However, just because a process is efficient doesn’t necessarily mean it is effective. As the myriad challenges involved with getting out press releases have declined, the volume of press releases peppering news outlets has only risen. Statistics show that some journalists receive over a dozen different press releases each day, meaning their chances of finding yours in the ever-expanding flow is the equivalent of finding a needle in a haystack.

But what if you were able to keep the needle out of the haystack, engineering your press release process in a way that would capture media attention? It would be the best of both worlds: an efficient process that also gets the job done. 

It’s possible to achieve this by following the following four steps.

1. Start by building media relationships

The first step to maximizing the effectiveness of your press releases begins long before you have news to announce and involves taking the time to build relationships with the journalists who cover the news that is relevant to you. This step is an essential part of differentiating yourself — and your press releases — from the general deliveries that will come through journalists’ inboxes.

Without this step, your press release process is essentially no more effective than cold calling. When you have already established a relationship with the journalist, your press releases come from a known commodity, increasing their overall value to the journalist as well as the likelihood they will capture significant attention in the media.

Engaging with the articles a journalist publishes is a great way to nurture a relationship with them. Follow them on Instagram, X, and LinkedIn, comment on the content they post and share, and make sure they know you appreciate their work in keeping people informed about important news.

Once you have a dialogue going, you can offer to provide information via a press release that supports the journalist’s work. If they accept, then you can rest assured that your press release is bound to receive some attention.

2. Craft compelling stories

Press releases are typically thought of as a tool for announcing something newsworthy. But with the flood of press releases flowing into news outlets today, simply being newsworthy is no longer good enough.

To capture media attention, you will need to craft concise and compelling press releases. The first step in making something compelling is making it interesting. If you are a publicist working for a client, the news you promote will be interesting to the client, but your job is to find a way to make it interesting to others.

The second step in making something compelling is making it irresistible. In other words, it must be presented as a story that is too important to be passed up.

One way to make news compelling is to think about the problem (or problems) it solves and the people it serves. For example, one client we recently worked with provides an innovative, fully virtual platform for retirement planning, and while that may be interesting, it’s not exactly compelling news on its own.

We made the client’s story compelling by positioning their platform as the solution for millions of Americans who are behind on their retirement planning and anxious about how they will live when they hit retirement age. By presenting recent stats to support the argument, we make our case that this is timely news that can help people by revealing a more convenient and cost-effective approach to effective retirement planning.

3. Deliver targeted releases

Targeted releases are designed to connect with a particular audience and present content they will find valuable. It’s not a scattergun approach, in which you send out bulk press releases containing general information with the hopes that a few will stick.

Reporters look forward to receiving targeted press releases because they make their job easier by providing something relevant and easy to use. They make it clear why the news is important to the reporter’s readers and provide the details needed to streamline the writing process.

Taking the time to deliver targeted releases also strengthens your relationship with reporters. If they see you consistently delivering releases that are not a waste of their time, they will be all the quicker to pay attention to your messages in the future.

4. Look beyond traditional media outlets

In today’s media landscape press outlets aren’t the only way to get a message out. Social media influencers, for instance, provide the potential to connect with a huge audience. 

Instagram alone has over 2 billion active monthly users. If you are not building relationships with influencers and providing them with targeted press releases when appropriate, you are missing prime opportunities for capturing media attention.

Leveraging the power of press releases continues to be an essential part of a solid public relations strategy, but today’s media landscape requires that they be used in new ways. Releases that provide relevant and valuable information to familiar media contacts will continue to open doors to impactful media coverage.

The post 4 Steps to Capturing Media Attention by Writing an Effective Press Release appeared first on SiteProNews.

Yet the answer isn’t always more AI. Incorporating custom GPTs in the right ways — and avoiding the wrong ones — is key to leveraging these innovations best.

Using AI internally and incorporating human oversight

Many business leaders assume that the primary use for AI chatbots is external customer support, so they hesitate to use AI for these purposes. While they may know that AI programs are getting better and better, they can still make errors that lead to customer frustration — but so can poorly trained human staff.

In my experience, however, AI has many applications that shouldn’t be overlooked. Consider the case of PayPal, which has used a combined AI and human approach to fraud detection, credit decisioning, and many other internal processes for years. 

