Learn The Secret to Unlocking the Content Marketing Treasure-trove

The phrase ‘content is king’ gets thrown around very frequently to highlight how important content is. In my view interactivity plays an important role and should not be discounted from the content creation process.

Interactive content is extremely beneficial for business as it attracts audience, boosts engagement, increases web traffic, and increases conversion rate. Businesses often neglect the importance of the interactive element as they are too driven to produce more content. Producing excessive content will make it seem generic and even make your audience lose interest when you see them swimming off to other competitors that are most focused on content that are engaging.

Think of it this way, if you’re planning to buy something online, what is the first thing you do? You'll want to make sure you check online to read reviews and when convinced you will try your level best to find the best deals you can get in the marketplace. Access to an array of information freely has caused today's consumers to be more savvy when making a purchase with online research taking a foothold in the decision making process before a buying decision is even made. This is different from conventional purchasing habits. However traditional recommendations from high-value connections in your network which consumers view and trust highly still play an integral role in the buying decision too. This is why ever more so you should facilitate a consumer's behavior by servicing their need for information with interactive thoughtful ideas to further enhance their decision to purchase from you.

Interactive content is the fundamentals of lead generation and conversion. It enriches your marketing plan as it elevates it to a different tier that creates an engaging experience for your customers.

Interactive content is different from traditional content as it seeks to engage and entertain its users. The mechanics of the internet and websites have allowed content to exist in different forms that can be presented in various ways.

The few common and effective interactive content are:

i) Infographics

ii) GIFs,

iii) Videos

iv) Podcasts

v) Webinars

The examples above do not represent the boundaries of interactive content. Interactivity should be embodied by creative freedom. Innovative elements with the guide of thought to engage the audience by providing an experience can unlock a lot of potential in the content you produce. Rather than taking the side of the informant, why not gamify, request for an opinion, or start a conversation, because these are some of the building blocks to making highly successful interactive content. Have your audience engage and interact with your content and you would have developed a valuable community that shares and relies on the information you recommend to them, and this can indirectly lead to better sales opportunities and strong positive brand perceptions.

Now, the million dollar question: Why, and how is interactive content beneficial?

Enriches The Appeal Of Your Website

Interactive content contributes heavily to make a website seem well-designed. We cannot deny that humans like to be satisfied visually. We like seeing beautiful things and are always mesmerised by things that are visually stunning. This is why the way a website looks is crucial in attracting and sustaining your audience.

With that being said, the thing that truly engages them is the interactive content you have distributed over your website. Interactive content emphasises more on visual elements, which is much more appealing than normal content. It enhances the overall ‘beauty’ of your website and has a higher chance in making page visitors to explore your website because let’s face it, no one would be interested in navigating through a boring website that is lackluster in its design and content.

Entices Your Audience To Buy

Interactive content grabs an online user’s attention. Furthermore, it’s extremely informative and educative. The interactive mechanism allows users to understand the product more in an innovative way, along with relevant information that drives the users to purchase.

It also important to intelligently incorporate your interactive content with your website’s call-to-action (CTAs) widgets. Delivering content that entices your audience should also be capitalized, build content so that it translates to measurable goals. By incorporating these in your strategy your audience will be more convinced to interact with the product or service in which you have to offer.

Increases Social Sharings & Engagements

When people had hands-on experience on how remarkable your interactive content is, they will surely share it with friends, either by mouth or through social media. Word of your business will reach more people, increasing brand awareness.

Keep up the momentum and provide updates constantly to entertain your audience and keep them on the hook. Utilise social media as a tool to spread the news about your interactive content and get more people to visit it.

Boosts Your Business Revenues

Successfully improving readership and website visits means that there are more people who will mostly likely end up buying your products/services. It exposes your content to more visibility and more people will visit it and experience it themselves. The increase in readers/viewership automatically translate it to higher sales for your business as the chances of people buying your products/services are higher.

Most companies put attracting customers/readers/viewership as their utmost priority because your business needs to get a notable amount of visibility and exposure in order to reach the right people that are interested in your products/services.

Interactive content is the key to acing your content marketing strategy. It drives leads and conversions, which ultimately results in the boost of business revenue. Devise your content marketing plan carefully and be sure to produce interactive content that will lay an impact to your audience.

You can find more information on how you can deploy your interactive content here through EVERWORKS unique mobile distribution gateways.

Read More

How to Choose a Programming Language for Your Business

With technology now central to most business processes and as a business owner you might be asking  how do I know that the developers I have engaged is using the programming language that's best for my business? To solve this let's do it in a few bite-sized steps:

What should you ask first?

