most appropriate specialists for a given task- Greater popularity and adoption of content with no human-generated elements.
More importantly, these AI systems can also create content people want to consume, making it fun to read.
Google Discontinues The Google My Business App – Palm Beach Sept 2022
If your business services customers in a local area, whether at your location or in their homes or businesses, then there’s no denying that Google impacts how — and if — customers find you. Many consumers of all ages and demographics use online searches as the default way to find products and services. Google is an overwhelming choice for those searches, receiving about 86% of search traffic worldwide as of September 2021.
Luckily, most companies have the opportunity to list specific and detailed business information on Google for free, and a Google My Business (GMB) profile is how they do that. Read on to learn about upcoming changes, what they could mean, and how marketers can stay on top of what matters most in their listings.
What’s New for 2022
In early November 2021, Google announced that significant changes to the Google My Business platform were underway, with more to come in the new year.
• New Name: Google My Business has been renamed “Google Business Profile.” This wasn’t surprising to many, since GMB Help documents began using the term “profile” instead of “listing” months ago. Previously, the platform was known as Google+ and Google Local, names that still appear occasionally, indicating it may be a while before “GMB” falls out of use.
• New Access Options: A more significant change is the decision to retire the GMB app in 2022 and encourage business managers to access their profiles through “an upgraded experience” on Google Search or Google Maps. This option has been available for a while and is done by simply searching for your business’s name or the phrase “my business” if logged in and clicking on the profile that appears. This is possibly a more common way to access your profile for single-location businesses.
• Support Changes: Google’s post also mentioned that the current GMB web portal would “transition to primarily support larger businesses with multiple locations.” This has led to mixed reactions from search optimization and digital marketing professionals. Some speculate that Google is moving away from supporting small and medium-sized businesses. In contrast, others suggest that the impact on most small businesses will be minimal since the desktop platform is already being used primarily by agencies and multi-location companies. Since Google has offered only “more details on these changes in the months ahead,” we’ll all have to wait a bit to see the actual outcome.
What’s Not Changing
Whatever it’s called and however you access it, the importance of having a Google profile with the most accurate and complete information will not change anytime soon. Here are a few points to keep in mind when managing your profile.
• Primary Category Is Key
One of the most critical pieces of information on your profile is your business category, especially your primary category. Google offers over 3,000 categories to choose from and adds new ones regularly. Lists like this one can show you what’s available and will report recently added categories. If you’re unsure of what to use, try searching for terms you want to place well for, and see what categories your competitors in the map section are using.
For example, if you own a shop that sells and repairs bicycles and related gear and clothing, you might initially call your business a “store.” However, you could receive more inquiries by changing your primary category to “bicycle store” and including additional categories like “bicycle repair shop” and “sporting goods store.”
There are also category-specific features to keep in mind that is only available to businesses in certain categories. For example, if you want to post a menu, Google says you’ll need to be listed as a “food and drink” business.
• Frequent Updates to Attributes
There’s a wide range of other “attributes” businesses can add to their profile to share information with searchers — from details about wheelchair-accessible bathrooms to identifying as “women-owned” or “veteran-owned.” These options are also expanded regularly, so it’s a good idea to check them periodically. During the pandemic, many new attributes related to contactless payment and delivery were added, for example.
• You Don’t Have to Pay (for Now)
The profile is free, although you’ll be given plenty of opportunities to learn about and use paid Google Ads. These ads are undoubtedly highly beneficial for some businesses when targeted correctly. But you can still communicate much about your business on Google without spending a dime — for now. Some experts believe Google may one day attempt to make these listings paid, but there’s no concrete evidence that will happen anytime soon, if ever.
One Prediction You Can Count On: More Changes
Looking ahead always has challenges, but we can make one prediction about Google’s offerings with complete confidence: There will be more changes. The pandemic has had massive and perhaps long-lasting impacts on how customers shop and communicate with businesses. By some estimations, it’s pushed the digital marketing industry ahead worldwide by a global average of six years. This has undoubtedly created mountains of customer data that are still being studied and will be used to implement new strategies soon. And as customer behavior continues to change, so will Google’s response and product offerings.
Whether we like it or not, businesses of all sizes must keep paying attention and change along with the platform to continue reaching new customers.
