How can we reposition SEO as being the foundation of a good website, and not something you can just turn on and forget? Learn more about how to communicate the value of SEO beyond traffic and leads.

The post The Value of SEO Beyond Traffic and Leads — Whiteboard Friday appeared first on ProdSens.live.

Having a portfolio can be a nice way to showcase your work and projects to the world. It can be a great way to show off your skills and experience to potential employers or clients. In this article, we will learn how to create a portfolio website using GitHub Pages from creating to deploying along with a custom domain.

What is GitHub Pages?

GitHub Pages is a static site hosting service that allows you to host your website directly from your GitHub repository. It is a great way to host your personal, organization, or project pages directly from a GitHub repository.

Prerequisites

Before we get started, you will need the following:

• A GitHub account
• A code editor
• A custom domain (optional)

Step 1: Create a new repository

The first step is to create a new repository on GitHub. To do this, log in to your GitHub account and click on the “New” button in the top right corner of the screen. Give your repository a name, such as portfolio, and click on the “Create repository” button.

Step 2: Creating the website

Start by creating a new folder on your computer to store your website files. You can name this folder portfolio or any other name you prefer. Open this folder in your code editor and create an index.html file in it.

mkdir portfolio
cd portfolio
touch index.html

Next, add some content to the index.html file. You can use the following code as a starting point:

 lang="en">

     charset="UTF-8">
     name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
    
     rel="stylesheet" href="styles.css"> 


    

        
Welcome to My Portfolio
    
    

        
About Me
        
Introduce yourself here.
    
    

        
Projects
        
Showcase your projects here.
    

Also, let’s add some styling to the website by creating a styles.css file in the repository. Create a new file called styles.css and add the following code:

body {
    font-family: Arial, sans-serif;
    margin: 0;
    padding: 0;
    background-color: #f4f4f4;
}

header {
    background-color: #333;
    color: white;
    text-align: center;
    padding: 1em 0;
}

section {
    margin: 2em;
    padding: 1em;
    background-color: white;
    border-radius: 5px;
    box-shadow: 0 0 10px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1);
}

This code creates a simple HTML file with a header, an about me section, and a projects section. It also links to a CSS file that styles the website. You can customize this code to add your own content and styling. Or you can use a template from a site like HTML5 UP or Start Bootstrap to get started.

Or if you prefer to use a framework, you can do the same, and you can follow my article on Deploying React App to GitHub Pages to deploy your React app to GitHub Pages.

We will also be configuring a custom domain for our portfolio which I have not covered in my previous article. If you’re here to learn about custom domains, it will be covered in the next steps.

Step 3: Commit and push your changes

Once you have created the index.html file, commit your changes to the gh-pages branch. You can do this by clicking on the “Commit changes” button and entering a commit message, such as “Add index.html file”. Click on the “Commit changes” button to commit your changes.

git add .
git commit -m "Initial commit"
git remote add origin 
git push -u origin main

Step 4: Create a gh-pages branch

Next, create a new branch called gh-pages in your repository. You can do this by running the following command in your terminal:

git checkout -b gh-pages
git push origin gh-pages

Step 5: Enable GitHub Pages

The next step is to enable GitHub Pages for your repository. To do this, go to the “Settings” tab of your repository and scroll down to the “GitHub Pages” section. Under “Source”, select the gh-pages branch and click on the “Save” button.

Step 6: Access your portfolio

Once you have enabled GitHub Pages, you can access your portfolio by going to https://.github.io/, where is your GitHub username and is the name of your repository. For example, if your username is john and your repository is portfolio, you can access your portfolio at https://john.github.io/portfolio.

And that’s it! You have successfully created a portfolio website using GitHub Pages. You can now customize your website further by adding more content, styling, and features.

Step 7: Configuring a custom domain

Sending out a GitHub Pages link is not very professional. You can configure a custom domain for your portfolio to make it look more professional.

The first step is to purchase a domain name from any domain registrar of your choice. Once you have purchased a domain name, you can configure it to point to your GitHub Pages website by following these steps:

I have purchased a domain geniethetool.xyz from Namecheap. So I will be using this domain for the configuration.

• Go to the “Settings” tab of your repository and scroll down to the “GitHub Pages” section.

• Under “Custom domain”, enter your custom domain name (e.g., geniethetool.xyz in my case) and click on the “Save” button.

After doing this, you should see a failed DNS configuration message. This is because we need to configure the DNS settings for our domain to point to GitHub Pages.

• Next, go to your domain registrar’s website and log in to your account.

• Find the DNS settings for your domain and add the following A records:

185.199.108.153
185.199.109.153
185.199.110.153
185.199.111.153

These are the IP addresses for GitHub Pages. You can find the latest IP addresses on the GitHub Docs.

