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How to use Quora for marketing?

Quora is an online writer community or a Question-answer forum where anyone can ask questions and write answers. Users find it the right platform to get and read the insightful answers by different writers without any geo boundaries.
Quora has gone ahead and started its own ad network to run ads on it. Now you can reach to millions of users across the world with Quora ads.

One of the most important social media platform for marketers that has emerged over time is Quora which has a monthly active user base of over 500 million.

What is Quora?

Quora can be best described as a knowledge sharing and enhancement platform designed in a question and answer format. Here the users typically post Queries which are directly answered by other users on the platform. The users answering the questions could be

  • Industry Experts
  • Experienced with similar queries
  • Loosely related to the field of the query

Although one should not blindly trust he answers given on Quora as the veracity of the answers cannot always be completed validated, the platform provides for very interesting perspectives by various users.

Additionally there are several metrics that Quora offers which can be useful analytics for gauging the contributor command over his or her subject. These include views on the answers and uptick votes.

These give an idea of the relevance, usage and correctness of the answers.

Benefits of using Quora

  • Access to a platform where millions of users engage on a monthly basis
  • Access to views by industry experts
  • Chance to demonstrate your competency in the field by answering relevant questions.
  • Allows you to share content from other domains on your profile
  • It allows you to resolve queries pertaining to your product and service offering directly.

How to use Quora effectively

Creating a Quora profile

You can sign up for Quora by

  • Connecting your Facebook or Twitter account
  • Creating a standalone Quora account
How to use Quora for marketing? Quora Marketing Guide-

After the profile has been created it is imperative to create great bio for yourself. The platform shows the first fifty characters of your profile as a sort of an appended tagline to every query you answer.

So as a good practice it is essential to include relevant details about yourself like your company name, profile and relevant expertise. You can create multiple bios to demonstrate your niche in different areas.

For instance, you can have one bio that highlights your finance proficiency while you can have another one which demonstrates your supply chain capability.

Additionally on the right tab you can update the “Knows about” section where you can choose various topics you are well aware of and can successfully demonstrate your proficiency. Additionally it is suggested to elaborately complete the following sections of your profile.

  • Interests
  • “About me” section
  • Professional and academic details

A complete professional bio helps you get more traction.

Track topics relevant to your industry

Quora is a great way to understand the potential customer psyche. One of the way is to conduct a research. The platform allows you to gauge the trending topics in your industry by checking what experts are saying, the topics that are trending.

To start with, you can start by typing in a keyword in Quora`s search box.

How to use Quora for marketing? Quora Marketing Guide-

The A.I of the platform delivers various autocompleted word suggestions regarding the keyword. On clicking on any topic a list of other related topics will be seen alongside.

Once yu choose a topic of interest you can follow the topic and also crate email notifications from the settings.

Answer Questions

An important step in actually marketing on Quora involved choosing the appropriate questions you want to answer.

While there are well over a million queries on Quora, not all are of value to the business. You are to display your proficiency in specific case, not anything and everything under the sun.

To search for relevant question type in the keyword at the query search box and proceed. Post this you will see a list of queries from a defined timeframe. (a month by default).

From this pick and choose the relevant topics and drive the discussions as the field expert.

To build up your presence and have an effective marketing strategy on Quora concentrate on building your brand visibility

  • Choose relevant topics for your business
  • Answer questions pertaining your industry, products or services
  • Choose trending topics. Find the query thread with upvotes. The threads with upvotes have more visibility and get maximum votes.

Respond to queries with authority and knowledge on Quora

Once you have identified the queries relevant to your business interests, ensure comprehensive and impressive answers. A two line

response on a question won`t really influence people; rather one must provide deeper insights into the queries by pro providing elaborate response including but not restricted to case studies, you company blogs or analytics that drive your point.

Also be aware of the audience for the said query of question. The way one would respond to a question posed by young generation would be different from that posed by an industry leader.

Network with other Quora users.

Quora isn`t just a question and answer platform, it is a social media platform. It gives you an excellent opportunity to connect with potential clients.