An early easy check is to just ask the appointed developer if he has done this kind of work before and find out if it was successful. Just check their references and you have to understand that you can't treat all technology you are asking for as a one size fits all solution to work just straight out of the box. Shoes have different sizes and technology also has different fits depending on the specific requirements your business might have. As a result you need to choose a programming language that is flexible and scalable to adapt along with your business needs. This can take a few different versions before it actually gets right.

Are there any specific requirements you need to get from your lead programmer?

First ask what programming language and framework are going to be used and what the thought process is behind that decision. Second ask if they have already checked out third-party libraries for ready made code that can be used off the rack so the programming team isn't spending unnecessary time  to reinvent the wheel when the wheel has already been invented.

Which languages are the safest?

1. Web apps, use Ruby on Rails
2. For iPhone apps use Swift or Objective C
3. For Android use Native Development Kit
4. For a simple website, go with WordPress
5. For e-commerce, use WordPress and WooCommerce or Shopify if you are looking for an all-in-one solution (This is a simple web-store that can function perform most tasks well).

Get online and host with a reliable and affordable web host so you can get any of your ideas online and in front of your targeted audience.

Read More

Alternative Option for SME Growth Driver Diversification

More people today use mobile devices as compared to years before. This has been driven with the sudden drive and demand for greater functional use and portability. This is heavily driven by growing global demand for more flexibility to perform daily tasks. The advancement in technology has made the smartphone indispensable to every modern person's daily life. Diversify your business and develop a unique proposition with proven results that drive greater profitability.

It is important that you look for a SMS Payment Gateway with these features:

1. Unlimited MO and MT. There should be no limitations to the amount of ingoing mobile originated and outgoing mobile terminated traffic providing you with the necessary scalability requirements;
2. SMS Helpdesk support. It is always integral to any operation to have available support to help with any payment-related disputes and management of your managing your sms business's reputation;
3. World-class datacenter with dedicated high speed fiber optic channels to ensure secure connections;
4. Easy API access with an emphasis on a short-integration method;
5. and flexible payment schemes to ensure adequate cash flow management to accommodate different payment terms of differing Telcos.

Small Business Diversification for Growth

Diversification options can be costly for most small businesses and therefore choices are not many but with EVERWORKS SMS Payment Gateway solution it can give small businesses opportunity to diversify with an affordable entry.

Transaction Costs

It is also important to identify with a provider that will not be charging you too high of a transaction costs. You can refer to EVERWORKS SMS Payment Gateway breakdown of revenue sharing here.

How it works

This method of diversification looks at fulfilling the key driver: adaptation as the business seeks to less risky and quicker deployment of an alternative localised internationalisation strategy. This would represent to be a more cost effective solution when compared to other vertical value chain involvements. 

Read More

Malaysian 4G Explained: What is LTE?

Like most things new, there have been a recent growth in acceptance across all major carriers in Malaysia touting "the fastest or widest 4G network in the country," but what does all this hype actually mean? What is the difference between 4G LTE and 3G? Which network should I choose for LTE the best LTE Coverage?

What is LTE?

LTE as defined by Wikipedia is an acronym for Long Term Evolution, commonly marketed as 4G LTE, is a standard for wireless communication of high-speed data for mobile phones and data terminals.

Although the definition has defined LTE fairly accurately, it hasn't given simple minds like mine an easy enough breakdown for me to understand. Here it is, plainly put, LTE is a faster mobile connection, and data terminals. Look at it as the bigger brother of 3G.

For history junkies (also from Wikipedia): The LTE service was first launched publicly by TeliaSonera in Stokholm, and Oslo.

Everyone is going LTE

Today Malaysian carriers advertise their networks as 4G (a few carriers include Digi, Celcom, Maxis, P1 Wimax, Yes 4G, and U Mobile) which confuses a lot of people. 

The most notable change you will experience when switching from a 3G network to a LTE network is a significant speed upgrade. LTE networks are on an average 10x faster than 3G. Websites load faster, in fact almost everything loads much faster.

You can check for a list of LTE Networks here.

Choosing the right network

There are 8 companies in 2013 who have been granted access to the 2600 MHz spectrum band; Digi, Celcom, Maxis, P1 Wimax, U Mobile and Yes. In Malaysia Maxis was the only company to have officially launched 4G LTE smartphone plans.

"Maxis's 4G LTE offers speeds up to 75 Mbps, which is less than the required speed of 100 Mbps for the required 4G LTE speed set by Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission (MCMC). Although Maxis's LTE on average, depending on where you are, offers ranges of 10 Mbps to 30 Mbps remains to be a good speed bump from 3G, it is still lacking from the 100Mbps required speed.

One other popular network provider in Malaysia is, Digi, has been upgrading its network sites in Malaysia to a new network which Digi names 'Tomorrow Network'. With this upgrade Digi aims to cover at least 95.8% of Malaysia to provide High Speed Internet along with a fully equipped LTE network. 

