When you hear of cyber-attacks, you might think of Fortune 500 companies and some of the largest companies in the economy. However, cyber-attacks are a threat that not only faces the largest companies in our economy that house important data, but small businesses as well. In fact, many of those who administer these attacks will specifically target small businesses for a variety of reasons. Small businesses are, in many ways, the backbone of the American economy. A coordinated attack on these businesses could cause widespread harmful effects on the economy and even cause a recession.

An Easier Target

One of the main reasons small businesses are targeted so often by cybercriminals is that they often present an easier target than large businesses. This is because small businesses don’t typically see their data as something that would be of high interest, especially as a business with lower revenue. However, the truth is that cybercriminals are just as likely to attack a small business as they are to go after a large corporation.

Not only are small businesses targeted very often, but the attackers are often successful when they do decide to attack. This is mostly due to the fact that small business owners are not well-versed when it comes to online protection. This occurs in both stages of the attack: before and after. Before a cyber-attack, small businesses are not taking the necessary steps to protect themselves and their information. Software and services that are designed to protect these businesses are often difficult to understand and represent an expensive investment.

Additionally, small business owners might not even recognize when they have been attacked. This prevents them from addressing the core of the issue and taking steps to prevent it in the future. Once a cybercriminal identifies a business as an easy target, it is hard to shake off that designation.

Finally, without knowing when they’ve been attacked, small business owners are also not reporting the incidents, which doesn’t help government agencies that have been designated to address these issues.

A Ripple Effect

Small businesses are one of the most important elements of our economy. They play a vital role in many steps of the capitalist lifecycle and provide more texture to the American economy. When they are attacked by cybercriminals, the effects of those attacks are vast and wide-reaching. This is especially true when the effects are compounded over years of failing to actually address the issues that are causing it.

A recent study found that the majority of small businesses that experience a cyber attack and data breach go out of business within the 6 months following the attack. This is because small businesses do not have the right resources to fight data theft that occurs in a cyber attack. They can quickly lose the trust of their customers and lose their foothold in their industry. Without a proper response to cyber attacks on the nation’s small businesses, we can expect this trend to continue and have a devastating effect throughout the economy.

In the era of “you can be whoever you want” new online businesses spring up like mushrooms. Since you are able to create an online business within seconds and all you need is a sound idea and some clicking, an increasing number of ambitious creative people decide to try and enter the wild world of digital market.

From customer’s perspective this upward trend is beneficial as it gives them a pool of possibilities to choose from. However, from entrepreneur’s perspective –  it impedes the growth of their businesses. They need to make an extra effort to entice customers to purchase from them and to unambiguously convince potential customers that their offer is more attractive than the competitors’ ones. And they can use a Customer Value Proposition (CVP) to do it.

What is a Customer Value Proposition?

To put it briefly, a Customer Value Proposition is a promise. A promise of value for your potential leads that comes with your product or service that differentiates your solution from what your competition has to offer. It is created in order to increase a value of a product itself and to boost customer engagement.

However, a CVP cannot be neither a simple slogan nor a tagline. It should be rather a relevant statement clearly showing how your solution enhance customers’ well-being, what advantages it provides them with and why you are the one they should go for. If you ask yourself now – “how do you write a customer value proposition?” let me show you.

What are elements of every decent Customer Value Proposition?

A CVP is a free-form but the most common and effective one should always have:

• an attention-grabbing heading unambiguously stating why your offer is the best,
• a more descriptive but still concise and catchy subheading being an extension to the headline,
• a few bullet points confirming value that is an integral part of your solution,
• an appealing visual element such as an image or a video.

These elements put together are first step in order to create a perfect CVP. However, you should also remember about content you put in those elements and that always should be only use well-thought and appropriate words and visual elements.

How do you write a Customer Value Proposition?

As mentioned – a CVP is far more than a simple slogan or a statement and it makes the creation process more time-consuming and reflection-requiring. However, once you do it well you may be sure it will bring fruits to your business, help you grow it and boost the number of your customers.

There are a few reflective points to be taken into consideration before you start writing your CVP:

1. You need to be aware of who are your customers, on what market you operate and how your product or service fits into a consumer-driven world. You need to show that your solution has value that is meaningful for all these areas and makes your offer outstanding.
2. You should determine all the advantages that comes with your solution. Don’t limit yourself and try to come up with as many as you can.
3. There is about time to describe what value comes with each of advantages – maybe your solution saves time or provides potential customers with something completely innovative than may change their lives?
4. You should determine the main problem of your customers. Think well and choose the one that seems to be definitely most crucial and burning.
5. You need to link one of the value you worked on before with this problem and emphasize in your CVP that your product or service assists in eradicating this issue.