In particular, PayPal’s utilization of AI has boosted its authorization rate, which means fewer transactions get denied. Its system does this by identifying good transactions that are being negatively impacted by technical difficulties and allowing them to proceed, knowing that everything will smooth out when these hiccups are resolved. If a given transaction fails, PayPal’s AI can also figure out the best conditions that should be used to retry it. 

If that wasn’t already impressive enough, PayPal’s AI can spot when criminals are testing batches of stolen cards on e-commerce websites and flag this fraud. Yet according to Dr. Hui Wang, PayPal’s Senior Director of Risk Sciences, these advances in AI’s capabilities have only been possible due to careful human oversight. That’s one of the main lessons for business owners looking to optimize operations with AI today — these brilliant machines often perform best when used internally and combined with the judgment and discretion of human staff.

Want to get started leveraging AI for your own company but don’t have a computer science or programming background? The good news is that today, you don’t need one.

Creating a customized chatbot

Creating a customized chatbot for your business is actually quite easy, and many online tools are designed to help you do just that. The key is to find which works best for you and your business, as different tools have different advantages and disadvantages.

No matter what chatbot builder you choose to use, the first step is to create an account. For each custom GPT you develop, you’ll also need to name it something different that evokes its purpose, as well as provide a brief description. 

Additionally, you’ll need to give it clear instructions about the process you want it to follow and any output you want it to generate. In many cases, the platform will have a detailed how-to section that explains these steps, as well as how to configure the chatbot to your specifications.

Your chatbot will need to be taught what to say, which is why the next step is providing it with a knowledge base. 

Training your customized chatbot

To improve the standard-issue chatbot and transform it into your own custom GPT, you will need to connect it with your business’s relevant information, such as the answers to relevant FAQs, for example. Sometimes, external websites or datasets can also provide the necessary library for your AI. You might also decide to give it your company’s style guide and marketing materials.

The more accurate information and guidance you can give the AI, the better it will be able to fulfill its purpose. If the material you provide is inaccurate, inconsistent, or irrelevant, not even the powerful intellect of today’s AI will be able to produce the outcomes you want. In this way, it is also much like human employees, which is why it pays to take the time to give your chatbot a thorough education in the issues with which it will deal.

Leverage AI with additional automations

Many businesses’ implementation of AI tends to stop with these custom GPTs, but AI can be leveraged even more. Consider using a platform that can connect your specialized chatbots to thousands of potential automations like Zapier.

Unfortunately, while Zapier can create automated workflows with standard chatbots like GPT-3 or GPT-4, it cannot currently directly incorporate the knowledge bases that custom chatbots rely on, which makes it challenging to integrate these AIs into Zapier workflows.

However, there are a couple of workarounds to this that have been discovered. 

Workarounds to create automations

The first workaround is to create a thread with the standard-issue chatbot and save the necessary information from the knowledge base to it. However, this clunky option may generate erroneous results.

A better solution is to use a third-party tool that allows you to build a custom chatbot and connect it to Zapier through an Application Programming Interface (API) key. While this might sound intimidating, it just entails configuring your custom chatbot appropriately and setting up the relevant custom actions in your Zapier account. 

A background in coding is not necessary — at points, Zapier will supply the necessary HTML script, so all you’ll need to do is copy and paste the code or a URL into your chatbot’s instructions or settings. You can find step-by-step tutorials on building a custom GPT and creating automations with it in Zapier on YouTube.

By combining a customized chatbot with automations in this way, your AI systems can automatically carry work forward until a human staff member’s intervention becomes advisable. For example, if you give your FAQs to a chatbot and ask it to draft a concise email based on them, it can generate a decent first draft. The trick is to have someone review it and make any necessary revisions before submitting it.

Indeed, one of the main ways my team uses this tool is to manage the thousands of emails we get every day. Responding to automated prompts, our customized chatbot reads and crafts initial responses to messages that human staff review and revise before sending them out. Thus, we get the best of both worlds: the AI generates the emails fast, and the human staff ensures their high quality.

