Facebook is on a mission to get Americas 25 million small businesses -- from plumbers to pizza parlors to boutiques -- to actively invest in Facebook ads. Modeling its efforts on how it is already courting big brands -- the Cokes, GEs, and Toyotas of the world -- Facebook aims to teach small businesses how to promote their products and services on its platform.

However, this plan could backfire if Facebook does not do one thing first: Teach small businesses how to define and develop their brand. This is true for small businesses as well as for large businesses, and it presents both an opportunity and a risk for Facebook.

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Perhaps you have a Facebook page to keep up with your college friends, cousins and golf buddies. But do you need Facebook for your small business?

Well, here is a fact to help you decide: 20 percent of all time spent on mobile devices – smartphones and tablets – is spent on Facebook, according to market research firm comScore.

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When it comes to advertising on Facebook FB -0.15%  these days, small-business owners are competing for more limited ad space—and paying more for ads even if they do not result in sales.

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Last years efforts to woo small businesses should pay off in a big way for the social media king this year.

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Why devote 10 minutes a day to Facebook? There are many reasons why, but most importantly Facebook can help strengthen your relationships with your customers. The smaller your business, the more important these connections can be to help keep your company thriving.

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Things to Know About Your Brand New Facebook Page

It blinks, it cries, it drinks from a bottle. That is right, kids, your new Facebook Page can do everything other little dollies can, and even more.

Lets take the beginning of this song and do it nice. And easy.

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Facebook  is to let small businesses in emerging markets sell to customers for free directly through their Facebook pages, the social media company said on Wednesday, marking a new effort to build up potential advertisers in its fastest-growing regions.

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Asking for that promotion or finally starting your own business is easier with an inspiring read in your back pocket. Plan to pick up one of these books in 2017 to boost your creativity, or learn leadership lessons from the best.

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In the wake of new rules and new attitudes, HR departments changed the talk about equality in pay, hiring, promotions and retention.

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A Look at Facebook Watch

The Facebook Watch platform, which will be accessible on mobile, desktop and in Facebooks TV apps, will focus on shows that have episodes that fit into a theme or storyline. And users can follow their favorites so that they never miss episodes. There will also be features to help users discover new shows that fit with their interests or that their friends are talking about.

To start, Facebook Watch will only be available to a limited number of publishers while Facebook grows the platform. But the company plans to roll it out slowly to more users in the coming weeks.

Build a Following for Your Business with Facebook Watch

Facebook is more than just status updates and photo albums -- it's a major marketing tool for businesses. However, if you don't know how to use it properly and take advantage of all it has to offer, you might as well not use it at all.

From engaging customers to entertaining them, Facebook Insights provides some of the best tips and tools for boosting your business. To start, Facebook Insights will tell you information about your customer base, such as the type of people who follow you, where they are located, how old they are and more. Another important area that Facebook Insights covers is your competition. Using the tool, you can track their posts and engagement in order to get ideas for your own business.

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Books can make us smarter, more informed, even more intellectually humble. But one of the most powerful benefits of regular reading is greater empathy. Through words you are transported to another's perspective. You look through their eyes. You understand their pain and their joy.

That can relieve loneliness and make life a whole lot more pleasant, but it's also good for business. Understanding customers and collaborators helps you get more done and be more creative.

So how exactly do books accomplish this magic trick? On Lit Hub recently Tufts University professor of child development and reading expert Maryanne Wolf explained the fascinating neuroscience of exactly what immersion in a good book does to your brain.

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Here are the statistics and headlines that you should be aware of.

Facebook Popularity
Facebook has more than 2.2 billion active members around the world.
More than 1.6 billion people around the world have used Facebook to connect with a small business.
More than 80 million businesses use Facebook to connect with customers.
But it’s not all about growth. 42 percent of U.S. adults have taken a break from Facebook for a few weeks or more.
44 percent of younger users have deleted the Facebook app from their phones in the past year.
But only 12 percent of older users have done so.

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Chatbots are all the business buzz – and for good reason.

They give customers of any-size business critical answers to pressing questions quickly.

They can:

Boost your average order value.
Accelerate the buyers’ journey.
Reduce your customer service costs.

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One thing brands should never do.

But it leads to something no brand should ever do: You should never assume that your customers feel the same way about your brand that you do. Your brand is how other people feel about your company, not how you feel about it.

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The CEOs of Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook faced the House Judiciary Committee virtually today, where they fielded questions about whether their respective tech companies take advantage of their dominant positions in the market to enhance their bottom lines.