The platform allows you to direct communicate directly with other users. There is a chance that people might have queries on your product or service.

A great way to connect is by addressing the queries pertaining to your business. To find relevant people to connect with you may do the following

  • Trace the trending answers of your followed relevant topics and connect with the people answering them
  • Create queries and knowledge boards pertaining to your industry or business
  • Connect with knowledge leaders of the industry

Review the quantitative aspects

Being actively involved in addressing Quora queries pertaining to your products/ services is bound to have a positive impact on credibility and will lead of growth in reputation.

However it is equally important to analyse the kind of impact your involvement is having and gauge the ROI of the time spent. You can do this through Quora analytics.

You get detailed analytics for the questions you`ve answered and you can gauge statistics like number of views, number of upvotes.

You can also enable the tracking feature on your answers enabling you to see the click through as well. With these you can easily determine whether the approach followed is reaping rewards or needs tinkering.

Conclusion

With using of Quora you can use your industry experience to highlight your position as a thought expert and build valuable connections with potential and existing customers.

By sharing out of site date, you can drive potential client traffic to your online marketplace.

However while this is an interesting platform, one needs to add value to the answers.

Projecting yourself as a thought leader and a knowledge champion will result in a flock of potential client traffic to your marketplace.

Everything about Google Meet User. How to use Google Meet? A Guide

We live in interesting times. With the increasing penetration of the internet and ample data availability, the “Information Age or the Data Age” is well and truly here.

This phenomenon has led to a massive growth in social media and chat platforms. They have truly changed the way companies interact with their customers.

Today, any organization of repute has a substantial online presence. Google is one of the pioneers of the “information age” and offers several services and platforms which are extremely useful for individual as well as businesses.

One of the exciting service it offers is Google Meet or Google Hangouts Meet.

This is nothing but a powerful videoconferencing calling platform. This is targeted primarily at professionals and successfully links users across remote locations to a common platform for real time simultaneous interaction.

It’s a very effective platform that can be easily used across locations. 

On a basic Google Meet call, a conference can be set up with up to 25 participants at once. All can speak and can share video simultaneously. If one needs to connect more people, you can use the higher tier membership available from Google.

One needs a paid Google suite account to initiate the conversation but anyone with a regular Google account can participate in the conference.

While the Google Meet it a nifty software, it is not suitable for use in all browsers, especially Safari. It is best if used with Google`s own Chrome browser.

Google Meet Membership tiers

As mentioned earlier to initiate a Google Meet video call, one needs a paid G-suite account. The G-suite account are available in the following tiers

  • G-Suite Basic: US$ 6 per initiating user per month upto 25 users at once
  • G-Suite Business: US$ 12 per initiating user per month upto 50 users at once
  • G-Suite Enterprise US$ 6 per initiating user per month upto 100 users at once
Everything about Google Meet User. How to use Google Meet? A Guide

Each of the said tiers provides additional storage space on Google Drive depending on the tier chosen and also provides extensive data security features.

Additionally there are tailored solutions available for educational institutions and Google offers these free to certain institutions. 

Google Meet User Guide

Now that we have a basic idea of Google Meet, let’s look at how to use the said features.

How to Schedule a meeting on Google Meet

The most efficient way to schedule a Google Meet is through the Google Calendar. Follow these steps

Everything about Google Meet User. How to use Google Meet? A Guide
  • Login to your paid G-Suite Google account
  • Open your Google calendar.
  • Click on the day you propose to set up the meeting
  • Add a title to the space provided and click on more options
  • Here you can set the event for all-day or else uncheck it and set the time you want the meeting to occur
  • Under the Event Details, click on ADD CONFERENCING drop down and choose HANGOUTS MEET. Choose the VIEW DETAILS link which appears to the right which includes info about the meeting.
  • Under this choose the option of ADD GUETS section. Here you can add the email addresses to invite them to the meeting.
  • Now you need to click SAVE.
  • After this there is a pop-up that will give you an option to send an invitation to all your guests. You can click send in case you want to send the invitations.
Everything about Google Meet User. How to use Google Meet? A Guide

How to Start a Meeting on Google Meet?