At this moment, you dispose of solid fundamentals to start creating a CVP that will truly speak to your customers as it promises them that your product or service solves their principal issue. Try to use the most meaningful words and adjust visual elements in order to make it absolutely extraordinary.

 

You all must know the worth of SEO, how it is playing a crucial role in the world of digital marketing to attract customers and increase sales. Strategizing your business with the right SEO can bring revenues to your business and immense success. How SEO can be a big advantage that’s what we are here to explain.

The importance of SEO

By using the SEO techniques, you can generate a massive amount of traffic to your website and that’s what every company needs. By adding the right SEO to your marketing strategy, you will see how quickly your business grows with leaps and bounds, and the striking traffic it brings is something unbelievable.

SEO; A Cost-Effective Marketing Tool

If you are some super-mind marketer and you know how to promote your business without spending a lot of money, then you will find SEO worth using, as it is one of the affordable marketing tools and is not at all costly.

SEO is More Effective Marketing Strategy As Compared to the Traditional Ones

With SEO, you will see results so remarkable and outstanding that traditional marketing strategies fail to bring. It is right to say that SEO is a more effective marketing strategy than traditional ones. Why is that so? The reason is simple, most people don’t bother to see TV ads, YouTube ads, or print media as they appear too frequently and people would simply turn it off.

But with SEO, everything is just so right and obvious, every person goes for Google search every day; if not so many, at least one per day. This causes them to discover a new business which isn’t possible with a print campaign or TV advertisement.

People Trust Search Engines More than the Traditional Marketing Strategies

People rely on the search engine links and are sure of their reliability. The three topmost results in the search engines are what attract people; they think of them as genuine links. So, if you want to grab the audience’s attention towards your business, it’s better if you take help from an SEO firm that caters to you to enhance your site’s search engine ranking. You need to build the trust between you and your customer for your business to grow, and this can’t be possible without the right SEO.

Sub-Par SEO is not worth Your Money

SEO is the one creating a striking impact on your business, and this doesn’t include sub-par SEO. Truth be told, sub-par SEO isn’t worth your business. This means inserting random keywords won’t work in your favor; many marketers make this mistake through their website, blog, and social media accounts hoping it would make a difference. To attract the audience and to make them your customers, you need to use the right keywords on your online content.

Changes in SEO:

SEO changes a lot, even if you try to learn every bit of SEO, you would still be standing one step before the newest SEO rules; that’s the reason it’s better to hire San Diego SEO firm. Since SEO changes frequently, why not put this SEO part of your business on a local SEO firm?

Now, you know how SEO is ruling digital marketing and it has got great potential to promote and grow your business in less time.

If you have a business, you need an online marketing strategy. There is simply no way to survive anymore in this day and age without being digital. And one of the key things that should be part of your online marketing strategy is reputation management. The ultimate goal is that you should never have to use reputation repair tactics, because your management operations are working so well, in other words. You will not be the first business to forget about reputation management, however, not in the least because online marketing is already such a broad, varied, and highly complex field. However, you should check out some reputation management consultants reviews and include it in your strategy, not in the least because some of the tactics also fit in with your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) tactics.

How Reputation Management and SEO Come Together

Very simply put, reputation management is exactly what it says on the box: making sure you are in control of your reputation. It is vital that the world, but particularly your employees, your business partners, and your existing and prospective customers, see you as a great company. Building a positive reputation can take years to achieve, yet destroying it takes just a few days. In fact, in today’s world, it takes minutes. A single well-written complaint about you can easily go viral, particularly if you do not strategically manage your reputation. That is the danger of the internet and you have no control over it.

While it may be easy to overlook how important it is to properly manage your reputation, the reality is that doing this could mean your business going under. The way your business is perceived makes all the difference for customers. If you look bad in their eyes, they will simply go elsewhere. After all, there is plenty of competition to choose from. The best way to combat this is by investing in a professional reputation management solution, meaning that an external company will focus on making sure you look good to others. Yes, this costs money but, at the end of the day, it will also help you earn money as it ensures you retain and attract more customers.