Spoiler: They all said they do not.

Rep. Cicilline said House Judiciary will publish a report on the Antitrust Subcommittees finding, which will propose solutions. but his hearing has made one fact clear to me: These companies as they exist today have monopoly power. Some need to be broken up. All need to be properly regulated and held accountable, he concluded.

A business owner who spent nearly $46 million over the years on Facebook ads said he got booted from the platform without warning.

Jordan Nabigon, the CEO of the Ottawa, Ontario, content-curation site Shared, said Facebook deleted his companys main Facebook page without warning in October, and without providing an explanation. He shared a Medium post detailing his experience, which has received more than 400 claps from readers.

Nabigon spent $45,870,181 on Facebook advertising between 2006 and 2020 for Shared and his other company Freebies, according to expense reports reviewed by Business Insider. Shared employees three people full-time and 12 contract writers, Nabigon said.

Facebook increased its use of artificial intelligence to oversee advertising and other content during the COVID-19 pandemic, and Nabigon is among hundreds of business owners who said they suffered from Facebook's crackdown on ad policies.

 It's a beautiful day in mid-Autumn on Skye and I'm not sure where the year went. This house came with an enormous walled meadow, which my neighbours use to keep their sheep in, and an ancient orchard. About seven years ago the orchard was flooded, and we lost all the redcurrants and gooseberries and rhubarb and such, but most of the trees survived, and there are apples and plums and pears still growing on them.

I'm very aware that on Skye, beautiful weather can be replaced by weeks of rain and gale-force winds, so I went down to the orchard and clambered up a ladder, and picked all the pears I could reach, disturbing a tawny owl, who flapped off somewhere it wouldn't bothered by people randomly climbing its trees.

And now I'm sitting and writing this outside. It's too chilly really to write outside, but it's possible, and it won't be possible soon, and that means a lot.

There are two new books out -- one came out last week, one comes out this week.

PIRATE STEW was published first, illustrated by the genius Chris Riddell. Here's me reading the opening and talking about how the book came into existence...

It's only published in the UK and UK-related territories (like Australia and New Zealand) right now. (It comes out in the US in December. This is, oddly enough, because of Covid.)

I just filmed a little unboxing-and-enthusing video. It's for the 25th Anniversary editions of Little, Big or, The Fairies' Parliament, by John Crowley. Illustrated (or rather, with Art by) Peter Milton. 

Prime Aviation Services Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi, India. 1,237 likes · 2 were here. The company established in year 1996 with the aim of providing quality...

Prime Aviation Services Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi. 1,782 likes · 20 talking about this · 3 were here. The company established in year 1996 with the aim of providing quality services to aviation Industry...

Prime Aviation Services Ltd., Kampala, Uganda. 976 likes · 2 talking about this. We get the job done!

When I worked as a respiratory therapist part of my responsibilities was to keep flowsheets for the mechanical ventilators I worked on. That’s a record of what the machine was doing with a time log. And when I gave a breathing treatment to an asthma patient I recorded the details of that treatment, the time,...

love my ebook, but. In the time it took me to update my ebook software I downloaded 2 movies on my other computer. #probleminanutshell

The post love my ebook, but. In the time it took me to upd… first appeared on Bigsnit Blog.

I tried very hard this year to push as much of my company records to digital files and NOT paper, but it seems to be almost impossible.  About half my business receipts are digital only this year, which is better than in past years. I do the majority of my purchases for the business online, … Continue reading Books Done, Still Loads of Paper →

The post Books Done, Still Loads of Paper first appeared on Bigsnit Blog.

A new book by Steve Clem, "Tulsa's KAKC Radio, The Big 97" is now available. Attend a book signing at Tulsa Historical Society on Tuesday, April 16, 6:30 pm. Steve and several of the former KAKC DJs will also be on hand to sign books, including Scooter Segraves, Dick Schmitz and Mike McCarthy.

About a week or two ago, I was having a business meeting with a former business associate and friend who has always been an entrepreneur and consultant in some way. He was there with another friend who is an entrepreneur...

As I write this, outside the sun is burning lazily down on a quiet, sleepy and green corner of Manchester as the day draws to a close. Fine weather, often makes me think about an alternate career I considered about a decade ago. I thought I’d share the story.

In 2002, the dot.com crash was in full effect. The internet era looked like it might be over for a while. As a software developer specialising in internet technologies, I was in a little bit of trouble. Whilst contracts appeared occasionally, I realised I was looking at 6-7 months of unemployment.