1. Delegation
First-time business owners experience anxiety when turning over duties as the business grows. No leader wants to be perceived as the lazy “idea guy,” but there comes a time when growth is essential. Leadership means focusing on the big picture instead of walking around the office providing nothing. Train yourself to delegate every duty that doesn’t need your authority by spending one hour each month auditing how you spend your time throughout the day. You are not doing your team a favor by backing them up with menial tasks if it means you’re not out there creating new opportunities for them.
2. Basic Communication Skills
This might sound obvious to anyone, but the most enormous and consistent gap I see between founders and leaders is not having adequate communication skills. A lack of communication can be a massive vulnerability for teams and organizations. As a leader, you should lead by example and help implement a culture that thrives on proactive, open, and honest communication. This should flow in every direction and include gaining feedback from clients, partners, and staff. By not having this skill, negative sentiments can grow and spread within the organization. This will create a domino effect, eventually impact employee morale, then spread to other aspects of a small business. A common misconception is that good communication is a natural skill. While it can be, it can also be taught and learned through experience.
3. Financial Literacy
Nothing is more critical in a business than understanding the finances. A good business owner knows how much things cost, including labor, sales, advertising, etc. This is important to maximize cash flow and have good planning for the future. Numbers don’t lie; they give you an honest, strong understanding of your business. It also indicates what direction your business is growing in and where it needs more focus.
4. Digital Marketing
In today’s society, digital marketing is essential for any business to grow. Many people have access to low-cost internet than ever before, and people rely on search engines to help them find information to buy products. A business owner needs to have a piece of knowledge about social media marketing, online advertising, and more to guide the business’s growth. You can hire knowledgeable people on these aspects, but you still need to be informed enough to lead your team in the direction you are heading for your business. You also should have the ability to track and measure the results of different campaigns.
5. Self-Awareness
Self-aware leaders can perceive others accurately and help them align their team’s strengths to the business—make wise choices about how you will handle a situation. Use your emotional intelligence and empathy to assess how you impact others through your characteristics. Successful leaders already have an understanding of how to harness their inner strength. Self-awareness is the key that enables you to develop an authentic personal brand.
Source: https://www.humanetech.com/
One of the most critical expectations to manage as a business owner is what marketing costs. The price each industry pays is based on what the companies in the space are willing to pay to be 1st.
For example:
Business x is 1st on google and generates 25,000 hits a month at a total of $6000, not including production costs. The yearly average is 300,000 website hits to remain 1st at all times.
A new company comes online and starts with 0 to 1000 hits in its first month, then scales based on its marketing budget. The question then becomes, will they ever catch up, and in how long?
The answer is never the same for any company; we pride ourselves on creating a short & long-term strategy that gets the job done and looks and feels incredible on your feed.
Source: @website_store_nyc
Do celebrities buy Instagram followers? Why should they? As they are already big celebrities and people automatically will follow them. But is it enough for them? No, if their real following had satisfied them, there was no need to buy likes and views to their post. But we all know that celebrities and Instagram influencers, even the industry’s big shots, are into buying fake followers.
What are Bot or Fake Instagram followers?
Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms for celebrities and influencers. There’s a massive variety of users engaging through these platforms. While using these platforms as a communication network, these influencers and celebrities face a major issue of lack of followers. These social media platforms try to use different strategies to increase their followers. So, sometimes instead of working a little hard, they try to use different methods, and one of them is to buy Instagram followers. So these big celebrities buy Instagram followers to show a huge following on their profiles to boost their fragile egos.
Having a certain amount of suspicious accounts on Instagram is cause for concern, especially for celebrities with large followings. Almost all accounts will have at least a small percentage of followers that are, or at least seem, inauthentic. A few suspicious accounts aren’t always an indicator that a celebrity bought that part of their following. There are many reasons why suspicious accounts could be following someone. For one, accounts might be flagged as suspicious because they’ve been inactive for a long time. Spotting fake followers has never been an exact science, but numbers can give estimates, and we used those estimates to give you a rough idea of who has the most suspicious accounts in their follower list.
One of the most popular talked about social media, Kim Kardashian, was accused of buying fake followers. And to everybody’s surprise, it was not the allegation’s first time. Back in 2015, when Instagram deposed millions of fake accounts, many celebrities lost a huge number of their fake following where. Kim Kardashian lost 1.3 million followers, but unfortunately, it was nothing when compared to Akon, who lost 56% of his following in the first hit.