To create AAAA records for IPv6 addresses, you can use the following:

2606:50c0:8000::153
2606:50c0:8001::153
2606:50c0:8002::153
2606:50c0:8003::153

Also, let’s add a CNAME record for the www subdomain:

The www subdomain should point to .github.io, where is your GitHub username. For example, if your username is john, the www subdomain should point to john.github.io.

Finally, these are the DNS records I added for my domain:

• Save the changes and wait for the DNS changes to propagate. This can take up to 24 hours.

• Once the DNS changes have propagated, you should see a success message in the “GitHub Pages” section of your repository settings.

Github pages also provides a SSL certificate for your custom domain. You can enable it by checking the “Enforce HTTPS” option in the “GitHub Pages” section.

Congratulations! You have successfully configured a custom domain for your portfolio website. You can now share your portfolio with the world using your custom domain. Now when you visit your custom domain, you should see something like this if you followed along:

As you can see, the custom domain geniethetool.xyz is now pointing to the GitHub Pages website. You can now share your portfolio with the world using your custom domain.

Conclusion

In this article, we learned how to create a portfolio website using GitHub Pages from creating to deploying along with a custom domain. Having a portfolio can be a great way to showcase your work and projects to the world. I hope you found this article helpful and that you are now ready to create your own portfolio website.

The post Create your portfolio with GitHub Pages appeared first on ProdSens.live.

So, we’ve spent 5 months coding what we think are some pretty neat code starters. We’ve got 8 of them, open-source, responsive, and yes, they’re all free. They’re for Nuxt, Gatsby, and Next.js. Do the math; that’s like 24 starters, give or take.

Styled with Tailwind CSS because, well, why not? Use them for whatever you want – private projects, commercial work, or just to poke around.

Here’s the deal:
They’re free. No catch.
Open-source, because we believe in that sort of thing.
Tailwind CSS for styling – you know it, you (probably) love it.
Use them for whatever – we’re not your boss.

Got the urge to show some appreciation? A star on the repo would be cool.
https://github.com/bcms/starters

Happy coding, or whatever.

The post Save these 24 free website code starters appeared first on ProdSens.live.

In an interview, Amritha Arun Babu, AI/ML Product Leader at Amazon, delves into the fundamental principles propelling product leadership at the e-commerce giant. From prioritizing user expectations to navigating the intricacies of data quality in AI development, Amritha shares invaluable insights and delves into future trends that will shape the product management landscape. Read more »

The post Building great products through feedback and psychology: Amritha Arun Babu (Product Leader, Amazon) appeared first on Mind the Product.

The post Building great products through feedback and psychology: Amritha Arun Babu (Product Leader, Amazon) appeared first on ProdSens.live.

Working in technology for over three decades, I have found myself in a position of getting up to speed on something new at least 100 times. For about half of my career, I have worked in a consulting role, which is where I faced the challenge of understanding a new project the most.

Over time, I established a personal goal to be productive on a new project in half the time it took for the average team member. I often called this the time to first commit or TTFC. The problem with my approach to setting a TTFC record was the unexpected levels of stress that I endured in those time periods. Family members and friends always knew when I was in the early stages of a brand-new project.

At the time, however, since I always wanted to provide my clients with the best value for the rate they agreed to pay for my services, there really wasn’t any other option.

Recently, I discovered Unblocked … which provides the possibility to crush TTFCs I had set on past projects.

About Unblocked

Unblocked, which is still in beta, at the time of this writing, is focused on removing the mysteries in your code. The AI platform trains on all the information about your project and then allows you to ask questions and get answers about your project and codebase. 

It absorbs threads stored within instant messaging, pull requests, source code, and bugs/stories/tasks within project manager software. Even project information stored in content collaboration solutions can be consumed by Unblocked.

Information from these various sources is then cataloged into a secured repository owned and maintained by Unblocked. From there, a simple user interface allows you to ask questions…and get answers fast… in a human-readable format.

Use Case: The Service Owned By No One

The idea of taking ownership of a service or solution that is owned by no one has become quite common as API adoption has skyrocketed. Services can be initialized to meet a shared need by contributors from various groups within the organization. 

This can be an effective approach to solve short-term problems, however, when there is no true service owner, the following long-term challenges can occur:

• Vulnerability mitigation – who is going to address vulnerabilities as they surface?

• Bug fixes and enhancements – who is going to fix or further extend the service?

• Tooling updates – who will handle larger scale migrations, like a change in CI/CD tooling?

• Supportability – who is responsible for answering general questions posed by service consumers?

I ran into these exact issues recently, because my team inherited a service that was effectively owned by no one. In fact, there were features within the service that had very little documentation, except the source code itself.