Not having any savings, and as yet mentally unprepared for the path of entrepreneurship I have now followed for half a decade, I was a little stumped as to how to actually pay my food bills, etc. I applied for barwork, but there was none forthcoming. I looked at minimum wage jobs, perhaps as a cleaner, but was “over qualified”. One CTO of an ISP I interviewed with thought I was too bright for the role he had in his firm, and that I would quickly become bored.

One contract I acquired however, led to an interesting discovery. I was hired by a small startup in Eccles to help “fix” a betting platform. It was a clone of Betfair.com, which was still relatively young at the time. I was hired for three reasons:

1. I knew how to fix the problem - their Bulgarian programmer was an idiot who didn’t understand what he was doing
2. I knew quite a bit about horse racing and gambling, and therefore had “domain expertise”
3. I was cheap

Since the age I’ve been legally allowed to gamble, I’ve been interested in it as a maths problem. Books on technical analysis in FOREX trading - one of which I’ve been reading recently - fascinate me. I had developed quite an eye for reading form, had become a better than “good” poker player, and enjoyed “the game” and all that came with it. I still have an impressive collection of books on sports betting and horse racing. Gambling, quite simply, is something I have always found a little bit fun.

An example of how confident I was: A few years before the events below unfolded, my mother was very concerned about my “gambling problem”. I did not have a gambling problem, beyond the fact I gambled, and this alone was enough to scare her. Sat in a small cafe in the town I grew up in, she decided to try and prove a point. She handed me £10 of her own money - money she could scarecely afford to fritter away at the time - and told me to go and bet on a horse with it there and then. If it lost, I would agree to repay her the £10 and to stop gambling. I didn’t quite understand her logic, but I agreed. I walked to the bookmakers around the corner, backed £5 each way a 4/1 chance in a jumps race, and then sat and watched as it won by 3 lengths. I returned to the cafe with my mother’s winnings, and she became silent as I handed her the cash.

So when I turned up at a rather dingy office in Eccles and discovered Betfair, I was transfixed. The major appeal to me was simple:

It allowed you to take the position of a bookmaker.

Bookmakers say that the moment somebody has to make a choice about which competitor will win a challenge, they are at a disadvantge. That means the bookmakers put themselves in a position where they don’t have to make a choice, they just balance the odds with the bets coming in.

The bookmakers generally don’t care who wins - they will “lay a book” at odds that mean whoever wins, they make a guaranteed profit. Some of them - especially on big prize handicaps - will often “lay to a common liability” which means they might lose some money if a favourite wins, but make a much larger profit if an outsider wins. A few don’t bother risk managing and just hope it all balances out. There are some truly horrifying scare stories about the last group.

The advantage they have however - encompassed in a mathematical measure of odds we call “the over-round” is that they are pretty much guaranteed to make money in the long run.

I opened a Betfair account, deposited £20, and laid a book on a race. I made 27p. It might not sound significant, but the important thing is, because of how I had done this, my risk was effectively zero by the time the race started. It was a “free” 27p that had magically been produced out of thin air.

I dived into the subject, buying whatever I could about bookmaking. I spent a lot of time - and frankly money - understanding the different conditions different laying approaches were best in. Like most geeks, once I choose to learn a subject, I go deep - I try and completely understand the whole domain. This was no different. I read up on the history of bookmaking, the backgrounds to important bookmakers, the maths, the probabilities, the strategies, and spoke to whoever I could about it that understood “the game”.

With my work done at the company, I now had an abundance of free time to put some of this learning to effect.

I was able to lay - and sometimes back using a method called “Dutching” on “under-round” books - over that summer out of Internet cafes (I had no connection to the Internet at home at the time), and cover my living expenses. I ate and drank well, I had a comfortable apartment in Manchester city centre, and was learning about being a bookmaker on a razor thin margin of 102% over-round.

About this time, I thought about becoming a professional bookmaker. The lifestyle of being on-course appealed to me almost as much as the 130% over-round (i.e the roughly 30% profit on capital staked pretty much guaranteed to a bookmaker), and I started to enquire about how to make it happen. I would need £100,000-£150,000 to get started at the courses I wanted to get started at which meant it would have to be a long-term plan. I contemplated assisting established names in the meantime, but without a driving license or a car, I was going to have a problem there as well.

And then the dream was interrupted, and all hell broke lose. 

