Shehryar Aziz

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I used to work on a fisheries crew where we would use an electro-fisher backpack to momentarily stun small fish (30 - 100 mm length) so we could scoop them up with nets to identify and measure them. The larger fish tended to be stunned for slightly longer because of their larger surface area but I don't imagine this relationship would be maintained for very large animals. Could you electrofish for a blue whale? At what voltage would you have have to set the e-fisher?

—Madeline Cooper

So you want to give endangered whales powerful electric shocks. Great! I'm happy to help. This is definitely a very normal thing to want to do.

There are various electrofishing setups, but they all operate on the same general principle: An electric current flows through the water, and also through any fish that happen to be in the water. The electric current, through a few different physical effects, draws the fish toward one of the electrodes and/or stuns them.

For a long time, people didn't really notice that electrofishing injured fish at all. For the most part, stunned fish seemed to be fine after a few minutes. However, they frequently suffer from internal damage which isn't obvious from the outside. The electric current causes involuntary muscle spasms, which can fracture the fish's vertebrae. As this paper shows, these kinds of spinal injuries are more common and severe in larger fish.

As you mention, for a given electrofishing setup, larger fish are usually more affected than smaller ones.[1] Why? Well, we don't know. In their comprehensive 2003 study Immobilization Thresholds of Electrofishing Relative to Fish Size, biologists Chad Dolan and Steve Miranda modeled the way electric currents stun fish of different sizes, but caution that "no adequate conceptual system exists to explain the effects of size on electroshock thresholds from the perspective of electric fields."

None of these studies dealt with animals anywhere near the size of whales. The largest fish in Dolan and Miranda's study were still quite small. This experiment tested larger fish up to 80cm long,[2] but nothing whale-sized.[3] Since we don't know exactly why larger fish respond differently, it's hard to confidently extrapolate.

Fish are typically[4] stunned by equipment delivering about 100 µW of power per cm³ of body volume, so for a whale, that would be about 20 megawatts.

But there's a catch: Most electrofishing is done in fresh water. Unfortunately, blue whales live in the ocean,[5] where the salt water conducts electricity much more easily. That might seem like good news for our electrofishing plans, but it turns out to make it much more challenging.

Electrofishing works best when the water and the target animals are about equally conductive. In highly conductive saltwater, most of the current flows past the animals in the water rather than through them. This means that ocean electrofishing requires much more power. Using our simple extrapolation, instead of 20 megawatts, we might need a gigawatt. In other words, you'll need to bring a large nuclear generating station.

Simple extrapolation is misleading here, since we know that large animals respond to electricity differently. How differently? Well, according to an electrofishing.net post by Jan Dean, a human who fell into the water in front of a typical electrofishing boat could easily die.[6] Blue whales, which are even larger than humans,^{[citation needed]} would presumably fare even worse.

Electrofishing temporarily stops a fish's heart.[7] The fish seem to recover, most of the time, but humans—and probably whales—have a harder time with cardiac arrest.

It's possible that giving blue whales massive electrical shocks isn't as good an idea as it sounded at first.

That's not to say there's no place in science for giving random electric shocks to large aquatic animals. A project at the Denver Wildlife Research Center used electrofishing-style equipment—linked to an infrared camera—to repel beavers, ducks, and geese from selected areas. Apparently, the results were "encouraging."[8]

So electrofishing equipment probably can't help you catch blue whales. However, if you're having trouble keeping them out of your backyard pond ...

... it's possible the Denver Wildlife Research Center can help you out.

[1] This can lead to larger fish being overrepresented in sampling studies.

[2] The fish they used in the experiment grew rapidly to a range of sizes, mainly because the larger ones kept eating their smaller siblings.

[3] There's been at least one case of dolphin death linked to illegal electrofishing.

[4] Actual quote from that paper: "The results for these tests were unsettling ... this observation was so unexpected that we stopped the experiment to recalibrate the equipment."

[5] I mean, unfortunately for Madeline. It's fortunate for the whales.

[6] While it sounds dangerous, people aren't often killed during electrofishing accidents. The 2000 EPA report "New Perspectives in Electrofishing" comments that "In the United States, since World War II, only about five electrocutions during electrofishing have been documented." I assume they just mean records weren't kept before World War II, but it's technically possible that the war involved so many electrofishing deaths that they need to exclude it from the stats.

[7] Until reading this paper, I didn't know clove oil was used as a fish anesthetic. You learn something new every day!

[8] The equipment kept the beavers away, although they returned as soon as it was turned off. It also worked on ducks and geese, although they had some problems with infrared waterfowl detection. The birds would usually take flight when the equipment turned on, although if it was cold enough, they'd just sluggishly paddle away.

My name is Zach, and I write at Four Pillar Freedom, where I tend to tackle financial topics through data visualization. While J.D. is on vacation, I offered to explore one of his favorite topics: the effects of saving rate versus investment returns.

Albert Einstein supposedly once said that compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. But does data actually support this claim?

In this post, I explore the nature of compound interest, how long it takes to become an important factor in wealth accumulation, and whether or not it actually matters much for people who hope to achieve financial independence in a relatively short time.

What matters more: your saving rate or your investment returns?

Accumulating Wealth in the Early Years

Suppose your goal is to achieve a net worth of $1 million. If you invest $10,000 every year and earn a 7% annual return on your investments — which is a reasonable assumption for long-term stock market returns — you'll accumulate $1 million in about 30.7 years.

The chart below shows exactly how long it would take to reach every $100,000 net worth milestone, using the assumptions of a $10,000 annual investment earning a 7% annual return:

Notice how each $100,000 net worth milestone takes less time to reach than the last. In fact, it's mind-boggling to see that it will take you longer to go from $0 to $100,000 than it will to go from $600,000 to $1 million:

The first $100,000 takes the longest to save because you don't receive much help from investment returns early on. The time it takes you to go from $0 to $100,000 is mostly dependent on the gap between your income and your spending.

The following chart shows just how much savings contribute to net worth growth compared to investment returns:

If you invest $10,000 each year at a 7% annual rate of return, you'll go from $0 to $100,000 in 7.84 years and a whopping 78% of that $100,000 will come purely from savings.