So how does this link to SEO? SEO is all about getting your website found on the internet. Reputation management, meanwhile, is all about making sure the positive things about your website are found on the internet. As such, they are one and the same thing. Indeed, a professional reputation management consultant will ensure that any positive comments that exist about you (reviews, press releases, blog posts, and so on), are pushed to the top of the search engine results. They will do this in such volume that any negative posts about you are pushed back to the third page of Google or beyond. Nobody ventures there anymore, meaning it is basically invisible.

Consider that 77% of consumers will search for online reviews before they decide whether or not to shop somewhere, and you will instantly see how important your reputation is.

 

Futurists have the unenviable task of trying to determine what society will look like decades in the future. Unfortunately, they are wrong more often than right. Perhaps it’s because they rely more on conjecture than what society is already showing us. The legal sector certainly does not want to make that mistake.

With the rise of legal tech comes so many questions about what the future of law will be like. It is easy to say that technology will eventually replace judges and lawyers with impartial machines capable of meting out justice equally and evenhandedly. But is such an assumption realistic? Maybe.

The people behind the NuLaw legal case management application say that there are numerous technologies currently in use that show us the possible direction of law over the next decade. Some of them are established while others are still experimental. Perhaps we can get a good idea of the future of law by paying attention to how these technologies evolve.

Automation in the Office

At the top of the list are automation technologies found in the local law office. For example, NuLaw subscribers enjoy automated calendaring that applies a series of rules to automatically schedule events without human intervention. Automated calendaring saves quite a bit of time and reduces the risk of calendaring errors.

Automation is now utilized as an e-discovery tool. Automation makes it possible for computers to scan unlimited numbers of documents looking for keywords and phrases, a process that can take attorneys and legal aids days. It can even be deployed for creating standardized documents, like contracts for example.

Electronic Court Filings

Although the technology enabling electronic court filings has been around for a while, courts are just beginning to adopt it now. As they do, they are becoming more efficient and accessible. Do not ignore the significance of this development. What is simple electronic court filing today looks like it could be something much bigger tomorrow.

There are currently a small number of systems capable of settling small claims civil disputes using machines. One such system is being tested in China. The system allows both parties to submit evidence online. Software with on-board artificial intelligence analyzes the evidence and renders a verdict. For now, the verdict must be sent to a human judge for review and finalization. However, China expects to eliminate the human judge at some point in the future.

These sorts of technologies should solve the accessibility issue that now exists within our legal system. Rather than hiring expensive attorneys, your average citizen who could not otherwise afford legal representation will turn to a court that offers automated service.

Predicting Case Outcomes

If automated litigation doesn’t do it for you, consider other technologies that rely on big data and analytics to predict case outcomes. Such technologies already exist. Moreover, their level of accuracy is gradually improving over time. The systems crunch untold volumes of data from past cases to predict how a current case will end up.

Such technologies are more than just case management applications. They look at past cases of a similar nature, the histories of the attorneys trying the case, previous decisions by the same judge, and other data points to render a prediction. How will this help the legal industry? By giving attorneys and their clients a more realistic look at case outcomes before litigation begins.

There are plenty of technologies now in use that show us what the future of law might look like. Law will still be law a decade from now, but it will most likely be practiced differently.

 

In Buryatia (Russia), along the Baikal-Amur Railway, preparations are ongoing for the second stage of construction on the 15-km Severomuisky Tunnel. The Severomuisky Tunnel 2 Project Company, created by Dmitry Bosov’s Sibanthracite Group, is building the tunnel. The Sibanthracite Group is working at its own expense and with private funds, foregoing government funding. The tunnel, which will run parallel to the current Severomuisky Tunnel and add a second track, is meant to address the problem of low railway capacity to the Far East.

Dmitry Bosov and Sibanthracite Group are passionate about improving Russian infrastructure to allow the company, and others, to meet the needs of a growing economy in China, India and southeast Asia. A privately funded project like the Severomuisky Tunnel 2 plan is critical to meeting the rapidly changing global economy in the 21^st century.

Plant construction is underway to produce reinforced concrete tunnel lining (tubing) which tunnel boring machines will place directly on the walls of the tunnel during the boring process. Korea Mould, one of the global leaders in designing and supplying equipment for tubing plants, is cooperating on plant construction. The company has handled more than 100 major infrastructure projects throughout South Korea, Singapore, Australia, India, Turkey, and the Middle East.