When you’re trading all day on Betfair, you’re moving money around in order to make just a little tiny bit more money. You are not improving the planet, or people’s lives. It’s boring, and frankly, it’s selfish. Your ego takes a hit, even when you’re winning.

I didn’t have the equipment available to automate the process (despite being a software developer), so for me it was about just grinding it out, hour after hour, day after day. I would get up at 10am, buy and read a copy of the Racing Post, head to an Internet cafe for midday, and lay books on around 20 races until at least 5pm, and during the Summer as late as evening racing allowed. Sometimes I even laid books on US races in the evening, or started earlier and managed to catch races in timezones some hours to the East of us.

It was soul-destroying and boring work. I lost discipline. I stopped managing my risks, and suddenly started to gamble a little to make things more “interesting”. I rode out a lucky streak for a few weeks.

And then I took some losses. I don’t like losing. Nobody does. The original plan said losses were impossible, but I was now being reckless. It was more exciting. But stupid. But the losses hurt.

I started to chase the losses. Any experienced gambler will tell you that this is the beginning of madness.

When you lose, walk away, and accept it. It’s as a good a lesson for life as it is for gambling: don’t take it personally. Right then though, the “red mist” gamblers talk about descended, and it stuck with me for days.

The numbers accumulated as loss after loss built up. Three days later, as an unemployed - perhaps unemployable - software developer, I had lost just over £5,200. Given my goal was to make just £3 per race, this was a rather large sum.

I stopped, stood back, and took a deep breath. I went and decorated a friend’s bathroom for some spare cash to live on and to get away from the screen for a day or two.

I thankfully got a job, and recouped my losses in a more traditional manner, and until the mist that had enveloped me had left, stayed away from Betfair.

Betfair now has an API - a means for a software developer to automate trading strategies. I’ve put off coding anything against it for years for a few reasons. Principally, the environment is now very different as a trading arena to what it was (the liquidity makes the markets zero-sum games, in essence, and that means profitability is harder to come by), and frankly I have other more interesting things to spend my time working on that are likely to make me more money, sooner. I still ponder it though - an automated solution can be developed calmly and unemotionally. It should work quite well.

That said, on evenings like this, when the weather is fine, and a great Derby will be with us at 4pm tomorrow, I think back to those dreams of becoming a bookmaker. Being in the ring at Epsom tomorrow - or even better, on the rails - would not be a terrible way to make a living. Providing you manage your risk properly, of course…

… but then I remember, as with most things, my Mum was probably right.

bookoasis:

The World In A Bookshop by infra-leve.

My living room is starting to look like this actually…

I love knowing what my friends and family are up to. I love finding out about the latest thoughts going on within my peer groups. I enjoy reading many blogs, newsletter and emails. I used to regularly get over 400 emails a day including group/mailing list traffic, followed over a thousand people on Twitter and was friends with more than 250 people on Facebook. I subscribed to over 200 blogs. I read all of it, all the time.

Mix in LinkedIn, reddit, Hacker News and a few other corners of the web, and we’re suddenly talking about a lot of data flowing into my head.

I’m led to believe that some even value the contributions I make myself from time to time.

However, I’m about to start dialling all that down. I’ve made a start in some places, but over time I’m going to stop reading anywhere near as much short-form (twitter, Facebook, etc.), a little less medium-long form (blogs), and use the time to start reading longer form work again (books) and creating more.

The reason is not because of burn-out, cynicism or some other excuse: I’m not arguing that it’s all pointless, and I’m not being a Luddite. I just want to create more, and there are only so many hours in the day.

This was prompted by going back over my resolutions posted here in December, and realising I’ve made little progress:

• I need to get my weight down. I’m finally prepared to do something about it.

• I want to create more, so will aim to not go more than two or three consecutive days without working on something creative in 2012. It could be writing (here, for example), it could be code for a personal project, or it could be something I’ve never really tried before (music? art? Don’t know yet). I basically want to spend less time reading/consuming and more time doing stuff. David Tate provides excellent inspirationif you want to consider doing the same. I’ll try to document as much of that as possible here.

• I’m going to try and shift from always being behind/late for almost everything going on in my life, to being early. I don’t know how I’m going to do this, but I suspect if I can pull it off, I’ll be calmer and happier as a result.

This, I am happy to report, seems to have actually happened for the most part. Public transport not withstanding - including my own self-sabotage - I tend to be where I need to be on-time (or early), far more than I was last year.