Top 10 Celebrities who have fake followers-
And like this, many celebrities were accused of fake followers just to boost their accounts and display their valuable profiles. But then, a majority of them declined this accusation and insisted that the fake followers targeted their profiles without their knowledge.
by Mark Purdy
Imagine a world where you could have a beachside conversation with your colleagues, take meeting notes while floating around a space station, or teleport from your office in London to New York, all without taking a step outside your front door. Feeling under pressure with too many meetings scheduled today? Then why not send your AI-enabled digital twin instead to take the load off your shoulders? These examples offer but a glimpse into the future vision of work promised by “the metaverse,” a term originally coined by author Neal Stephenson in 1992 to describe a future world of virtual reality. While defying precise definition, the metaverse is generally regarded as a network of 3-D virtual worlds where people can interact, do business, and forge social connections through their virtual “avatars.” Think about it as a virtual reality version of today’s internet.
While still nascent in many respects, the metaverse has suddenly become a big business, with technology titans and gaming giants such as Meta (previously Facebook), Microsoft, Epic Games, Roblox, and others all creating their own virtual worlds or metaverses. The metaverse draws on a vast ensemble of different technologies, including virtual reality platforms, gaming, machine learning, blockchain, 3-D graphics, digital currencies, sensors, and (in some cases) VR-enabled headsets.
How do you get to the metaverse? Many current workplace metaverse solutions require no more than a computer, mouse, and keyboard keys, but for the full 3-D surround experience you usually have to don a VR-enabled headset. However, rapid progress is also taking place in computer-generated holography that dispenses with the need for headsets, either by using virtual viewing windows that create holographic displays from computer images or by deploying specially designed holographic pods to project people and images into actual space at events or meetings). Companies such as Meta are also pioneering haptic (touch) gloves that enable users to interact with 3-D virtual objects and experience sensations such as movement, texture, and pressure.
Within the metaverse, you can make friends, rear virtual pets, design virtual fashion items, buy virtual real estate, attend events, create and sell digital art — and earn money to boot. But, until recently, the implications of the emerging metaverse for the world of work have received little attention.
That is now changing. The effects of the pandemic — especially limitations on physical meetings and travel — are spurring a search by enterprises for more authentic, cohesive, and interactive remote and hybrid work experiences. The metaverse seems set to reshape the world of work in at least four major ways: new immersive forms of team collaboration; the emergence of new digital, AI-enabled colleagues; the acceleration of learning and skills acquisition through virtualization and gamified technologies; and the eventual rise of a metaverse economy with completely new enterprises and work roles.
The metaverse promises to bring new levels of social connection, mobility, and collaboration to a world of virtual work. NextMeet, based in India, is an avatar-based immersive reality platform focused on interactive working, collaboration, and learning solutions. Its mission is to remove the isolation and workforce disconnectedness that can result from remote and hybrid work. I interviewed Pushpak Kypuram, Founder-Director of NextMeet, who explained the inspiration behind their virtual workplace solution: “With the shift to remote working from the pandemic, keeping employees engaged has become a top challenge for many companies. You can’t keep 20 people engaged in the flat 2-D environment of a video call; some people don’t like appearing on camera; you’re not simulating a real-life scenario. That is why companies are turning to metaverse-based platforms.”Insight Center CollectionReimagining WorkBeyond a return to “normal.”
With NextMeet’s immersive platform, employee digital avatars can pop in and out of virtual offices and meeting rooms in real-time, walk up to a virtual help desk, give a live presentation from the dais, relax with colleagues in a networking lounge, or roam a conference center or exhibition using a customizable avatar. Participants access the virtual environment via their desktop computer or mobile device, pick or design their avatar, and then use keyboard buttons to navigate the space: arrow keys to move around, double click to sit on a chair, and so forth. Kypuram gives the example of employee onboarding: “If you’re onboarding 10 new colleagues and show or give them a PDF document to introduce the company, they will lose concentration after 10 minutes. What we do instead is have them walk along a 3-D hall or gallery, with 20 interactive stands, where they can explore the company. You make them want to walk the virtual hall, not read a document.”
Other metaverse companies are emphasizing workplace solutions that help counter video meeting fatigue and the social disconnectedness of remote work. PixelMax, a UK-based start-up, helps organizations create immersive workplaces designed to enhance team cohesion, employee wellness, and collaboration. Their virtual workplaces, which are entered via a web-based system on your computer and don’t require headsets, include features such as:
The ultimate vision, according to Andy Sands, co-founder of PixelMax, is being able to connect different virtual workplaces. It is currently building a virtual workplace for a group of 40 leading manufacturers in interior design that are co-located in Manchester, England. “It’s about community building, conversations, and interactions. We want to enable worker avatars to move between a manufacturing world and an interior design world, or equally take that avatar and go and watch a concert in Roblox and Fortnite.”
