Category: Insights

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Bitcoin Investment: Tips for Maximizing Returns

on January 24, 2019

If there is one alternative investment that has been solidly gaining traction in recent years, it is bitcoin. A lot of people are now taking advantage of the potential of this cryptocurrency to deliver profitability. However, there are also uncertainties that could make some proceed with hesitation. That being said, the rest of this post briefly outlines some of the best things that can be done to maximize the return of your bitcoins.

Find the Right Trading Platform

One of the best ways to earn money from bitcoin is through trading. Basically, what this means is that you will buy the cryptocurrency at a low price. When the price is high, you can now sell it and earn a profit. To do this, you need the right bitcoin trading platform. Find one Stock Apps that is reliable and trusted by many, making it possible to have lots of buyers when it is time to sell.

Host an ATM

There are tons of ways to maximize profits from bitcoin, including offering complementary services. A bitcoin ATM is one of the perfect examples of the latter. They even offer an online bitcoin ATM locator, which will make it easy for users to find an ATM that is nearest their current location. Almost any existing space can be used for the ATM machine.

With the variety of the options for a bitcoin trading platform, one of the best that you should not miss is https://www.coincloudatm.com/.

Short Sell your Bitcoins

Shorting bitcoin is one thing that can work when the market is down, and you want to earn a profit. Although, it should be noted that this is a strategy that is best done only by the more experienced investors since it is quite complicated. Many exchanges are already making this possible, but a lot of novice investors may end up doing it incorrectly, which makes the risks high.

Hold on for Dear Life

It is inevitable that there will be a crash in the cryptocurrency market, especially in bitcoins. When things go south, this does not mean that you should lose hope. In one article from Forbes that tackles how crypto investors can profit from a crash, the Hold On for Dear Life strategy has been recommended. Also called HODL, this simply means that you should wait and see. You do not have to do anything in your bitcoin. Let it become idle in your chosen platform and hope for the best.

Conduct a Thorough Research

This is perhaps the most important from the points that are raised in this post. You need to be knowledgeable about the ins and outs of bitcoin to make it a profitable alternative investment. When you are armed with the right knowledge, it will be a lot easier for you to grow your cryptocurrency.

While there are lots of people who are investing in bitcoins, not all of them are fortunate enough to craft their own success stories. With this, take note of the things that have been mentioned above to increase the likelihood of maximizing returns.

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How Robotics Is Improving Businesses

on January 24, 2019

The impact of robotics on modern manufacturing is immeasurable. Though industrial robots have seen use in factories for decades, their capacity for complex tasks have grown by a considerable margin, and they’ve continued to develop at a steady pace. Manufacturing aside, other industries have enjoyed the benefits as well.

In the hospitality, food and customer service industries, robots have proven indispensable in the day-to-day responsibilities of employees and business owners. Additionally, many executives in management positions use today’s technology to delegate their smaller duties, allowing them to focus on more pressing matters.

So how do these changes manifest? What do modern robots look like, and how are they improving businesses across the country? In this article, we’ll explore the subject in greater detail, touching on three different industries and how they’ve implemented robotics in their current practices.

Robotics in Hospitality

Customer service has always been the keystone of the hospitality industry. After all, the definition of “hospitality” is the warm, friendly reception and entertainment of guests. With this in mind, it seems strange and somewhat counterintuitive to replace a hotel’s staff with cold, unfeeling robots.

Yotel has shown this isn’t the case, and their use of robotics doesn’t substitute staff but supplements them. When a guest walks into the lobby at their Times Square location, a team member helps them with a touch-screen kiosk. After checking in, a robot takes and safely stores their luggage.

Robotics in Manufacturing

When most people envision a production line — such as those in automotive factories — they often picture pneumatic robot arms. While these robots have applications in the auto industry, they see use in many different factory settings, making a broad spectrum of everyday items.

While their functionality is impressive, how they function is just as extraordinary. Check out the following infographic.

Infographic source: https://www.quincycompressor.com/how-a-pneumatic-robot-arm-works

Robotics in Food Service

Automation has streamlined the food service industry for business owners and customers alike. Beyond self-serve kiosks, new machines have replaced outdated dishwashers, saving almost 10 hours of labor per week which employees would have to spend cleaning spatulas, bowls, and other food prep utensils.

Fast food chains have also found a use for robot arms, similar to those employed in manufacturing, but repurposed prepare meals. Little Caesar’s recently patently a robotic arm which can spread the dough, add toppings and place a pizza in the oven. It’s safe to speculate even greater changes are on their way.

The Future of Robotics

It’s challenging to grasp the influence of modern robotics on the enterprise. In hospitality, manufacturing, food service, healthcare, agriculture, and even law enforcement, technology has simplified and reshaped the responsibilities of the American workforce. Moving forward, one thing is clear.

The current trajectory of robotics has placed us on a path toward even greater and more inflexible reliance on technology. While it represents an incredible opportunity for growth, small businesses and large corporations should consider the implications of automation. It might have unintended consequences.

That said, it’s important to approach the future with optimism. Technology is evolving in new and exciting ways, and it’ll be exciting to watch what happens.

