Businesses are now using multiple social media platforms to market to and communicate with their customers. In this article, we will look at the various characteristics of some of the main social media platforms to help you to prioritise which to use in your business. A killer website these days needs a killer social media marketing strategy.
Projections show that there will be more than 2.67 billion registered social media users spread across various networks by 2018. Facebook is the most famous social network and currently has around 1.97 users every month. The choice of social media platform for private use depends on the taste and preference, but for business depends on applicability and market dynamics. It is often hard for a business to select the most suitable social network because they are many.
The following are crucial factors to consider when selecting social networks for your business.
1. Understand your target audience
Which channels do your potential clients use most? If you target the younger generation, consider using platforms that support videos such as Snapchat and Instagram. Adopting Snapchat when you have a target audience of women who are more than 55 years old will likely be a total miss. It would also be unwise to use Pinterest when your target market is older men because research shows they just don’t tend to be on there that much.
You have to understand the social media demographics and user profiles.
A little while back I talked about Ai and job prospects. I mistakenly said in that video, that you were likely going to be working for large organizations if you were interested in Ai work. As it turns out, I was wrong about that one!
In fact, Ai jobs can be found in small businesses too. I actually personally know two companies who are doing it!
One of my former employees and a mentee of mine, went off and cofounded an educational startup that is working hard to integrate Ai into their product. I can’t get into the details because they wouldn’t be too happy if I spilled the beans, but needless to say, it is some interesting stuff!
The other company that is leveraging Ai, is in a completely different field and they are much more advanced in their project. About 90% of the way there, already the app’s Ai implementation is impressive.
… My buddy was showing me demos that were pretty cool.
The concept of responsive design is not a big breakthrough, but it has attracted a lot of attention recently due to the growth of the mobile device market, mainly tablets and cell phones of varying sizes and resolutions.
In this new context of browsers and various resolutions, responsive design emerges as a logical evolution of website design, mostly known as web design.
Early on, much of the internet was composed by very similar resolutions and browser options. Until recently, it was just fine to make a website that worked on Internet Explorer with a maximum resolution of 1024 × 768 pixels and everything was solved. Of course, there were other features, but the vast majority was in the same group. At the opposite side of the spectrum, there were users of Mozilla Firefox. And that was about it.
Today, everything has changed. There are 50″ inch TVs accessing the internet, phones that have 2″ to 5″ screens, 5″ to 7″ “phablets”, 6″ to 14″ (or even more) tablets. And that is not including the computers themselves, which have screen sizes up to Apple’s iMacs, making it a range from 11″ up to over 26″ inches.
So let’s get started by asking one of the most obvious questions, which is of course, the first that comes to mind…
When learning a programming language, you are going to make many mistakes – it’s normal that your code won’t work the first few times. That said, the key to learning code, is to write code as soon as possible, and as often as possible.
… Even if the code you are writing, does not make sense to you at the time.
The anxiety when learning something new
I was recently reminded of the anxiety most people experience when learning something new. Case in point, though I’ve been creating videos for many years, I always just used the camera’s automatic settings. I didn’t really know much about my equipment.
A little while ago, I decided that I wanted to do more, and so I ventured into more advanced functions like:
aperture-priority
shutter priority
manual mode
… I wanted more control over the video I was shooting.
At first, understanding these basic concepts was confusing, and I was wondering when it would all sink in … therein lies the anxiety. The not knowing if you will ever get it.
In the end, as it is with learning to write code, I just had to use the camera … you have to jump into it and start practicing.
What is the best way to learn to code?
Over the years (since 1994,) I’ve learned 9 programming languages. That may sound impressive, but it isn’t really. Like learning to drive a car, once you understand one programming language, you pretty much understand the basics of all programming languages!
So having done this many times, I can tell you that if you want to learn to code, you have to dive in and write code.
It comes down to these steps:
Do a little theory.
Write code that was taught in the theory.
Repeat
… It’s about bite-size morsels of delicious little code bits! You have to write lots of code, make mistakes and write more code. Repetition goes a long way.
This is a method that is proven to work btw, and we’ve used it for 7 years with StudioWeb. StudioWeb’s courses include: HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, Python, SQL and PHP.
I finally got around to getting this video of me on television, talking about the importance of students learning to code. It comes down to two big reasons:
A huge number of high paying jobs in programming and coding.
Brain training: learning to code is like pushups for the mind!
Watch my interview to learn more:
If you want to learn more about learning or teaching code, check out StudioWeb.com
About 6 years ago, I began helping schools bring code into the classroom. My app and curriculum (StudioWeb) was originally conceived from my own ideas and experiences … that took us about 70% of the way there. Over the last 6 years though, StudioWeb has been highly refined, with the help from many teachers and students.
… You can’t beat real-world feedback, especially from students who are not shy to tell you what they think!
A new way to think about teaching
StudioWeb represents one of the new strategies (of teaching,) that schools are starting to embrace all over the world. A way where teachers are NOT expected to be masters of many subjects. Rather, teachers facilitate classrooms, and proven interactive video based courses, do the actual daily teaching.
… The best tools though, provide much more than just a set of videos and lesson plans.
I’ve been in the web development business for over 20yrs now, and one consistent problem for many well meaning nerds, is the over engineering of web apps. This extends to all development as well, not just the web developers.
… The old KISS acronym “Keep it simple, stupid”, seems to be forgotten with every new generation of developers.
So today we have once again, new and overly complex frameworks and apps being thrust upon us. I vlogged about this recently in this video:
Shameless self promotion:
If you like web development and you like things simple and easy, then you will probably like my Interactive Web Developer course package – it’s the best I’ve ever made and people love it.
I am writing just to say how happy I am with the courses. Although, I am a member of Lynda and Udemi, your courses are way better. For me you are the HIDDEN GEM, the YODA of web design. Thank you for sharing your knowledge.
How do you find the worlds greatest web hosting? In the following video, I will tell you what to look for, and you’ll hear a little story about a web hosting disaster, that almost took down a multi million dollar company!!
… Ok, a little exaggeration. But it sounds great! 🙂
Check out my video, all the answers to your web hosting questions will be found:
