Soft Scribe LLC

Social Media Marketing Trends – Post COVID

admin — Thu, 18 Jun 2020 15:43:11 +0000

Post COVID, companies have been forced to adapt to a new digital era. The tools of the trade are also evolving with companies struggling to identify the right set of social media tools for their brand.

With time it became more apparent that lockdowns were not short-term and if not a total lockdown, “flexible” lockdowns will stay in place for a long time. Consumer buying patterns and behaviors have shifted over this time period. With increased reliance on online shopping and delivery services, contactless buying is quickly becoming our new norm. Businesses have had to adapt, invest in technology and tools to make this shift possible. There is also the challenge of connecting with customers using the right social media tools.

We have outlined a few trends in social media marketing which might help you better understand the platform best suited for your business.

Is it time to consider diversifying from your traditional platform?

Facebook revolutionized the way we connect, but you may find that most of your customers no longer use only Facebook. Check out where customers are spending their time and why:

Facebook (1.4 billion daily active users)

Instagram (500 million daily active users)

TikTok (720 million daily active users)

Snapchat (178 million daily active users)

YouTube (30 million daily active users)

Pinterest (200 million monthly active users)

Twitter (100 million daily active users)

Platforms such as TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram have grown in popularity and are considered leading social media channels. What has caused this shift?

Micro-influencers

Companies who want to launch their products usually reach people with huge following in social platforms to review their product and post the review outcome in their social platform. This will increase the brands reach and awareness to a different set of audience. These influencers try the products, prepare content over it, and then upload those product-based content and advertisements so that it can reach a large number of people.

A newer source of marketers, called micro-influencers, have evolved. This targeted army of marketers work on a scale, much smaller than influencer marketers. They also have a smaller following on social media and they target a specific niche product or service with a very precise approach. Typically, promotions revolve around authentic and visual posts instead of sponsored ads.

Community Management

Have you noticed that all big brands have dedicated social media pages? Some have taken the additional step of building groups to offer more information and to stay connected with their customers. This goes a long way towards building brand loyalty. These groups allow customers to reach out directly to companies on their own time, but it is up to the company to offer effective community management. This involves a timely and informative response, information on safety measures, new products or promotions, etc.

Storytelling

This is one of the latest trends and stories are proving to be very successful and effective in conveying the message to consumers. It captures the attention of the user and it creates a direct connection between the company and the existing or potential consumer. Your story, if told effectively, can become viral within a short period!

Leveraging User-Generated Content

The role of reviews has shifted from merely offering information about the user’s experience with the specific product or service. Companies are taking community management to the next level by leveraging reviews to generate content. In other words, they are promoting their brand by pushing positive reviews. Some are even offering promotional discounts to loyal customers for creating a video testimonial. Imagine the power of user-generated content in influencing customers on the sidelines.

Messaging Apps:

According to Business Insider Intelligence, post COVID will be a time when more people will start using the top four messaging apps – WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, WeChat, and Viber. For instance, more than 1.3 billion people using Facebook Messenger. We can assist you in promoting your content and even create ads that can boost your sales through these messaging platforms.

Brands that are able to deliver clear, informative and strong messages, engage in transparent conversations considered reliable for their informational content, feel-good messages or offer valuable advice will rebound and outlive the crisis.

The post Social Media Marketing Trends – Post COVID appeared first on Soft Scribe LLC.

Post Covid Business Dynamics

admin — Mon, 04 May 2020 21:00:00 +0000

Perhaps you are one of the lucky businesses to have stayed alive through the pandemic. Congratulations!

As governors outline phased re-openings, how prepared are you? As eager as employees will be, they will be equally cautious and concerned. Have you set up the necessary guidelines and safety precautions for your employees as well as your customers?

Leading this unique opportunity to create a new team or build on your existing team will be key to your organizational success. Give your staff the time and opportunity to share and deal with the challenging issues each has faced while fighting or coping with the virus. Many may have lost family members without the opportunity to grieve, juggling continuing childcare issues, and whatnot. At a time like this, they will need leadership support more than ever!