To start a meeting the following needs to be done

  • From the Google calendar, click on the meeting that you set up.
  • In the subsequent window, click on “Join Hangouts Meet” link
  • From this window next click “Join Meeting” button
Everything about Google Meet User. How to use Google Meet? A Guide

The meeting is now live.

How to start a Meeting on Google meet?

Once the meeting has been joined by all the participants, the following options will now appear:

Everything about Google Meet User. How to use Google Meet? A Guide
  • Meeting Details – This is normally labeled as the title of the meeting
  • Turn off the microphone – This option mutes the microphone
  • Leave Call – This option ends the call for you
  • Turn off Camera – This off turns off the camera for the user.
  • Present Now – One gets the option to choose the entire screen or just a specific window/ application
  • Captions – This option makes it easier for the participants to follow what’s on by displaying the text of the conversation.
  • Removing participants – In case any participant needs to be removed, the same can be done by clicking the back arrow, pointing to the person, and clicking remove.
  • Mute a participant – In certain cases when there is background noise disturbance, there is an option to mute a participant.
  • Viewing attachments – In the lower-left corner there is an option to select and download attachments affiliated to the meeting.
  • More options – Here you can choose to record your meeting, go full screen, or change your settings such as your video resolution, and selecting the microphone and/or camera you want to use.

How to use ‘Present Now’ option in Google Meet?

When you choose the A window option in the Present now menu, you are presented with a screen containing all of the available windows currently open on your computer.

Simply click the one you want to present to your students. For example, if you want them to see your web browser, click on the thumbnail to select it.

Settings section in Google Meet

When clicking the Settings link in the More options menu, you are presented with the following two tabs:

Everything about Google Meet User. How to use Google Meet? A Guide
  • General – Here you can select the camera, microphone, and speakers you want to use. You can also test them to make sure they are functioning correctly.
  • Network – Here you can choose between High Definition (720p) or Standard Definition (360p) for your Send Resolution (maximum) and Receive Resolution (maximum). Use high def when you have a good internet connection and standard with a slower connection

People and Chat in Google Meet

Click the left pointing arrow next to the thumbnails on the upper right of the screen to expand the window. Here you have the following:

  • People – A list of participants currently in the meeting. Here you can pin their video so it’s being viewed in the main window, mute their audio, or remove them from the call.
  • Chat – Here you can send a chat message to the group. This would come in handy if you cannot get your audio to work, or if participants cannot hear you through their speakers.

How to Record a Meeting on Google Meet?

Video meetings can be recorded. Meeting organizer’s or those in the organizer’s domain can record a meeting. Participants are notified when the recording starts or stops.

Recordings are saved to the Google Drive of the meeting organizer and in the Calendar event. The organizer will also receive an email with a link to the recording. To record a Google Meet, do the following:

  • Click the More options (three little dots) icon on the lower right and choose Record meeting.
  • Wait for the recording to start.
  • To stop the recording click the More options icon again and choose Stop recording. The recording automatically stops when everyone leaves the meeting.
  • Click Stop recording again to confirm.
  • Wait at least 10 minutes for the recording to be processed and saved to the organizer’s Google drive. It will appear in the Meet Recordings folder. An email with the recording link is also sent to the meeting organizer and the person who started the recording.

Latest Developments

Following the COVID-19 crises, since March 2020 Google has begun offering the premium features previously available for the premium G-Suite accounts for free.

Everything about Google Meet User. How to use Google Meet? A Guide

This has resulted in massive growth of the platform with more than 100 million users a day now accessing meet. With the increased videoconferencing requirements during the crisis, Google took this step to roll out free services. Currently the Free calls have a single initiator and up-to 100 participants.

However the paid G-suite users can have more participants. Further with the free services, the chats and calls cannot be recorded unlike the paid services.