Important note: For the sake of simplicity, we're assuming a steady 7% annual return in these examples. It makes things easier. But please remember that in real life, returns are almost never average. Some years, the stock market drops 10%. Other years, it gains 20%. Over the long term, however, the average real returns are close to 7%. So, we're keeping things clearer by using that number.

Even if you earn higher annual investment returns, the majority of your first $100,000 will still come from savings. The table below shows how much savings account for each $100,000 net worth milestone based on different annual rates of return:

On the low end, if you only earn 3% annual returns, then savings will account for 89% of your total net worth growth from $0 to $100,000. On the high end, if you earn 9% annual returns, then savings will still only account for 74% of total net worth growth.

Note: This is why Get Rich Slowly has written many times before that the number-one factor in determining how much you'll have in retirement is the amount you save.

The good news is that once you cross the $100,000 net worth milestone, investment returns begin to help you. For example, if you keep investing $10,000 each year at a 7% annual rate of return, then 49% of your net worth growth from $100,000 to $200,000 will come from investment returns:

So, even though you're saving and investing the same amount each year ($10,000), it will only take you 5.1 years to go from $100,000 to $200,000 since investment returns add to your net worth. Notice how it takes less and less time to accumulate each $100,000 because investment returns begin to account for more growth as time goes on.

Why Your First $100,000 is Such a Big Deal

You might find these charts discouraging if you're someone who has yet to save their first $100,000. After all, the numbers don't lie: The first $100,000 takes the longest to accumulate. Warren Buffett's longtime business partner Charlie Munger even once said, “The first $100,000 is a bitch!”

The good news, though, is that accumulating your first $100,000 represents a huge milestone. If your goal is to save $1 million, then $100,000 only represents 10% of your total goal. But let’s instead view wealth accumulation from a time perspective: It takes 7.84 years to get your hands on that first $100,000 and a total of 30.7 years to go from $0 to $1 million.

This means accumulating the first $100,000 takes up a whopping 26% (7.84 years / 30.7 years) of the total time it takes to accumulate $1 million:

Although it may not feel like a huge milestone in terms of dollars, accumulating your first $100,000 is a huge milestone in terms of time.

It's fascinating to see how much time each $100,000 milestone actually accounts for on the road to $1 million. For example, going from $100,000 to $200,000 represents 17% of the total journey in terms of years:

This means that accumulating your first $200,000 represents 43% of the journey to $1 million in terms of years. The table below shows how much time each $100,000 takes up on the journey to $1 million (again, assuming consistently investing $10,000 annually at a 7% rate of return):

As your net worth marches higher, each subsequent $100,000 takes less time to reach than the last.

When Do Investment Returns Matter More Than Savings?

We've seen that net worth growth can be slow in the early stages simply because you don't have enough money invested for investment returns to make much of a difference. As time goes on, though, investment returns begin to account for more and more net worth growth. You might be wondering: When do investment returns matter more than savings?

To answer this, let's consider the case from earlier where you invest $10,000 and earn a 7% annual return. At the end of year one, you have your initial $10,000 plus $700 in investment returns for a total of $10,700. This means 93% ($10,000 / $10,700) of your net worth growth came from savings and only 7% ($700 / $10,700) came from investment returns.

In year two, you invest another $10,000 and again earn a 7% return. This year you would earn $1,449 (($10,700 + $10,000) * 7%) from investment returns. This means 87% ($10,000 / $11,449) of your net worth growth came from savings and 13% ($1,449 / $11,449) came from investment returns:

If we keep doing these calculations each year, we’ll find that investment returns account for more and more of yearly net worth increases as time goes on:

Notice how it takes about 11 years for investment returns to account for more yearly net worth growth than savings:

After year 11, investment returns become the main force that pull your net worth higher.

Here’s another way to view these numbers:

It turns out that no matter how much you save each year, these numbers hold true. For example, suppose you saved $20,000 consistently each year instead of $10,000:

Only the net worth numbers change. The percentages stay the same. Investment returns overtake savings again in year 11.

But what if you earn less than 7% annual returns on your investments? For example, suppose you save $10,000 each year again but instead earn 5% annual returns:

We see a similar pattern: Investment returns slowly begin to account for more net worth growth over time, but in this scenario it takes about 15 years for returns to become more important than savings.

This brings up an interesting question: How long does it take for investment returns to overtake savings for different annual return amounts?

This table reveals the answer:

The lower your annual investment returns, the longer it takes for investment returns to become more important to net worth growth than savings.

J.D.'s note: This last table is important, even though it might not seem so on first glance.

Right now, the FIRE movement is hot, right? Everybody's talking about early retirement. A lot of young folks are able to quit their jobs because their investments have done so well. How well?

My calculations show that as of today (28 Nov 2018), the stock market has returned an average of 15.06% annually since its bottom on 06 Mar 2009. This is an insanely high rate of return for an insanely long period of time, and it's allowed patient investors to rack up big returns quickly.

Many folks aged 30 to 35 have only known this environment where investment returns are so strong that they soon matter more than the amount you save. This is not normal!

When things do normalize, I believe it'll cool some of the heat the FIRE movement has been building.

How Much Do Investment Returns Matter for Early Retirees?

We've seen that the amount you save usually matters more than the investment returns you earn in the early years of a net worth journey. This brings up an interesting question: how much do investment returns matter for people who hope to achieve financial independence in a time span of only 10 to 20 years?

According to the Financial Independence Grid, a household that is able to save 50% of their post-tax annual income each year will be able to achieve financial independence (25 times their annual expenses) in just 16.6 years, assuming they start with $0 and earn 5% investment returns each year:

Let's round this number up to 17 years and find out just how important investment returns vs. savings are on the road to financial independence. Using my Contributions vs. Returns Calculator, we can find out just how much investment returns matter. (Note: I'm using the term “contributions” and “savings” interchangeably here.)

Consider a household that is able to invest $30,000 per year at a 5% annual rate of return for 17 years. At the end of these 17 years, they'll have $813,972, 63% of which will have come purely from savings. Only 37% of this total ending amount will have come from investment returns.

