They Say Timing Isn’t Everything, But These Numbers Beg to Differ

Photo by Florian Biedermann on Unsplash

I recently heard someone say “timing isn’t everything,” in that it shouldn’t be at the top of your to-do list as a general rule. I thought, fair enough. It doesn’t have to be the #1 priority all the time, that much is true. But it’s still up there, regardless of your line of work. In marketing, it’s as important as any other issue.

Getting the content right is usually a non issue in marketing. Basically, you just need “something” that can be used in a campaign. It’s not a priority – it’s a must! Without the content, you don’t have marketing, period. Now, since content creators are everywhere, putting together a colorful banner or a video is not a pressing issue. What you do with that content is much more important.

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Why Outfitting Your Office Is Crucial for Attracting New Talent

Companies competing in the technology sector are – to put it mildly – smart. They not only make the world go round, but they also set the tone for the future through their unique taste in architecture, collaboration and HR practices.

Employers today have to struggle to wow applicants with bold office designs, mild policies and a long list of benefits. For tech companies, the workforce is the most important asset. Without the people, there is no product or service, no matter how brilliant the company’s management might be.

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Public Libraries Are Beating The Internet In One Key Area: Trust

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Thanks to smartphones and tablets, book reading no longer requires a trip to the local library. Amazon alone probably holds all the books you could read in a hundred lifetimes, but many people still prefer to stop by their local library regularly, whether it’s for looking up a guide or job hunting.

In a recent survey conducted across the United States, Pew Research Center uncovers the habits of Americans young and old, rich and poor, educated or not, based on race, gender, etc. The research group found some interesting things, including the fact that two-thirds of all of those 16 and older believe that closing their local public library would have a significant impact on their community. 32% said it would affect them (and their respective families) directly.

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Overthink Much? You Could Be a Full-Blown Genius

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Do you think geniuses are happy, contempt, at peace with themselves? Think again. People like Isaac Newton or Nikola Tesla worried about the world and their own existence in it. Their anxiety levels were so high that it triggered imagination beyond the contemporary limits. According to a recent study that focused on people who worry, it is this neurotic level of imagination that makes a genius.

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The Hidden ROI of User Experience [Infographic]

Ever ask yourself what the ROI of User Experience is? Not many business leaders do, despite UX playing a crucial role in the success of a given product or service.

Experience Dynamics has put together an extensive infographic that attacks the subject from every angle, showing that UX holds a return of investment (ROI) that far exceeds any forecast. For example, did you know that if you get the User Interface right you will have likely eliminated as many as 80% of the unforeseen issues that lay ahead? Or that good UX reduces development time by 33-to50 percent as it helps prioritize dev tasks more easily?

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Quote of the Day Is About Getting Things Done

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Fantasizing about success is one thing we are all good at, but few of us know when to stop daydreaming and roll up those sleeves to get some actual work done. The following quote says it with such eloquence that you’ll get off your butt and make today worthwhile.

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The Deep Secret of Emoticons and How They Impact Our Communication

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I can still remember the first time I saw a smiley face. : ) I couldn’t understand it because it wasn’t a pictogram and it hadn’t arrived with an instruction manual – “tilt your head to the left.” All I could see was a colon and a parenthesis. I was failing at the one thing I normally did best: visualize. It could have been a mild form of dyslexia (which I may or may not have because I never got it diagnosed), but I blame it on the missing bits.

I was with a friend at the time and I had asked him to explain it to me. He obliged, but nonetheless mocked my poor observation skills, which ensued my aversion towards this alien language made up of punctuation marks. They were everywhere and I didn’t get them. When I finally did manage to commit some to memory, I incorporated them into my own texts – for I had found them necessary to relate to those who fired them in my direction – but I would still scratch my head at the arrival of a new specimen. Like <3. The whole of planet Earth saw a heart, I saw an arrow tip and a three.

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“X” Marks The Spot

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Market researchers everywhere are sounding the horn that Millennials are quickly becoming the dominant figure in the workforce, dispensing their invaluable advice on how to cope with the situation left and right. However, the world is in no danger of ending just because Generation Y is growing up. Gen Xers are alive and kicking, and spending more than ever.

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Cloud Saas, IaaS, PaaS – A $112 Billion Market by 2019 [IDC]

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IDC reveals in a report that the cloud software market reached $48.8 billion in revenue in 2014 (a 24.4% growth from the year ago) and is projected to be worth in excess of $112 billion by 2019. SaaS (Software as a Service) will play an instrumental role, outpacing traditional software product delivery by a rate of 5-to1. $1 of every $4.59 spent on software will directed at the cloud software model, IDC predicts.

The analytics firm sounds the horn on a huge opportunity, advising all major IT product vendors to put this strategic goal at the top of their to-do lists: figure out how to capitalize on the cloud services transformation. However, CIOs and IT reps at various cloud-centric companies seem to be fully aware that the doors to service heaven are wide open.

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Technology Is Evolving Faster Than We Can Handle It

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Not too long ago, we discussed how a number of African countries were going mobile before they could even be fitted with landlines. Cell phones are dirt cheap today and ‘wireless’ is the norm, so it’s no surprise that copper-wire infrastructures are becoming irrelevant.

The same thing is happening across other industries and applications. According to a survey commissioned by Deloitte,

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