Insights

Why Manufacturers Should Move to the Cloud

on January 24, 2019

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are digital software packages that facilitate the integration of business operations and departments to provide shared data, reports, and other resources. They’re essential to streamline processes, improve productivity, and reduce costs. Clearly, then an ERP system is a necessary tool for manufacturers to stay competitive in today’s marketplace. A software package that utilizes cloud computing capabilities – even more so.

There are several choices in enterprise resource planning systems out there, and Sage provides a variety of top-selling solutions that help discrete manufacturing and process manufacturing companies do more for less. Hiring more staff and purchasing additional hardware to handle larger capacities is only going to balloon costs. Cloud-based ERP software helps save while streamlining. Here, you can learn about the latest business management software options available, and why manufacturers should move to the cloud today.

Sage Business Cloud combines multiple integrated products that can help small businesses to enterprises with their management needs. It can be customized to suit your specific needs and it can be adapted to change with you as your business expands and evolves. Expert consultants can assist with the installation, adoption, and training processes, so your teams know how to integrate and use the new system right from the start. Plus, helpful and responsive consultants like IWI Consulting Group provide extra self-teaching resources and ongoing customer service that is personalized to your current and future needs.

A cloud ERP solution allows manufacturing and other types of businesses to collect, analyze, and access company-wide data remotely. Manage inventory, sales, and orders. Increase insight into the supply chain and see where there are inefficiencies. The cloud allows for increased accuracy because data is saved, shared, and backed-up in real time. Executives to agents on the ground have access to the same information, and sales teams can work from anywhere there is a connection. Sage Intacct specifically allows for accounting, financial, and operational insights.

Some other ways cloud ERP systems can help include:

Adopting a Lean Manufacturing Philosophy. Your business operates within a flood of spreadsheets. Every department has its essential data to track and utilize on-the-job. Managing this volume of data in multiple places can go beyond a hassle and take up precious time. Printing sheets, hand-tallying, re-entering data, and handling a physical volume of information produces even more waste (some of it environmental).

Cloud ERP automates data entry and shareability and helps you scale and shift production. View customer orders in the same place and batch quicker. Cut the fat and move to lean manufacturing processes with better use of equipment, staff, and materials. Overtime is slashed with ERP adoption, and unexpected orders and other changes can be quickly processed. 

Lower IT Costs. Keeping antiquated systems and maintaining an IT department to do so is costly. Updating and upgrading old hardware systems and paying the staff to handle it is unnecessary with cloud ERP. Free yourself with cloud software that updates itself because it is managed by third-party providers like Sage. Don’t sit idly by waiting for patches and updates to download. And stop trying to troubleshoot an old, buggy system.

Increased Security. Cloud-based systems provide increased security versus on-site systems and servers. Professional third-party vendors are required by law to protect the security and privacy of its clients. There is no need to run an in-house security audits. Sage ensures your system is running at peak efficiency as part of the package and contract. 

Save time and money, increase efficiency, cut waste, and open your manufacturing business up to new opportunities and growth with a cloud-based enterprise resource planning system.

If you are struggling to find the right candidates to help you move your ERP system into the cloud, a specialized supply chain and manufacturing recruiting firm like SCOPE Recruiting might be able to assist.

InsightsSaaS

Azure Certification from Microsoft – Benefits and Learning Path

on January 21, 2019

The recent developments in large-scale cloud services have changed the modes of IT service delivery to a large extent. Well, known cloud platforms from the world’s leading providers like Microsoft, Google, and Amazon are constantly evolving, which has a big impact on the IT industry as well as the IT professionals.

When it comes to information technology businesses or other sectors dependent on IT, any decision to adopt technology or upgrade it has an immediate impact on the performance, cost, security, delivery, and customer satisfaction. High level of decision making, design, and implementation, and administration skills are required to manage these sophisticated IT-centric industries. The frequent and fast changes in technologies are creating skill gaps in the IT marketplace, which is the major problem enterprises are finding while tapping the opportunities.

Lately, with a large number of organizations across the globe adopting cloud technologies, there is a huge demand for skilled professionals in it. One can enjoy high salaries and a wide range of opportunities in cloud computing if they become experts to manage the fast-changing cloud computing environments. For the cloud career aspirants, MS Azure certification is one great way to achieve this necessary skill-set.

About MS Azure

As admired by the industry, one specific skill which recruiters are looking for while hunting for cloud computing specialists is Azure Certification from Microsoft. Owing to the growth in the cloud sector, job opportunities for MS Azure certified professionals had increased drastically over the last couple of years.

  • As per a press release by Microsoft, nearly 1000 customers are signing up for Azure suite daily, which can be projected as about 3,65,000 organizations adopting the technology each year.
  • Considering the Fortune 500 companies, about 57% of them have implemented Azure.
  • The cloud revenue of Microsoft had increased by 104%.
  • UK government had given an official accreditation to Microsoft Azure, and US government also backed it for government offering.

All the points towards the future potential of Azure to create a huge number of job opportunities in the coming years. It is easy to learn and adapt, and also a highly efficient tool to handle the traditional tasks like designing, deployment, and management as well as to meet the needs of the future big data environments.

Azure in business IT

As we have seen, Azure is a cloud computing solution and to be more precise, and it offers an advanced cloud platform which helps the organizations to build, deploy, and operate managed services wherever they want to. The major competitors of Azure are AWS (Amazon Web Services), and Google Cloud.

There are two handy models of Azure services as:

  1. Infrastructure as a service (IaaS), in which you let the provider (Microsoft) handle your networking and computing needs.
  2. Platform as a service (PaaS), where you add the cloud capabilities as a platform only to your existing network and manage it your own.

With Azure, Microsoft provides the clients with access to the service directory which is constantly building. This now includes:

  • Virtual machines – You can use the pre-existing templates or create your machine images to prepare Windows or Linux virtual machines and host any apps and services in these virtual machines.
  • Application services – Deploy new enterprise applications and gain instant and scalable access to it with minimal risk of downtime or data loss.
  • Active directory – Better manage the authentication, group policy, and security settings, etc., remotely.
  • Storage – Secure your critical business data with the solid infrastructure by Microsoft, all at an affordable cost.
  • SQL DB – Enjoy unlimited SQL relational database from Microsoft without the need for any on-premise software or hardware.

Why use Azure?

The primary benefits of hosting critical business solutions using Azure as SAP Business One include:

1. High flexibility

In fast-changing market conditions, you may experience a positive spike in your favor with a demand for more efficient technology solutions at any time. In such situations, Azure has it all covered well. You may design and launch innovative services at any time in lightning speed with the scope of scaling up storage and processing capabilities instantly.

2. Save cost

There is a very limited upfront cost for migration, and when it comes to maintaining hardware and that of energy consumption, you will reduce the overall costs. As the cloud providers offer security administration, the security costs are also covered. With enterprise-grade cloud services, you need to pay only for the availed resources, which can be scaled up or down at any point.

3. Services to meet any needs

Azure offers a huge number of à la carte services. You may search the Azure service list first when you have the need of any service or business app next time. Even on thinking of a customized app, there is no need to start from the very scratch as many of the apps can be integrated into the already existing framework and custom tailor meet specific needs.

Apart from the above, Azure also features fully managed services, quick disaster management, remote access management, etc., which makes it a highly flexible and user-friendly platform for business administrators. As the adoption rate of Azure is going up, the industry requires more skilled and knowledgeable Azure experts to handle the tasks at various types of IT settings.

Azure training

For beginners, Microsoft Official Curriculum could be a good option to start with the basics of Azure. Microsoft directly offers some support to IT professionals with some eBooks etc. through the MVA (Microsoft Virtual Academy).  Over time, Azure certification had undergone several improvements too. Now, the certification path of MS Azure is more modular with the need to develop IT infrastructure management skills, especially Windows Server. Some exams aimed at Azure certifications are:

  • Exam 70-533 – Implementing Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Solutions
  • Exam 70-532 – Developing Microsoft Azure Solutions
  • Exam 70-534 – Architecting Microsoft Azure Solutions

You will also find many other certification exams closely related to it like Exam 70-473, Exam 70-475, Exam 70-744, Exam 70-413, Exam 70-414, Exam 70-246, Exam 70-247 related to public and private cloud administration and Windows server infrastructure administration, etc. to hone your skills.

DevelopmentInsightsSaaS

How Is It Possible To Create A PHP Development Environment In Androids?

on January 10, 2019

Google offers the open wide space for the web developers to let them provide their applications on Google play for public downloads. However, in the case of Apple, it is totally under firm guidelines and there are many requirements to meet. However, people, most of the developers’ think that only ios can help them to do the best kind of coding. But what if Apple comes with a lot of restrictions whereas Google offers ease? One should prefer the option that comes with ease. All there is a need is to create an atmosphere which let the PHP develop enabled in Android applications.

Moreover, we all are well known to the fact that there are approximately 5 million web developers who are well-versed with PHP and can work with PHP at the utmost level. So, why to not to give it a try to convert those web developers into potential Android app developers by enabling just creating the perfect environment for PHP development in Androids. Besides that, while creating the environment-friendly for PHP you ought to have the software that is helpful for the coding. For instance- Termux that lets you run all the terminals.

Here are the few ways to create your android app using PHP

1. Editing the text is the mainspring

The foremost step is to choose the best text editor as it is the foundation for the developer’s community. Although, there is a presence of many text editors but finding the best is no so hard. But the most popular two are the Emacs text and Vi/Vim, which are often competing with each other. However, the most preferred is Vim due to its existence for a long time in the market.

Not just the existence decides everything when it comes to making a choice for the text editor. The other impressive factors comprise of reliability gained by the years of excellence, the charityware, and it highly customizable and extensible. Besides, due to its numerous plugins, it is highly handy to edit the codes on the text editor.

What can be expected from a text editor? In addition by all these valid features, it is way better than Emacs, so the editor war is of no use when the best is known.  So, use Vim for the androids where it is called as Vim Touch.

2. A help for PHP developers-

It is undeniable that Java has been and still continues to be the most predominant language for development of Android applications. Even though there are various ports present for app building like Python, HTML, and Ruby etc, but the Java gives outstanding performances that are not reachable by other ports.

But when it comes to using PHP in android, it will facilitate the best PHP developers who are keen to bring PHP into androids. Besides, it can compete with the development environment of Microsoft Windows 8 that has multiple programming languages enabled to build apps. Therefore, it will be really intriguing to see developers having a PHP enabled environment for native apps in androids.

3. Use lamp as server configurations

For your information, the lamp stands for the Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP which comprises together and make the LAMP. The lamp is really popular among the PHP web applications and PHP developers. However, you must choose the appropriate server like one is Palapa web server. The main perk of such a server is it handles the weedy CPUs very well and keeps their functioning top-class. Besides, all the constituent part must be current and up to date for the best experience.  While considering Palapa as the desired server, you will get a web interface that can enable to find out various aspects of web server eventually. Basically, you ought to find the best server just like one Palapa that comes with all the latest versions.

The inclusion of PHP in android is a perk for the system

Android apps can be developed from various way outs like python, CSS but why not with PHP? This issue was previously addressed well and solved now by the inclusion of PHP has done it. Moreover, it becomes so easy for the developers to take the app development by setting up the android app with PHP.

So, simply replace your Macbook pro with the Android device when you don’t want to carry something expensive or maybe some extra burden. Thus, it can be said without any confusion that PHP inclusion in Android is good and it can facilitate those upcoming or already existing more than 5 millions app developers for the whole system.

Author Bio

Gravatar A/c: https://en.gravatar.com/sonalmehta9

Sonal Mehta is a Content Lead at SoluLab, a leading Enterprise Blockchain, Enterprise Mobile Apps and Web design and development company, started by ex-vice president of Goldman Sachs and ex-principal software architect of Citrix. SoluLab Inc provides full spectrum, 360-degree services to enterprises, startups and entrepreneurs helping turn their dreams into awesome software products.

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10 Tips for Choosing the Best WordPress Hosting Provider

on January 3, 2019

WordPress is an open source software that has caused an internet storm in the recent past due to security, robustness and its simplicity to set up and customize. WordPress has been beneficial for many content management websites, e-commerce stores, blogger websites and other website development needs. Businesses from many different industries have adopted the use of WordPress, including  Shopify, TechCrunch, Mashable and New York Times.

As often as businesses may be shifting to WordPress because of the earlier mentioned benefits, whenever it comes to WordPress hosting, each business takes a different route. Businesses have different needs, and there’s no one-fits-all solution for their WordPress hosting needs.

The WordPress Hosting business is very competitive. Despite the intense competition, some WordPress hosting companies will offer average service while others are remarkably good service. To settle for one may be daunting. In this article, you will find 10 tips you should consider when choosing the best WordPress hosting provider.

Security

Security is at the top of the list. Cybersecurity should be your first consideration when faced with a challenge of choosing a managed WordPress hosting provider. You will need to do a background check on their security history and protocols. A good WordPress hosting provider shouldn’t have a history of DDOS attacks and phishing. They should ensure they use the latest internet security measures, such as encryption and web application firewall.

For instance, CanSpace a Canadian WordPress hosting company offers web application firewall across its entire packages for WordPress hosting. The company is also GDPR compliant, meaning that any information you share with them cannot be shared with non-compliant third parties.

Support

Support is an important factor to consider. For any unexpected reason, your website may experience challenges or even go down temporarily. Since the servers aren’t physically near you, you may need the support of a WordPress host to troubleshoot the problem. The level of support that a host provider accords to a customer will matter at this moment. A 24/7 customer support, available in different languages, is highly recommended.

Additionally, your hosting provider customer support needs to be proficient in WordPress, and able to provide you with solutions within the shortest time possible. To gauge a WordPress host company’s level of support, check their help documentation.

Speed

Server performance has a direct impact on the speed of a website. A server with inadequate RAM space or that experiences a lot of load from other websites may affect the speed of a website that shares the same server. Slow speed has an impact on the page ranking of a website on search engines. A slow website doesn’t attract visitors, since they are prone to bypassing the content.

  

Photo by StockSnap on Pixabay

Scalability

The success stories of many businesses have similar properties, such as limited resources, few employees, minimal web traffic to business conglomerates, a high number of employees, high revenues and so on. Therefore, a WordPress hosting company should offer room for business growth by providing an allowance of infrastructure resources. Jankus from cmswire argues that it is important to have a partner that supports your growth.

Hosting features

The list of features that your WordPress hosting provider accords you plays a role on how convenient you will rate their service. You should consider the number of domains and email accounts with which they provide you. A WordPress hosting provider that gives you multiple email address and domain names would be preferred over one that gives you a limit. There are hosting companies that will give their customer a free domain name for a year, which is a good offer. Other things to consider are storage space, bandwidth and backup policies.

Type of hosting

In deciding the type of hosting you need, you will be required to choose between WordPress-managed hosting and self-managed hosting. The latter is when the host provider distances himself and only does the hosting for you, assuming that you will handle the setup side yourself. This means you will need to configure the mail server to FTP, handle the server’s operating system and much more.

With WordPress-managed hosting the host provider will handle every aspect of your WordPress from configuring your email server, backups, WordPress updates, server operating system and more. You will need to do very little when setting up WordPress. CanSpace WordPress managed hosting would best suit busy businesses that would like another entity to handle their WordPress hosting and businesses that are looking for secure WordPress hosts.

Uptime

Website downtimes are annoying, and you wouldn’t like your business to fall under that category of websites that have frequents downtimes. Therefore, your WordPress host should have robust checks and balances that ensure that there is no server downtime, and monitoring is on a 24/7 basis.

Reputation

A WordPress company that has been offering excellent services for a substantial time is most likely to have good reviews and a stellar reputation. Although this shouldn’t be the only parameter to consider, it at least sheds some light on which host provider you should trust. The level of customer satisfaction as manifested on independent online forums will give you a clue of what to expect. You can also look for Cloudways review and other hosting providers like Hostgator before making your purchase.

Pricing

In deciding which WordPress host provider you will choose, you may need to consider the pricing. “You get what you pay for” is a phrase that perfectly applies in the web hosting industry. It is so common for WordPress host companies to advertise cheap plans, only for clients to end up frustrated after subscribing to a plan. Avoid falling into the trap of cheap service, resulting in frequent downtimes, lack of support and other letdowns. Conduct a proper scrutiny of what is entailed in every price package.

Ease of installation

A WordPress host company that gives its users a one-click installation would be ideal for those who are new to WordPress. It gives users time to focus on other elements of the websites.

The factors mentioned above are important when assessing a service provider you might want to use for your WordPress hosting service. The true judgment of the level of service offered can be measured best by actually trying the service. Therefore, if a WordPress host offers a trial period, consider it before subscribing for their premium services.

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Earn Millions by Becoming an AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner. Here’s How

on December 26, 2018

When we talk about the leading cloud service provider, Amazon Web Services is an example that makes our mind tick.

These services act as building blocks to be used when building an application in the cloud. Since these services work in association with one another, cloud-based applications turn out to be organized and advanced.

The demand for AWS services has grown worldwide and, therefore, this realm has opened up new opportunities for cloud practitioners. If you really want to become an AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner, AWS Certifications are the best IT certification to scale one’s career. Though there are other cloud service providers, for example, Google Cloud Engine, Microsoft Azure, and Salesforce, AWS is the leading cloud service provider that involves a secure network of security.

AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Certification Exam is all that you need.

AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner is a certification exam for cloud enthusiasts who really want to unlock the potential of the cloud to global business. This exam is for practitioners who are aware of technicalities of cloud and can convey the complete discernment of AWS Cloud. This exam allows you to test how strong AWS concepts are so that you can plan on your career ahead. Moreover, the AWS CCP certification is recommended by cloud experts to excel in Big Data and Advanced Networking.

Eligibility Criteria

The right criterion is mentioned below to appear in the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Certification exam:

You should have a minimum of six months experience of AWS cloud concepts no matter in what field, for example, sales, managerial, technical, financial or purchasing, etc., you have been working in.

You should be aware of IT services and what the different ways are to deploy them to implement in the AWS Cloud platform.

Exam Pattern

You would answer two types of questions in the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Certification Exam. First, the paper would consist of multiple-choice questions which have one correct option and three incorrect options that can distract you and the second type of questions is the multiple-response question which involves more than one correct response out of five options.

You can even select more than one response but make sure that both answer to your question well. Focusing on unnecessary topics of AWS can become your downfall as you may choose distractor options and lose your potential marks. What you need to note here is you can guess answers, and no negative marking will be there; however, if you leave a question unanswered then deduction of marks will be there.

Exam Objectives

Clearing this exam highlights your skills at

  • Understanding of AWS cloud and its infrastructure.
  • Well aware of account management, billing, and pricing
  • Convey AWS cloud values
  • Follow and implement the basic principles of AWS Cloud Architecture
  • Understanding of shared security model, security and compliance concepts
  • Need for technical assistance or documentation
  • Can deploy in the AWS Cloud

AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Certification Subjects

The AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Certification exam comprises four subject areas you need to study. Each of the subject areas includes particular topics.

Here are the four domains that the exam consists of:

  1. Technology
  2. Billing & Pricing
  3. Cloud Concepts
  4. Security

1. Cloud Concepts

The knowledge of cloud concepts is critical to passing the Certified Cloud Practitioner Certification exam. 28% of the exam includes cloud questions related to

  1. High Availability
  2. Fault Tolerance
  3. Elasticity
  4. Scalability

2. Security

No matter whether you have worked on infrastructure or not, security is always the main concern. Therefore, the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner certification exam usually tests the knowledge of candidates by asking questions about security, acquiescence, and culpable management. About 24% of the exam involves questions about different security models, DDoS Protection, IAM- Managing users, Password policies, MFA, etc.

3. Technology

When it comes to security, the exam does not refrain from asking highly technical questions. Being an AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner, it is expected of you to have a handful of knowledge of EC2, RDS, SNS, ELB, S3, Lambda, etc. Do not skip this section as it covers 36 % of this certification exam.

4. Billing & Pricing

Though the section carries 12% of the content, you cannot afford to take it lightly as you will be answering questions related to the business application of AWS that includes Billing & Pricing. Furthermore, your competence in general account information, AWS support, billing, cost calculation will be tested. Keep your pool of knowledge widen enough to accommodate other exam domains, for example, AWS Cost Calculator service.

Final Words

Using shortcuts for clearing the exam won’t make sense in the long run. It’s not rocket science to pass this exam; however, your sincere approach is critical to fill gaps in knowledge. Tons of books and podcasts are available online if you are a beginner and want to dive deep into AWS Cloud. Make sure you acknowledge each subject and solve test papers to know the level of your preparation.

Good Luck!

Reference: https://aws.amazon.com/training/path-cloudpractitioner/

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Essential Social Media Metrics You cannot Afford to Ignore

on December 21, 2018

Statista predicts that the number of social media users will reach 3.02 billion by 2021. Therefore, not using these channels to connect with your audience may hurt your branding efforts on multiple levels. However, as the number of your competitors investing in social media marketing (SMM) keeps growing, just creating a Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter account for your business is not enough.

To rise above your rivals and improve your customer relationships, you need to set the right SMM metrics and track them regularly.

What are KPIs and why are They Important?

Do you know which social media marketing practices bring you the highest ROI? Statistics show that 90% of marketers don’t know what their most profitable SMM tactics are. This probably means that they either rely on the wrong KPIs or don’t track any KPIs at all.

Your social media KPIs (key performance indicators) are basically the values you set to monitor the performance of your campaigns. Focusing on engagement, conversions, and branding efforts, these metrics help you make wiser decisions, refine your tactics, and improve your ROI significantly.

Now, if you’ve hired a digital marketing agency to handle your social media campaigns, you’re golden. In this case, digital marketing professionals will track the right KPIs for you and build your campaign around the results they get. However, if you’re building your SMM campaign all by yourself, measuring its performance may be overwhelming for you. As there are numerous metrics to track, you first need to learn how to choose the ones that really matter.

This is the basis on which you will further build your success in the overcrowded social media landscape.

Brand-Related Metrics

When building your social media marketing campaign, your goal is to raise brand awareness and connect with the right people on a personal level. This is why you need to track brand-related KPIs, as they help you understand how strong your brand is.

1. Brand Awareness

Brand awareness tells you how many people know about you. To measure it, you first need to determine the timeframe within which you want to measure your brand awareness and determine the brand awareness metrics to track (mentions, shares, etc.) This is where social media monitoring tools can help you, as they let you find both @direct and indirect brand mentions.

2. The Reach of your Posts

This KPI shows how many users have seen your piece of content since it was published. As such, it heavily depends on the relevance of your post, as well as when it was published.

How to measure: (the reach of a post/the number of your followers) x 100

3. The Growth of your Following

This KPI tells you at what speed your follower base expands on social networks. It doesn’t focus on how many followers you attracted within a certain timeframe, but on how quickly you gained them.

How to measure: (net new followers/the total number of followers) x 100

Engagement Metrics

Relying on your brand reach is not enough. Having thousands of followers is purposeless if they don’t communicate with the content you share. To measure the true impact of your campaigns, you need to track your target audience’s engagement, too.

By engagement, many marketers mean likes, shares, and comments. However, these are vanity metrics that make you feel special about the performance of your posts but tell you nothing about how your followers engage with them. This is why you need to put them in a broader context by combining them with the following KPIs:

1. Applause Rate

Likes are important because they indicate how many of your followers have seen your post and liked it. However, monitoring the number of likes doesn’t tell you much about people’s engagement with your content. This is why you need to keep monitoring your applause rate that shows what percentage of your followers considers your posts relevant.

How to measure: (the number of likes per post/the total number of followers) x 100

2. Amplification Rate

Your social media shares tell you how many people consider your content valuable enough to share it with their network. However, what if one post performs significantly better than the other? What you can you conclude from these numbers, except that one is more popular? You’re right, nothing. This is why you need to track the amplification rate or the average number of shares per social media post.

How to measure: (the number of shares per post/the total number of followers) x 100

3. Virality Rate

What is better- a post with 15,000 likes but poor virality rate or a post with fewer likes but a higher virality rate? The latter one, of course. Precisely because of that, you need to measure the virality rate. This metric shows you the number of users that shared your post, compared to the number of its unique views.

How to measure: (the number of shares/ the number of impressions) x 100

Conversion Metrics

Calculating the engagement metrics is only half the equation. The other half is to understand how many of your followers are eager to convert. This is what conversion metrics are for. They are critical for the performance of your campaign, as they directly indicate the effectiveness of your social media engagement.

4. Social Media Conversion Rate

This metric represents the total number of conversions arriving from social networks. It helps you understand the effectiveness of your posts and see how well your social media content resonates with your target audience.