Remote work can be stressful. Research by Nuffield Health in the UK found that almost one-third of UK remote workers were experiencing difficulties in separating home and work life, with more than one quarter finding it hard to switch off when the workday finishes. Virtual workplaces can provide a better demarcation between home and work life, creating the sensation of walking into the workplace each day and then leaving and saying goodbye to colleagues when your work is done. In the virtual workplace, your avatar provides a means of communicating your status — in a meeting, gone for your lunch break, and so on — making it easier to stay connected to colleagues without feeling chained to the computer or cellphone, a frequent source of stress in traditional remote work situations.
Better teamwork and communication will certainly be key drivers of the virtual workplace, but why stop there? The metaverse opens up new possibilities to rethink the office and work environment, introducing elements of adventure, spontaneity, and surprise. A virtual office doesn’t have to be a drab, uniform corporate environment downtown: why not a beach location, an ocean cruise, or even another world? This vision provides the inspiration for Gather, an international virtual reality platform that allows employees and organizations to “build their own office.” These dream offices can vary from “The Space-Station Office” with views of planet Earth to “The Pirate Office,” complete with ocean views, a Captain’s Cabin, and a Forecastle Lounge for socializing. For the less adventurous, you can choose from options like the virtual Rooftop Party or meeting in the Zen Gardens.
Our work colleagues in the metaverse will not be limited to the avatars of our real-world colleagues. Increasingly, we will be joined by an array of digital colleagues — highly realistic, AI-powered, human-like bots. These AI agents will act as advisors and assistants, doing much of the heavy lifting of work in the metaverse and, in theory, freeing up human workers for more productive, value-added tasks.
Recent years have seen tremendous progress in conversational AI systems — algorithms that can understand text and voice conversations and converse in natural language. Such algorithms are now morphing into digital humans that can sense and interpret context, show emotions, make human-like gestures, and make decisions. One example is UneeQ, an international technology platform that focuses on creating “digital humans” that can work across a wide variety of fields and different roles. UneeQ’s digital workers include Nola, a digital shopping assistant or concierge for the Noel Leeming stores in New Zealand; Rachel, an always-on mortgage adviser; and Daniel, a digital double of the UBS Chief Economist, who can meet multiple clients at once to provide personalized wealth management advice.
Emotions are the next frontier in the metaverse. SoulMachines, a New Zealand-based technology start-up, is bringing together advances in AI (such as machine learning and computer vision) and in autonomous animation (such as expression rendering, gaze direction, and real-time gesturing) to create lifelike, emotionally-responsive digital humans. Its digital humans are taking on roles as diverse as skincare consultants, a covid health adviser, real-estate agents, and educational coaches for college applicants.
Digital human technology opens up a vast realm of possibilities for workers and organizations. Digital humans are highly scalable — they don’t take coffee breaks — and can be deployed in multiple locations at once. They can be deployed to more repetitive, dull, or dangerous work in the metaverse. Human workers will increasingly have the option to design and create their own digital colleagues, personalized and tailored to work alongside them. But digital humans will also bring risks, such as increased automation and displacement of human work for lower-skilled workers who generally have fewer opportunities to move to alternative roles, or possible erosion of cultural and behavioral norms if humans become more disinhibited in their interactions with digital humans, behavior that could then carry over to their real-world interactions.
The metaverse could revolutionize training and skills development, drastically compressing the time needed to develop and acquire new skills. AI-enabled digital coaches could be on-hand to assist in employee training and with career advice. In the metaverse, every object — a training manual, machine, or product, for example — could be made to be interactive, providing 3-D displays and step-by-step “how to” guides. Virtual reality role-play exercises and simulations will become common, enabling worker avatars to learn in highly realistic, “game play” scenarios, such as “the high-pressure sales presentation,” “the difficult client,” or “a challenging employee conversation.”
Virtual-reality technologies are already being used in many sectors to accelerate skills development: Surgical technology company Medivis is using Microsoft’s HoloLens technology to train medical students through interaction with 3-D anatomy models; Embodied Labs have used 360-degree video to help medical workers experience the effects of Alzheimer’s Disease and age-related audiovisual impairments, to assist in making diagnoses; manufacturing giant Bosch and the Ford Motor Company have pioneered a VR-training tool, using the Oculus Quest headset, to train technicians on electric vehicle maintenance. UK-based company Metaverse Learning worked with the UK Skills Partnership to create a series of nine augmented reality training models for front-line nurses in the UK, using 3-D animation and augmented reality to test learners’ skills in specific scenarios and to reinforce best practices in nursing care.