Alleviate fears by implementing safety procedures. Some of the helpful suggestions listed below may be applicable to your business while others may not:

Sneeze-guard partitions
Safe zone markers for elevators and wait lines
Floor layouts honoring distancing
Food accessibility and kitchen rules
Common area social distancing (conference rooms, cafeterias, break rooms, gyms, locker rooms and perhaps you keep gyms and locker rooms closed until phase two)
Equipment adjustments for public spaces (personal keyboard covers, for example)
Personal hygiene and personal workspace cleanliness
Personal items security measures (personal tech, mugs, desktop items, masks, availability of disinfectants)
Distribution of resources by creating staggered work schedules
Innovative ways to recreate your supply and demand logistics
Contact tracing (at the very least, encourage employees to be mindful of their public interactions)

The new norm business model will require to be an inclusive, sustainable growth model. A crisis is a terrible thing to waste. Prepare your business to succeed in this new environment. Communicate with your employees and your customers. Let them know the steps you have taken to build trust and confidence. Relationships are based on trust, and that trust will slowly see a return of the business.

The post Post Covid Business Dynamics appeared first on Soft Scribe LLC.

Coronavirus and Beyond – Time for Digital Transformation

admin — Wed, 01 Apr 2020 11:47:40 +0000

Improvise is the new mantra. How quickly can you transform your business, shift your operations online and communicate with your customers?

This can be an overwhelming phase as you try to morph your business to cope with the consequences of COVID-19. It is likely that you have already started re-evaluating how to survive this crisis. Health Care professionals are warning us that this virus is going to be in our midst for a long time. There are digital marketing strategies you can implement to help your business.

Connect with your target audience on Social Media

This is not the time to sit back and relax. Reach out to your customers. Connect with them. Let them know the changes you are making to ensure that services continue. Social distancing does not have to mean isolation. Quite the contrary – use all digital tools to remind customers that you are here for them. Don’t forget to thank them for their support during this crisis.

Get to the front of the line

Make sure your website is optimized. With the whole world conducting online searches for every kind of service, your business needs to be at the top of Google’s search engine result pages (SERP). Climbing to the top of SERPs takes time and strategic optimization tools and strategies. This is a process, much like a sourdough starter, it has to be carefully fed and nurtured regularly so it doesn’t go stale.

Does your audience know you are open for business?

Use pay-per-click advertising to get in front of your customers. It is a relatively cheaper way of advertising. On average, cost-per-clicks (CPC) has decreased by 6 percent across all verticals since last week. CPC is likely to continue to decrease in the coming weeks, thereby reducing the amount of money an advertiser pays a publisher for every ad click. Some industries such as Restaurants and Health Care are the major beneficiaries of ad conversion.

The below chart will help you in understanding the conversion rate industry wise, we can easily figure out that the Restaurants and Health Care industry are the top players when it comes to Ad conversions.

Preparing for post COVID-19

It may not seem to be coming fast enough, but look at China which is slowly reopening its shuttered doors. Consumer habits will slowly normalize but there will be a new normal. This new normal is still developing and your efforts and budget spent on SEO today or any other digital marketing strategy are likely to reap multi fold benefits. Now is not the time to trim your digital marketing strategy or its budget. To the contrary, now is the time to increase your efforts and your investment.

We have been working with companies by their side to help cope with today’s environment and we can do the same for you.

The post Coronavirus and Beyond – Time for Digital Transformation appeared first on Soft Scribe LLC.

Human vs. Machine Transcription: Who Comes Out on Top?

admin — Mon, 16 Mar 2020 18:45:44 +0000

Confused over machine versus human transcription? Wondering which is better and why? This short guide might help with your decision.