While currently the free calls have no time limit, starting September 2020, the free calls would be restricted to 60 minutes.

Top 10 PPC tools for 2020- Search Engine Marketing Tools

The past decade has seen a massive penetration of the internet amongst the developing countries. Over time, the data is now available at cheaper rates and this has prompted the growth of internet as a critical advertising medium and has ushered in the virtual “Information Age”. In this information age, any company serious about selling its products has an online presence. One of the most up and coming segments in digital marketing is Pay Per Click (PPC).

In internet marketing PPC model is becoming increasingly popular. As per this model, a fee is paid by the advertisers for every click on their advertisements. In other words this is nothing but a way of buying prospect visits to your online marketplace.

Advertising through search engines is the most common and one of the most effective forms of PPC.

Search Engine Marketing enable marketers to place bids on for Advertisement placing in the search engine`s links (sponsored section) which would be triggered when a prospect searches for a specific keyword related to the marketers product or service.

For instance if one clicks “Anti-Virus”, Norton Antivirus shows as the top result on Google`s results page. Every time this is clicked, Norton would pay a fee to Google.

However creating an effective PPC campaign is an arduous task and isn’t very simple. However, over the past decade or so, extremely worthwhile and capable PPC tools have been developed and released.

Here we look at ten of the most efficient PPC tools for 2020 which not only significantly reduce the effort duration but help create an impact PPC campaign as well.

1. Google Ads Editor

Google Ads Editor is a fundamental and critical developed by Google to manage PPC campaigns. The tool is free for use and helps in the simultaneous editing of multiple Google Ads campaigns. This feature rich tool performs the following functions

  • Bid management by raising or lowering bids for keywords
  • Campaign management by tweaking of ad text, keyword lists
  • Managing the keyword match types.

It offers a near complete suite for efficient optimization of bulk edits and is quite efficient and fast.

2. SPYFU

SPYFU is the virtual equivalent of an intelligence agency for PPC marketing. As the name suggests, it is used for spying on your adversaries. 

With its enormous data base, it tracks and records the campaigns and keyword lists of your competition.

Not just this it let us know the amount bid by competition keyword wise, the advertisements run and edits made to them over their entire run,  the total amounts spend by them amongst other things.

By getting to know the keyword optimizations of an adversaries’ successful PPC campaign, one can save a truckload of time and effort for the same.  In short, you gain a critical advantage.

3. Wordstream Advisor

As mentioned earlier management of a PPC campaign is not very simple, but is inherently time consuming and complex.

To make this job easier, an efficient tool called Wordstream advisor is available.

The tool is especially useful for SME and mid-size businesses and is extensively used by this segment to efficiently manage their PPC campaign.

The flag tool highlights the areas of the campaign that require swift attention.

The tool can be customized to take corrective action based on personalized recommendations and it can keep track of the resulting performance.

Apart from PPC campaigns, the toll of also adept at managing Facebook campaign making it a feature rich integrated platform.

4. Opteo

This tool is primarily targeted to cater to the SME segment, medium businesses, freelance marketers and Social Media managers.

Opteo is essentially performance enhancing optimization tool which populates recommendations basis continuous data tracking and account monitoring of the performance related data points.

The tool allows simultaneous bulk editing of the GoogleAds.

The software has over forty different enhancement features like bid control, spend control, efficient schedulers, and real time trackers amongst others.

5. TenScores

This tool is unique in its methodology towards managing the PPC marketing.

It does not vouch to be a complete know it all tool. Instead it focusses on one of the most important aspects of PPC marketing. i.e efficient optimisation.

The tool uses a unique scoring approach to instantly optimize your Google Ads.

The user interface itself is extremely intuitive with detailed and simple to understand analysis represented through various charts. Basis its analysis, Ten-scores provide adequate recommendations to improve ad engagements, reduce spends and enhance overall returns.

This is one tool which provides real time performance improvement.

6. SpeedPPC

SpeedPPC was launched in 2007 and had been a hit ever since launch.