The challenge for our team was that a bug existed within the original source code and we weren’t sure what the service was supposed to be doing. Efforts to scan completed tickets in Jira or even Confluence pages would result in incomplete and incorrect information.

I attempted to perform searches against the Slack instant messaging service, but it appeared that the chat history around these concepts had long since been removed as a part of corporate retention policies.

Getting Started with Unblocked

The Unblocked platform can be used to reduce an engineer’s TTFC by simply selecting the source code management system they wish to use:

After selecting which source code repositories you wish to use, you have the opportunity to add integrations with Slack and Jira as shown below:

Additional integrations can be configured from the Unblocked dashboard:

• Confluence

• Linear

• Notion

• Stack Overflow

After setup, Unblocked begins the data ingestion and process phase. The amount of time required to complete this step is largely dependent on the amount of data that needs to be analyzed.

At this point, one of the following client platforms can be prepared for use:

• Unblocked Client for macOS

• Unblocked IDE Plug-in for Visual Studio Code

• Unblocked IDE Plug-in for any JetBrains IDE (IntelliJ, PyCharm, and so on)

There is also a web dashboard that can be accessed via a standard web browser.

Where Unblocked Provides Value

I decided to use the web dashboard. After completing the data ingestion and processing phase, I decided to see what would happen if I asked Unblocked “How does the front end communicate with the back end?”

Below is how the interaction appeared:

When I clicked the block-patterns.php file, I was taken directly to the file within the connected GitHub repository.

Diving a little deeper, I wanted to understand what endpoints are available in the backend.

This time I was provided the result from an answer that had been asked 11 days earlier. What is really nice is that the /docs URI was also provided, saving me more time in getting up to speed.

I also wanted to understand what changes had been made to the backend recently. I was impressed by the response Unblocked provided:

For this answer, there were five total references included in the response. Let’s take a look at several of these references.

Clicking the first reference provided information from Github:

The second reference provided the ability to download Markdown files from the Git source code management:

The experience was quite impressive.

By asking a few simple questions, I was able to make huge progress in understanding a service that is completely new to me in a matter of minutes.

Conclusion

The “service owned by no one” scenario is more common now than at any other point in my 30+ year career in technology. The stress of having issues to understand and fix — without any documentation or service owner expertise — does not promote a healthy and productive work environment.

My readers may recall that I have been focused on the following mission statement, which I feel can apply to any IT professional:

“Focus your time on delivering features/functionality that extends the value of your intellectual property. Leverage frameworks, products, and services for everything else.”

– J. Vester

Unblocked supports my personal mission statement by giving software engineers an opportunity to be productive quickly. The platform relies on a simple interface and AI-based process to do the hard work for you, allowing you to remain focused on meeting your current objectives.

By asking a few simple questions, I was able to gain valuable information about the solutions connected to Unblocked. In a world where it can be difficult to find a subject matter expert, this is a game changer — especially from a TTFC perspective.

While updating my IntelliJ IDEA client I realized there is even an Unblocked plug-in that I could have utilized just as easily too! The same good news applies to users of Visual Studio Code. This functionality allows engineers to pose questions to Unblocked without leaving their IDE.

The best part is that Unblocked is currently in an open beta, which means it is 100% free to use. You can get started by clicking here. Take Unblocked for a test drive and see how it holds up for your use case.

I am super interested in hearing about your results in the comments section.

Have a really great day!

The post Using Unblocked to Fix a Service That Nobody Owns appeared first on ProdSens.live.

Like many others, I get dozens of emails a day. 

If the subject line’s irrelevant to my interests, I’m scrolling by and ignoring it. Or, worse, I might click on an email and hit the unsubscribe button after deciding it wasn’t worth my time.

If you’re a marketer, you want to avoid scrolling and unsubscribes at all costs. If your email goes unopened because your messaging missed your target, was the content you created within it even worth it?

To effectively engage and convert potential customers, you need to leverage behavioral targeting tools that enable you to deliver personalized and relevant messaging to your unique audience segments. 

Fortunately, there’s a wide range of tools available that can help you meet your audiences where they are. Below, we’ll explore some of the top behavioral targeting tools that can level up your marketing strategy.

Top Behavioral Targeting Tools

HubSpot Behavioral Targeting

Get started with HubSpot Behavioral Targeting

With HubSpot Behavioral Targeting, you’ll be able to meet prospects where they are by learning about how they engage with your website and content. 

As a content marketer, my team and I use it to create segmented lists based on persona and level of engagement with our brand or site. These lists often help us determine how to personalize site content, tailor our marketing emails, and run automated campaigns.

Beyond this, the tool helps our broader team identify, learn from, and respond to high-intent behaviors like web visits, email interactions, and form submissions.

You can also leverage contact details from your CRM, personalizing messages using contacts’ name, company, and role. Lastly, you can set up custom triggers, like automatically send a follow-up email after a visitor fills out a form. 