In January of this year, at Korea Mould’s global headquarters located in Imson, Republic of Korea, a meeting took place between experts from the TransTunnelGroup (general contractor for Severomuisky Tunnel 2 construction) and representatives of Korea Mould. During that meeting, they discussed the final stage of assembly line construction and the segment molds for manufacturing the tubing. A shipment with the first batch of equipment is scheduled for mid-February 2020. The main building should be ready in March when Korea Mould’s entire tubing assembly line will be delivered.

When you work in a competitive industry like the tech business, you may not always get a second chance to stand out. First impressions are so important.

In order to utilize the power of first impressions, however, you need to grasp how people perceive you.

Why First Impressions Matter

Within the first few seconds of meeting, people can have the capability to decide whether you’re high status, trustworthy, charismatic, leadership material, smart, dominant, successful, a friend, or an ally … among other things. Once a first impression has been established, it’s hard to change.

As Brigadier General Milford H. Beagle Jr. writes, “Research has found that it can take up to six months of regular contact with someone to change their initial impression and alter the lens through which they see you or your organization. These first impressions can be nearly impossible to reverse or undo, and they often set the tone for the relationship that follows.”

Good or bad, first impressions stick. Odds are you might not ever get the chance to reverse the original perception someone has of you.

So don’t take the first few moments with anyone for granted.

How to Make Stronger First Impressions

Science is clear about how quickly first impressions form, but it’s also given us strong indications of how people can make a stronger first impression. Here are some of the elements that come into play.

1. Body Language

If people make initial first impressions within one-tenth of a second of meeting someone, as some research has suggested, it follows that what a person says isn’t nearly as important as how he or she looks. As superficial as this may seem, body language is an essential part of that.

If you want people to hold you in high regard, pin your shoulders back, keep your chin up, smile, and make plenty of eye contact. Relax your facial muscles and maintain a soft, warm expression.

These are things anyone can do, yet few take sufficient trouble to put them into practice.

1. Appearances

In addition to body language, your physical appearance matters. It’s critical to be conscious of and strategic about what you wear.

For men, clothing that fits the shape and size of their body is key. A tailored suit or properly fitted slacks will say a lot. For women, wearing a nice watch can give off the sense of a successful person.

1. Voice

When you finally get the chance to open your mouth, you should be tactful in how you speak. Even the simple way in which you say “hello” makes a difference.

According to ScienceNOW, “Men who raised the tone of their voices, and women who alternated the pitch of their voices were rated as more trustworthy. Men with lower-pitched voices were generally perceived as more dominant. But the opposite was true for women: Those with higher average pitch were rated as more dominant.”

If that sounds a bit complicated, let’s admit that, in fact, it is. You’ll have to do some detailed research on this issue and experiment with different approaches until you find the natural fit for you.

1. Talking Points

Subconsciously, people focus on your tone of voice. However, consciously, most people also pay attention to what you’re saying.

Thus, it’s appropriate to be mindful of the content of your speech. The worst thing that can happen in an initial meeting is to come across as unprepared or inept.

It’s a good idea always to identify and bring two to three effective talking points on which you can fall back, in case there’s a lull in the conversation. You might select a funny story about something that happened on the way to the meeting, an anecdote about a mutual acquaintance, or some other tasteful comment.

1. Follow-Up

Finally, you can solidify a solid first impression by following up with the individual soon after the encounter. If you meet someone for coffee in the morning, for example, think about sending a two-sentence email to follow up that afternoon, in which you thank the person for his or her time.

This is one of those small things that most people fail to do! So you’ll stand out if you do it.

Give Yourself a Boost

You don’t have to possess a track record of past achievements or an amazing skillset to make that positive first impression. If you give a little attention to your body language, voice, talking points, appearance, and initiate a follow-up contact, you can give yourself the boost you need to set yourself apart in the overcrowded tech industry.

 

Digital technologies are transforming nearly every aspect of our lives. The increasing number of smart devices all around us are shifting more and more of our daily activities from physical to virtual platforms. These internet-connected devices are relying upon increasingly-com complex software applications, many of which rely on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) algorithms. As these advanced technologies continue to find new ways into our homes and businesses, MCA Connect will provide the guidance enterprises need to embrace the benefits of digital transformation.

The Internet of Things Reaches Top Industries

The Internet of Things (IoT) is huge. It already consists of billions of internet-connected devices, and more and more of our daily activities are moving to digital platforms. The IoT is changing the way business is done, and no industry is immune from the shifts these devices are creating.

