I love this and I want to be able to take advantage of it more. Just keeping it here for reference. I’m still learning and I hope to one day say that I am a expert in content marketing.
Created by Chris Lake @lakey by Econsultancy Ltd.
AI is progressing at a scary rate. I’ve never thought it would reach to the level it is now, but we may not be far from having an AI that can interact with us on a Human level or even better.
Here are the current hottest AI Programs to use right now by category:
This company has blown up due to how good it is. Companies right now are following them in their footsteps. Simply write a prompt and then it generates a response. You can refine through further prompting. It is predicted future job is writing prompts, who knows where we’ll go. Right now it is free, but there is a waitlist. There is also a premium option.
Personally, I love ChatGPT. It helps me save mental anguish, pain, frustration and road blocks when it comes to writing.
Google’s chatbot! Similar to ChatGPT it works through prompts too, however it is not available in every country.
It checks your grammar, paraphrases and fluency. When paired with a Chat Bot it makes writing far more efficient.
It is not easy to use, you will have to sign up for Discord, and everyone can see what you are promoting. That is a two edge sword. There may be things you don’t want others to see. However, seeing what people are creating helps you become a better creator.
Much easier to use than Midjourney. You can prompt the AI to create images. You have to be very specific in your prompts. There is a waitlist, but I prefer this over Midjourney for ease of use.
They do have an AI component that is pretty great but is kind of buried. Canva, though, I think is great to have in your toolbox. They have so many templates, images, etc., that have made me much more efficient.
I like this as it immediately allows you to play with it intuitively. Also, if you have a screen recording program like OBS, you can rip the audio without creating an account.
They have a free option with presets like Boomy.
Think of those training videos where a person talks to you on the screen. This is what they specialize in. It is very corporate but very good. It’s not free, but it does save money for companies who are looking for this type of style.
If you are on social media, especially TikTok, you have run into this program. They have so many templates to create different styles and types of videos it amazes me how good it looks.
I look forward to seeing how AI grows and how I can incorporate them into my life.
Now that I’m out of the private sector, here are some things I wish I had known before using Hubspot to make the most of it.
In Hubspot, you can define scoring your contacts. Here is the HubSpot article on how to access it.
You have to decide what is important to your company or you. Common ones are:
There is also a persona tool you can use in HubSpot to use as a guide for onboarding.
Their predetermined boards are good and are one of the things I enjoyed about HubSpot. Specifically for Marketing, I would suggest a Lead Gen Dashboard. Business is all about how much money you can generate. The marketing part of that is generating Leads/MQLs.
HubSpot offers predefined dashboards which you can explore. It gives you a good baseline to start.
You can choose what view to show for email and contacts. Choose what is best for you. For emails generally have:
I guess this is the nature of the beast, but this kind of grinds my gears. When you create a form for a specific event, you have unique fields that you may only use once. Like “What’s your favourite drink” or something similar. HubSpot will create a unique contact property and attach it to the contact. You only need it for a specific amount of time. What are the chances of you using it again? Perhaps you would like to keep it, but this can become a little unmanageable.
When you are exporting the list, all of the fields you have ever created will show up. You can unclick these options when exporting or deleting them, but it gets a little annoying. So, do a routine cleanup of your contact proprieties.
Of course, that’s not to say you want to keep items for historical data like previous landing pages or emails.
When people unsubscribe, have them automatically removed from your main marketing list and move to a do not email list or similar. The toughest part of email marketing, I find, is maintaining your list from getting too messy.
That’s it for now, and I am still learning the monster that is HubSpot. They are constantly improving, growing and changing things. That’s one of the reasons I like using HubSpot.
WordPress has grown over the years, and I even use it for this page. However, over the years, I have had some gripes with the platform. Here are some of them below.
I will say this gripe is the nature of the beast. When you have so many creators making Plugins and Themes, this was destined to happen. There are incompatibilities with plugins and themes when you install them. Often, you don’t know they will break something until you install them. That’s the risk you take. This sucks because I find a cool plugin to use it, and it doesn’t work with a theme or vice versa. Even extensions will slow down Word Press. This is the major gripe I have.
If you are looking for extra functionality, forget it with Word Press. The company is reliant heavily on its Plugin Creators to create it. This creates an ecosystem where there a pressure from creators not to add any native functionality because they will lose out on revenue. I get these are businesses that rely on Word Press users for a living. This is a foregone conclusion. You will have add a bunch of plugins if you are looking to level up your site. Once you are in it, it’s hard to move away from it.