Consider instead if this household is able to earn 7% annual returns while still saving half of their income. It turns out that they would be able to achieve F.I. in just 15 years. In this case, investment returns would account for 44% of their total net worth after 15 years:

And if this same household instead earned stellar 10% annual returns, they would be able to achieve F.I. in just 13 years. In this case, investment returns would account for 52% of their total net worth after 13 years:

So, for people who are able to achieve F.I. in 13 to 17 years, investment returns account for anywhere from one-third to one-half of total net worth growth.

But suppose this same couple experiences incredible 15% annual returns like we've seen since since the stock market bottom of March 2009, as J.D. previously mentioned. Here's the same financial independence grid from earlier, except with the assumptions of 15% annual investment returns instead of 5%:

If this same couple was able to save and invest half of their income each year at a 15% annual return, they would be able to achieve financial independence in just 11.1 years.

For simplicity, let's round to 11 years and plug in the same numbers as we did earlier into the Contributions vs. Returns Calculator:

It turns out that 61% of this couple's net worth after 11 years would be composed of investment returns. Recall that this same couple who earned 5% annual returns on their way to F.I. only had 37% of their final net worth composed of investment returns. That's a massive difference!

As J.D. pointed out, these incredible returns since 2009 have given investors a huge boost over the past decade, but these type of returns are not typical. The stock market typically delivers around 7% annual returns, which is why I used that number consistently throughout this post.

Conclusion

We saw a few interesting things in this post:

• On a net worth journey, the first $100,000 often takes the longest to accumulate. Each subsequent $100,000 takes less and less time to accumulate, though.
• The amount you save matters more than your investment returns in the early years.
• For people who are able to achieve F.I. in 13 to 17 years, investment returns account for anywhere from one-third to one-half of total net worth growth.

Your job as an individual is to focus on what you can control. This means focusing on increasing your income, keeping your spending in check, minimizing investment fees, and maintaining an asset allocation that aligns with your financial goals.

If you hope to achieve financial independence in a relatively short period of time, you'll likely be better off focusing on these variables you can control rather than fretting over investment returns, which are largely out of your control — and not likely to ever be as good as they have been over the past decade.

The post Which matters more for building wealth: your saving rate or your investment returns? appeared first on Get Rich Slowly.

Getting some analyzed medical marketing ideas, via multiple search engines, may be a bad idea. In addition, investing half your day on hectic HARO (Help a reporter out) may not be easy. What about infusing expensive training into your staffs’ genes? Expensive you say.

Now it gets bitterer when your benchmark expectations like; an enhanced reputation, increased mark share, higher cash flow, top-notch reputation management fail.

What to do? Sit down, grab a cup of coffee and read this article to the end. Because in this article, I will reveal the only medical practice marketing strategies that truly work.

Not just that! Each what to do & what not to do section is followed by an infographic. Keep reading!

Things you should do in Medical Practice Marketing

The easy-to-practice marketing strategies for physicians below goes beyond every Doctor’s expectations. They are an ultimate guide for marketing success. They will wheel you toward a sound medical line reputation management. No beating around the bush, let’s dive around the formalities immediately.

• A Website/Blog:

  Your online presence contributes immensely to growing your medical practice. This is not new (I hear you say) but you’re not doing your website design the right way. Designing a website/ blog is the root of all successful web marketing; an overall failure bangs in even on super-talented physicists with a well-designed online site missing out of their best marketing strategies. While considering a good site, characteristics like; high loading speed for mobile devices, beauty on mobile devices and PC, and drop-dead contents, are the determinant.

  Platforms that are gold mines of web design experts are Upwork, Freelancer, and Fiverr. However, maintaining a good blog/web, top-notch freelancers from platforms mentioned above for contents like images, articles, videos, and weekly newsletter expos you to the over 10 billion medical patients on the net.

• Social media pages:

  My team and I parted ways for two weeks, on research for a kill-joy technique for attracting new patients. But we went beyond our expectations. Each of our members came up with GOAT (Greatest Of All Time) healthcare marketing ideas. And from our long list of findings, social media pages/group ranked the highest. We hereby recommend seamless social networking & marketing, which can be achieved by creating a relevant Facebook and Instagram page, and linking them to your blog.

  This is a sure way of constructing a network of two strong bridges, flooded with potential patients that end up on your site. This is so because each time an interesting medical content gets published on your site, it automatically appears on those pages for billions of people to read. Since it’s obviously a more-read-more-patients hack, running a weekly fitness challenge with a smart Facebook Advertising adds a cube of sugar to the tea.

  Recommended Readings:
  Difference Between SEO & SEM
  Importance of Graphic Design
  Importance of Digital Marketing
  How much does a Website Cost?

• Online profile:

  As a medical practitioner, harnessing those online profiles is not too shabby. A well-ironed online profile is a magnet to draw all the sick nails in. Hassle-free and efficient, begin by sending private messages to your friend list. Support that with regular sought-after medical updates on your timeline and watch your benchmark data grow fast.

  As sulking patients meet you for the health fair, leave with faces brimmed with a joy of better health, encourage them to grace your profile with reviews and success stories. By sharing their tantalizing patient experience on your profile, your magnet extends toward new patients. The territory expands. However, an endeavor to include rare physician practices on a marketing plan is a straight-shot.

  Since you will be receiving positive reviews, on the other hand, poor medical practice leave a bad impression on every potential patient. Furthermore, these potential patients will stain your reputation management with negative reviews.

• Be a source for journalists:

  The best mistake most health experts make is sending out representatives for TV program invitation. In fact, supported with my team, we found out where good marketing strategies go wrong. Fortunately, we’ve sorted things out in the next header. Being resourceful is as important as being readily available for journalistic exposal.

  Submitting in-depth useful articles to every local press, demanding for radio program invitation and grabbing every Press Release opportunities forms effective outreach for attracting patient.

  A popular personal online magazine owned by you is a fair trade. Really, assurance should be made on journalist exposure when submitting an article for publication.

• Referrals:

  The goal never changes for every medical practice marketing activities. However, it goes beyond mere products and services internet marketing. Targeting, continuously, large referrals is the door no medical personnel can open without good health care services. Think of it, would you refer me to an incompetent doctor who broke your scrotum? Or rather make sure no one gets hurt by him anymore?

