spelling

The Rising Star Scaffolding Guide: Supporting Young Children’s Early Spelling Skills

Encouraging pre-kindergarten children to write affords teachers the opportunity to provide scaffolds to improve spelling development. Teachers, however, tend to provide more support than necessary to guide children's early spelling, which may stifle children's opportunities to engage in important thinking that helps them to grow in their literacy knowledge.




spelling

Dispelling the Darkness

Fr. Apostolos Hill reflects on the verses of the Gospel of Matthew about the eye as the light of the body and how we might dispel the darkness around us with the Light of Christ.




spelling

Handling Spelling Mistakes with Postgres Full Text Search

Background #

Postgres Full Text Search (FTS) is a great way to implement site search on a website running Postgres already, without requiring additional infrastructure.

On a recent engagement with a client, we were deciding between Postgres FTS and ElasticSearch. Ultimately we chose FTS because we could spin it up without having to add extra infrastructure, as we would with ElasticSearch.

Since the project was written in Ruby on Rails, we were able to use the excellent PgSearch gem to implement FTS in ActiveRecord.

Multisearch #

As we wanted a general site search, we needed to utilize multisearch. Multisearch combines multiple ActiveRecord models into one search 'document' table that you can search against. For example, if a user searches for some search term, and the search is configured for multisearch, then every single model that we mark as multisearchable will be searched for that term at the same time. See here for more detail.

Search Features #

PgSearch allows for different search features, tsearch, trigram, and dmetaphone. The default is tsearch, which uses the built-in Postgres Full Text Search.

This was great for our use case, since it also comes with highlighting, a feature that was required. The highlighting is from a field returned by Postgres FTS, where it returns the text around the search term for context and bolds the search terms.

Spelling Mistakes #

Unfortunately, tsearch does not handle misspelled words. However, as I mentioned before, PgSearch allows for other search features!

And trigram is a feature that can be installed via a Postgres extension (pg_trgm) that does just that.

Trigram #

  • The idea behind trigram search is to split pieces of text into sets of three-letter segments, and compare the sets to one another
  • If two trigram sets are similar enough, we assume there was a spelling mistake, and return the document with the correctly-spelled term.
  • As a quick example (ignoring whitespace): Consider the word Viget. Viget would make trigrams:
[vig, ige, get]
  • Now, consider our evil twin agency, Qiget. They would make trigrams
[qig, ige, get]
  • The two trigram sets match very closely, with only one of the trigrams not being the same. Thus, if we were to compare these with pg_trgm, we could reasonably tell that anyone typing 'Qiget' must have been actually looking for 'Viget', and just misspelled it.

Working Trigram into our existing solution #

PgSearch allows us to use multiple search features at once, so we can use tsearch and trigram side by side. Note that we cannot just replace tsearch with trigram due to needing some features in tsearch that are exclusive to it. Here is what an example configuration might look like.

PgSearch.multisearch_options = {
  using: {
    tsearch: {
      prefix: true,
      highlight: {
        MaxFragments: 1
      }
    },
    trigram: { 
      only: [:content]
    }
  }
}

Trigram (and timelines) causing issues #

While it was easy to slot Trigram into our multisearch, it caused a pretty serious performance hit. We were seeing 50x-75x slower searches with both features combined than with just tsearch. We needed to find a way to balance performance with handling misspellings

At the point that handling misspellings became prioritized, the entire search feature was almost fully QA'd and about ready to go out. There wasn't much time left in the budget to find a good solution for the issue.

This thread from the PgSearch repo sums it up pretty well – there were multiple other users that were/are having similar issues as we were. The top-rated comment in this thread is someone mentioning that the solution was to just use ElasticSearch ('top-rated' is doing a lot of heavy lifting. It did have the most likes...at two). We needed to find some sort of middle ground solution that we could act on quickly.

Postgres Documentation saves the day #

In the docs for the Trigram Postgres extension, the writers give an idea for using Trigram in conjunction with Full Text Search. The general idea is to create a separate words table that has a Trigram index on it.

Something like this worked for us. Note that we added an additional step with a temporary table. This was to allow us to filter out words that included non-alphabet characters.

execute <<-SQL
  -- Need to make a temp table so we can remove non-alphabet characters like websites
  CREATE TEMP TABLE temp_words AS
    SELECT word FROM ts_stat('SELECT to_tsvector(''simple'', content) FROM pg_search_documents');

  CREATE TABLE pg_search_words (
    id SERIAL PRIMARY KEY,
    word text
  );

  INSERT INTO pg_search_words (word)
    SELECT word
    FROM temp_words
    WHERE word ~ '^[a-zA-Z]+$';
  
  CREATE INDEX pg_words_idx ON pg_search_words USING GIN (word gin_trgm_ops);
  
  DROP TABLE temp_words;
SQL

This words table is therefore populated with every unique word that exists in your search content table. For us, this table was pretty large.

result = ActiveRecord::Base.connection.execute("SELECT COUNT(*) FROM pg_search_words").first['count']
puts result.first['count']
# => 1118644

Keeping the words table up-to-date #

As mentioned in the docs, this table is separate from your search table. Therefore, it needs to be either periodically regenerated or at least have any new words added to search content also added to this table.