It has presence in close to 100 countries. The software is a cyclical tool that robotises a company`s PPC marketing campaign.

This automation enables the company to create a focused and targeted campaign in the matter of a few minutes. The tool optimizes the ad quality scores resulting in cost savings and tighter integration between the keywords and Ad placements.

The tool is highly flexible and can be tailored to your organization`s needs.

7. BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is an all in one tool that encapsulates various aspects of analysing content, discovering trends, measuring performance and determining Return on Investment.

All in all it serves as a one stop shop by providing important and essential features pertaining to trend discovery and content management.

The tool has features like alerts for brand mentions, deep research tools and trending keywords pertaining to your product.

Additional features like customer query analyser tools, Facebook analyser tools, keyword influencer and top author tools are unique features of this software.

BuzzSumo is considered a critical part of PPC content stack of any organization.

Its layered approach is extremely unique and provides critical inputs into prevailing trends.

8. AdEspresso

AdEspresso is an intuitive and simple tool developed by HootSuite and it focussed specifically on Facebook ads. The tool breaks down every complete Facebook campaigns into a series of manageable parts. The individual parts are then optimized using demographic tools and subsequent results. AdEspresso is also extremely efficient at result tracking and allows users to get access to conversion tracing and subsequent customer conversions.

9. MeetKite

The MeetKite is a PPC a fast paced tool focused on ROI optimizations.

The tool prioritises recommendations from a large number of Social Media data points.

The tool tend to view your businesses as a combination of the following

  • Lead Generation business: Determines costs per trail and recommends suitable actions.
  • Software as a Service (SaaS): Focuses on sales volume scaling
  • eCommerce Business: Using inputs from the above, this module throws u immediate “hot” conversion leads and suggests unique campaign pitching.

10. Ahrefs

While Ahrefs is one of the leading search engine optimization tools, it has extensive PPC features as well. Similar to SpyFu, this tool has the spying ability.

It is able to spy on competitor keyword bids and analyse their traffic flow. It is especially adept at keyword benchmarking, Using its extensive data base, the tool is able to segregate the keyword basis spend, traffic and uniqueness.

Using internal analytics the tool is able to present scenarios which compare an organic search against a sponsored search.

Combining these features with the search engine optimized features, Ahrefs is an excellent tool to manage PPC marketing.

8 plagiarism checking tools for free

What is Plagiarism?

Plagiarism is copying another person’s work without their knowledge or approval and then presents it as your own original work.  Plagiarism is an illegal act which violates the law and is punished by fines and in some cases up to one year jail sentence.  It is something very important that you need to keep in mind that work should never be plagiarized and it should be unique.

There could be lots of liabilities for them. It is very important that we keep that in mind, if do not then there could be some serious issue and people could face some problems. There are many people who do not understand how badly plagiarism can affect them, they need solutions which is something very important. If they go not get good results, there could be problems.

The major importance of plagiarism is to define your dependency on someone else work and also to draw a differential line between your original works from that of your source.  

It is very important that you do not copy what is there word by word, you can take idea from there but write in your down words which is something very important and should always be kept in mind, if it is not then you could land up in big trouble.

There are a number of ways to prevent plagiarism that include; understanding the concept and then presenting it as defined in your understanding(paraphrase), using quotation mark in case you have used somebody else work or you can also use software that aid in checking for plagiarism.  

So it is something very important that you take care of and if you want to give good results, then you can go in for that.

Examples of Plagiarism

  • When someone does an assignment for you then you present it as your own original work. This is something that should not be done and you need to keep this in mind and you can get very good results for this.
  • Copy pasting information from online sources and other literature sources then presenting that as your own original work.
  • Using other people’s brands, logos or names with the intention of presenting as the original, without their approval or their knowledge of it.

Different types of plagiarism and example

Plagiarism is divided into different categories based on the the technique used in copying.

Complete plagiarism is where the writer copies an entire external work then, without any alterations, pastes in their work then tries to own that work as their original.