  Meet other ranking physicians, grow good relationships with them, and ask them for referrals. Now working it out to drive a selling-hard specialist to give you juicy referrals may be difficult, what to do? Stretch-out tempting offers like digging into their problems, find solutions and make a deal.

• Online Advert running:

  Facebook and Instagram form about 60% of the internet. While other social media, blogs, and sites tug-a-war over the remaining 40%. So? It goes beyond the sick people, everybody invests on health improvement.

  So, therefore, get your medical center upfront 2.5 billion people on Facebook, and 1.2 billion people on Twitter. They both sum up to a large number on your benchmark data, of course.

  Good news is, none of these Ads, unlike google advertising, will make you splash out much cash from your wallet.

• SEO:

  Every marketing and advertising effort starts and ends here, online. Leaving SEO out of any physician practice marketing is the big last straw that breaks most expensive health care resolution back. Asking what is SEO? Simply put, search engine optimization is a series of internet activities required to drive patients in large crowds, not to the doorstep of your website but to break into your door, begging for whatever health care packages you have in store.

  Search engine optimization can be self-done if you have the spine; in fact, there’re loads of free SEO tools and paid search engine optimization tools all over the web today. Best SEO toolset plans are available on Ahrefs, SEMrush, and MOZ which are the perfect GOAT kill-joy of medical practice marketing strategies.

  Want it done for you? There’re some few great SEO consultants like Coalition Technologies, Neil Patel, and Wowbix capable of both local SEO and international optimization.

• Email Marketing:

  Have the biggest taste of all innovative medical marketing ideas by merely dipping your lab coat in email marketing rich waters. Email marketing is easy; however, most health care personnel get it wrong. Focusing on email list growth is not the way otherwise a drop-dead email marketing strategy is within the circle of an active email list.

  Have a start by sending direct mail to a long list for 2 weeks, rich direct mail I mean, and at the weekend, find out your mail openers. Tools for email marketing optimization include Hubspot, htmlemailcheck, and Emailonacid.

Nothing more, you’re a pro by now if you did read this article by heart but wait, there are some obstacles along the way, let’s clear those weed.

Medical Practice Marketing Strategies That “DOESN’T” Work

All medical office marketing yields nothing or gives a short-term patient retention result if these mistakes are not avoided;

• Content strategy issues:

  Patients want to read benefiting and easy-to-read contents. Our health is our life and we don’t want to be misguided. The only way to show your online patients your qualifications is not by CV/resume submission.

  Don’t chase your competitors; be confident enough to show the world how well you are by providing relevant blog posts on your blog and through emails. As an overall, empower your content strategy.

• Poor website management:

  The medical practice marketing strategies in the previous header are a reliable marketing for doctors like you. The most important of them is the website which I laid much emphasis on, sadly you may fall back into the pit by neglect it perhaps because you feel the struggle is over.

  Keep throwing out all the energies and time into that website, it’s a lifetime investment and your competitors are investing too, and yes, the big gold goes to the highest bidder.

• Poor blog management:

  Once up, never relax. According to our researches, almost every medical organization with quality innovative healthcare marketing ideas fetch 78% potential patients through a well-managed-blog. The bitter truth is, working in the office and blogging may be difficult.

  Blogging requires continuous deep attention and keeping an eye on any other thing is impossible. To overcome this problem, employ an experienced freelancer in the medical field.

  Scroll back to the first bullet of the heading titled; “Things you should do in Medical Practice Marketing” to see the best sources for freelancers.

• Lack of sales process for inbound phone calls:

  Heads up! Your medical office marketing is getting burnt at the edge while you slack. Washing the hands off the meal of a strategized adequate inbound phone call will shortly return a blooming healthcare organization to the bud. Keep marketing your medical practice by either upgrading that inbound phone calls service or maintaining your stand to your patients.

  Inbound phone calls management is among the most crucial marketing strategies, especially for urgent medical care.

• Trying to look big:

  This problem is the biggest but less paid attention to. Never feel relaxed because there’re dogs on your tail and the rat race is never-ending. Neglecting email marketing, stopping your initial carrying out of following up, as well as sitting away from referral outreach, all of this marks the beginning of your downfall.

  Remember the saying; the fight starts just when you’re winning? After working it to the top with what you’ve read here, expand your horizon and get more efficient strategies for medical practice marketing. Because your competitors will get here, read just what you’ve read, and make it work for them just like you did.

Missed anything or have something to share? Use the comment box below to get our lightning support. You may also want to get your colleagues in the field to see this, use the share buttons.

The post Top GOAT Medical Practice Marketing Strategies appeared first on Wowbix.

Updated on 27/Oct/2018

I bet you’ll agree that not only the clients at the buying end but the designers themselves do not have a solid idea on the importance of graphic design.

Graphic design is much like the third act of magic: the prestige, in which one has to bring something into existence that was previously not there.

This is exactly what a good graphic designer does. However, this is where the problem begins to demoralize us.

While the graphic design industry is booming at supersonic speed, there are not many graphic designers who fully understand the importance of the magic that they have mastered.

And it goes without saying:

If you, being a good graphic designer, do not know why graphic design is important for communication with the clients to bargain on the price of the design to the deliverance, you will not do as good as you should.

Also:

If you, the reader of this post, is a person who needs to buy a graphic design for their website, business card, social media or other purposes, and you do not know the importance of graphic design, you may never exploit the potential of design up to its true extent.

So:

Here are some undeniable reasons that will show you the value of graphic design:

1. Design Speaks Better Than Words

That “A picture is worth a thousand words” proverb might have become a cliché, but if you ask the reality, it is so true.

Take Apple’s logo for example. What do you see on the back of every Apple product: MacBook, Macintosh, iPhone, and iPad etc.?

Just Apple’s logo: An apple! You don’t see a mission or vision statement, not even a tagline.

So yes:

When it comes to spreading the word about one’s business, the design comes first and then comes the words. The design speaks louder, clear and better than words.

2. Your Own Identity

Alright:

For marketing purposes and speaking out louder, yes the graphic design is just as important as other factors, but what happens when you have to establish your own distinguished tone, style, and identity among competitors and for the prospects?