One way to achieve this is with a trigger, which adds all new words (still filtering out non-alphabet characters) that are inserted into the documents table to the words table

create_trigger("pg_search_documents_after_insert_update_row_tr", generated: true, compatibility: 1)
  .on("pg_search_documents")
  .after(:insert, :update) do
  <<-SQL_ACTIONS
    CREATE TEMP TABLE temp_words AS
      SELECT word FROM ts_stat('SELECT to_tsvector(''simple'', ' || quote_literal(NEW.content) || ')');

    INSERT INTO pg_search_words (word)
      SELECT word
      FROM temp_words
      WHERE word ~ '^[a-zA-Z]+$';

    DROP TABLE temp_words;
  SQL_ACTIONS

end

Note that this does not handle records being deleted from the table – that would need to be something separate.

How we used the words table #

Assuming for simplicity the user's search term is a single word, if the search returns no results, we compare the search term's trigram set to the trigram index on the words table, and return the closest match.

Then, we'd show the closest match in a "Did you mean {correctly-spelled word}?" that hyperlinks to a search of the correctly-spelled word

Given more time, I would have liked to explore options to speed up the combined FTS and Trigram search. I'm certain we could have improved on the performance issues, but I can't say for sure that we could have gotten the search time down to a reasonable amount.

A future enhancement that would be pretty simple is to automatically search for that correctly-spelled word, removing the prompt to click the link. We could also change the text to something like "Showing results for {correctly-spelled word}".

Ultimately, I think with the situation at hand, we made the right call implementing Trigram this way. The search is just as fast as before, and now in the case of misspellings, a user just has to follow the link to the correctly-spelled word and they will see the results they wanted very quickly.





spelling

Dispelling 3 Common Myths about Sustainable Packaging

The demand for sustainable products and packaging is only growing. With continuous innovations to packaging technologies, brands have many options for improving their packaging and reaching sustainably minded consumers.




spelling

Dispelling the Myths and Misconceptions about Digital Corrugated Printing

In this article, Domino’s Ben Ginesi offers his perspective on how digital corrugated printing stacks up against flexographic and lithographic printing.




spelling

NYT Spelling Bee: an archive of disallowed BrE words

Twitter has been my main internet stomping ground since 2009, but I've been withdrawing my labo(u)r from it since October, when it became much more volatile for some reason

The New York Times Spelling Bee has been my morning-coffee activity for some of those years, and since November 2020 I've been jokingly tweeting the BrE words that it hasn't accepted. These go in a thread of posts that always start: 

Perfectly Common BrE Words the @NYTimesGames Spelling Bee Has Denied Me: An Occasional Series

Twitter has really degraded this week, which is making me feel a bit sad that perhaps that thread will have to die. (I'm also sad that the thread has frayed along the way—it's very difficult to read it all the way to the beginning because it splits here and there.) So as a clearly procrastinatory measure, I'm putting the list of "perfectly common BrE words" here, with a little more explanation than they tended to get on Twitter.

For those who don't know the Bee: it's an anagram game where one must use the middle letter. The twist—and what makes it a superior anagram game—is that you can use any of the letters as many times as you like. Here's what it looked like on the 5th of April when I hadn't yet got to Genius level.  (My goal every day is 'make it to Genius before breakfast'. It's nice to be called 'Genius' before you've started work.) 


The game, of course, has its own word list, which is suitably American for its New York Times home. Still, some not-usually-AmE words are playable, like FLATMATELORRY and PRAM. But many words that are part of my everyday vocabulary in England are not playable. And non-AmE spellings are generally not playable. 

There's been a lot of attention to AmE words that (orig. AmE) stump non-American players in Wordle. (Here's Cambridge Dictionary's 2022 Word of the Year post, which covers some—and includes a video in which I talk about why HOMER was a great choice for Word of the Year.) Not as much attention has been paid to the Spelling Bee, which you need to subscribe to. I'm sure British players have their own (mental) lists of American words they've had to learn in order to get "Queen Bee" status (finding all the day's words) in the game. If you're one of them, do use the comments to tell us about those weird words.

So, after all that preamble, here are the "Perfectly Common BrE Words the @NYTimesGames Spelling Bee Has Denied Me" words in alphabetical order, with translations or links to other blog posts. But first, a bit more preamble. The disclaimers! 