Optimize your operations through AI-human collaboration

Creating a customized chatbot is not only easier than many entrepreneurs and business leaders fear but it can also be used for many more purposes than they usually suppose. By building a specialized chatbot and creating automations in your internal workflows, you can place a surprising amount of labor on machines and position your human team for success. To optimize your operations, it’s time to implement AI-human collaboration.

The post Customizing AI to Optimize Business Processes appeared first on SiteProNews.

Use Segmentation to Generate New Leads

Your customers want to feel valued. Firing a generic email to everyone leaves them with the impression that they are just another stepping stone on the path to your success. Fortunately, today’s email campaigns can easily be personalized.

AI software groups your customers into segments based on all kinds of data. The software analyzes your customers’ shopping habits to determine their favorite products. It tracks opening rates to determine the best times of day to send emails and texts. You can even ask customers to input data pertaining to their interests, birthdays, or anniversaries.

Does creating personalized email campaigns seem like a daunting task? With the help of automation, it doesn’t have to be. First, you set parameters for the customer habits and preferences that will determine each audience segment, and then you create template emails for each group. Don’t forget to personalize each template by leaving a space for the customer’s name. After that, the software’s AI takes over.

Personalize Email Campaigns Based on Demographic Data

You can segment your customers based on demographic data, such as age, gender, geographic location, career, and income level. This data enables you to know a lot about each customer’s individual needs and preferences.

The simplest way to collect this data is during the sign-up process. The more information you obtain, the more options you have when it comes to segmentation. Be careful, though. Some customers may steer clear of sign-up forms that require too much personal information.

The best plan is to settle on the most useful metrics for your particular business. For example, if you are marketing a clothing line, gender would be key to creating your email segments. If you are marketing seminars or events, the geographic location would be extremely valuable.

Campaign Monitor incorporates demographic segmentation into its email builder. You simply personalize the content you plan to send to different email segments and then define the groups who will receive that content.

If you prefer not to collect demographic data in your sign-up process, you can ask your customers for the information later. Surveys and quizzes enable you to get the same data along with more detailed information about your followers’ interests and preferences. Surveys paired with incentives like coupons or entries into a drawing are bound to get more responses.

WordPress offers a Quiz and Survey Master plugin to help you design custom surveys. WordPress integrates with Mailchimp, providing an easy way to export your results.

Personalize Email Campaigns Based on Email Engagement and Past Purchases

You can use data collected from email engagement to group your customers. With the help of Mailchimp, segmenting by engagement is quick and easy. Clicking on the “Activity” tab offers a variety of options to categorize your subscriber’s behavior.

You may also want to segment your customers based on their interaction with your products. Past purchases, amount spent, and length of time since the most recent purchase are all data that can drive personalized email campaigns.

For example, you may want to send emails suggesting similar products or accessories that would go with a previous purchase. Additionally, if the product a customer purchased will run out, you can send a timely email suggesting a refill. The Shopware plugin and eCommerce360 tracking are both tools that can enable Mailchimp to track purchase activity in your campaign reports.

Personalize Email Campaigns Based on Website Behavior

You may choose to group your customers according to their behavior on your website. Targeted emails based on the content users engaged with or skipped over can be incredibly effective.

BeamPulse is a tool that allows you to track your customers’ actions on your site. You can obtain data about where they scroll, what they click, menus they visit, and how long they spend in each location.

The “Goals” feature in Mailchimp enables you to send emails according to how your customers interact with your website. You can track the pages each customer visited, the pages they didn’t visit, the videos they watched, and how long they watched each video.

Mix Emails With SMS and Website Popups for Omnichannel Communication

Staying ahead of the competition means constantly finding ways to engage your audience. Email is a proven strategy, but a blend of tactics often enhances your reach. Adding SMS to your email campaign strategy is bound to deliver improved engagement and conversion, and you can do so with the help of a business SMS provider.

People seem to be glued to their smartphones, so it makes sense that e-commerce through mobile devices is on the rise. Retail Touchpoint predicted over 54% of internet sales would be transacted over mobile devices by the end of 2021.