This is the worst thing one can do and should be avoided at all cost and this is something that can cause major harm to your reputation and also have impact on your ranking in search engines if you are doing online market and should not be done at all.

Paraphrasing plagiarism is the case whereby a writer will find a source information reads it then try to paraphrase by editing; deleting and adding, some words.

This is something that should not be done and should be avoided as some of the told at the present time are quiet capable of getting this traced and that is the last thing that you want.

Direct plagiarism 

this is when you copy someone else’s work and inject into your work then you attempt to present this work as your own without any indications of trying to acknowledge the source of the information you are presenting.

Direct ‘patchwork’

here, the writer copies information from different sources. Rearranges this information to create a new copy without making citations from the external sources he/she has used.

Incomplete citation

when a writer attempts to copy someone else work for his or her use then they need to completely show citation for every single piece of work imported. This is something that should be completed avoid and if you want to do good work, you should not be doing this at all.

Top 8 Tools for Plagiarism

As part of a fight against plagiarism, there are several tools designed to help in detecting any form of plagiarism thus helping people to create original and unique work.

Top 8 Tools for Plagiarism

Some of these plagiarism checking tools are free of charge while others have a fee charged.  They include;

1 DupliChecher

This is a free plagiarism tool which allows the users to either paste their work on it or to upload the work for checking any copyright breach.

This is something that one must know and are looking for solutions which will make things easier for you.

2 Copyleaks

This plagiarism checker tool detects plagiarism by scanning document(s) over the web resources. This is known to give good results and you can be sure, that it will give you perfect output and will help you to detect any kind of plagiarism which is there.

3 Whitesmoke plagiarism checker

This tool scans a document over the online web sources to seek to detect any plagiarism preset.

4 ProWritingAid

This tool is designed to check for plagiarism in manuscripts, novels, or literary works. Other than that, it also helps in detecting grammatical errors in a document.

This is known to work well and give desired results and it has got a paid and a free option as well and can really give some good insights about the quality of work in term of plagiarism.

5 Duplichecker

Duplichecker is a free plagiarism aid tool designed to detect copied content from blog articles. This is known to give good results and is very popular.

6 PlagiarismCheck.org

It’s a vital resource in helping to detect plagiarism by comparing your presented document against its database information

7 Quetext

In This plagiarism tool, you simply paste your work then it compares your work against the web pages in its database.

8 Copyleaks

Checks for unauthorized content used, by scanning a document over a web database. Even shows where the work was extracted from.

Introduced in the Finance Act 2016, an “equalisation levy” at the rate of 6% (on the nonresident companies indulged in the digital advertisement space) sought to address the tax-related challenges by the growing digitization of the Indian economy. Effective from 1 April 2020, the scope has been widened to cover the levy of 2% on consideration received by Ecommerce operators from Ecommerce supply or services.

The provisions of equalisation levy are not a part of the income-tax law which means that the tax treaty benefits may not be available in relation to such levy.

Applicable to:

Applicable on non-resident E commerce operators who own, operate or manages a digital or electronic facility or platform for the sale of goods or provision of services (or both) via an online medium.

Applicable on: The levy is applicable on E commerce supply or services including –

  • Online sale of goods owned by the e-commerce operator.
  • Online provision of services provided by the e-commerce operator.
  • Online sale of goods facilitated by the e-commerce operator (via a platform for others to supply goods or services).
  • Any combination of the above.

Applicable when:

The levy will be applicable when the goods or services are facilitated to either a resident in India or to a person using an IP address located in India or to a non-resident (in respect of the sale of advertisements focussed at residents in India or using an IP address of/in India).

Exclusions:

The equalisation levy shall not be charged when

  • The e-commerce operator has a permanent establishment in India and the e-commerce supply or services are effectively connected with such permanent establishment.
  • The equalisation levy is leviable on an online advertisement and related activities; or
  • The sales, turnover or the gross receipts of the e-commerce operator is less than Rs. 2 crores (INR 20 million) during the financial year.

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