  • Words in the puzzle must be at least four letters long, so some of these are suffixed forms for which the three-letter base word was unplayable. If there's an -ED form but not an -ING form (etc.), that'll be because the other one's letters weren't in the puzzle. 
  • Some of these would not have been allowable—regardless of their dialectal provenance—on the basis that they are "naughty" words. I include them anyway. 
  • I have checked questionable cases against the GloWbE corpus to ensure that the word really is more common in BrE than AmE.
  • Some are Irish or Australian by origin, but they are still more common in BrE than in AmE.
  • Sometimes my spelling is a bit liberal here. If I could find one British dictionary that allowed me the word with the given spelling, I included it.  
  • Also the phrase "perfectly common" is not meant to be taken too seriously!
  • These words were not playable at the time when I tried to play them. The word list may have changed and some of them may be playable now. 
  • Red ones are ones that have been unsuccessfully played/tweeted about since I first started this blog list. Green ones have been added to the blog since the original post, but were tweeted-about earlier than that—I just missed them in the tangled Twitter threads when I was writing the blog post. 

ABATTOIR
  AmE slaughterhouse

AGGRO aggression, aggressive behavio[u]r

AITCH  the letter. Less need to spell it as a word in AmE. See this old post.

ANAEMIA / ANAEMIC  AmE anemia/anemic

ANNEXE  minority spelling in BrE; usually, as in AmE, it's annex

APNOEA  AmE apnea

APPAL   AmE appall; old post on double Ls

ARDOUR   old post on -or/-our

ARGYBARGY this is a bit of a joke entry because it's usually spelled/spelt ARGY-BARGY (a loud argument), but the Squeeze album has no hyphen. 

ARMOUR    -or/-our

BALLACHE   something annoying or tedious (usually hyphenated, but some dictionaries include the closed-up version)

BIBBED  I don't know why this shows up more in BrE data, but it does, just meaning 'wearing a bib'

BINMAN / BINMEN  AmE garbage man (among other terms); old post on bin

BINT  derogatory term for a woman

BITTY having lots of unconnected parts, often leaving one feeling unsatisfied; for example, this blog post is a bit bitty

BLAG covered in this old post

BLUB / BLUBBING to sob (= general English blubbering)

BOAK retch, vomit, throw up a bit in the mouth. That was gross. Sorry.

BOBBLY having bobbles 

BOBBY  I think this one might be playable now. Informal term for police officer. In AmE, found in bobby pins

BODGE / BODGED make or fix something badly

BOFFIN  see this old post

BOLLOCK / BOLLOCKED  reprimand severely

BOLLOX  This one's more common in Irish English than BrE. To screw something up.

BOKE   see BOAK 

BONCE  the head (informal)

BOYO a boy/man (Welsh informal)

BRILL  short for brilliant, meaning 'excellent'; also a kind of European flatfish

BROLLY  umbrella (informal)

BUNG / BUNGING to put (something) (somewhere) quickly/carelessly. People cooking on television are always bunging things in the oven. 

BUTTY  see this old post

CAFF  a café, but typically used of the kind that is analogous to an AmE diner (that is to say a café is not as fancy in BrE as it would be in AmE)

CAWL  a soupy Welsh dish (recipe); also a kind of basket

CEILIDH  a Scottish social dance (event)

CHANNELLED   post on double Ls

CHAPPIE  a chap (man)

CHAV / CHAVVY  see this old post and/or this one

CHICANE  a road arrangement meant to slow drivers down; see this old post

CHILLI  see this old post

CHIMENEA / CHIMINEA the 'e' spelling is considered etymologically "correct" but the 'i' spelling seems to be more common in UK; I think these kinds of outdoor fireplaces are just more trendy in UK than in US?

CHIPPIE alternative spelling of chippy, informal for a (fish and) chip shop

"cholla" at a UK online supermarket
CHOC chocolate (informal, countable)

CHOLLA  a spelling of challah (the bread) 

CLAG  mud; more common is claggy for 'having a mud-like consistency'

COLOUR    -or/-our

CONNEXION this is a very outdated spelling of connection. Not actually used in UK these days, but wouldn't it be nice to be able to play it?

COOTCH  a hiding place, a shed or similar (from Welsh cwtch)

COUNCILLOR  post on double Ls

CRAIC it's really an Irish one (a 'good time'), but it qualifies here because it's used more in BrE than AmE (and understood pretty universally in UK)

CRIM  criminal

CUTTY  short (in some UK dialects)

DADO  as in dado rail, what's often called a chair rail in AmE (here's a picture)

DEFENCE  AmE defense

DEMOB /DEMOBBED  de-mobilize(d); that is, released from the (BrE) armed forces / (AmE) military

DENE  a valley (esp. a narrow, wooded one) or a low sand dune near the sea (regional)

DEVILLED  post on double Ls

DIALLING  post on double Ls

DIDDY    small (dialectal); see this old post

DOBBED / DOBBING  actually Australian, dob = to inform on someone; see this old post on the BrE equivalent grass (someone) up

DODDLE  it's a doddle  = (orig. AmE) it's a piece of cake (very easy)