The design comes to rescue. Adidas and Nike are two different companies with the same type of product, same pool of prospects and same niche.

Yet:

When a prospect or repeat customer goes to a store with both Adidas and Nike products at a display, they take less than a second to identify the product of their favorite brand. The logo would reach their eyes before the brand name does so.

In simple words, graphic design works like a connection between you and your clients and prospects, and they identify you among hundreds or thousands of others.

3. Your Company’s History & Philosophy

One of the most intelligent authors, who wrote “The Prestige” (the movie was based on this novel), Christopher Priest, had this notion that people do not really look for the secret but only for the effect of magic.

Well:

The graphic design is not just a merger of image, colors and different angles etc. It is deeply connected with the history and philosophy of many companies.

Take Evernote for example; its logo is an elephant with an ear that looks more like a paper with a bent corner. The elephant was chosen because of its good memory and the page-like-ear is chosen because this is a note-taking app – something that we otherwise do with a paper.

Take the example of Audi – you think that 4 rings are without a good reason and just because they look cool? No! Actually, 4 rings represent 4 companies behind the making of Audi.

So:

Graphic design is more like your “business family tree”. It lets people know where you are from, who you are and what you want to be.

4. Graphic Design Can Boost Your Sales

Yes, it can:

A thought-provoking, intelligently done and pleasing graphic design, whether it is on paper, Facebook page banner, website banner, logo or otherwise, can boost your sales.

It is because people love good design and a good design spread good vibes about your business. Vibes play an important role in a time when a prospect has a few seconds to decide whether they will buy from you or not.

Take the example of Starbucks:

Their Christmas days mugs used to have Christmas related graphic art on them, and when someone entered a Starbucks shop in a cold, winter night around 25^th of December (Christmas), they loved to see Santa Clause, his cart and other Christmas art on Starbucks disposable coffee mugs.

Some genius decided that Christmas is nothing but a stupid pagan festival that somehow crept into Christianity and that Starbucks, being beacon holder of modernism and progress, needed not to support stupid religious rituals and stuff like that.

And:

Bam! When the next year’s Christmas was around, people who used to see beautiful Christmas art on their coffee mugs saw nothing but Starbucks logo and they were angry to find out that Starbucks had no respect for public festivals and rituals.

So:

A good design strategy – synced with the sentiments of your target clientele, will definitely rake in a lot of money for you.

5. Credibility and Professionalism

Apart from all other points that prove the value of good graphic design, there is this point which not many people pay attention to.

Importance of graphic design in communication is just another aspect and as a matter of fact, good design plays a major role in getting you sales and establishing a credible and professional image.

Any example?

Yes. I’ve been giving examples of all points made above and here is another example. Go to your email inbox and open all emails sent to you by companies and organizations that sell some services or products.

Also:

Go to trash and find out all the marketing emails that you deleted.

Done?

Now check, and I bet, if not all of them, at least a huge majority of them would have really nice email signatures based on good and decent graphics.

Also:

Most of them come with simple, but responsive HTML email design – in simple words, image underneath the marketing text or news. This kind of email, whenever you open it, says something immediately.

“It is a business message about something that might be of great value to you.” And God knows, even if we delete such an email, we do it after reading it. It makes a business look very professional and credible.

6. The Strength Behind Your Company’s Name

It is a matter of fact:

However, many people fail to see the obvious. On daily basis, not once but many times a day, we get to notice at least one company whose name is so much known and can easily be identified, because of graphic design.

Stunned?

I’ll get to the importance of graphic design behind the name of this company, but first let us talk about the type of logo designing: Wordmark logo.

This is simply a merger of word + color & graphics. Google “wordmark logo” and tell me the first few images you see.

Yes:

Google itself. Then CNN, Disney, Jeep … the list is long. A lot of companies, big shot, blue-chip companies out there think that company’s name is not enough for the holier cause of branding, those words must also be turned into a logo.

This is the strength of graphic design that works behind the name of a company – a company as big as Google.

7. People Love Graphics

Evidence?

Haven’t I established and proved each and every of my claim with evidence? I will give evidence of this contention as well.

Although it is a universal truth and you know it yourself, but we have to prove the importance of graphic design in education, business, communication and other walks of life.

Let us do it:

Go to the Google search page and enter a topic of your choice. Done? Now open a blog post that ranks on top for your searched topic.

I’d be a fool if you told me that that post exists on top without any graphic design job – no image, no meme, no Gif and other sorts of graphics.

What else do you need to admit that graphic design for business is just like water for fish? In today’s world, no business can survive without hiring a graphic designer.

Take Infographics as an example of my claim. There is a big community of submission websites, creation websites, people who make them and people who need them, only because the internet loves graphics.

By internet, I mean social media and Google prefer content with appealing graphics only and only because – people love to see some splendidly done Photoshop or Illustrator job on every post: and that too in abundance.

So:

Dear reader, I bet that these 7 reasons, with undeniable evidence, are enough to prove that the importance of graphic design in society and over the internet is beyond any doubt.

In simple words, if you overlook the importance and benefits of good graphics job, you will do great disfavor to your personal and business presence over the internet.

Sources:

Starbucks Red Cup Controversy

Audi’s Four Rings

The post Importance of Graphic Design: 7 Reasons with Examples appeared first on Wowbix.

Let us admit:

While each and every one of us internet users enjoys the fruit of SEO every day. Hardly 2 or 3 out of 10 such users might be aware of what does SEO really stand for and why it is important in our daily life.

Well:

Let us make it simple.

Suppose today is that day that you want to treat your family to a good dinner, and since you are done with all good or bad restaurants that you’ve tried so far. You want to try some new place with a new culture and cuisines.

So what do you do?

Yes:

You go to the big G: Google, and search keywords like “Chinese restaurant” and Google treats your eyes with a map of your vicinity and the names of the restaurants (local businesses) with reviews, address and contact details etc. This is one example of what is SEO.

However:

This is not enough. This defines a small part of a big SEO puzzle; this is called Local SEO. But SEO is not just local, it is global.