I had my Word Press hacked twice. I have never experienced this with other platforms, such as WebFlow, and Site Infinity, and that’s just to name a few. WordPress seems to attract the worse and the best. Being hacked was an unpleasant experience, and I lost one of my sites’ data. You have to have a security plugin and make backups if you can. That’s the only advice I can give you.
I’m not knocking on WordPress; it is super easy to use. That’s why I continue to use it. I also have a soft spot for it. However, for future client projects, I recommend another web site builder.
These are the common glitches, complaints and pain points I’ve seen so far in the forums and social media. They range from minor things to bigger problems.
You can see my post on to fix this. This a known glitch where a specific link state shows up in WebFlow that isn’t easy to find in WebFlow. It is not intuitive at all.
Webflow has a standard function, like many web design platform, to design how a page look at different sizes. Unfortunately, you cannot do that with CMS. Let’s say that you want only 20 items to show per page on a desktop, but on mobile, you just want 4 items to show. Nope, not possible. There are workarounds, but it is annoying not to have this function built in.
When you enable CMS pagination, or pagination in general, when you click next, it will send you back to the top. This is especially annoying when you have the CMS near the bottom of the page. There are workarounds for this. You can find it on youtube.
CMS is undoubtedly one of the key features of WebFlow. Surprisingly, it doesn’t have an option for a slider. There are workarounds to this, too by making it overflow and making it draggable.
This is one of the biggest complaints I’ve heard on Reddit and the forums. It does not compare to Shopify. Webflow is good for portfolios, agencies, and small businesses. However, if you have lots of products, don’t use them.
This has mixed reviews from what I’ve seen across the web. Some didn’t get notified of any form submissions, while others did. The vast majority suggested getting a 3rd party app to ensure you get every form submission.
Webflow has said they were bringing this in 2022. However, many don’t know the progress on this feature that is very much wanted. It’s 2023, and still nothing. There is a 3rd party vendor called Weglot, and I think that’s why WebFlow stalled on this feature. This is a feature I saw on other competitors’ products years ago.
If you want your page to have a unique look, a la McKinsey, for example. You can’t do that; the blog relies on CMS. Which only allows rich text body.
Being able to reference other CMS gives customization that isn’t possible with other CMS. However, WebFlow does impose a limit of a max of 10 with their paid, maybe a bit more with their corporate accounts. This limits my creativity and possibilities.
When you start having a huge CMS list, you will want to filter it to give the user a better experience. Nope, you can’t do that. There are third-party codes to work around this. My favourite is Finsweet.
The Lightbox gallery lacks captions. I think that this should have been added way earlier. There is, again, a workaround, and I made a post about it here.
Let me know if you have any more, and I will add them to the list.
I’m not knocking WebFlow. It is still an amazing platform I use personally and professionally. I’m impressed with what they have done. I just want to blow off a little steam.
*Note: This is my anonymous interview with a friend.
Here are some top things I wish I had known before working with an International Vendor. We hired a wedding photographer in another country, which is our experience.
What happened to me was that I didn’t specify what currency we were paying in. It caused a bit of an argument when we wanted to pay USD as it would save us money vs paying in Euros. It caused tension in the relationship, and I wish I had nipped in the bud way earlier.
Although we hired an international photographer, where we were shooting isn’t their home country. They just live close and could drive there. I thought they would have at least looked up the local culture and customs, but they didn’t. They directed us to do certain poses and actions that were not in line with the local custom and were offensive. This is a general good rule thumb to do when you are travelling.
The photographer might have their own vision or storyboard. You can ask about their process, and understand how much you need to prepare. I wish we looked up places where we would like to take photos at, and what we wanted to do.
This should have been a non brainer but it totally slipped our mines. A lot of rentals were closed (Do this ahead of time if you can), and locations were too. Which was a bummer.
I hope these few tips helped! Have a wonderful week!
There are similarities in how top musicians and K-pop stars approach their fanbase and generate business. Both groups have a highly dedicated fanbase that is often called a “fandom.” These fans are typically extremely passionate and emotionally invested in the artists they support. They are often willing to spend large amounts on merchandise, concert tickets, and other related products.
One tactic that both groups use is creating a sense of exclusivity and belonging. Top musicians and K-pop stars often create language, slang, and symbols unique to their fanbase. Fans who are “in the know” and understand these references feel part of a particular group separate from the mainstream.
For example, K-pop bands have names for their Fandom. The top female kpop band Blackpink calls their fans “Blinks”; another group, Twice, calls their fans “Onces.” Western Artists also do the same, although unofficially. Beyonce calls her fans “The Beehive”; another example is Ariana Grande, who calls her fans “Ariantors.” Giving their fandom identifying monikers brings the fans together under one umbrella.