DOOLALLY  out of one's mind

EQUALLED   post on double Ls

FAFF / FAFFING  one of the most useful BrE words. See this old post

FARL  a kind of (AmE) quick bread, usually cut into triangles; can be made of various things, but here's a recipe for a common kind, the potato farl

FAVOUR   -or/-our

FILMIC cinematic, relating to film

FITMENT = AmE fixture, i.e. a furnishing that is fit(ted) in place

FLANNELETTE = AmE flannel  old post on flannels

FLAVOUR   -or/-our

FLAVOURFUL   -or/-our

FOETAL AmE (and BrE medical) fetal

FOOTMAN a servant or (formerly soldier (of a particular rank)

FUELLED  post on double Ls

FULFIL   post on double Ls

GADGIE / GADGE guy, man, boy (regional)

GAMMON  this post covers the meat meaning, but lately it's also used as an insult for Brexiteers and their political similars

GAMMY  (of a body part) not working well; e.g., I have a gammy knee

GANNET a type of sea bird, but also BrE slang for a greedy person

GAOL  now less common spelling for jail

GIBBET  gallows; to hang (a person) [not really in current use]

GIGGED / GIGGING  to perform at a gig  [playable as of May 2023]

GILET   covered at this clothing post and also at this pronunciation post

GIPPING form of gip, a synonym of BOAK (see above)

GITE French, but used in English for a type of holiday/vacation cottage

GOBBED / GOBBING  form of gob, which as a noun means 'mouth', but as a verb means 'spit'

GOBBIN waste material from a mine

GOBBY mouthy

GOOLY (more often GOOLIE, GOOLEY) a testicle (informal, see GDoS)

getting gunged/slimed
GUNGE  any unpleasant soft or slimy substance; also used as a verb for having such stuff poured over one's head on a children's show (= AmE slime)

GURN / GURNING  see this old post

HAITCH  = AITCH, but pronounced differently See this old post.

HALLO old-fashioned hello 

HENCH strong, fit (like a weightlifter)

HOLDALL  a duffel bag or similar heavy-duty bag; often spelled with a hyphen (hold-all), but at least some places don't. 

HOOPOE a kind of bird (mostly African), which sometimes makes it to England

HOGMANAY it is a proper noun, but I wanted to include it anyway

HOICK / HOIK  to lift/pull abruptly

HOTCHPOTCH  AmE hodgepodge

INNIT invariant tag question: isn't it

INVIGILATING AmE proctoring; old post

JAMMY  lucky; old post 

KIRK  church (Scotland)

KIPPING  form of kip, to take a nap

LAIRY  (esp. of a person) unpleasantly loud, garish 

LAMBING  form of to lamb, give birth to lambs. Often heard in lambing time or lambing season

LAMPED  form of to lamp, to hit a person very hard

LARKING  form of to lark,  'to behave in a silly way for fun'

LAYBY  AmE turnout (and other synonyms/regional terms); a place where a car can move out of the flow of traffic (usually has a hyphen lay-by, but I found one dictionary that doesn't require it)

LIDO an outdoor public swimming pool; there's some debate about how to pronounce it 

LILO  a blow-up mattress for floating on in a pool

LINO  short for linoleum

LOLLY  lollipop or (AmE) popsicle (especially in ice lolly)

LOVAGE  a(n) herb that Americans don't see very often  [has been added! Played successfully on 3 May 2023]

LUPIN  AmE lupine, a flower

LURGI / LURGY  see this old post

MEDIAEVAL  the less common spelling of medieval

MILLIARD  (no longer really used) a thousand million, i.e. a billion 

MILORD address term for a nobleman

MINGE  a woman's pubic hair/area (not flattering) 

MINGING  foul, bad smelling, ugly (rhymes with singing!)

MODELLED  post on double Ls

MOGGY  a cat (informal)

MOOB  man boob

MOULT    AmE molt (related to  -or/-our)

MOZZIE  mosquito

MUPPET in its lower-case BrE sense: 'idiot; incompetent person'

NAFF  this has come up in posts about 'untranslatables' and about a study that identified common BrE words Americans don't know

NAPPY AmE diaper

NAVVY  a manual labo(u)rer (old-fashioned)

NEEP  Scottish English for what the English call a swede and what Americans call a rutabaga (old post on the latter two)

NELLY in the BrE phrase not on your nelly (= AmE not on your life)

NIFFY unpleasant-smelling

NOBBLE  to unfairly influence an outcome; steal 

NOBBLY  alternative spelling of knobbly (which is more common in both AmE & BrE)

NONCY  adjective related to nonce (sex offender, p[a]edophile) 

NOWT  nothing (dialectal)

ODOUR    -or/-our

OFFENCE  AmE offense

OFFIE  short for BrE off-licence; AmE liquor store  (discussed a little in this old post

ORACY  the speaking version of literacy; in US education, it's called orality

PACY  having a good or exciting pace (e.g. a pacy whodunnit)