With deep roots in online gaming, the metaverse can also start to tap the potential of gamified learning technologies for easier and faster skills acquisition. PixelMax’s O’Carroll observed: “The game becomes the learning activity. In the medical world, we’ve used gamified technologies to train lab technicians; you’ll break out in different groups and then go to, say, a virtual PCR testing machine where you’ll go through stages of learning about how to operate that machine, with your training result then recorded.” For the first responder community in the UK — police, firefighters, medical crew, etc. — PixelMax is working on games that combine physical training with immersive gamification to enable first responders to do repeat training, try different strategies, see different outcomes, and look at different ways of working as a team.
Research has established that virtual-world training can offer important advantages over traditional instructor or classroom-based training, as it provides a greater scope for visually demonstrating concepts (e.g., an engineering design) and work practices, a greater opportunity for learning by doing, and overall higher engagement through immersion in games and problem-solving through “quest-based” methods. Virtual-world learning can also make use of virtual agents, AI-powered bots that can assist learners when they get stuck, provide nudges, and set scaled challenges. The visual and interactive nature of metaverse-based learning is also likely to appeal particularly to autistic people, who respond better to visual as opposed to verbal cues. Virtual reality tools can also be used to combat social anxiety in work situations, for example by creating realistic but safe spaces to practice public presentations and meeting interactions.
The internet didn’t just bring new ways of working: it brought a whole new digital economy — new enterprises, new jobs, and new roles. So too will the metaverse, as the immersive 3-D economy gathers momentum over the decade ahead. IMVU, an avatar-based social network with more than 7 million users per month, has thousands of creators who make and sell their own virtual products for the metaverse — designer outfits, furniture, make-up, music, stickers, pets — generating around $7 million per month in revenues. Alongside the creators are the “meshers,” developers who design the basic 3-D templates that others can customize and tailor as virtual products. A successful mesh can be replicated and sold thousands of times, earning significant income for its developer. The Decentraland platform is creating virtual realtors, enabling users to buy, sell, and build businesses upon parcels of virtual land, earning a digital money called “Mana.”
Looking further ahead, just as we talk about digital-native companies today, we are likely to see the emergence of metaverse-native enterprises, companies entirely conceived and developed within the virtual, 3-D world. And just as the internet has brought new roles that barely existed 20 years ago — such as digital marketing managers, social media advisors, and cyber-security professionals — so, too, will the metaverse likely bring a vast swathe of new roles that we can only imagine today: avatar conversation designers, “holoporting” travel agents to ease mobility across different virtual worlds, metaverse digital wealth management and asset managers, etc.
Despite its vast future promise, the metaverse is still in its infancy in many respects. Significant obstacles could stymie its future progress: the computing infrastructure and power requirements for a full-fledged working metaverse are formidable, and today’s metaverse consists of different virtual worlds that are not unified in the way the original internet was. The metaverse also brings a thicket of regulatory and HR compliance issues, for example around potential risks of addiction, or unacceptable behaviors such as bullying or harassment in the virtual world, of which there has been some concern of late. While many issues remain, business leaders, policy makers, and HR leaders can start with the following imperatives for successful collaboration in the metaverse:
The workplace of the 2020s already looks vastly different from what we could have imagined just a couple of years ago: the rise of remote and hybrid working has truly changed expectations around why, where and how people work. But the story of workplace transformation doesn’t end there. While still in its early stages, the emergent metaverse provides an opportunity for enterprises to reset the balance in hybrid and remote work, to recapture the spontaneity, interactivity, and fun of team-based working and learning while maintaining the flexibility, productivity, and convenience of working from home. But three things are clear. First, speed of adoption will be important. With most of the technology and infrastructure already in place, large enterprises will need to act fast to keep up with metaverse technologies and virtual services, or risk being outflanked in the market for talent by more nimble competitors. Second, the metaverse will only be successful if it is deployed as a tool for employee engagement and experiences, not for supervision and control. And, third, metaverse-based work must match the virtual experiences that workers, particularly younger workers, have come to expect of the technology in their consumer and gaming lives.
Guided by these principles, business leaders can start to imagine and create their own workplaces of the future.
Source: https://hbr.org/