How to measure: (social media conversions/the total sum of conversions) x 100

5. Click-Through Rate

The click-through rate (CTR) shows you how often users hit the CTA link in your posts. Similarly to other conversion metrics, its goal is to show you whether you’re targeting the right audiences and whether your posts resonate with them.

How to measure: (the number of clicks on a post/ the number of impressions) x 100

6. Bounce Rate

Calculating the CTR alone is not enough. You need to know what happens once a user lands on the page. And, this is where your bounce rate steps in. The bounce rate represents the percentage of visitors that click on the link in your social media post, land on the page, and leave it immediately, before taking any further action. If your social media bounce rates are high, this only means that you’re either targeting the wrong audience or that your landing page doesn’t meet their expectations.

How to measure: This is where Google Analytics can help. Choose Channels> All Traffic> Bounce Rate and the tool will rank your digital marketing channels by their bounce rate.

Over to You

Boosting your presence in the competitive social media sphere doesn’t happen overnight. To succeed, you need to choose the right metrics and track them regularly to measure the performance of your strategy. This will help you make wiser decisions and take your strategy to the next level.

What social media marketing KPIs do you track?

DevelopmentInsightsMartech

Most Notable SEO Trends That We Will See in 2019

on December 20, 2018

In the present day, it’s impossible to imagine a business without a strong online presence. Now, the term strong online presence is, in this day and age, almost synonymous with a strong search engine rank. Sure, social media presence also plays a huge role in one’s brand presence, yet, a potential customer is still more likely to look you up in a regular Google search than to try and find you on Facebook or even LinkedIn. With that in mind and without further ado, it’s important that you keep up with your SEO efforts in 2019, as well and there are several suggestions you need to take into consideration.

1. Featured snippets

Google rank and position in search engines are a huge deal for users, yet, getting positioned on featured snippets is an even bigger deal. This is due to the fact that featured snippets appear above the first organic search results, thus occupying the so-called Position 0. In other words, in theory, it’s even better to get on featured snippets than to get the position one, even though these two things aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive (they often go hand in hand).

As for getting there, there are several things you need to know. For instance, instead of going with the generic keyword phrases, you need to make keywords that start with traditional question formats like “How to”, “What is” and “How to do”. This is the most common way in which people ask questions, so, you need to format your content in this way.

The problem with this lies in the issue of competitiveness, due to the fact that the majority of your niche might aim to do the same. Nonetheless, with the right strategy and methodology, you can get ahead of them. For instance, you can go to a popular Q&A portal for your industry and the chances are that people there ask the same question over and over again. In this scenario, it isn’t that hard to imagine them repeating this question on google. This is just one hint that could put you well ahead of your competition.

2. Video marketing

The next thing you might have noticed recently is the fact that Google tends to feature more and more videos in its search results. Since June, there’s a three-video display that provides you with one more way to get through to your audience. In other words, now you have one more reason to commit to a video marketing and get your content to the top. This, paired with a traditional SEO and a position in Google Snippets can truly put you at the head of the industry. This will increase your traffic and give your brand some much-needed legitimacy.

In order to get there, you need to learn a thing or two about the YouTube SEO. As always, the starting point needs to be keyword research. Once you’re done with this, you need to ensure that people who actually click on the video decide to stay. For this, you need an attention-grabbing thumbnail and high-retention content. As soon as this is over, you can continue with YouTube on-page optimization. We’re talking about title, tags and similar metadata. Lastly, you need to promote your content on various platforms.

3. White label SEO

Another trend that will shake the world of SEO to the core is the growing importance of the phenomenon of white label SEO. You see, even though some people may boast with the ability to handle their SEO as a DIY project, the truth is that the effectiveness of this project never comes even close in quality to what an expert could achieve. In fact, with Google adjusting to the existence of SEO, the quality standards are getting higher and higher. This means that even the most basic of SEO projects now require a great number of skilled specialists. The concept of white label allows several minor companies to team up in order to create a holistic set of SEO services.

In fact, some companies like SEO Reseller Hub, specialize in white label services and are ready and willing to act as silent partners. This means that they have a primary deal with another SEO company for which they do a part of SEO services, yet, have no contact with the actual client. The client in question doesn’t even have to know that they’re involved in the process. Earlier on, we’ve talked about DIY SEO. Well, even individuals can use these services and let the white label SEO company handle some aspects that they’re ill-equipped to undertake on their own.

4. Producing quality content

This is the one trend that’s been consistently relevant for years and years and such a thing is unlikely to change in 2019 either. Namely, producing quality content is something that’s incredibly important for your SEO, seeing as how it boosts brand loyalty, duration of visit and your online presence, in general.

The problem with this particular tip lies in the fact that there’s no shortcut around it. You need to spend more time writing, scripting and editing, self-improve, test, and research your audience. You need to practice using storytelling techniques in content creation and find a way to put your audience in focus. Moreover, you need to find a way to make your content provide value to your audience. Sometimes, it’s the fact that they learn something new. At other times, it provides valuable information on the product they intend to buy/service they intend to use (review). Then, sometimes it’s all about creating an entertaining piece of content for the amusement of your audience.