PAEDO  short for pa(e)dophile

PANTO see this post

PAPPED / PAPPING  from pap, to take paparazzi pictures

PARLOUR    -or/-our

PARP  a honking noise

PEDALLED   post on double Ls

PELMET  another one from the study that identified common BrE words Americans don't know

PENG  slang for 'excellent' 

PIEMAN / PIEMEN this one is usually two words (pie man), but I was able to find a dictionary that allowed it as a single word, so I added it to the list

PIPPED / PIPPING  pip = to defeat by a small amount; often heard in to be pipped at the post 

PITTA another spelling for pita, more in line with the BrE pronunciation of the word

PLAICE another one from the study that identified common BrE words Americans don't know

PLUMMY  see this post

PODGY  chubby

POMMY another Australian one, but English people know it because it's an insult directed at them, often in the phrase pommy bastard

PONCE / PONCY  see this post

PONGING horrible-smelling

POOED / POOING  see this post for the poo versus poop story

POOTLE to travel along at a leisurely speed

POPPADOM / POPPADUM anything to do with Indian food is going to be found more in UK than US

PORRIDGY  like porridge, which in AmE is oatmeal

PUFFA full form: puffa jacket; a kind of quilted jacket; it is a trademark, but used broadly; I did find it in one dictionary with a lower-case p

PUNNET  see this old post

RAILCARD  you buy one and it gives you discounts on train tickets

RANCOUR    -or/-our

RUMOUR     -or/-our

TANNOY  AmE loudspeaker, public address system  (originally a trademark, but now used generically)

TARTY dressed (etc.) in a provocative manner

TELLY  (orig.) AmE tv

TENCH a Eurasian fish

THALI  another Indian menu word 

THICKO  stupid person

TIDDY  small (dialectal) 

TIFFIN  usually referring to chocolate tiffin (recipe)

TINNING  AmE canning

TITBIT see this post

TITCH  a small person 

TIZZ = tizzy (to be in a tizz[y])

TOFF  an upper-class person (not a compliment)

TOMBOLA  see this post

TOTTED / TOTTING  see this post 

TOTTY  an objectifying term for (usually) a woman

TRUG  a kind of basket; these days, often a handled rubber container  

TUPPENCE  two pence

TWIGGED, TWIGGING  form of twig 'to catch on, understand'

UNEQUALLED   post on double Ls

UNVETTED related to my 2008 Word of the Year 

VALOUR   -or/-our

VIVA  an oral exam (short for viva voce)

WANK / WANKING  my original Word of the Year (2006!)

WEEING  AmE peeing

WELLIE  / WELLY  a (BrE) wellington boot / (AmE) rubber boot

WHIN a plant (=furze, gorse)

WHINGE  AmE whine (complain)

WILLIE / WILLY  penis

WOAD a plant used to make blue dye

WOLD a clear, upland area (mostly in place names now)

WOOLLEN   post on double Ls

YOBBO / YOBBY  hooligan / hooliganish

YODELLED   post on double Ls





spelling

Dispelling Charter Schools Myths




spelling

Mountaineering astronauts and bad spelling? It's advertising's future

Feedback digs into a baffling ad for a mobile game and identifies a new and devilish way to advertise a product online: make it as confusing as possible to encourage people to click (it worked on Feedback)




spelling

Mountaineering astronauts and bad spelling? It's advertising's future

Feedback digs into a baffling ad for a mobile game and identifies a new and devilish way to advertise a product online: make it as confusing as possible to encourage people to click (it worked on Feedback)




spelling

Dispelling Myths About Organ Donation

All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Director, M. Srinivas, advocates dispelling myths about medlinkorgan donation/medlink and emphasizes




spelling

Good word guide : the fast way to correct English - spelling, punctuation, grammar and usage / edited by Martin H. Manser ; foreword by Martin Cutts, Plain Language Commission ; consultant editors, Jonathon Green and Betty Kirkpatrick ; compilers, Rosalin

London : A & C Black, 2007.




spelling

Bruhat Soma wins Scripps National Spelling Bee title in tiebreaker

Bruhat Soma, a 12-year-old seventh-grader from Tampa, Florida, beat Faizan Zaki by ninewords, to win the title




spelling

Dispelling darkness




spelling

Safety first: Punish attacks on doctors, but also focus on dispelling Coronavirus fears

Traditionally, our response to laws failing to arrest healthcare violence has been to simply increase the quantum and severity of punishment the next time.




spelling

Dispelling myths around ecosystem service projects

A new study has compared conservation projects that focus on promoting only biodiversity with projects that focus on promoting both biodiversity and ecosystem services. The results dispel several myths surrounding ecosystem service projects and indicate they are as effective at addressing threats to biodiversity as their biodiversity counterparts.




spelling

Manhattan fifth-grader tops day one of Daily News spelling bee

Manhattan fifth-grader Vale Esposito took home top honors during the first day of the Daily News spelling bee Tuesday, despite being one of the youngest contestants on stage.




spelling

Manhattan eighth grader wins second day of Daily News Spelling Bee

Ashwin Ranjan, a 13-year-old student at The Dalton School, correctly spelled “bauxite,” a type of sedimentary rock, to win the day and go to the Scripps National Spelling Bee in May.




spelling

Texas Teenager Wins National Spelling Bee

Karthik Nemmani, 14, from McKinney, Texas, nabbed the Scripps National Spelling Bee champion title on Thursday night in Oxon Hill, Md.




spelling

English given names : popularity, spelling variants, diminutives and abbreviations / by Carol Baxter.