Text messaging is fairly new as a marketing strategy, but it offers some distinct advantages. SMS marketing is one of the most effective platforms for delivering timely call-to-action messaging to your customers. In fact, research finds 90% of text messages are read 3 seconds after delivery.

Before you can communicate with your customers through either email or SMS channels, they need to give their consent. Once you build a list of loyal subscribers, reaching these followers with marketing ads costs absolutely nothing. According to a survey from TechJury, 75% of mobile device users don’t mind receiving texts from a brand as long as they’ve opted in.

Integrating your email campaign with text messaging is a winning marketing strategy. They are both powerful marketing tools, but they are very different from each other. Knowing when and how to employ each allows you to cross-promote your brand seamlessly.

Emails are typically better for educating customers about your brand, introducing new products, making press releases, and sending newsletters. Texts, by nature, are more concise and time-sensitive. Reminders, coupons, receipts, confirmations, product offers, giveaways, and urgent updates are ideal for text messages.

Your goal is to use SMS as a complement to your email campaign. For example, a short text can get customers excited, and a longer email can follow with all the details.

If you’re launching a new product or service, announce it to your followers in an engaging text. Follow that text with an email detailing specifics, such as features and pricing. Communicating across both channels will prove far more effective than relying on email alone.

Use Challenges and Promotions to Make Emails More Effective

More and more eCommerce marketers are incorporating email campaigns into their strategies, and the bar for engagement has been raised. Interactive marketing can help your emails stand out from the crowd.

Gamification is the process of incorporating some kind of gaming elements into non-gaming content. Mini-games can be highly effective as a part of an email campaign. Don’t just employ games for games’ sake, though. Keep them relevant to your products, industry, or brand.

You instantly drive engagement and interaction by linking a reward to the game experience you provide through your email. Winning the game could mean a bonus coupon, special offer, or free tickets.

Email challenges to boost engagement don’t have to be high-tech games all the time. Simpler options include interactive quizzes, trivia questions, or prize drawings.

Email is a highly effective tool for building user engagement in your digital marketing campaigns. For the greatest impact, personalize your messaging through segmentation, incorporate SMS to offer an omnichannel experience, and boost engagement through interactive challenges and games.

The post Email Marketing Trends of 2022 appeared first on SiteProNews.

As with almost everything else in 2020, COVID-19 has played a huge part in the eCommerce explosion. Because of this, a lot of people should be pondering how they can make this online upswing work for them beyond being on the receiving end of some online retail therapy.

Online start-ups are much more difficult to create than they were five or six years ago. But they are still starting, growing, and thriving. Consulting companies are an excellent asset for budding start-ups. They can help people build their eCommerce businesses from making zero dollars in revenue, to six-figures in a couple of months. The problem for most people is the initial investment. However, professional consultants can help you reach your eCommerce goals in a few short months if you have the start-up funds.

More than ever, this is the era of doing business virtually from across the country – or in some cases, from across the world. Skype and Zoom meetings, phone calls, e-mails – these are all the new and acceptable ways to land $10,000-plus deals. And the hiring process is the same. Companies’ workforces are spread out all over the country, but it works. Of course, the upside is that businesses do not have to sustain a pricey office building to do stellar business. 

So, what are some of the best eCommerce ventures right now? Any business that does not have excessive overhead is a plus. Therefore, the service industry is booming. If you have a skill or a service to market, you are a valuable resource in the eCommerce industry. And not having inventory to pay for is a huge plus. 

Online companies that outsource technical jobs— such as website construction, blog writing, podcast creation, and more— are having a field day in this economy. More and more people are looking for additional work, and the nature of the times dictates it is remote work. Not only is there no inventory in this situation, but there is also no dedicated office space to rent and heat and cool.

Business trends are always changing. This year, maybe more than ever, we see more eCommerce opportunities due to COVID-19 and its lingering effects. The following is a list of just a few top eCommerce opportunities you could benefit from investigating:

Summary of top eCommerce services for 2020

• Remote technical services
• Web development
• Blog creation
• Podcast creation
• Freelance services 
• Consulting
• Marketing
• Public relations
• Influencer
• Social media expert
• Educational videos and services

It’s important to note that any budding business needs some expert advice along the way. To hit your potential and not hit the wall, make sure you are in a niche well within your capabilities. Then, seek some expert advice. First, find a consultant who specializes in eCommerce start-up creation. Then, find a firm that offers extraordinary public relations and marketing services. These investments are time and money well-spent in the long run.

