Following the release of the Google Trips Android and iPhone app, what opportunities does it bring to local businesses and their marketing teams alike.
The post Google Trips: What are the Opportunities for Businesses? by @barriesmithii appeared first on Search Engine Journal.
From http://tracking.feedpress.it/link/13962/4549957
Following on from our time saving Excel shortcuts, we continue offering updated advice for the time-sensitive spreadsheet enthusiast.
Back in 2013 John Gagnon wrote a very popular post about VLOOKUP basics and rookie mistakes.
We thought we’d update the piece to reflect some minor changes for accessing the functionality to VLOOKUP words and values in Excel 2016.
An Excel VLOOKUP can be a marketer’s best friend because it can save you hours of work. Give this formula the information you have (a name) and it looks through a long list (list of names) so it can return the information you need (phone number).
The problem is we often struggle to remember how to use the formula – or worse make mistakes.
We’re going to fix that now. This post will explain:
Many of the tips are courtesy of John Gagnon, and are accurate as of September 2016.
Remember phone books? Phone books happen to give us a fantastic mental model to understand how VLOOKUPs work.
Basically, the phone book is a long list of just a few columns: names and phone numbers. You pick up a phone book with a clear intention – find a phone number (info you want) for a specific person (info you have).
Once you’ve found the person you’re looking for, you look at over to the second column to find their phone number. Call made, problem solved.
It turns out this is the same principle for how a VLOOKUP works. Let’s breakdown what each piece of the formula to understand what they mean:
There is an added piece of information needed for a VLOOKUP called a range_lookup. This basically is how accurate you want your results.
Excel 2016 comes with a new multi-purpose search box, the ‘Tell me what you want to do’ tool. Click the box, or ALT + Q to jump right to it. From there, if you type ‘VLOOKUP’ or any lookup or reference search term, really, then the function you need will appear in a dropdown menu.
For the purpose of this article, I want to VLOOKUP a value. Selecting this then offers the ‘Function Arguments’ box where you can add in the Lookup_value and Table_array etc.
As you can see, it’s a little more helpful for newer users than in previous editions of Excel.
Realizing VLOOKUPs work the same as a phone book is helpful. It’s also helpful to know the common mistakes. Here are the top five mistakes made by VLOOKUP rookies.
VLOOKUPs only work when the info you have (lookup-value) is in the first column of data you’re looking at (table array). To use the phone book, you need to start with a name first. You can’t start with the phone number and find the name.
Once Excel has found the value you gave it, it needs to know what give you back. This comes in form of a column number. Make sure to start counting from the first column of the range (table array).
Many marketers get the wrong values because they forget one step. Ninety-nine percent of the time we want exact match, which means a value of FALSE (here’s why).
The power of a VLOOKUP is it can be copied down to hundreds or thousands of cells. But once you copy this down, the references change leading to errors. To fix this issue convert your range to an absolute value instead of a relative value, so cells don’t move around (as they tend to do).
Occasionally when data is copied from one source to another, a few leading or trailing spaces tag along. This causes issue during the match, so use TRIM to delete any spaces added to the cell (except for any single spaces between words).
After you use VLOOKUP enough, you’ll encounter its limitations. For example:
(There are simple solutions to these problems, creating unique keys and pasting – but we’ll save those for another time.)
Back to the phone book for a moment. How many John Smiths are listed? Probably more than one. But with a VLOOKUP, only the phone number of the first John Smith is being returned! You’re probably calling the wrong guy.
To make sure you’re calling the right John Smith, you need to bring in additional information. Commonly for phone books it’s an address (e.g., John Smith at 123 Acme Lane or John Smith at 765 NW Jones St.).
Again, it’s the same for VLOOKUPs.
Let’s say you want to know match type by keyword. Your match type column would be identical (all “broad”, in this case), and your second variable (keyword) would differentiate the data.
Create a new table with both pieces of data in columns, and insert “&” in the table_array field of your VLOOKUP. Then the VLOOKUP knows to return the combined data for your result.
What are your most common uses for VLOOKUPs? Is there anything about VLOOKUPs that stump you?
from https://searchenginewatch.com/2016/09/30/excel-vlookup-basics-and-top-five-rookie-mistakes/
From http://kateninablog.tumblr.com/post/151202974019
It used to be that digital interactions portrayed in the Jetsons, on Star Trek and through KITT on Knight Rider were make-believe preserved for the television and big screen.