Pricing: Part of Marketing Hub, which offers A free version, Starter at $45/month, Professional at $800/month, and Enterprise at $3,600/month. 

Omnisend

Source

With Omnisend, you can organize your users into groups based on their engagement, interests, and activities. Once you’ve done so, you can monitor how users interact with your promotional campaigns by tracking if they performed actions like clicks or likes. You can also keep tabs on who opens your emails and messages, and implement web tracking on your website.

Omnisend also allows you to segment your contacts based on their shopping behavior. For example, I could use the tool to find out what products they’re buying  from me, or if they’ve bought specific items, types, or quantities of products. Like other tools on this list, you can also segment customers  based on their web activity to understand how they navigate your website – or whether they just viewed or fully-explored its pages or product listings.

Like HubSpot, Omnisend also lets you segment contacts based on custom events that you create or upload. These events can be tailored to your specific needs, covering anything from shoe size to car model, and more.

Pricing: Free version, Standard at $16/month, and Pro at $59/month.

Klaviyo

Source

Klaviyo allows you to automate and set triggers for personalized messages, including emails, SMS, and social media, based on customer behavior. 

Whether it’s welcome messages, abandoned cart reminders, or cross-sell campaigns, you can customize your messaging based on specific conditions like order history, channel preference, or cart value.

By leveraging customer data such as location proximity and average order value, you can also create segmented experiences that can be used in various marketing initiatives, including flows, campaigns, paid ads, and sign-up forms. 

Additionally, Klaviyo lets you create one-time sends for special events like holidays, product launches, or sales.

Pricing: Free version available. Email starting at $45/month and Email and SMS starting at $60/month.

Segment

Source

With Segment, a customer data platform, you can deliver personalized messages based on audience, time, channel, and behavior; view real-time customer profiles; and optimize your offers based on how likely someone is to convert.

Pricing: Free version available. Team at $120/month and custom pricing for Business.

Get Started With Behavioral Targeting

As consumers and technology become increasingly sophisticated, we expect personalized experiences. Leveraging behavioral targeting tools is no longer an option but a necessity – especially if you want to catch my eye during an endless email inbox scroll. 

The ability to precisely segment your audience based on their behaviors and interests allows you to deliver targeted messaging that resonates with, engages, and – ultimately – converts individuals.

Get started with Hubspot Behavioral Targeting.

The post Top Behavioral Targeting Tools Marketers Should Know About appeared first on ProdSens.live.

Facebook is home to nearly 2 billion monthly active users, so it’s safe to say that having a compelling Facebook Business Page is essential for any company looking to bolster its online presence. It should be easy enough, right? Just slap together a photo and a couple of posts and expect the leads and customers to roll in, right?

Not quite.

If you’re not creating a Facebook Page with a comprehensive strategy to get noticed, Liked, and engaged, the chances of generating leads and customers from it are slim.

To help you out, we created a helpful guide for creating your Facebook Business Page, and we compiled the tips below to ensure your page takes full advantage of everything Facebook marketing offers.

Listen to an audio summary of this post:

How to Design a Facebook Business Page

1. Create your page.

A Facebook Business Page isn’t a user account like your personal page. It’s an asset you manage from a personal Facebook user account as a Page Administrator.

To create a Facebook Business Page, you need to:

• Choose a personal Facebook account from which you’ll create your Facebook Business Page. If you don’t have one, you’ll need to create one.
  • You may want to create a new Facebook account with your work email address to keep things separate, but this isn’t required.
• Click the See all button on the left sidebar menu and then select Page from the Create menu that appears on the right.

2. Plug in your details.

On the next page, enter some basic information about your business.

• Page name: The name of your business.
• Category: The category that best describes your business. Facebook has hundreds of options, so start typing, and it will auto-populate with your business type/industry.
• Bio: Keep it short and sweet. Enter a sentence or two about who you are, what you do, and what you stand for.

Now, it’s time to make it official. Click Create Page. Congrats! You are the proud owner of a Facebook Business Page.

Next, you’ll need to enter some additional information about your business, such as:

• Website
• Phone Number
• Email Address
• Hours
• Location

Pro tip: Check out your page’s mobile view to ensure everything looks correct when accessing your page via phone.

As of 2023, 98.5% of Facebook users access the site via mobile, and 81.8% exclusively use their phones to browse the social media site. So, it’s safe to say that a mobile-conscious approach is warranted.

3. Add your profile pic and cover photo.

Now’s the time to add some style to your page with high-resolution photos that represent your brand.

• Your profile picture should include some iteration of your logo.
• Your cover photo can be more stylized, but consider using a colorful background that is consistent with your brand style guide.

We recommend using the PNG format for profile pictures and cover photos that include text/logos.