Certainly, COVID-19 has dealt a blow to the economy that will be felt for a long while. However, when one aspect of the economy takes an adverse turn, another seems to rise. At this moment in time, eCommerce is making its mark by setting the bar high and over-reaching for the prize. With the right service to offer, some start-up cash, some expert advice, and a lot of hard work, your eCommerce start-up dreams could come true. 

For anyone thinking of putting themselves out there and dipping their toes into the eCommerce pool, weigh your options. You never know, 2020 might have started as your worst year ever, but that doesn’t mean it has to end that way.

The post ECommerce Thrives in COVID-19 Era appeared first on SiteProNews.

1. Professional Photographer

You can become a professional photographer from the comfort of your own home. Product photography has a big demand, because most businesses with a website require photos of their products to show their customers what they will be buying. It is something you can easily learn how to do, even if you start with your phone’s camera. What you would need is a cheap light box and a decent camera that will allow you to take good quality pictures. After that, you should be able to edit them with Photoshop or any other photo editing software. Editing your pictures will help them stand out and look professional, so it would be easier for you to sell them. If you don’t know how to work any type of software, you can find freelancers to do it for a reduced fee.

2. Website Development

Website development means building, creating, and maintaining a website. A website developer is in charge of writing the script to design the site. This is an easy and affordable skill to learn; there are plenty of platforms you can use online that will teach you exactly how to get started in this business. Developing a website is a great way to make extra revenue, and some sites can even be sold for over $10,000. All you need to do is learn the process and start designing attractive websites that will make companies want to hire you.

3. Graphic Design

Graphic design is a visual communication and problem-solving skill that is done through iconography, illustration, photography, and typography. It is a job that can be done manually–many like to design their graphics drawing and painting by hand–as well as virtually. If you decide to do it virtually, you will need to learn how to use Photoshop or other image editing software. Once you know how to do this, you can sell your services to companies who are looking to create a logo or a brand image. Many eCommerce businesses are looking for graphic designers who can edit their images to create something more appealing to their customers. You can do this from the comfort of your own home and earn a good income.

4. Digital Marketing

There are different types of marketing that companies implement. One of them is digital marketing, which uses the Internet and any other online-based digital technologies to promote products and services. If you have social media accounts, you can easily learn how to do this. You need to know exactly how to showcase the product or the service in an appealing light. 

Nowadays, most companies hire digital marketing experts to create paid ads for Facebook or Google. You can start by selling the product to your clients and work with the money they provide you. It is a great way to generate an income.

5. Video Editing

Video editing is the manipulation and organization of video shots. It can be used to create different types of content: films, television shows, advertisements, and even video essays. It is a skill in demand and extremely easy to learn. Most computers nowadays come with video editing software already installed; otherwise, you can find affordable ones online. Once you learn how to do it well, you can offer your services to companies who offer different services or products. Find out what appeals the most to you and figure out how video editing can help you get there. Many YouTubers started editing their own videos and grew a business from that skill.

6. Drop Shipping

With many businesses doing their sales online, a great job opportunity you can do from home is drop shopping. This means retailers who do not have goods in stock transfer their customers’ orders and shipping details to the manufacturer, another retailer, or a wholesaler who will make sure the product is shipped. This is a job that will cost you no money to start. You can begin by moving things around and this will lead to more opportunities.

Learning how to do these six jobs means learning new skills that will make you a more rounded professional. An advantage to learning all six of them is that you could combine them and start your own business. If you do some quick research, you will see eCommerce is big right now, and combining these skills can lead you to creating your own eCommerce business. 

Losing your job or having your hours reduced can be incredibly stressful. It can lead to negative thoughts and feelings because we live in a society where we need to constantly be generating an income. But we also live in a time that allows us access to resources to learn new skills. These six jobs are easy to learn from home and will help you earn money in times of need.

The post Ways to Make Extra Money Online During COVID-19 appeared first on SiteProNews.