For example:

Consider yourself a student who is looking for a lucrative full bright scholarship; the keyword that you use to find a scholarship, shall look like this “Fulbright scholarship SUBJECT 2019” and Google will line up a number of universities offering scholarships and websites that offer a great deal of information or help about the scholarship.

This help that you get from Google is basically why SEO is important.

You want to import salt lamps, you want to export software, you want to buy something online, you want to find a forum for a line of work relevant to you, for every single thing that you want to find over Google, SEO works like a genie that brings up the most relevant results.

Let us try to understand what SEO is after all:

Structure:

1. What does SEO stand for?

2. How SEO Works?

3. How to do SEO?

1. What does SEO stand for?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.

It is a two-fold thing. For owners of websites and blogs, it brings free of cost and organic traffic straight from Google (or Bing etc.) Search Engine Results Pages (SERP).

And:

For those who google for everything, every result that you see after entering a keyword in Google search engine comes to the surface because someone did a little or more SEO for that web page.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is basically a set of tried and tested tactics and techniques that every SEO expert tries while working on their website as well as off of it.

In this brief guide, we will briefly discuss both on and offsite search engine optimization. However, before we get into detail, let us set some basic points that define SEO.

• SEO helps bring web pages to better and higher ranks in search results.
• It is done on-site by toying with site’s content, tags, and structure etc.
• It is also done off-site by spreading the word about the website and fetching some link-juice from high authority websites.
• SEO brings traffic to the website and with the passage of time, it increases the quality of traffic (organic) as well as the quantity of traffic (number of users).

2. How SEO Works?

Alright:

Let us again start with the example of a restaurant.

You go to a restaurant and you order one or two certain dishes.

After some time they’re served to you.

Google (or other search engines) and SEO work the same way. Search Engine is the restaurant where you go and your ordered dishes are actually the keywords that you entered in Google search. Well, guess what, search engine optimization is the entire process of cooking that you cannot see.

All you do is enter keywords, get your results in 0.40 (less or more) seconds and then open a link and do what you want to do.

SEO brings all those results from the unseen kitchen to your dining table. Google and other search engines have crawling bots that sneak into all the websites to find out as to what the website is about, and once a specific web page gets crawled, these crawlers bring it to a query related to that page.

So where does SEO stand in all this?

SEO is actually what dictates whether your page will appear in top ten search results or in the graveyard of page 3, 4 or beyond.

SEO has to account for a lot of factors to please Google or other search engine’s algorithms. For example, if your SEO technique overlooked the importance of responsive web design or any one of Brian Dean’s 200 ranking factors, Google algorithm will punish the web page by not letting it have a good ranking.

3. How to do SEO?

Well:

I am sorry to disappoint you but there is no definitive guide on how to do so.

Top ranking on a search engine result page is like mountaineering.

There is no road to the summit and every trekker has to find its own way.

Had Google or Bing explained how to please their algorithms in a certain way and rank to the top, all websites would have ranked for page 1, but this is not possible.

Here’s the deal:

People who know Google’s algorithm. People who know SEO and people who have been working with SEO giants like Neil Patel and Mathew Woodward etc., know how to rank a website.

But they cannot tell how long it will take.

Some would rank their websites by on-site SEO, paying ordinary attention to off-site SEO.

Then there are those who ace the art of back-linking and only do on-site just as much as needed for the job.

Let us try to understand both strategies but before understanding below strategies, make sure you truly understands what SEO stand for and why you need it:

A. On-site SEO

Alright:

There are two main pillars of search engine optimization: on-site and off-site. Let us first understand the meaning and function of on-site SEO.

As the term suggests.

It is the type of SEO that is associated with the actions that you take on your website. In simple terms.

It means improving and devising best website structure, content strategy and style, keyword research and application, optimization of tags and metadata and page load speed as well as its responsive design.

Let us briefly discuss all of them:

• Content & Keywords – From a content strategy that encompasses everything from content topics to style, to keywords strategy, the biggest chunk of on-site SEO is made of content and keywords.
• Tags – Talk about H1, H2 or H3 tags or canonical tags, all of them either define the status of a heading in HTML language or they establish the ownership of content.
• Page Metadata – This is the mixture of keywords and phrases that define your page for the target audience. Correct use of metadata helps the visitors skim and scan a page and tell the search engines that your page is associated with a certain string of keywords or topics.
• Speed and Design – It is now confirmed that Google considers page speed as a ranking factor. Google’s approach is dictated by one simple principle – user’s ease and convenience. This is why Google considered page speed a good omen and now for mobile search as well, page speed is a big factor (Google Speed Update: Page speed as a mobile ranking factor).

Speaking of mobile.

Let us talk about mobile-friendly and responsive design. It is one of the basic principles of on-site SEO. If your website is not optimized for mobile phone and tab screen. It’s a bad omen because it goes against a few basic on-site search engine optimization practices.

B. Off-site SEO

That’s it:

Enough about on-site SEO; this is only one side of the coin, let us now talk about the other side of the coin.

Off-site SEO:

Well, it is every effort to rank your page that you do outside your website.

Take your website as your campaign office.

When you are off the office and going door to door asking for support (in SEO language asking for backlinks), that is called off-site SEO.

Here is a little detail of the actions that one takes in off-site SEO campaigns:

• Backlinks – Well, tell you what, when some says off-site SEO 90 out of 100 times they mean struggle to get do-follow backlinks. What is a backlink? It is the hyperlink to your webpage mentioned on other web pages. It becomes a do-follow backlink when the pages giving reference to your web page let Google and other crawlers follow the link and land on your web page. Unless a web page owner specifically turns the hyperlink into no-follow, it remains a do-follow link. Backlinks are so awesome because they bring the link juice to your web page. In SEO terminology, link juice is the quality of hyperlinks to your web page. All the hyperlinks that come from other web pages form the link juice.
• Other than Backlinks – Actions other than backlinks are also an important part of off-site SEO strategy. What are these actions? Well, if you market your website on social media and bring a lot of social signals, that is off-site SEO. If you bring traffic via guest blogging, blog commenting, brand mentions and influencer marketing etc., this all is termed as off-site SEO.

So:

Pals, trying to sum up something like what SEO stand for in a blog post as small as this can only help at the novice level. For more in-depth SEO guides on each aspect of SEO, stay connected and keep asking!