Digi's Tomorrow Network boasts the following benefits:

1. Malaysia's first LTE-equipped network (able to provide fiber like speeds to mobile devices)
2. Expanding High Speed Internet Coverage (EDGE & 3G) to cover 95.8% of Malaysia.
3. More stable network
4. More efficient equipment (green initiative - saves more energy)

Further reading: How LTE affect to Malaysia's mobile content business

EVERWORKS is Malaysia's leading Mobile Hosting Provider, that provides business owners with operator- grade delivery mechanism that connects your SMS content and wireless applications to reach your targeted audiences. 

What are your views on 4G LTE? What is the impact of LTE to Malaysia?

photo by kowitz

Read More

Build Your Startup Internet and Mobile Hosting Business: Step 3

Previously I have written on how easy it is to startup your own Internet and mobile hosting business.

Oh, and yes, this is a series on Building Your Startup Internet and Mobile Hosting Business. There are 3 steps to the whole process. Well, 3 steps keeps things nice and compact and easy to follow.

This is the final of the three (3) steps on how to easily startup your own Internet and mobile hosting business.

Yes I have a plan, now I will get to doing it tomorrow.

You know what you need to do. You know why you need to do it. You even know what steps you must take to get it done. But there’s one small problem: you can’t seem to get moving. Big problem, but it actually isn't one.

The final step.

Work on your project rather than saying you will. Get down to things, start doing work now; rather than later.

The measure of productivity and good returns is the ability for you to start something and to get it up and running immediately.

Contact EVERWORKS. Ask the support team all the questions you need answers to, and get down to starting your business.

Some tips to help with procrastination:

1. Make sure you really want to do it
2. Keep things simple
3. Make it the first priority of your day
4. Just get started
5. Tell yourself you are just going to work on it for 10 minutes

Ask anything, unsure of how long it will take, how much work is required, how much it costs, what are the plans, who will help when help is needed most?

Asking is important, because if you don't ask no one can answer any of your questions. 

With that, this ends the series on how to startup your own internet and mobile hosting business easily.

Somethings to ponder on:

1. Tell us what you want to read in future?
2. Was this short series helpful?

Subscribe to our feed for future series like this.

Read More

Your Data Is Your Data.

Can Internet Companies be forced by Government to disclose data that is stored by its customers?
Recently there has been a lot of concern on the NSA Prism program where government has been secretly obtaining data from companies; an undisclosed program, now made known to the public. "NSA Prism program taps in to user data of Apple, Google and others" - The Guardian UK

The National Security Agency has obtained direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and other US internet giants, according to a top secret document obtained by the Guardian.

The NSA access is part of a previously undisclosed program called Prism, which allows officials to collect material including search history, the content of emails, file transfers and live chats, the document says.

It is EVERWORKS's policy that it will not access, transfer, or deliver EVERWORKS's customers in response to any government authorities other than pursuant to a properly issued, lawful request from appropriate law enforcement officials or other order from a competent body from the country in which the servers are physically located.

EVERWORKS has not participated in any data mining or collection of customer data located within its hosted environments.

Read more on EVERWORKS's Terms & Policies.

What are your thoughts on:

1. How to maintain digital privacy?
2. What other policies should be implemented to keep privacy?

Follow us through our feed for more reads.

 Security photographed by bulldog1 | PRISM Information & Picture: The Guardian UK Online

Read More

Build Your Startup Internet and Mobile Hosting Business: Step 2

Previously I have written on how easy it is to startup your own Internet and mobile hosting business.

Exciting news isn't it? Stopping there wouldn't have done you much justice. In this post I will tell you just how to do it, and what you can possibly achieve with this easy startup option!

Oh, and yes, this is a series on Building Your Startup Internet and Mobile Hosting Business. There are 3 steps to the whole process. Well, 3 steps keeps things nice and compact and easy to follow. So stay tuned for the final chapter of this series, the "third step".

Is the Mobile and Internet Space worth it?

May 2012: Mobile & Social Gaming, Internet Consulting, Internet Publishing and Broadcasting E-Commerce are some of the 11 Best Business Opportunities according to Inc.

Big news surrounds this big boom, but is the mobile industry just another "dot com" bubble or is it going to last a good century? Technology as it seems, is moving towards a more mobile, organic form whereby designers and engineers in the current age are building for the future and going back to the roots of ideology where technology was meant to be an aid to everyday work, rather than an obstruction.

Considering the current trend is really staggering, so why don't we take advantage of the booming trend in technology and immediately assimilate into it with little or no heavy initial commitments.

From the previous understanding of how to startup your own Internet and mobile hosting business easily, there are a few steps that you could perform much in advance to prepare yourself for an immediate performable action. In other words, prepare a simple action-step; simple, quick, and effective.

