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Money for Nothing

There was a time, not too many years ago, when relationship articles were the hot topic. They still are, but they’re not the hottest topic anymore. In its place is now money and security.

One of my publishers, whose opinions I greatly respect, was talking to me about the kinds of articles that most people are reading these days and we thought that with people so concerned about wanting to meet and marry their soul mate, that they were the articles most people gravitate toward. We were wrong.

I was looking over the stats of the articles that I’ve written over the last four years (over 900 articles) and what I discovered is that relationships, which used to be the prime focus of people, has been steadily losing ground to articles about money.

People are now more concerned about financial security than meeting their soul mate. There is more of a here today, gone tomorrow, way of looking at their lives. And business articles, which used to be a big drawing card, don’t seem to have the same impact that they used to.

Today’s hot topics center around getting money for nothing. People have always been attracted to articles about getting a lot of money without having to work for it, but lately, it’s been almost a mania, as evidenced by all the people who set up gofundme websites. This concept is now called crowdsourcing. I call it panhandling or standing there with a begging bowl in your hands asking strangers for money.

I had heard a story about a lazy, spoiled, twenty-one-year-old girl, who is in excellent health, setting up a gofundme website asking people to donate money so that she can go to Japan on a two-week vacation. The hands out, begging bowl concept, annoyed me so much that I wrote an article about it. And, wouldn’t you know it, but the number of people who read that one article climbed much higher and much faster than most of my other articles.

People take a look at Bill Gates and Warren Buffett and all they can see is the billions of dollars they have and they want to have what those two men have. They don’t see all the hard work that went into accumulating that wealth, nor do they see the kind of hard work they do to sustain their wealth. They just see a lot of money and they think they are entitled to the same riches.

Sad to say, but we’re living in a lazy, selfish, society these days and we’ve lost our moral compass along the way. We need to get back to the things that are really important before our whole society comes crumbling down around us.

Connie H. Deutsch is an internationally known business consultant and personal advisor who has a keen understanding of human nature and is a natural problem-solver.

Shopping Cart Loss and Theft – Prevent Loss at Your Store

Shopping carts are provided by a store for customer use. Customers use shopping carts as a convenient way to collect merchandise as they shop around the store. The customers collect the desired merchandise in their cart and continue to the check-out stand to pay for their goods. Once they have gone through the check out line, customers transport the paid merchandise from their shopping cart to their cars. Often times they do not bring their carts back to the appropriate destination, leaving them scattered throughout the parking lot, or even worse they are stolen! Lost shopping carts can add up to an eight to ten thousand dollar drain in your revenue each year. Lost or stolen shopping carts have become such a nuisance that over 200 cities around the United States have implemented ordinances requiring retailers to find ways to keep their carts from leaving their property. Fortunately there are a number of solutions to prevent shopping cart theft. Electronic systems such as locking wheels, the boot or brake shell, and alarm systems are effective in preventing shopping cart theft. Physical limitations such as security guards, vertical pole attachments, and magnetic strips can be effective in preventing shopping cart theft as well.

The most effective way to prevent people from stealing shopping carts is an electronic wheel locking system. This system works with a thin wire embedded below the surface of the perimeter of the stores parking lot. If the wheel is pushed beyond the perimeter it will automatically lock disabling the cart. The wheels can be unlocked by the touch of a button on a remote control.

Alternatively, the boot or braking shell is not inside the wheel but rather a covering. When the shopping cart is taken beyond the stores designated perimeter, the braking shell covers the wheel disabling it from rolling. One drawback to this method is that if any part of the boot breaks, the entire mechanism must be replaced. It is easy for dirt, snow, and other materials to get jammed in the boot and disabling it. Another downside to this method is rather than using a remote control to unlock the wheel like the electronic wheel locking system, one must bend down and unlock the boot manually in order for the cart to be of use again.

Motorized shopping carts are popular among the elderly or shoppers with disabilities. These carts tend to be extremely expensive and therefore highly desired by thieves! Losing just one motorized shopping cart can hit retailers hard financially. To prevent the loss of these assets, a wireless device attached to the back of the motorized cart preventing the cart from working when it reaches the designated invisible barrier. The cart can be reactivated with the touch of a button on the store’s remote control, or by pushing it back into the unlock field.

Another effective way to prevent shopping cart loss and theft is an alarm system. The alarm system has two components: an alarm, and a transmitter perimeter circuit that is installed at the entrances and exits of the store. The shopping cart has a warning signal and an alarm signal. Once the shopping cart crosses the warning line, the warning sound will go off. The alarm is deactivated once the cart is returned to the designated area. If the shopper chooses to ignore the warning signal and continues to cross the line, the shopping cart will sound a higher pitch and louder alarm. While this system may embarrass the customer it does not stop the cart from leaving the premises.