Speed: If speed is more important to you than accuracy, then automated transcription services are the way to go. There are many software tools that can convert speech into text in record time. A video that is approximately two hours long can take less than 30 minutes to transcribe. But, remember what you lose with this speed is accuracy.
Audio Quality: Machine transcription converts spoken word into written word. It cannot isolate the actual speech which needs transcription from a noisy background. Multiple speakers, all of who may be enthusiastic to make their voice heard, will likely complicate the quality. To even consider using machine transcription for your needs, ensure that your audio has been recorded in a reasonably quiet environment and is free of static, cross-talk and that each speaker is using a microphone or at the very least, speaking very clearly.
Punctuation & Grammar: Most machines do a good job on punctuations, but today’s technology still cannot beat the perfection from a human transcriber. For instance, the machine may interpret a pause to mean the end of a sentence when in essence, the speaker may have simply paused to find the most appropriate words.
Accents: Different dialects have different accents. Software requires a significant amount of training on accents. The more the training, in all likelihood the better the transcript will be. If you have an accented audio, to consider machine-generated transcription, you should be fully aware of the software and the processes used for transcription. This includes how much quality control is used post machine-generated transcripts. Quality control is always done by humans so this added layer will likely add to the cost.

Machine-generated transcription has made progress in leaps and bounds. Yet, it has a long way to go when verbatim transcription is needed, when the audio quality of your project is compromised or when you have a large volume of work with customized requirements. We hope this blog has been helpful with your decision. Should you require transcription services, we hope you will consider us.

The post Human vs. Machine Transcription: Who Comes Out on Top? appeared first on Soft Scribe LLC.

Financial services and Online Reputation Management

admin — Tue, 11 Feb 2020 10:04:55 +0000

Are you a financial services company? Should you care about your online reputation? Why? Asset managers are not selected based on proximity to one’s home or office, rather based almost exclusively on reputation and referrals. A good reputation will typically generate strong referrals. While traditional word of mouth referrals are not extinct, online reputation generated from references and experiences is becoming increasingly key in manager selection.

A good online reputation filled with positive reviews is more likely to result in warm leads and potential new clients.
According to Forbes, 42% of U.S. adults look someone up before doing business with him or her.

As Michael Fertik, CEO of Reputation.com said, “Word of mouth has given way to word of review”. Nearly everyone conducts online research before spending on any product or service. Consumers interested in a financial advisor will conduct even deeper research and will most certainly not invest with an advisor who has negative reviews.

The first step is knowing what your clients are saying about you. Do reviews about your service exist and how many are positive or negative. Knowing what’s at stake, building and maintaining a strong positive online footprint must be a priority.
Secondly, have you claimed your business name with Google? It is imperative to do so in order to ensure high rankings on search engines. In addition to that, register with relevant social media sites and be sure to monitor activity and stay active and engaged on social media platforms.
Set up alerts to enable you to monitor your reputation. This means that you will be notified anytime your business name is used – good or bad. If a negative review is posted, be sure to craft a careful and thoughtful response before reacting. It is a good idea to respond to every review, positive or not.

Be genuine and ask your clients if they are willing to post reviews about their experiences or your services and feature those glowing ones!
An online presence has made it easy to communicate information. If you aren’t already offering interesting and useful information via blogs and on social media then you could be losing valuable opportunities to expand your online presence. Don’t shy away from the option to be a guest blogger!
Establish your presence as an expert on your subject. Use the SlideShare feature on LinkedIn, participate in content worthy groups and share your insight as a thought leader in your field.

Chances are, you are too busy to attend to the tips included here and more. Consider hiring an online reputation management specialist. As a financial advisor, one of the most valuable pieces of advice you likely convey is patience. Remember, the same applies to social media management. Be patient with your online management specialist, ask for monthly reports, stay on top of your reviews, design a good online strategy and you will boost your results. You may not be able to get clients, but you will build goodwill.

Public figures are no longer the only ones who have to worry about negative publicity; anyone can fall victim to online smears, even if those complaints have little or no merit. Advisors are no exception. Regardless of online reports or complaints are misleading, inaccurate or unfair, they can still create a lingering doubt in the minds of potential clients.

The post Financial services and Online Reputation Management appeared first on Soft Scribe LLC.