Back to the main point: by reading what’s going on out there, by trying out new apps, by listening to all these voices, I am feeling engaged and plugged in, but only as a consumer. The purpose of the Internet is not to simply consume but to create, amend, edit, destroy, vandalise and promote. Ideas, content, products, whatever.

Also, am I the only one who has noticed how exhausting this hosepipe of information can be on a daily - even hourly - basis? I’m tired of consuming. It’s worse than television - at least with television an editor or commissioner has attempted to do some curation.

So I’m not departing, I’m not shutting down accounts, I’m just going to read a great deal less online, to the point the relevant apps might disappear off my phone. In return, I should be able to produce a few new things to share. Watch this space!

Faith's Checkbook by C.H. Spurgeon
Devotional for Wednesday November 13, 2024

The Unfailing Watch

Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep. (Psalm 121:4)

Jehovah is "the Keeper of Israel." No form of unconsciousness ever steals over Him, neither the deeper slumber nor the slighter sleep. He never fails to watch the house and the heart of His people. This is a sufficient reason for our resting in perfect peace. Alexander said that he slept because his friend Parmenio watched; much more may we sleep because our God is our guard.

"Behold" is here set up to call our attention to the cheering truth. Israel, when he had a stone for his pillow, fell asleep; but His God was awake and came in vision to His servant. When we lie defenseless, Jehovah Himself will cover our head.

The Lord keeps His people as a rich man keeps his treasure, as a captain keeps a city with a garrison, as a sentry keeps watch over his sovereign. None can harm those who are in such keeping. Let me put my soul into His dear hands. He never forgets us, never ceases actively to care for us, never finds Himself unable to preserve us.

O my Lord, keep me, lest I wander and fall and perish. Keep me, that I may keep Thy commandments. By Thine unslumbering care prevent my sleeping like the sluggard and perishing like those who sleep the sleep of death.

---

View more daily devotionals online.

Do you want to build a portfolio website for your small business or personal project but don't know how to get started? Find the answer in the free eBook.

The post How to Create Portfolio Website for Your Small Business [Free eBook] appeared first on MonstersPost.

Gutenberg editor has users offering contradictory opinions about it. Some people consider it to be a really convenient tool, while others have different favorites. But what is it really like?

The post Gutenberg WordPress Editor: A Clear Look Under The Hood [Free eBook] appeared first on MonstersPost.

Download a free eBook to learn how to launch a wedding website with the minimum investment.

The post How to Create a Wedding Website [Free eBook] appeared first on MonstersPost.

Never A Dull Moment by Keith Richardson. Keith Richardson is known to Kiwi babyboomers for his top rating radio shows on 1XN Whangarei, 2ZC Napier, 2ZB Wellington...

Aunt Gwen of 2YA by Margaret Willis. "Putting together this story about my mother has taken a long time, all my life in fact."

They Called Her Tokyo Rose, by Rex Gunn and Treason on the Airwaves, by Judith Keene added to Radio Tokyo at War (radioheritage.net/Story39.asp) and Tokyo Rose Broadcasts (radioheritage.net/Story41.asp)...

Treason on the Airwaves by Judith Keene from the University of Sydney.

Nearly 1200 combined pages and extensive notes make the 'Shortwave Radio Trilogy' of U.S. radio listener and historian Jerry Berg a virtual encyclopedia of the global shortwave radio scene since 1923.

Support the Radio Heritage Foundation by purchasing your new copy of the WRTV Handbook 2010 via Amazon through us....

Changing Stations. The Story of Australian Commercial Radio by Bridget Griffen-Foley...

The other aspect of textbooks that students found very important, at 31 percent (64) or extremely important, at 38 percent (78) was cost. Cost was particularly important for first-generation students. Fifty-nine percent (36) of first-generation students considered cost to be an extremely important factor, compared to twenty-nine percent (42) of continuing-generation students. Strikingly, not a … Continue reading ""Exploring First-Generation Student Experiences with OER Textbooks""

How to Write and Publish your own eBook... in as little as 7 Days: "�How to write and publish your own OUTRAGEOUSLY Profitable eBook in as little as 7 days � even if you can�t write, can�t type and failed high school English class!�"

My books on the Ezine Acts Bookshop & some other useful books by titles and authors. You can save money on selected books about your interests, or use the bookstore to publish your books, or to promote books you like.

Decade of Growth: LaserLightShow.ORG's Vegan Facebook Groups Flourish Over the past 10 years, their expanding online community has become a vibrant hub for plant-based enthusiasts to connect, share, and inspire each other. [PR.com]