The post What Does SEO Stand For: A Beginners’ Guide appeared first on Wowbix.

SEO and SEM:

These are two different terms that often confuse us because we confuse one with another. Yes, all of us know that SEO stands for search engine optimization and SEM is search engine marketing, but where it all gets tangled is when it comes to marketing.

I mean,

Isn’t SEO just another way of inbound marketing? If it is, then how can we draw a clear line between both: SEO and SEM?

Well:

In this blog post. I am going to draw that line for you and we will see how SEO is different from SEM.

Let us take a look at some very clear points of distinction:

SEM is Whole – SEO is Part

Yes, exactly:

For starters, SEO and SEM are not two equal or parallel marketing or search engine manipulation tactics. SEO is a big part of a bigger whole that we know as SEM.

SEM consists of two parallel techniques of bringing lots and lots of traffic to your website. One of those techniques is SEO and the other one is PSA (Paid Search Advertising).

What is PSA?

You must have tried or at least heard of Google PPC advertising that is also known as Google AdWords advertising.

When you think that SEO will take a long time to kick in and you need some traffic immediately, you go for a paid advertisement. You pay Google to show your website in Google ads or search results.

So, to start with, not only SEM includes an entirely different tactic than SEO, it is the whole which SEO is only a part of.

Focus

While comparing SEO to SEM is like comparing a car engine to a car itself (part vs whole). There are certain points that help one draw a line of difference between both of them. Take the focus of both strategies for example.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO):

If you look at SEO and try to find its focus, it is a two-fold marketing and traffic acquisition strategy that is focused on two main fronts: on-site and off-site.

So a person who applies SEO is like a ping-pong ball between on-site SEO strategies and off-site hard work to accumulate more and more traffic.

However:

The focus is not the same in case of SEM.

SEM does not have to do anything with on-site and off-site because it already encapsulates SEO and all its dimensions.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM):

SEM is, in fact, an extensive marketing approach and strategy that relies heavily on two most important parts: SEO and PSA.

However:

Since SEO is a small universe of its own, when someone presents themselves as SEM expert, we mostly think of Google AdWords and other PSA strategies.

So while SEM’s focus is very wide and it covers SEO as well, SEO focuses only on two main techniques.

Yet, when it comes to scalability, both: SEO and SEM are equally difficult.

Activities

In terms of activities too, SEO and SEM do not sound much similar.

Yes, I know SEO is part of SEM and thus both should look alike – to a certain limit.

However:

While an SEO expert is supposed to be busy in keywords search and getting backlinks etc., an SEM expert is supposed to take up the task like ad campaigns and managing ad groups etc.

Here’s a breakdown of the activities of both an SEO and SEM

SEM	SEO
Launching ad campaigns	Taking care of keywords research
Creating ad groups	Getting content
Setting an ad budget	Getting backlinks
Making sure that spending is proportionate to the ad metrics	Finalizing small details like tags and structure etc.
Doing SEO	Guest posting, social media, and other tactics

Approach

Well:

This is one very important point that differentiates SEO from SEM or vice versa. This is in terms of approach.

We all know that whether go for the whole or its part SEO, the target is only and only one: getting more and more traffic for one’s website.

However:

The way how both strategies channelize the traffic from internet in general to one’s website is what makes the difference.

As we know SEM includes SEO as well. However, it is a group of techniques that includes SEO and if we minimize SEO from SEM, it is all about paid advertising.

SEO, on the other hand, is about getting more and more traffic from unpaid sources.

This is the difference in terms of approach. SEM (minus SEO) is all about allocating ad budget, managing expenses, launching ad campaigns and taking other actions that do the same thing – bringing traffic in return for money (via ads mostly).

SEO, to the contrary, uses technique and smart work to replace the money that we find involved in PPC advertising techniques. How to structure the website, how to strategize the content, how to do keywords research, how to do tags and how to bring in more and more do-follow backlinks, it is all smart-work.

So, a major difference between SEO and SEM is smart-work vs money (not that SEO can be done without money or SEM does not require intelligence and hard-work).

Place of Action & Form of Action

Yes:

I know a lot of posts discussed this topic, but none of them mentioned this point. I know this point does not matter much, but it is still a point of difference.

Where do you expect to run into SEO and where you have chances to meet SEM? To some, this question does not matter, but in certain scenarios, this is an important point.

For example, a learner of SEO and SEM would not like to waste time and immediately want to know the places and tools used in both types of techniques.

SEO is done on your website and off your website. On-site means that whether your website is on WordPress or some other CMS that is the place where you do SEO. Also, you do SEO on others’ websites and social media and forums etc.

The tools are Ahrefs, SEMRush & Moz etc.

In the case of SEM, the place is ad tool of a search engine. For example, when you have to test a PPC Google ad, you go to AdWords which is a tool for Google ads.

Folks:

This is it.

These are the most important points about SEM and SEO that a researcher and blogger could find out. You ferret around the internet and do enlighten me if you find any other point of difference.

Also – don’t forget to share this and comment if you like.

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We all hate Gary Vaynerchuk!

We hate this NJ boy for using too many foul words in his talk. Well, perhaps he gets overwhelmed by success and motivation, and this is his style.

But we love him a lot too!

For him nagging and consistently urging us to start thinking about the importance of digital marketing.

And this is what this blog post is all about! We are going to see why digital marketing is important, and why it will become almost inevitable for any business in 2019.

It does not matter whether you sell products or services online or offline! You go get some digital marketing campaign going on all important social media channels and Google!

Not convinced yet?

Well, here are all the right reasons to pull your socks and get into extensive digital marketing strategies.

Statistics Say It All

Let’s say you’re not fully convinced that marketing on Facebook or Google is just as good as doing the same on Television.

Well:

We will get to the traffic stats later, let us see how much a TV commercial can cost you.

On average a 30 seconds TV commercial in the USA costs $200 to $1500 based on the area and the popularity of the network.

Facebook charges you, more or less, $0.11 per 30 seconds.

Do you see the disparity?

Now you might be wondering whether Facebook gets just as much attention as a big national TV network in the USA. Because paying to Facebook is not worth it if Facebook is not getting a traffic closer to the viewers of any big TV network.

How would you like if we compared Facebook to Fox News? Interesting, right?

Well, Fox News, being one of the oldest and biggest TV networks of the USA, get on average 2.24 million viewers.

Compare this to Facebook and you will learn that Facebook has more than 500 million active users.

Yes! Digital Media left behind the print and electronic media while you were sleeping.

Why I Brought Gary Vaynerchuk into This?

You must be turning sides in your couch or chair and thinking why the hell I brought Gary Vaynerchuk into this blog post.

Well:

For starters, he’s a huge digital marketing expert and inspiration for digital marketers and digital entrepreneurs who are interested in digital marketing (Like Me).

But:

This is not the reason why I’ve mentioned Vaynerchuck in this blog post. Well, I just recently watched him speaking with people who were into entrepreneurship and digital marketing and he proved the importance of digital marketing.

Here’s the video:

In this video, Gary says, that video ads on social media should not be made like TV commercials. He believes that digital media is ahead of electronic media, just like electronic media was ahead of print media.

Why a Real Life Business Needs Online Marketing?

But why, oh why, do I need to try online marketing methods while my business is a real life one.

I do not sell over social media and I do not have a website, so why do I need Facebook?

Well, this is a legit question. However, you forgot that while you decided to keep your business “off-line”, your customers have gone online.

As a matter of fact, at the beginning of 2016, the number of internet users crossed a milestone and reached 3.2 billion people figure.

Out of them, 2 billion people are from developed countries. This means that if your business is anywhere in the USA, Canada, Europe, the Gulf, China or Australia. Your target customers are already using the internet – while you don’t.

However, this is not the killer stat that will bring you from off-line business to online presence. Let me talk about that stat and you will see the bigger picture.

60% of these 3+ billion people use their internet on their smartphones. This means that they use the internet to make buying decisions as well.

From buying baby diapers to dining out, people Google everything. But this is still not the killer stat that will make you feel like a loser if you did not get into PPC AdWords or Facebook advertising.

The killer state comes from Business Insider.

As per this post, 13% of US citizens who use mobile phone apps out of 3+ billion internet users, use Facebook app, while 12% use Google’s apps e.g. Gmail and Google Drive etc.

As per Statista, the number of US users of smartphones is 224.3 million.

This means that 22 million US smartphone users use Google Apps and a bigger number of them use Facebook and Facebook Messenger apps.

Think about it:

22 million+ of your target audience use smartphones and Facebook/Google apps. Would you like to reach out to them with the most conversion-oriented videos, photos, and content?

Getting Known in Your Area

This is yet another big benefit of Social media outreach for businesses that are not on the internet.

Also:

If your company is selling a product or service online but it does not have an exhaustive digital marketing campaign, here is the biggest reason to do so.

If your business has an address of its own, it must be well-known in your area. Think of a dentist offering his service in his gated society.

People who search the internet every day for a dentist in that society will never get to know him or visit his clinic because he never optimized his business for Local SEO.

Go search Google for “dentist near me” and you will see that Google makes a special listing of dentists with destination maps, clinic names, reviews, and phone numbers etc.

This is called Google My Business and this is just one side of Local SEO.

You can have a Facebook page of your business and let me tell you that with a good number of likes, you have good chances of ranking on the first page of Google SERPs.

Getting known in your area is one of the biggest benefits of Local SEO and social media marketing.

Learn more on What Does SEO Stand for?.

Conversion Rates

Let us take a look at the whole marketing deal from a different viewpoint. You must agree that every business needs marketing, and depending on one’s budget and vision, there is always a marketing strategy in place.

Even if you aren’t running ads on print or TV media, you have a strategy to reach out to the target audience.

Let us see how well your business will deliver if we implemented a proper and all-inclusive digital marketing campaign.

We are talking about conversion rate because this is what proves whether a marketing campaign is good or not.

Since we have talked enough about Facebook and Google, let us talk about another big and huge social media channel: Instagram.

Yes:

All you think about Instagram is hipsters and wanna-be hipsters sharing their photos and getting more and more hearts from others.

However:

Instagram is associated with Facebook and it has very fast evolved into a big marketing channel.

Here’s a small case study about how Adidas, the giant sports products brand, used Instagram to get 71,000 mentions of #MyNeoShoot to promote their new brand: Neo.

Assuming that one hashtag was noticed by 20 people who did not know about Neo and its products, Adidas successfully won the attention of 1,420,000 people. Only if each of the hashtags got noticed only by 20 people.

This is the impact of digital marketing. Do you wonder how many people Adidas converted out of hundreds of thousands of “hearts”? Well, I do not have that figure, but the company got 41,000 new followers.

Considering that Instagram has a minimum 1.73% conversion rate, out of 41,000 followers. Assuming that only followers converted into customers and not the people who were attracted by the campaign. Adidas got roughly 700+ customers. Cold hard cash!

Micro-Targeting

If there was one big and clear answer to “Why digital marketing is important?” That would be: “Micro-targeting”.

Digital media is all about scalability. Think of a digital marketer as a drone in the air. He uses his cameras to take a closer picture of the target and then hit it with 100% precision.

You have to have a marketing campaign. Let’s quickly compare TV and Print Media.

• You run your TV commercials in prime time and pay a fortune, but it’s not only men who watch that new razor’s ad, but women and kids too. Zero targeting at a price that only a few can afford.
• You decide to try print media and the local newspaper robs you of your wealth for a big ad on the front page. Fine. But the problem remains the same.
• Men are not interested in leak-proof diapers. At least unmarried men or those who have adult kids!

However:

With Facebook or Google ads or any digital media marketing, you can narrow down the audience and hit the exact segment that you think is your target audience.

No one will see those ads and your ad budget will not be a waste. Only people who are meant to see those ads will see them, and those too only at a fraction of what you would pay to TV or newspapers/magazines.

So:

Next time when someone asks you about the importance of online marketing, tell them that it turns you into a drone of a seller and helps you hit only those who you want so badly.

Recommended Readings:
 
• Importance of Graphic Design
• Importance of Website
• What Does SEO Stand For: A Beginners’ Guide
• Difference Between SEO and SEM

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