Why Online Reputation Management is Important for Your Business in 2020?

admin — Wed, 08 Jan 2020 15:26:52 +0000

In this Digital era, online reviews and ratings are very important. Reviews and review platforms is a reference point for buyers across the globe as they trust reviews while making a purchase decision. We have listed out some important stats to understand the importance of good online reputation:

90% of people first check online reviews before making a purchase
88% of people trust online reviews and ratings
Positive online reviews lead to increased sales
72% of people will only interact with brands that have positive reviews and ratings
Online reviews give you an exact picture of what your customers expect from you
Online reviews help boost your SEO results
Reviews create brand loyalty

Nowadays there are hundreds of reviews sites available online and lots of users write dozens of reviews on these platforms. Some may write genuine reviews, while others write fake reviews to spoil your reputation. You may be surprised if we tell you that some organizations pay these users to write negative reviews on behalf of your competitor.

It is nearly impossible for you to keep an eye on these activities. Moreover, it is hard to respond to all the negative and positive reviews, especially the negative ones. As a business, it’s important for you to maintain an online reputation. If you don’t do so, you are failing in comparison to your competitors.

Wondering what to do? Do you need help to manage your online reputation?

We at Soft Scribe LLC can help you; our Online Reputation Management (ORM) services can remove negative remarks from the initial 1-2 pages of Google and guarantee they end up imperceptible to looks. Regardless of whether you run a startup or a Fortune 500 organization, you can employ our services to battle with the negative remarks to keep your online reputation in place.

Benefits Of Our Online Reputation Management Services

The advantages of profiting from ORM services are innumerable. We have enrolled the chosen few of our services here which are the most vital ones:

Builds Trust

ORM constructs trust and increases mouth to mouth publicity. At any point, if a positive survey or message spreads about your organization, ORM turns that into a web sensation. Hence you can construct the trust which resultantly helps up your business.

Eliminates Negative Comments

ORM takes out every single negative remark or potentially negative reviews from the best rankings to downwards. This way it debases or expels a wide range of wrong substance and to empty the spaces for accommodating remarks, surveys, and postings which encompass the catchphrases in your online business.

Cost-Effective

ORM services for your organization can cost impressively lesser than the costs related to the online notoriety threats and avoid the crisis as negative remarks and postings will hurt your online reputation as well as influence your business sales and income.

Improves Ranking of Your Keywords

Online reputation management strategies are custom-fitted to expedite your positive surveys to the higher rankings. Adding more positive content and ranking them higher in the search engine will minimize the negative content. ORM also helps your organization in enhancing its rankings on prominent web crawlers.

We at Soft Scribe, recognize the need for businesses to have stellar review profiles so you can continue to compete. Online reviews and feedback are becoming much more prominent in search and other areas, so building a trustworthy reputation and keeping that customer bond is more important than ever.

That’s why we’ve developed online reputation management services that allow you or your clients to generate, monitor, and showcase online reviews in a smooth, seamless, and successful way. You can sit back and relax, while we do the job for you.

The post Why Online Reputation Management is Important for Your Business in 2020? appeared first on Soft Scribe LLC.

How Local SEO Can Help Your Business in 2020

admin — Mon, 06 Jan 2020 11:52:14 +0000

Local search is powerful for businesses: Four out of five users rely on online searches for information on local businesses. Are you prepared? Is your business optimized for local searches? If not, you could be missing out.

The importance of local Search Engine Optimization cannot be overemphasized. Here are a few reasons to ensure that your online presence is optimized for local searches:

Local Scale Exposure

Local SEO is not much different from organic SEO; it simply has a local focus, enabling not only locals to find your business quickly, but also non-locals searching for products or services.

Leverage local online resources like Craigslist, Angie’s List, and Yelp by advertising in the local classified section and uploading high-quality images and videos on these sites.

Link Building and Social Sharing

Another important part of using local SEO is the creation of potential partnerships or links between two or more businesses.