Security guards are people hired to protect property, assets, and people. Shoppers are less likely inclined to steal shopping carts if they know they are being watched. Security guards reduce shopping cart theft tremendously, however hiring additional personnel can become costly. In order for security guards to have a significant impact, one must be placed at each exit way of the parking lot to ensure no one leaves with a shopping cart.

A physical limitation that reduces shopping cart theft is the implementation of the vertical pole. This pole is attached to the shopping carts preventing the carts from leaving the store. The only downside to this method is the inconvenience it may have on customers who have large amounts of groceries or merchandise that they need to transport from the store to their car.

The last method to prevent shopping cart theft is the implementation of a magnetic strip embedded in the concrete of the perimeter of the shopping center. Each shopping cart has a locking device fitted to two wheels and as the cart approaches the magnetic strip, the wheels lock rendering it immovable.

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Video As an Engaging Content Marketing Tool

If you are an Internet marketer, blogger, webmaster, and online retailer, you must be turning the Web inside out looking for a strategy to keep your website visitors a few seconds longer on your page. There are a million and one advises or suggestions you can try, but you can save yourself from much trouble by grabbing what seems to be a current trend: video content marketing strategy.

What is video content marketing?

Video content marketing makes use of the video as the heart of the content marketing strategy with the social media being used to support and promote the video content. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube and embedding videos in blog posts offer the most engaging way to share video message to the target audience.

A message that informs, entertains or is useful can foster maximized engagement, spread and conversion by using the content as the message. This can best be achieved by seamlessly integrating the message with the look, feel and flavor of the video. You know you have done well when your message is talked about in forums, discussion boards, and even mainstream media channels.

The use of videos may not really be a new idea. What is novel is the recognition that it can be a very effective vehicle of information and a powerful strategy that prompts immediate action. You have heard about YouTube ranking as the second largest search engine in the Internet and passing the 1 billion monthly users mark. This is equivalent to over 4 billion hours of video viewing each month. With these explosive statistics, it is not surprising to see how it is gaining strength as a source of content marketing.

Will online video be just another over hyped and soon-will-fade craze?

Based on current researches and surveys, it seems unlikely. For instance, consider the data from B2B Demand Generation Benchmark Survey for 2012 entitled Percentage of Marketers Using Each Content or Offer (survey compiled by Eloqua, CMO.com and Software Advice).

What makes video a crown jewel of content marketing?

Video communication is an effective strategy of reaching target market as it pools the pluses of “classic” TV advertising and the Internet’s interactivity. Powerful and compelling videos can more likely motivate viewers to buy on impulse than those who merely read text ads. In a way, it seems like it is irresistible having a “biological” or “human” factor about it. This may be attributed to the fact that videos can simultaneously affect several senses. If you want to understand the science behind web trending towards video, the explanation of Susan Weinschenk, Ph.D. in Forbes’ article Why Online Video Is Vital For Your 2013 Content Marketing Objectives says it all.

According to Dr. Weinschek, there are four major reasons why people are drawn to videos: the fusiform facial area or the face easily catches and holds attention; the voice can effectively convey rich information and meaningful content; the emotions and the body language are pleasing to watch and infectious; and movements grab attention due to the human’s innate power of peripheral motion. For online marketers looking for a way to engage their visitors, the question is: How must you leverage this 100% human connection to video? The answer lies in what innovative option you will use to make a simple, but impactful video.

If video is not a passing fancy among content creators, then how will it affect future content marketing?

In Kissmetrics’ article The Future of Content Marketing Revealed, some ways to get ahead of competing pack are emphasized. There are three major points made; the content becoming big (long blog posts, giving away of free eBooks, and offering multiple lead magnets) and two stressed the importance of visual content such as use of infographics and videos.

In ReelSEO’s 2012 Online Video Marketing Survey Report, 81% of the respondents/online marketers said they used online video in their marketing efforts. Over two thirds of them (67%) use these videos to social networking sites, and about half (52%) used video in email marketing.

Moreover, approximately 64% of these marketers indicated they intend to spend more money in the coming years intended for technologies, platforms and services allied to the use of video for business marketing programs.

There are of course other statistics that may say otherwise, but for now it seems that content marketing is going beyond text.

Where is video content now?

“Video gives us the opportunity to wow our customers and this in turn delivers results. We have tested and proven that when someone watches our video reviews they’re 120.5% more likely to buy, spend 157.2% longer on the site and spend 9.1% more per order… ” (Matt Lawson, Head of Conversion at Appliances Online).

With all these stats, YouTube’s sensational rise to fame and the cheap video technologies, how can you not use it as a marketing tool? Many think that video is still an underused marketing tool at the moment, but not so in the coming days. Those into it are starting to enjoy improved SEO rankings, site engagement and customer conversion. Maybe you just found a way for your visitors to stay little bit longer on your site.

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