This and That

Writing is the love of my life. 

I may not always have a great story every time I start writing. But, by the time I complete my piece, I always have something that I believe is important and worth jotting down. Does that make me a good writer? For me, writing cannot be boxed up as good or bad. Even after writing for hundreds of projects, that categorization is still an unsolved riddle for me.

Every piece devoid of grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors is the writer's way of jotting down a story or an experience. I write the way thoughts come gushing down. I am not a sesquipedalian writer who shows off the vastness of my vocabulary. I believe in keeping it simple and engaging. Even if very few readers love and appreciate my work, I consider it good. 

I also engage in constant reading and practice - the two qualities that I believe are highly important to becoming a good writer. Thus, I continue to narrate stories and experiences through my writing. It's my passion and also helps earn my bread and butter. I am not excellent, but I am always getting incrementally better.


Learn how to make your content shine bright

If you want to build a loyal and ever-increasing audience base for your blog or website, you have to be smart with content writing and optimization. Writing is just one part of the puzzle. The other parts comprise various steps to make your content error-free, engaging, and SEO compliant. Your content must be optimized for both search engines and the target audience. Optimization factors are imperative to decide ranking and visibility in organic search results. Does that mean one can overlook content quality and focus on the other factors? The short answer is: No. Is there a way to balance both and win search engines and the expectations of the target audience? Let’s find out!

The roadmap to engaging and lead-generating content should include two key points:
  • Write optimized content that solves a problem.
  • Optimize your content to appeal to the end-users and search engines.
When it comes to content creation and optimization, a well-thought-out map is your cornerstone. While this process can be time-consuming, the rest of the pieces will fall into place quickly if you utilize cutting-edge tools that help write optimized and quality content faster. Content writing and optimization tools always top the list. Let’s understand the reason behind the increasing relevance of tools that make content creation easy and breezy.

Search engines can identify informative and optimized content. They serve their users with the best results, and they want you to do the same through your blogs and websites. However, what if you don't have the luxury of time to make your content shine bright like a diamond? What if you have to create content faster without hurting the quality? According to research, nearly 44% of content marketers say that creating good quality content consistently and quickly is one of their biggest challenges. Time is the essence, and your audience will greatly appreciate your effort if you can deliver quality and optimized content quickly, consistently, and effectively.

Gone are the days when the quantum of the content needed per day was minimal. With the increasing amount of content requirements, the necessity of using advanced content creation tools has grown by leaps and bounds. The reason is simple: such tools help make content creation easier and successful. By providing valuable insights and recommendations, they can make your content outstanding and worth reading. That said, such tools can never replace the relevance of quality writing or rewarding and long-term strategies. In short, even with time constraints, you can make your content shine bright like a diamond.

The goal of every content writer is to create engaging and shareable content. However, it is important to write well-researched, SEO compliant, and grammatically correct content. This is where a software tool can be of immense advantage. Features embedded in content creation tools can:
  • detect grammatical and structural errors
  • help you get organized
  • ensure SEO compliance
  • suggest matching hashtags
  • suggest trending topics.
Nowadays, such tools are AI-powered and go way beyond the fundamental features. They add clarity, strength, and style that can make your content persuasive and engaging. They can also be of immense help when it comes to finding fresh topics and ideas in your niche and augment your productivity and performance. Editing tools can make your content mistake-free. You can use them to check for grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors. Editing tools also include top-notch features that can help proofread and edit your work by yourself.

As a content writer, you must not know how to produce and optimize content for search engines. For optimization, you can make use of AI-embedded SEO tools. They help keep an eye on keyword quality and density, word count, headlines, body copy, and readability. These insights are highly relevant to optimize your work for the search engines and target audience.

Using or not using a thesaurus is an individual choice, but I believe that the benefits of using a good thesaurus far outweigh the drawbacks. A thesaurus is indispensable to improve your command of the English language. It can provide you with the most reliable collection of synonyms and antonyms.

If you are looking for a tool to avoid plagiarism, you can find a whole host of online tools that can help identify plagiarized content. As you know, plagiarism is a serious offence that can lead to Google penalties and even blacklisting.

As we all know, every content piece you create will have room for improvement. The steps to improve will depend on the performance of the content that you publish. To get insightful performance metrics and make data-driven decisions, you can make use of content analytics tools. They can help improve and optimize your content and examine sources of traffic without fail.

These content creation tools can undoubtedly help make content creation quick and smoother, and they can take your content to the next level. Such futuristic tools can also lessen the time that you invest in researching, writing, and polishing content each day. Put simply, having the skill set can be the content pillars. But if you want to create amazing and engaging content that stands out from the competition, it is important to have the best content tools in your arsenal. They can up your content writing game, attract readers, and drive conversions.

I wrote this piece as part of a selection process for the post of Content Specialist. 