Names, Personal -- England.




spelling

Welsh given names : popularity, spelling variants, diminutives and abbreviations / by Carol Baxter.

Names, Personal -- Welsh.




spelling

Scottish given names : popularity, spelling variants, diminutives and abbreviations / by Carol Baxter.

Names, Personal -- Scottish.




spelling

Pilot sparks complaints for breaching lockdown after spelling &apos;NHS&apos; with flightpath

A pilot has sparked complaints over an alleged breach of lockdown rules after spelling out "NHS" using his plane's flightpath.




spelling

Kids' Choice Awards sees Tori Spelling and Dean McDermott together

The reality stars brought eight-year-old Liam and seven-year-old Stella to the awards show at The Forum in Inglewood on Saturday. Tori paired her bright pink dress with blue heels.




spelling

Gamer surprises girlfriend by spelling out 'Maleea I love you, will you marry me?' on Super Mario

Jae Kim proposed to his girlfriend Maleea Brown on her 25th birthday by creating a level on Super Mario Maker 2 which spelled out: 'I love you, will you marry me?' in Seoul, South Korea.




spelling

Tori Spelling and husband Dean McDermott reveal gender of their upcoming baby

Tori Spelling, 43, and Dean McDermott, 50, who are already parents to nine-year-old Liam, eight-year-old Stella, five-year-old Hattie and four-year-old Finn, will be adding another boy to the family.




spelling

Donald Trump deletes tweets after Marco Rubio goes after Twitter misspellings

After Marco Rubio pointed out several misspelled tweets from Donald Trump, the Republican front-runner went back and deleted the tweets, later posting them with the correct spelling.




spelling

Tori Spelling rocks Kris Jenner Christmas sweater as she shops for Black Friday amid money troubles

She and husband Dean McDermott, 53, owe $1,182,760 in taxes. She recently appeared on the Beverly Hills, 90210 meta reboot BH90210, which was cancelled after only one season.




spelling

Donald Trump deletes tweets after Marco Rubio goes after Twitter misspellings

After Marco Rubio pointed out several misspelled tweets from Donald Trump, the Republican front-runner went back and deleted the tweets, later posting them with the correct spelling.




spelling

B2B Marketing Mythbusters: Dispelling 10 Common Myths with Extraordinary Marketing

B2B marketing is boring, doesn’t feature influencers, and uses only monotonous white papers and lifeless case studies — we’ve all heard these stereotypes, but what is the reality of B2B marketing in 2020?

The traditional image of dull B2B marketing has been turned on its head in recent years, and we wanted to explore 10 top myths and show how the state of B2B marketing has gone from bland to unforgettable.

Let’s dig in and break down the biggest B2B marketing myths, and look at how your brand can benefit from the new era of business marketing.

1 — B2B Marketing Goes From Boring-2-Boringest

The Myth:

The grand-daddy of all B2B marketing myths — dating back nearly to when the term business-to-business was coined — is the notion that it stands for boring-to-boring, with marketing about as exciting as forty shades of dreary gray.

The Myth-Buster:

As we’ll explore throughout this post, the B2B marketing of 2020 has left boring in the dust, replaced with exciting and truly memorable content experiences.

As the B2B marketing landscape continues progressing from its dusty Boring-To-Boring roots, business customers are expecting content and experiences that are increasingly similar to what B2C efforts have long provided.

Today’s B2B customers expect to find all of the relevant information they seek brought to life through an online interface that’s not only easy to search and navigate, but one that’s also chock full of interactive and story-rich user experience features that make interacting an entertaining experience, such as our “Laser Bear.”




Click Here to see the Break Free from Boring B2B Guide in Full Screen Mode

[bctt tweet="“Tell the truth, but make the truth fascinating. You know you can’t bore people into buying your product, you can only interest them into buying it.” — David Ogilvy" username="toprank"]

2 — B2B Marketing Doesn’t Use the Cool Social Media Platforms

The Myth:

You won’t find B2B brands actively sharing content and interacting on Instagram, TikTok, Reddit, Pinterest, Twitch, or other fun and fresh social media platforms.

The Myth-Buster:

Fortune 500 firms regularly now have social media presences on fashionable social channels such as Giphy, Snapchat, and even Facebook Horizons — the social media giant’s foray into the virtual reality (VR) world — all gaining new B2B brands at a faster pace than you might imagine.

Our senior content marketing manager Joshua Nite recently took a look at “6 Unconventional Social Channels for B2B Marketing,” showing how B2B brands can gain a competitive edge by adopting unconventional social channels.

Out client Dell Technologies offers a fine example of how B2B brands are embracing nontraditional social channels, with its Dell Technologies Giphy page.

via GIPHY

Despite using social media more than any other demographic, Gen Z is most at home not on traditional mainstream social platforms but increasingly on gaming platforms, according to recent Kantar study data, which showed that 90 percent of the demographic use gaming platforms to serve roles similar to those social media does for some 59 percent of the general population.

To learn more, we’ve also looked at how B2B brands are successfully using various social media platforms:

[bctt tweet="“B2B marketers should be exploring any channel where their audience is. While it’s easy to feel like the more younger-skewing platforms are optional, we ignore them at our peril.” — Joshua Nite @NiteWrites" username="toprank"]

3 — B2B Marketing Doesn’t Relate to Real People & Their Stories

The Myth:

B2B marketing isn’t about me or my real challenges, and never even attempts to appeal to people like me — instead it just continues to put forth insincere messages targeting people who don’t exist in the real world.

The Myth-Buster:

Telling real stories about actual people has catapulted B2B influencer marketing to the forefront of business marketing success, while B2B marketing in general has also continued to embrace the importance of storytelling.

We’ve set out to tell the intriguing stories of many top B2B marketers in our Break Free B2B video interview series, to date featuring 23 industry professionals such as Amisha Gandhi of client SAP Ariba and Kelvin Gee of client Oracle,  sharing their insights and passions.

Some, such as Eaton’s director of corporate marketing Zari Venhaus have explored the importance of storytelling.

Another benefit of telling the stories of real people in B2B industries is that it lends itself well to the creation of episodic content, as our senior content strategist Nick Nelson explored in “Hungry for More: What B2B Marketers Need to Know About Episodic Content.”

Additional takes on how storytelling benefits B2B marketers are available in our following related articles:

[bctt tweet="“The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller.” — Steve Jobs" username="toprank"]

4 — B2B Marketing Never Gets Heard, or If it Does It’s Quickly Ignored and Forgotten

The Myth:

B2B marketing is just wasted effort, since nobody ever really reads it or pays any attention to its boring business-suit-and-briefcase imagery. Who would ever remember a B2B advertising message, anyway?

The Myth-Buster:

Study after study continues to show that real emotion makes us remember digital content and messaging, and smart B2B marketing has grown significantly in its use of the kind of authentic storytelling that people will remember.

The most-shared ads during the last Olympics were all loaded with hard-hitting emotion from brands like Panasonic and Apple, and the Super Bowl perennially features similarly emotion-packed spots from brands like Google and Microsoft.

[bctt tweet="“Stories are just data with a soul.” @BreneBrown" username="toprank"]

5 — B2B Marketing is For Stodgy Old People

The Myth:

B2B marketing is for stodgy old fuddy-duddies, and has no relevance for anyone under 40 or 50.

The Myth-Buster:

B2B marketers freshly out of college are having tremendous impact in today’s professional brand messaging, and are bringing with them their younger takes on B2B marketing, which will increasingly drive the industry.

Thanks in large part to the successful inroads B2B influencer marketing have made for brands looking to reach younger audiences, when an influencer recommends a product, 51 percent of Millennials say they are more likely to try it, according to research data from Valassis and Kantar.

Gen Z and Millennial B2B marketers who have grown up with newer social media platforms are occupying ever-more positions of power all the way up to corporate marketing management — a move that has helped today's B2B marketing look decidedly different from that of even five years ago.

Snapchat recently published a study exploring brand expectations among Gen Z, finding that 82 percent of the demographic want brands to act on customer feedback, while a similar report from Campaign Monitor also found Gen Z's social media platform preferences to differ from those of older generations.

[bctt tweet="“The B2B marketing of 2020 has left boring in the dust, replaced with exciting and truly memorable content experiences.” — Lane R. Ellis @lanerellis" username="toprank"]

6 — B2B Marketing Should Never Include Interactive or Experiential Content

The Myth:

B2B audiences don’t expect or even want interactive or experiential content when it comes to brand messaging — they want only dense black-and-white case studies of at least 200 pages, or white papers filled with serious professional business information.

The Myth-Buster:

B2B audiences have been starved for interactive and experiential content for far too long, and in recent years have come to expect much more B2C-like digital experiences which incorporate truly entertaining, memorable, and interactive elements.

With 98 percent of consumers more likely to make a purchase after an experience (Limelight), and 77 percent having chosen, recommended, or paid more for a brand that delivers a personalized service or experience (Forrester), more B2B marketers have begun to use experiential content.