In K-pop, there is a whole unique term that only those inside the community would know, and for both groups they have inside jokes or history that one can reference and immediately recognize as a fellow fan. These all create a stronger connection between fans, artists and fandom.
Both groups also use social media to build relationships with their fans. Top musicians and K-pop stars often have a highly active presence on platforms like Twitter and Instagram, where they share personal updates and behind-the-scenes footage and interact with their fans directly. This helps build a sense of intimacy and connection between the artist and their fans, leading to increased loyalty and sales.
They are constantly creating content to keep fans constantly on the lookout and invoke a sense of FOMO if they don’t follow their favourite artist closely. Here is an example from K-pop, groups often release dance practice videos. These have become productions themselves. Teasers are produced, and different versions are released, all of the same dance!
In addition, being constantly on social media and sharing their lives create a “parasocial relationship.” Individuals form a one-sided, one-directional relationship with media figures such as celebrities, fictional characters, or social media influencers. In a parasocial relationship, the individual feels a sense of intimacy and connection with the media figure, even though the figure does not reciprocate those feelings or even know the individual exists. The individual may feel they know the media figure personally, despite having no real-world interaction with them, and may develop feelings of loyalty, affection, or attachment towards them. Parasocial relationships are common in today’s media-driven culture and can positively and negatively affect individuals’ mental health and well-being.
Both K-pop and western artists create collectibles for the most die-hard fans.
Collectibles are important to music fans for several reasons:
Collecting music memorabilia can be a way for fans to express their love and appreciation for their favourite artists and music and connect with others who share their interests. K-pop has exploited this. For example, there are collectible trading cards in albums. Some of these cards go for 1000s of dollars. They also create different versions of the same album!
No top artist or group becomes famous without a scandal in their lifetime. Even if it’s stupid, it puts them on the radar of many. For fans? This increases their attachment to the artist because they defend them, and when you fight for someone, you become fonder of them.
Controversy can create even more dedicated music fans in several ways:
Overall, controversy can be a double-edged sword for musicians and bands. While it can lead to increased attention and fan dedication, it can also damage reputations and alienate some fans. It’s up to individual artists and bands to decide whether the potential benefits of controversy are worth the risks.
Fans are the lifeblood of any artist’s career. It pays off when you treat your fan well and create a connection with them.
A good practice for your website if it isn’t loading fast is to reduce the size of your image. You can reduce it via free online resources or in Adobe Photoshop.
There are different image types. You will usually see it in the image type at the end of the file name, such as JPG, PNG, GIF, etc. or by right-clicking the file and choosing “Properties.”
If you type in compress [image extension] into google, you can find plenty of free websites that do this service. Sometimes, there are limits to how many you can compress. Here are my favourite site to use: https://ezgif.com/optimize
You can see there are three image compression options.
In terms of which image format is the lightest, WebP is the lightest but not widespread. I prefer PNG for the web, jpg for photos, and gifs for short animations.
With Photoshop, you can slice images into pieces, which then quickens the load time. Below is a tutorial
This one is a bit more advanced method for optimization.
Find the maximum size you need for your webpage. Often time the image is way bigger than it needs to be. To reduce the dimensions, you can use any free image editing software.
I usually screenshot what I need, find the dimensions and reduce the image to that size.
The fewer colours, the smaller the file. You can do this via photoshop by going to export> Save for Web
You will see on the left-hand side the colour drop-down options. The fewer colours, the smaller the file.
First, you have to download the ICS from ZOOM.
Upload the ICS file somewhere. You can use mega, HubSpot, or wherever it lets you upload a file.
Next, create a new single send in Send Grid.
Choose the code editor.
Or you can duplicate an email and choose code editor ver.
You will see a window like this. Find where the content begins.
You will then type the HTML code:
<a href="URL OF THE ICS HERE">TEXT YOU WANT HERE</a>You can edit the look with other HTML codes like text colour, bold, size, etc.
Send a preview email to yourself to test it out. It should work.
I hope that helps!
I hope that helps!
There are several reasons why it is important for businesses to update their social media accounts regularly:
Here are ideas to keep your content fresh:
LAER (Land, Adopt, Expand, Renew) is a business model that describes selling and delivering technology products or services to enterprise customers. It is designed to help companies focus on building long-term customer relationships by providing value at each stage of the customer journey.
The LAER model consists of four stages:
The LAER model is designed to help businesses build strong, long-term relationships with their customers by providing value at each stage of the customer journey. By helping customers land, adopt, expand, and renew your product or service, you can build a loyal customer base that will continue to drive growth and revenue for your business.