Recommended image sizes:

• Profile picture: At least 170px x 170px
• Cover photo: 851px x 315px

4. Add an action button.

An action button is a custom call-to-action (CTA) that appears below your cover photo. You can set it to direct visitors to a landing page, book an appointment, or contact you directly (and more).

A thoughtfully selected action button can help drive conversion from your Facebook Business Page. Check out the video above or the steps below to learn how to add one:

• From your Page, click the button with a dash, then click Add Page Button.
• Select a button from the list of options, then click Next.
• Follow the instructions on the screen and click Save.

5. Put on the finishing touches.

At this point, you’re almost done creating your business page and ready to start churning out engaging posts. However, there are a few final touches we recommend taking advantage of.

Customize your tabs

• To manage tabs, navigate to your page management dashboard and select More > Manage Sections.
• Choose the most relevant tabs to display on your Facebook page, depending on your industry.
• For example, you can choose to hide or show reviews or hide tabs such as “Music,” “Sports,” and “Check-ins,” which may not be necessary for a business page.

Create a custom URL

• A custom URL will make your Facebook page appear much more legitimate. Your customers would rather see facebook.com/yourbusiness than facebook.com/page18376657 when they visit your page.
• Set your custom URL by navigating to General Page Settings and clicking Edit next to Username.

Pin a Post

• Choose a post you want to remain at the top of your page and pin it. It can be an exclusive offer, a new product announcement, or a welcome message to new visitors.
• Pin a post by clicking the pin icon on the post you want to pin.

If you’ve followed the above steps, you’re ready to hit the ground running and cultivate an engaging Facebook Business Page that resonates with your audience and drives sales.

However, the work doesn’t stop there. You need to keep the ball rolling by posting regularly. If you’re unsure where to start, check out our 41 Facebook Post Ideas for Businesses guide.

15 Tips for an Engaging Facebook Business Page

So you’ve got your Facebook Business Page up and running, but what now? We have some tips to help you get the most out of your page. Check out 15 tips for an engaging Facebook Business Page below.

1. Create engaging graphics.

Image Source

Your business page should be clean, stylish, and consistent with your brand style guide. However, that doesn’t mean you need a full-time designer to churn out those assets.

Use tools like Canva to easily create custom graphics for your posts, cover photos, and profile pics using Canva’s templates and free design assets. Canva features templates for every type of social media post you can imagine, so you never have to worry about choosing the correct dimensions.

2. Assign page roles.

It takes a village to manage a Facebook Business Page. That’s what they say, right?

If you work with a team, take advantage of page roles to assign users different access levels to your page so your team can help out without stepping on one another’s toes.

As the page creator, you’ll be the admin, meaning you have full access to everything about your page. As the admin, you can create new admins and users with other access levels. Page roles include:

3. Integrate your YouTube channel.

People love watching videos on social media, and that includes your customers. If you have a YouTube channel (which we recommend) you can integrate it directly into your Facebook page by following the steps in the video above.

Linking your YouTube to your Facebook page allows you to easily share your YouTube video content with your followers on Facebook for maximal engagement.

4. Post consistently.

Consistency is key when it comes to posting on Facebook (and social media in general). Make the most of your Facebook page by adhering to a consistent posting schedule.

For B2B brands, we recommend 4-6 times a week, while every day is optimal for B2C brands. Consistently posting will improve your standing in the eyes of Facebook’s algorithm, getting your posts in front of more customers for increased engagement.

5. Promote your page.

For a few dollars, you can use Facebook’s advertising tools to run ads on the platform promoting your page and get it in front of new eyeballs.

Click the Promote button on your page, and Facebook will guide you in creating an ad that matches your goals.

Choose your goal, plug in your assets, and you’re off to the races!

6. Go Live.

You can use Facebook Live to engage with your audience in real time by broadcasting live video directly from your Facebook Business Page. When going live from your page, prioritize building an authentic connection with your audience and bolstering your brand story.

You can run a Q&A session, introduce team members, tour your facilities, or run a live giveaway contest. The sky’s the limit! Get creative and go live with a specific goal to enhance your customer engagement.

7. Experiment with different post formats.

Facebook offers a plethora of post formats beyond just photos and videos. You can share polls, stories, live videos, events, links, and questions.

Video is still the dominant post format, but experiment with all post types and see what resonates most with your audience. Facebook will reward you for thoroughly using all its tools by serving your posts to more people.

8. Collaborate with influencers.

Influencer marketing is an essential part of today’s social media landscape.

Of Gen Z and Millennials, 72% follow influencers on social media, so collaborating with word-of-mouth mavens is a safe bet for driving traffic to your Facebook page by introducing your company to a new audience.

When working with influencers, the key is to create relatable content and integrate branding subtly in order to foster an authentic connection with people interacting with your brand.

9. Post when your customers are online.

We know that posting consistently is important, but the time of day you post is also essential. On average, the best times to post on Facebook across industries are in the evening and mid-to-late afternoon, specifically between 6-9 p.m. and 12-3 p.m.

You want to avoid times when customers are less likely to be online, such as early morning and late night hours.

That being said, you should view your Facebook Page Insights to learn valuable information about how people engage with your page.

Using this data, you can make informed decisions on when to post based on when your customers are typically online and engaged with your page.

10. Optimize your videos to play without sound.

Image Source

When was the last time you were browsing Facebook and clicked on a video to expand it and hear the audio? Probably not recently, and definitely not when you’re in a public space like the train or waiting in line for lunch.

86% of Facebook videos are viewed without sound, so when creating video content for your page, optimize it for silent playback by using text, subtitles, and strong, descriptive visuals that get the point of your content across without relying on audio.

Check out our guide on optimizing silent videos on Facebook.

11. Incorporate user-generated content.

Image Source

When someone tags your page or product in a post, you can send them a request to feature their content on your page. This is referred to as User-Generated Content (UGC).

UGC helps foster a sense of authenticity and social proof. Showing customers that other people are enjoying your business makes them want to enjoy it too.

You don’t just have to sit around and wait for people to post about your product, though. Try incentivizing your customers to generate UGC by offering discounts or running a giveaway, for example.

12. Engage with your audience.

If you want your customers to engage with your Facebook page, encourage them to do so by engaging with them right back. When your customers leave comments on your posts, be sure to reply from your business account and be as friendly and helpful as possible.

Maybe you show gratitude and thank customers for enjoying your product or offer technical support from the comments. In any case, engaging with your customers is key is fostering a sense of loyalty and community on your Facebook Business Page.

13. Analyze Page Insights.

Facebook Insights is an analytics dashboard where you can track user behavior and post performance on your Facebook Business Page.

Take advantage of this dashboard to measure your success and determine areas of your page that need some TLC. If you consistently leverage the data in Page Insights, you can create better content and generate more revenue for your brand.

14. Connect your Instagram.

Only 0.1% of Instagram users are unique to the platform, meaning most Instagram users are on Facebook as well.

If you have an Instagram for your business, we recommend connecting it to your Facebook Business Page so you can crosspost your pics and stories from IG directly to Facebook. Doing so ensures consistent content across your platforms and gives your audience more opportunities to connect with you.

15. Share content related to your industry.

Image Source

Your Facebook Business Page isn’t just a place to talk about how amazing your product or service is. Give customers a reason to consistently check on your page by sharing relevant articles, amplifying content from other brands, and starting discussions on events related to your industry.

Make sure the content you share comes from a trusted source, and encourage engagement by asking your customers what they think.

Kickoff Your Facebook Business Page Today

With these steps and tips in hand, you’re well on your way to creating a successful, engaging Facebook Business Page for your brand.

Once you have the foundation laid, don’t forget to keep up with consistent posts and respond to follower comments. Increase your customer engagement today with a compelling presence on Facebook.

The post How to Design an Engaging Facebook Business Page [+ Tips] appeared first on ProdSens.live.

Remember when being a “creator” was a laughable teen pastime?

Now, consumers are largely trusting influencers over brands, creators are taking over brand marketing teams, and the industry is only growing bigger.

In 2023, we’ve seen the so-called Creator Economy grow to 50 million creators globally, with a market size of $250 billion. By 2027, this number is expected to reach $480 billion.

Perhaps most telling, there are now kids’ summer camps dedicated to content creation.

But with great opportunity also comes drawbacks: The market is saturated, and AI makes it easier than ever for anyone to become a creator — which means it truly takes a special case to be sustainable and profitable.

“Successful creators will be those who generate unique insight, can talk about unique experiences, and are able to truly build trust,” says Jay Clouse, founder of Creator Science.

We got the insider scoop from Jay and several other successful creators, and narrowed their advice down to seven key tips. Read on to make 2024 the year you make it big.

Creators’ Tips for Surviving the Creator Economy in 2024 

1. Know your way around platforms.

Jay Clouse says that the best content strategy leverages both discovery and relationship platforms. Here’s a breakdown of what he means:

• Discovery platform: Generally refers to social media, but also includes search-based platforms like Google and YouTube. These platforms have a built-in mechanism for connecting new viewers with your content.

• Relationship platform: Focuses on distribution that YOU own and control. If someone opts into hearing from you on a relationship platform (i.e. a newsletter), you receive direct contact information for them, and your messages are reliably delivered there – there’s no algorithm deciding whether they see your content or not.

It’s generally a good idea to focus on a few discovery platforms, and one or two relationship platforms, rather than trying to conquer them all. For a long-term strategy, Clouse recommends putting more focus on relationship platforms once you’ve gotten the ball rolling.

2. Niche down and be yourself.

Content creation is like any other art form: It might feel like a constant battle against what you want to create, and what you think your audience (or algorithm) might like. Creators reassured me that however tempting it might be to try to be the next MrBeast, it’s better to stay true to yourself.

Jensen Tung, a YouTuber best known for his honest AI entrepreneurship and crazy fitness challenges, maintains that it’s great to use others as your inspiration. But you should always “put your own twist and spin to it.”

Finding your niche won’t happen in a day, so experimenting is encouraged. Be patient and stay in tune with yourself. Here are some questions to help you begin discovering your niche:

• What are your strengths (personality traits, background, skillset)?
• What is a subject you can discuss endlessly, with a unique perspective that only you possess?
• What kind of content brings you joy to create?
• What content creation format feels most comfortable for you (video, blog, newsletter)?
• Which content is resonating well with audiences? Keep track of comments and feedback.

Once you’ve found your niche, Tung also has some tips for approaching your content.

“Don’t be afraid to be real and candid, and talk about difficult or un-pretty topics. Vulnerability often does the opposite effect of pushing people away — it brings audiences closer to you,” he told me.

3. Optimize for binge-able content.

Once you’ve found your niche, aim to become part of your audience’s regular routine. “I now see audience feedback using the word ‘binge’ as the ultimate signal of progress,” says Clouse in a LinkedIn post.

Natasha Pierre, host of the Shine Online Podcast, likes to create a video series, which is a collection of three or more pieces of video content that all have a common theme.

This helps you not only keep users coming back for more, but also makes creating content easier — you have a reliable content structure, and posts that can remain evergreen long after they’re posted.

4. Interaction drives audience growth, and vice versa.

In a conversation on the My First Million podcast, Samir Chaudry (of the Colin and Samir YouTube Channel) explains how media content has become more participatory in nature.

Before, we had the TV Guide Channel that told us what to watch, then we had on-demand, and now, we have Twitch streams where audiences can interact with the creator and even influence the content.

So how do you build an audience who wants to interact with you?

Essentially, you’ll need to show that you’re a real-life person. Find out which platforms your target audience inhabits. Discord? Twitter/X? Twitch? Use your analytics tools to find out their media habits and which topics entice them most.

It also helps to think about what space you want to occupy in your audience’s lives. Do you want to be their comfort creator, or trusted daily news source on their morning train ride?

Then, just show up. Engage in those comment section debates (tastefully), utilize the Community tab on YouTube, and go live on Twitch or TikTok. Comment on other folks’ content that you admire, or even a random dog meme account. It’ll put you on consumers’ minds, even outside your niche, and give you traction by association.

5. Consistency is king.

This is the number one tip shared by John Lee Dumas, host of Entrepreneurs on Fire. With over 4,000 episodes out and counting, he has truly mastered the art of consistency.

But it’s easier said than done. One of the biggest pain points is ideation — it’s easy to burn out when your output is so high.

“When you know exactly what the ideal consumer of your content is struggling with, you’ll never run out of valuable topic ideas to share with them,” Dumas shared.

“And the more value you can provide, the more likely they are to come back for more content.”

Creator Natasha Pierre recommends productivity hacks to help you stay on track.

“Time block your calendar, add themed days like a day dedicated to admin or creating, and take regular breaks for movement. This has helped me prevent burnout even during the busiest seasons,” she told me.

Additional tips for productivity include AI and automation tools — some examples include Descript, Adobe’s Text-Based Editing, HubSpot’s AI Content Assistant, and Canva’s Magic Design Tool.

6. Join a network.

Networks can be great for many reasons: steady income, more reach, and a trusted corporate partner to fill up some ad inventory. But arguably most beneficial is the community.

Good content can’t be produced in isolation, and there’s no better place to connect with others than a dedicated space for creators. Within HubSpot’s Creator Network for podcasters and YouTubers, creators constantly guest on each other’s shows, do ad swaps, and bounce ideas off of each other.

As an added bonus, they get access to exclusive workshops, blog features (like this one), and networking events like INBOUND.

7. Be willing to put in the work.

In a conversation between John Lee Dumas and Jay Clouse at INBOUND, Dumas mentions the phrase: “The higher the barrier, the lower the competition.”

While building his podcast, Entrepreneurs on Fire, he realized that there were many folks interviewing entrepreneurs once or twice a week. So to create a higher barrier and lessen the competition, he decided to interview entrepreneurs every single day of the week. He maintains that this is a crucial factor to the success of his podcast (He has 155 million total listens and counting).

For both Jay Clouse and John Lee Dumas, it took them years of trial and error to finally break through.

Both of their journeys serve as reminders that success often requires perseverance and continuous improvement. But it also shows that with the right tools, mindset, and community, it is possible.

The post 2024 and Beyond: 7 Insights for Thriving as a Creator, Straight from the Experts appeared first on ProdSens.live.

Photo by Sigmund on Unsplash

In the previous article I’ve introduced you to my plan of migrating away from my dedicated server to a fully serverless infrastructure. The previous example was hereby quite a doable task – after all the given website was mostly static and the migration of the API part was rather painless thanks to the sound base of using C# / .NET.

The current task at hand will be a bit more difficult. In this post I’m going to convert my multiplayer spaceshoot game. If you want to know more about this game, check out my “classic” articles:

• SpaceShoot Single-Player
• The SpaceShoot server

A bit similar to the previous article the bulk of the work are static web assets. These will not pose any problem. However, this time we need something more than just a bit of API. We need a fully server – or at least full server capabilities.

Quick Recap – What do we want?

Before we go into the technical details let’s see what I expect from this migration:

• A more clean code base (finally I can clean up my stuff, maybe remove something and modernize some other parts)
• No more FTP or messy / unclear deployments – everything should be handled by CI/CD pipelines
• Cost reduction; sounds weird, but the last thing I want to have is a cost increase (today it’s about 30 € per month for the hosting and my goal is to bring this below or close to 10 € – note: I pay much more for domains and these costs are not included here as they will remain the same).

Right now I am on track. Up to this point the new monthly total will be 5 €, which is for a DNS service with full e-mail capabilities incl. 30 GB storage and simple static websites.

Let’s see what we can do about this thing and how much it will cost me monthly.

Legacy Structure

Right now the project is just a Visual Studio solution. It consists of three projects:

• The client, these are mostly static assets
• The server, this is a command-line application spawning a WebSocket server on a certain port
• Unit tests for the server

Running this results in the game being loaded – but without the server the multiplayer part is just grayed out.

There are several things that make this structure hard to work with for my desired goal:

• We don’t want to create a custom server / command line application
• The web assets should be processed by a web pipeline / bundler, which also includes more optimizations etc.
• The whole build process should run on a dedicated pipeline within Azure DevOps

Also a bit of an update would be nice – in the end I still need to enter the “Server IP” in the multiplayer options. I’d like to have a DNS here instead (and it should default to the current domain).

Before we can settle on a basic structure for our new repository we need to find an appropriate serverless replacement.

Choosing the Right Service

While I’ve chosen an Azure service in the last article we also might want to consider something else. However, let’s first see what Azure offers us:

• Azure Web PubSub (only free for up to 20 connections with a max. of 20k messages; standard paid tier would work – but costs around $45 per month)
• Azure Functions (durable functions to be specific, the free tier goes up to 400,000 GB-s monthly, assuming 100 MB memory consumption that means we can have 46 days in a month – or a party of 46 users concurrently playing for a whole day in a single month)
• Azure App Service (the free tier would be sufficient, but it gives us a limit of 60 CPU minutes / day, which – for a larger game – would be insufficient; furthermore it does not allow custom domains)
• Azure SignalR (only free for up to 20 connections with a max. of 20k messages; otherwise – also from standard plan – comparable to Azure Web PubSub)

So far Azure Functions seems mostly interesting – especially since we could use Azure Static Web App again for our static assets.

Alternatives are:

• Linode (Nanode with 1 GB could be as cheap as $5 per month)
• DigitalOcean (a Droplet with 512 MB could be as cheap as $4 per month)
• Render (a free instance running for 750 instance hours with shutdown if not used)
• Ably (a free tier contains 6 million monthly messages with 200 concurrent connections)

Ably could be used together with Netlify or other functions as a service.

The free tier of Ably looks interesting and choosing this stack seems to be just the right amount of learning something new (Ably + using Azure Entity Functions) with an established pattern (Azure Static Webs). Also, there is a great blog post by Ably, which discusses a very similar scenario.

In the end we would aim for the architecture as outlined in the article.

Personally, I’d love to go with Render, however, it does not have “native” support for C#/.NET. This would mean a complete rewrite into Node.js. Even if I would like to do that I lack time. So, unfortunately, I need to drop that options. Or do I?!

It turns out that Render also supports deployment of Docker images. This way, I could just do the most minimalistic changes to the server code – making it a new and shiny .NET 8 AoT Docker container.

Minimum memory footprint, best performance – least development effort. Sounds too good to be true? Well, let’s give it a try!

Code Changes for the Client

The app itself was quite a mess. This has been created in a time before bundlers. So it featured an HTML file that in the end had something like:

Then in order to optimize this I ran (from a BAT-file) a little utility called jsmin.exe (!), which received as input all found