As a general matter, the development of the IoT is particularly relevant to product marketing and customer engagement. As the IoT expands, more and more clients and vendors are engaging with businesses via mobile platforms. Countless clients have come to MCA Connect seeking ways to unlock growth with improved mobile engagement, but the IoT is transforming some industries in ways that are far more impactful than best practices for digital marketing.

The IoT is setting up some industries for a complete transformation. For example, the increasing presence of smart devices in the typical home is shifting the home maintenance and services market from a reactive industry to a proactive one. Rather than reaching out to a service provider after a crack, leak, or other damage is discovered, smart home devices can notify homeowners of a potential issue before it becomes a costly repair. Thanks to the predictive skills of these devices, home maintenance is becoming a contractual engagement maintained on a preventative basis rather than as-needed.

The smart devices all around us are collecting and sharing digital data that provides valuable insights about who we are and what we do. The transformative impacts of the devices in the IoT are compounded when these devices are paired with AI and ML applications capable of deriving deep insights from data collected by digital devices.

Improving Data Analytics With Advanced Technologies

The devices in the IoT are generating a lot of data. Data analytics help companies make good use of this data, such as by improving the efficiency of resource us or the efficacy of customer engagement. MCA Connect has seen some of the more forward-thinking enterprises build online customer experiences that feel fully personalized, all thanks to the power of data analytics.

Whether using off-the-shelf enterprise software solutions or custom-built applications, tech-forward enterprises are harnessing the value of the data created by the proliferating audio, visual, text, and biometric sensors found in IoT devices. In fact, around 94% of enterprises reported that data and analytics as an important aspect of their business growth and overall digital transformation in 2019. Over the next five years, IoT and AI/ML, together with cloud computing, will have the greatest impact on data analytics, as these technologies work together to collect, process, analyze, and apply insights derived from digital data.

To compete in today’s increasingly digital economy, enterprises harness the raw data collected by IoT devices and transform them into meaningful enterprise-level information by leveraging the analytical power of AI/ML applications. To meet this growing market demand, MCA Connect works with clients to identify the data collection and analysis solutions that work best for their unique circumstances.

A CMS like WordPress can change how you organize a website. Companies that make the choice of building around a CMS have a clear goal in mind. Some options are more popular than others, and you can always get the best hosting for WordPress by doing some research. Below are the top four choices in the CMS field when user friendliness is a concern. A few of the choice may come as a complete surprise for website builders.

4. Joomla!

What Joomla! lacks in plugin support it makes up for with flexibility. This CMS is perfect for users that have a lot of text-based content. Besides a few custom options for posting, the platform is also incredible on the management aspect. You can set up any page with its own custom template while monitoring important visitor traffic for statistics. The entire experience is done well, and they do a good job of not overloading you with plugins, templates or extra features. This is a nice tight platform that gets the job done in the fastest way possible.

3. Dotclear

For the blogger that wants a no-nonsense approach to creating, Dotclear lives up to its name. It never gets in the way of the creation process, even on larger projects. By sticking to the basic features, the platform still supports a wide variety of setups. When opting for advanced setup, it rivals even the bigger players in the industry. Out of all the great features provided by Dotclear, the RSS support is still considered one of the best.

2. Serendipity

Serendipity often gets lost in the shuffle when discussing quality CMS choices. Think of it as ‘WordPress Lite”, something that will appeal to smaller companies or startups. Businesses that want an alternative to WordPress turn to Serendipity for its similar but more streamlined features. In some cases, this platform has shown more compatibility than other CMS choices. At its core, Serendipity is a performance-based CMS with fantastic cache settings.

1. WordPress

WordPress is still the most widely used CMS in the world. It is used by millions of users and companies daily, and boasts the widest support for themes, templates and plugins. WordPress was built with user friendliness in mind and managed to keep that intact without losing any features. Because of all the bells and whistles, that user friendliness can vary greatly from site to site. The more plugins that are added to WordPress, the more complicated it becomes. The platform is simultaneously the most user friendly and the most complicated in the industry. To get the most out of it, users should always check for compatible plugins and verify the source.

Wrap Up

As a company, having options is always a good thing. It allows you to explore the most compatible features for your business. A CMS is no different, and should always represent your best values. By prioritizing user friendliness, consumers will be more likely to buy a product or service.