In 2020 experiential content comes in many forms, with just a few examples being:

  • Virtual Reality (VR)
  • Augmented Reality (AR)
  • Cloud-Based Digital Assets from Ceros and Other Platforms
  • Quizzes and Polls
  • Interactive Flipbooks and eBooks

Experiential content is also intertwined with both storytelling and customer experience (CX), together becoming an extremely powerful triptych of B2B marketing strategy.

You can take a closer look at the growing field of B2B experiential marketing here:

[bctt tweet="“Experiential content makes us a central part of a story, and not just a passive subject receiving a one-way brand message.” — Lane R. Ellis @lanerellis" username="toprank"]

7 — B2B Marketing Doesn’t Have Influencers

The Myth:

Influencers don’t exist in B2B marketing, because they are only for hawking cosmetics and pushing designer clothing lines on Instagram — what relevance could influencers really have in the professional B2B world?

The Myth-Buster:

Influencer marketing in the business world has never been more vibrant and thriving, especially the kind of always-on B2B influencer marketing our CEO Lee Odden has explored in articles including “Always On Influence: Definition and Why B2B Brands Need it to Succeed.”

Influencer marketing will see global brand spending up to $15 billion by 2022 (Business Insider Intelligence), and with more people using social media and spending greater amounts of time doing so, B2B influencers have a bigger audience than ever.

This may explain why influencers are seeing rising engagements with a variety of firms, as even the World Health Organization recently worked with influencers for its latest “Safe Hands Challenge” hand-washing campaign.

B2C and B2B influencer marketing are undoubtedly very different – and ever-evolving – undertakings, as we recently explored in “B2C vs. B2B Influencer Marketing – What’s the Difference?

[bctt tweet="“The output of B2B influencer collaboration can be in any form that the brand is currently publishing content: text, video, visual, audio, interactive and even VR.” @LeeOdden" username="toprank"]

Learn more about B2B influencer marketing with these insightful looks at how brands are using it to achieve success, and dig in to recent influencer marketing statistics here:

8 — B2B Marketing is Pointless & Impossible For Brands Than Aren’t Billion-Dollar Firms

The Myth:

B2B marketing is only for billion-dollar mega-corporations looking to attract other massive Fortune 500 firms — and it doesn’t have any relevance for a company with less than 10,000 employees.

The Myth-Buster:

It doesn’t take billion-dollar firms to create priceless B2B marketing efforts. Indeed, some of the most successful and memorable B2B marketing campaigns are coming from small-to-midsize firms, especially those that are using B2B influencer marketing.

Our content strategist Anne Leuman recently took a look at “5 Examples of Effective B2B Content Marketing in Times of Crisis,” featuring several smaller firms including HealthcareSource and our client monday.com, showing how they are putting out timely and helpful marketing messages during the pandemic.

Social media and influencer marketing have helped level the playing field not only among large B2C and B2B firms, but smaller B2B businesses as well.

Being savvy and nimble can propel a business a long way in the B2B marketing world — perhaps even over land and water, as Shakespeare once noted.

[bctt tweet="“Nimble thought can jump both sea and land.” — William Shakespeare" username="toprank"]

9 — B2B Marketing Isn’t Even Well-Suited for Social Media

The Myth:

B2B marketers shouldn’t even use social media, since business audiences don’t use social platforms, or if they do, they’re not there to find serious B2B information.

The Myth-Buster:

Nearly everyone uses social media in 2020, with global active social media users topping the 3.8 billion mark recently, and that includes almost all the business professionals in every B2B industry.

Social media and B2B marketing go hand-in-hand these days, and smart marketers recognize the importance of this intertwined system, and work hard to inform and delight on every social channel where their brand's customers are actively engaging.

[bctt tweet="“It doesn’t take billion-dollar firms to create priceless B2B marketing efforts.” — Lane R. Ellis @lanerellis" username="toprank"]

10 — B2B Marketing’s Only Real Channel is LinkedIn

The Myth:

LinkedIn is the only social media platform B2B marketers ever need to use, because it’s the only one those in B2B industries ever really utilize.

The Myth-Buster:

While it’s true that LinkedIn is the top social media platform for B2B marketers and professionals in general, and still represents the go-to source for business information when it comes to social — and we’re not just saying that because they are a TopRank Marketing client — if you’re limiting your efforts solely to LinkedIn you’re missing out on key industry players who happen to spend the majority of their social media time on other platforms.

As we've shown above, there are a wide array of social media channels B2B marketers are finding vital to their brand efforts. With every Fortune 500 firm now represented on LinkedIn, however, it's a platform that should be included in every B2B marketer's mix.

Soar Beyond B2B Myths With Powerful Marketing Tactics

Now that we've made an effort to dispel these 10 common B2B marketing myths, we hope that you'll be better able to power your next marketing campaign using the tactics we've looked at, and create B2B content that inspires and enchants while also providing best-answer solutions.

The post B2B Marketing Mythbusters: Dispelling 10 Common Myths with Extraordinary Marketing appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.




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