However, with the rise of digital personal assistants in recent years like Cortana and Siri, and intelligent bots, what was once science fiction is quickly becoming fact.
We are on the cusp of the next big shift in computing—a shift that is fueled by the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) and built around the one act that comes most natural to us—conversation.
We are optimistic about what technology can do, and this is rooted in a belief that every person and organization should be empowered to achieve more. It’s important though to set some context on how we’ve arrived at this new reality to help answer why you should care and what you should do as a marketer.
Every decade is marked with a shift driven by technological innovation. From the proliferation of PCs during the 80s to the emergence of the Web in the 90s to the rise of mobile and the cloud in the last decade – we have expanded our commerce, improved our communication and strengthened our connections.
But while these advances have helped the world become smaller, in many ways they’ve added layers of complexity, and more significantly, they’ve put the onus on us, the user, to adapt our behavior and expression so that we can be understood by the machines.
But what if we could just talk and interact with technology in exactly the same way we do with other people? Call upon it when we genuinely need support and not have to change the way we behave in order to reap the benefits?
We envision a world where digital experiences mirror the way people interact with one another today. A world where natural language will become the new user interface. A world where human conversation is the platform—the place to discover, access and interact with information and services, and get things done.
The mobile first, cloud-centric world of computing is driving this new platform of engagement. With the ability to understand tone of voice, interpret emotions and remember conversations, the nature of AI is no longer about man vs. machine, it’s about machines complementing and empowering people to do more of what really matters to them.
One of the major trends that has set the stage for an era of people communicating with their devices is the growth in people communicating through their devices.
With more than 3 billion people using messaging apps every day, consumers are spending five times longer on average using messaging apps than they do on all other mobile apps.
And, what’s more, we’ve reached a point where natural language is the new universal user interface with technology. Search intelligence is now embedded across platforms and services, harnessing intent understanding and using a vast base of semantic knowledge.
When coupled with machine learning that’s infused throughout all of our digital interactions, technology is becoming more human. People and machines are able to sustain conversations with personal digital assistants and intelligent bots in such a way that the meaning, intent and even emotion behind the words are as comprehensible as the words themselves. And we’re nearing a time when this will be scaleable to every individual and every business.
Imagine if brands had the opportunity to engage with consumers in ways that were not only relevant and personal but also in an environment where their added value is proactively sought out by the individual themselves. In the realm of conversations as a platform, this is the new reality.
Picture having a sudden craving for pizza. Just by telling the personal assistant on your phone “I would love a thick crusty four seasons pizza right now,” you’ve initiated a conversation to seek options or gone directly to your preferred pizzeria.
The bot you choose to talk to will place the order for you and arrange delivery and payment within seconds. In essense, you expressed a need, an emotion and took the initiative to engage with a particular company through their bot and you got what you wanted with more speed and ease than was previously possible.
This example illustrates how brands need to be ready for the engagement opportunities within this conversational exchange.
Marketers must think strategically about the best framework for building bots that cater to natural language and play into conversations across all platforms.
From there they must figure out how to connect these into their existing cloud, CRM and other elements of their digital marketing ecosystem. This is a business strategy that will require input across functions – starting with the CMO and throughout marketing, sales and IT – in order to offer a customer experience that is consistent with other more traditional digital engagements as well as being timely, relevant and serendipitous.
It’s a time of fundemental change in the digital technology experience. Conversations as a platform, A.I. and emerging search technologies are advancing this next frontier in ways that will simplify and enhance our lives and will be critical to every future marketer’s success.
To put a twist on these three timeless words from the Cluetrain Manifesto, it’s not just “markets are conversations,” but the future of “marketing is conversations.”
Ryan Gavin is General Manager, Search and Cortana Marketing at Microsoft.
From http://kateninablog.tumblr.com/post/151202973544
Learn why content marketing isn’t an easy overnight achievement: but, why the long-term dividends could mean your highest-value marketing.
The post Why Content Marketing Isn’t an Overnight Success by @JuliaEMcCoy appeared first on Search Engine Journal.
From http://tracking.feedpress.it/link/13962/4542505
Among the findings: Indian food is big with Clinton supporters; Trump supporters like Chinese food.
Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.
From http://feeds.marketingland.com/~r/mktingland/~3/66bJaRI0wUw/grubhub-vote-with-your-stomach-193475
And what it could mean for the balance of power among the major marketing clouds.
Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.
Here’s our recap of what happened in online marketing today, as reported on Marketing Land and other places across the web.
Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.