Amongst other things, links are a major factor in how Google ranks web pages. The key to link building is relevancy to your service and your customers. Writing consistently informative blogs, guest posts online relationships are all good strategies for positive link building. Outreach via good content, promotions, etc. can help you build long term relationships with key influencers, in turn positioning your business as a highly regarded one.

You can build and share links with local search engines like Google Places, Bing Places, Yahoo Local, Yelp, Foursquare, and YP.

Here are the best Directory Submission Sites With 200+ Directories which will help you in link building and increase your search penetration.

Growth of Mobile and Wearable Devices

Mobile devices are increasingly popular for their ease of use and accessibility. Searches on-the-go, particularly for restaurants and medical professionals is on the rise. According to Adam Farra, CEO of HostGator, “Society today is already transitioning from PCs to mobile Internet usage, so local SEO will be a necessity, not a ‘nice to have’ in the very near future.”

Business Extension

Your website is your business’ home away from home. Local SEO just makes it easier for potential customers to find you and interact. Being able to let a broad base group of your clients know your business hours, what you are serving today or the promotion of the day is invaluable. Posting relevant and informative content will showcase your business and let them know you value their patronage.

Increase in Revenue

Much of the success of any business depends on its marketing strategy and local SEO must be an integral part of a good marketing strategy.

Today, businesses are moving faster than ever. In the blink of an eye, you will find new competitors, new products and services with the time to market shrinking. Regardless of the industry, what worked well a few years ago is just not a good enough strategy today. So, this is not the time for trial and error, it’s time to position your business properly and we can help you.

The post How Local SEO Can Help Your Business in 2020 appeared first on Soft Scribe LLC.

How to Record a Good Audio for Quality Transcription

admin — Fri, 26 Jan 2018 06:45:38 +0000

How to Record a Good Audio for Quality Transcription

Do you require a quality verbatim transcription for your events, meetings or even court proceedings? And did you know that you control the key to a fast and professional transcript? Yes, that’s right! Transcription has a direct bearing on the quality of audio recordings. This means a good quality audio makes certain that you get back an accurate transcript with a quick turnaround.

Here are a few tips to ensure that you record your audio well.

Record in quiet and consistent setting

Choose an enclosed room to keep off any unwanted noise such as creaking tables and chairs, busy roads; and ask your staff not to disturb while a recording is ongoing. Microphones are sensitive to background noises, so soundproofing the room is a good idea.

Presence of a moderator

If there is a meeting or a seminar, ensure that a moderator briefs everyone about the audio recording and request them to avoid any crosstalk and background conversations. The members may also need to be reminded that overlapping conversations makes it difficult for the transcriber to understand what the main speaker is saying. As a result, the quality of transcription will suffer.

Quality of recording devices

When recording, it is always recommended to use good quality microphones, recorders, and professional software. In case you have set up a perfect ambiance, but compromised on recording devise, be prepared to expect screeching sounds and audio distortion, thus giving poor results. Device quality should not be taken lightly, especially for verbatim transcription.

Placement of devices and tone of speaking

Subsequent to the quality of microphone comes its placement. You have to be sure that microphones are positioned properly and at the right distance for clear recording. Also, ensure that speakers speak at a steady pace, pronounce the words right and are loud enough to be audible. Eliminating “inaudibles” will get you quality transcripts with quick turnarounds.

Run a trial recording

A simple way to check if the recording is right is to run a trial. It is advisable that you test your recording device, placement of microphones and checks for disturbances. In case of a panel discussion, speakers must be identified by either asking them to introduce themselves or taking a moderator’s help to address them. By doing this, you lower the chance of creating any confusion for the transcriber.

Keep the breaks in mind

If there is a break in between sessions, the mediator should announce the pause of a meeting and turn off the recorder until meeting resumes. Make sure the stoppage of a recorder is also mentioned before actually turning it off and resuming again.

To sum up, your transcriptions can be cost-effective and completed faster if you take care of little things during a recording session. If you need a quality transcript with quick-turnaround, click here to upload your file.

The post How to Record a Good Audio for Quality Transcription appeared first on Soft Scribe LLC.