AI in advertising: A necessity to stay afloat during the pandemic crisis

We live in an incredibly fast-paced and noisy world where attention is a prized commodity. From advertisements to social media posts, emails, and blogs, most of us are on information overload 24/7. Hence, companies and brands need to get their message across in a clear, engaging, and timely fashion. On time, effective, and efficient communication with prospective customers also should be a top priority. Companies and brands must constantly innovate and push boundaries to stay afresh in their customers' minds. But how can they make it happen when a pandemic takes the world by storm? Most companies and brands are no strangers to crisis management. However, the global impact and the ongoing uncertainty around Covid-19 is a first for many of them. The crisis responses they are aware of have now become a thing of the past.

As we know, the unprecedented Covid-19 pandemic has sent shockwaves across various industries. These are challenging times for every industry, and advertising is no exception. The need of the hour is the ability to adapt to the current scenario. It is undeniable that the current landscape poses its own set of challenges. However, when it comes to advertising, the marriage of data and creativity can help create persuasive and creative ad campaigns that enable sustainable brand building and revenue growth.

Given the changes in the advertising landscape, it is imperative to optimize and fully utilize the vast amount of data available and create result-driven and impactful campaigns. When consumer behaviour shifts, advertisers must react promptly and cater to the evolving needs. They must leverage data to empower their campaigns and decision-making. This is where artificial intelligence comes in!

There is no denying that AI is shaping the future of advertising and marketing. It is a fast-growing market and is estimated to be worth $9.88 billion by 2022. AI tools are now used for advertising automation and optimization. It can reduce human errors significantly and improve user experiences. From targeting to budget allocation, AI takes up the time-consuming tasks from advertisers and frees them to pay attention to other key aspects of advertising.

The potential benefits of AI are both compelling and unlimited. AI can play a critical role in helping you select the right influencers and thought leaders and devise the most lead-generating content strategy that can increase engagement across platforms. It can also play a crucial role in helping marketers target the right prospects at the right time. By deciphering data from multiple sources, marketers can quickly create lead-generating campaigns that deliver guaranteed results.

Personalization is another advantage that AI offers. Tailored and hyper-personalized messages help establish long-term relationships with customers across various touchpoints. You can use AI to optimize creative messages as well as short-term and long-term marketing content. It helps connect with the target customers and can consequently augment brand loyalty by raising customer retention. AI can thus be called the sure-shot way to reduce advertisement waste, improve ROI, save time, and drive more value from every penny.

I wrote this piece as part of a selection process for the post of Content Writer.

Selfie clock-ins: Because touch-free is the way to be.

The COVID-19 pandemic is far more than a mere health crisis. It is affecting people and economies across the world. Its impact and uncertainties continue to batter every possible trade, business, and enterprise across all boundaries. With nearly 2 million confirmed cases, India has the world’s second-highest number of COVID-19 patients, now second only to the United States.

As you know, we are amid a second wave, and the deluge of COVID-19  infections keep touching a new all-time high every day. The second wave has brought with it a whole host of dangers that have made us more vulnerable to infection. According to health experts, the virus can stay on unsterilized surfaces for hours to days. Hence, the need of the hour is to follow touchless practices at homes, offices, and public places.

With restrictions on travelling and mass gatherings, work from home has become the new normal for most of us and going to the office an exception. When an increasing number of employees work from home, managing their day-to-day attendance is a major area of concern for many employers. Tracking daily attendance manually can be time-consuming and expensive. Additionally, if employees are going to the office, biometric attendance can be very dangerous in the current scenario. A long-term and effective online attendance management is the only comprehensive solution to curb contact-induced COVID-19 cases, avert human errors, and track daily attendance swiftly, safely, and effectively.

With the help of disruptive technologies, companies can take attendance management to a whole new level and enable easy and effective workforce management. Selfie attendance is the best way to overhaul the workplace attendance management system to match the changing needs. In addition to being an uber-cool way to register attendance, selfie attendance leaves zero chances of glitch and little manual intervention. Thus employers and HR staff can focus on critical and pressing tasks and not worry about day-to-day attendance management.

How does a selfie attendance system work?

Selfie attendance is an ideal attendance management system for both the office-going employees and those working remotely.  The applications include cutting-edge facial recognition and geological features. They can detect your employee's face (even with a mask on) and store the image along with locations, time, and other relevant details. Employees can mark in and mark out in just one tap, and all it takes is selfies and the location details.

While the registration and login processes may vary for each application, the attendance recording method is the same in most of them. Employees can record their attendance at the beginning and the end of each working day by clicking their selfies and uploading them to the database.  They can clock in and clock out easily, and the HR team can later verify the data for authenticity.

Such new-age attendance management systems are safe and cloud-based and are available at surprisingly reasonable costs when compared to the popular on-premise solutions. They are mobile-friendly and packed with a whole host of futuristic technologies and features. Another exciting advantage is the ease of use and the minimal time necessary to adapt to the new way of attendance management. Furthermore, most of the selfie attendance solutions providers offer incredible features to grab the data in multiple formats.

Selfie attendance is a scalable, secure, and infection-free way to simplify streamline attendance management, especially during tough times, like the ongoing COVID-19 crisis.

 I wrote this piece as part of a selection process for the post of Content Writer.