In conclusion

While the above-discussed list doesn’t really have anything completely new to it, however, search engines are evolving and changing every single year. This is something that every SEO expert has to get accustomed to, sooner or later. Having experience from previous years will give you a head start, yet, there’s still a lot of new features and factors to get accustomed to. Nonetheless, if you’ve followed 2018 SEO trends, so far, the adjustment process shouldn’t be that hard.

InsightsSaaS

List Of The Most Desirable Apps For 2019

on December 17, 2018

You require a certain degree of seriousness before you decide to start your mobile business application. If you can amass it, then the time is perfectly ripe to begin, as app development offers profound business opportunities. According to analyses conducted by relevant bodies, the sales of smartphones are increasing day by day. It further explains that the number of people involving in digital interactions on a regular basis is also increasing continuously. However, before contacting some of the best app development organizations, you have to think about the type of application that will bring in profits and revenue, while engaging more users in a short period.

  1. Transportation applications

Traveling is essentiality that people want to be sure of before stepping out of the house. Your mobile app development company in India can help users decide on the right public transportation mode. The selection can be according to convenience, economy or time-saving facilities. Offline services attract more users than online ones, and you can exploit that feature to draw in customers.

 

  1. Dating applications

Researches are pointing out that the smartphone is the reason behind people becoming lonely. With a mobile application that allows a user to communicate with likeminded and interesting people, your business can race past others in no time. Your app can import users from some of the existing media platforms via a system that lets two people search out partners based on compatibility.

 

  1. Task management applications

If there is an application which users can utilize to manage tasks and make plans, then it allows the user to maintain motivational levels. A unique app like this one will remind the user of daily chores like setting up alarms, informing about housework, examinations, workouts, and others.

Source – Pixabay

 

  1. Food delivery applications

When guests are only a few kilometers away from the doorstep, preparing meals in time gets tough. That is why food delivery apps are so much in demand these days. If you can create an application for grub delivery, then there is a possibility of it achieving success in an instant. Users always appreciate applications that ensure fast delivery of food from renowned and favored restaurants.

 

  1. Job hunting applications

A rather unusual idea for an app but has the potential to succeed, job search applications are essential in today’s time. It will be a marketplace where employers and job seekers can come face-to-face. Go to an application developing agency for the creation of this dream smartphone application. Entrepreneurs also use online platforms to hire full-timers or freelancers.

Source – Pixabay

 

  1. Emergency applications

A sudden and unpredictable emergency can ruin a day at any time. So, a disaster, terror or emergency warning app can be a brilliant idea. There are already multiple apps regarding coverage of unforeseen and unfavorable situations. These apps have an alert function which prepares you to face a disaster or inform relatives and loved ones. Such an application can also notify the police, fire departments, hospitals, and others.

 

  1. Gifting applications

The busy and hectic life of today doesn’t allow a person time for purchasing gifts for loved ones. An application can let you send flowers, gift cards, toys and other goodies with a single touch. It will be quite a surprise for the recipient or receiving a gift without any prior information. A user can connect to the application and select gifts, flower bouquets, chocolates, and other special items.

 

  1. Reservation applications

You aren’t always in a mood to go out for dinner, and when you have it, you can’t afford to spoil it. Most reputable and renowned restaurants remain full almost every day, and prior reservations are the only way to grab a bite. An app which allows a user to book a table with multiple options can be successful in no time. It is one such app that will have a design to meet necessities of unexpected dinner outings.

 

  1. Holiday planning applications

Now that the internet is bestowing uninterrupted knowledge and information, many people utilize holidays by planning trips. You can think about app developers to prepare an application for you that will let a user plan vacations. Such an application can contain reliable audio information that anyone can listen to. It can also have facilities like searching for restaurants, bars, taxis, buses entertainment modes, etc.

 

  1. Fitness applications

As mentioned before, the internet is the all-knowing digital partner of everybody currently. As a result, many people are finding out the pros of fitness and good health. Just as it is difficult to go to a shop to purchase a gift, finding out time to visit gyms is also negligible. For that reason, fitness applications of today are one of the favorite choices of youngsters. These apps encourage users to pursue goals of fitness, health or bodybuilding.

 

  1. VR/AR applications

There are mobile apps that companies develop based on a VR system. A user can click a picture of the interior that will undergo revamping and then compare the different objects, colors, backgrounds, or for adding an amenity like furniture. With an AR app, a user can scan a room with a smartphone camera and place the selected items to decide on the style and compatibility.

Source – Pixabay

 

Best ideas

Given above are some of the best ideas for applications in the upcoming year. As mentioned before, more and more people are relying on smartphones with every passing second. It is quite understandable that a significant number of users will join in the squad in the upcoming years. For people who find mobile applications puzzling, this article should clear everything up. After all, without knowledge of different application types, it will be almost impossible to start the business you wish to open. This topic will expand your understanding of the multitudes of applications that are flooding the smartphones of users. You also have to consider going for such applications that the customers are currently seeking. The wrong one can lead to a complete waste of your investment.

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