Start with:

1. Market Identification: All you need to do is identify the market you wish to penetrate, with the wide array of already available infrastructure provided by EVERWORKS. What helps is to; identify the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats that could potentially come against you, and have a good strong core that your customers can relate to. Generally people believe in your beliefs and ideas, because ultimately all products sold are relatively the same. 
2. Also, having a solid plan that covers the action-step for the next 3 years helps to keep the direction clear during times of trouble.

Behind every won war, there is a great tactician. Plotting your action-plan is vital to making sure your business succeeds. Even though the easy solution has been given, but if your idea or inspiration does not take direction, and have a clear path, nothing gets translated properly into effective actions.

Consider those two suggestions, with a valid professional business advisor, before making any critical decisions. Don't just take my word for it.

Stay tuned for more. In the mean time let us know what you think:

1. Is the mobile and Internet hosting business something for the future?
2. Are there any other advice you would like to share to better prepare a Startup?

Please subscribe for future posts.

Read More

Maxis Introducing Error Code of 415

Recently, we got an email from Maxis about the introduction of Error Code 415. Maxis is upgrading their API documentation about this new feature, so that we can reconfigure our Premium SMS Gateway accordingly while detected this error code.

Basically, this error code is to inform EVERWORKS SMS Gateway to take the necessary action when receiving this error message while pushing the MT to Maxis SMS Gateway.

Below are the explanation from Maxis about this error code of 415:

Code	Description
415	The subscriber subscription service has been temporarily blocked due to renewal reminder not receive by subscriber (e.g. may due to the subscriber being out of network coverage area, subscriber.s mobile device being switched-off, etc.).

As our platform will trigger periodical renewal reminders to the subscribers, there will be scenario where some subscribers do not receive the renewal reminders at their mobile devices (e.g. may due to the subscriber being out of network coverage area, subscriber.s mobile device being switched-off, etc.). In this scenario, Content Provider will receive Error Code 415 when attempt to trigger renewal/ content charge to this subscriber.

Action Plan by EVERWORKS
In this situation, all Content Provider of EVERWORKS should not do multiple retries of charging MTs to the subscribers, once receiving Error Code 415 from the SMS gateway. In the following renewal cycle, the renewal reminder will trigger accordingly by Maxis and your subscribers will receive the chargeable content upon successful renewal reminder delivery to the subscriber's device.

Maxis has sent us the latest API documentation with this implementation, and EVERWORKS will revise our SMS gateway in order to compliance on this new feature by Maxis, as well as to update our current API documentations. We will keep our Content Provider update once the revised API is ready. For more information  please contact our Messaging Team at sms@everworks.com

Read More

The LTE Game Changer: How LTE affects Malaysia's Mobile Content Business

In December 2012, MCMC (Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission) has announced that eight companies were allowed to access the country's 2600MHz spectrum band for LTE services.

The eight companies were Celcom, DiGi Telecommunications, Maxis Broadband, Packet One Networks, Puncak Semangat, REDtone, U Mobile, and YTL Communications.

Earlier in 2013, we have slowly seen local Telcos rolling out their LTE services with a lot attractive data plan bundled together.

Maxis has launched their high-speed 4G LTE network on 1 January 2013, and (according to Maxis) they are also the first Telco in Malaysia to activate 4G LTE for Apple devices such as iPhone 5, iPad mini and iPad 4, as well as you can see the same thing with other local Telcos like Celcom and DiGi.

Of course, penetration of LTE service has to work closely with phone maker, and this investment can't be a successful if none of their subscribers is upgrading to LTE phone. Hence, you can see how desperately Maxis is pushing their iPhone5 and Samsung 4S package with so much attractive data plan. In fact, I have signed up too with Maxis for their iPhone5 package.


How LTE affect to Malaysia's mobile content business? 

We see this as an advantage to our industry in term of the delivery of mobile content. A solid connectivity between mobile phone and content provider is extremely important once a mobile user has subscribed to their service via SMS short code. 

Today, many Mobile Content Providers (CP) has started shifting their content delivering method from SMS to internet channel (included GPRS, EDGE, 3G, LTE). In early years, when you purchase a mobile content via short code, you will usually receive the purchased content in SMS format, and now (as most of the mobile users have already signed up internet data plan with their operator) you will most likely receive a WAP SMS with a embedded URL. 

With high penetration of mobile internet, Content Provider (CP) has started to change their business model by offering even more bigger size content (such as mobile apps and games). Content providers have already 'think out of the box' with all these available mobile connectivity, and SMS has just act as their micro payment tool in collecting payment from their mobile users. 

Just to share a business case study from EVERWORKS.com, my client was thinking to offer some pre-launch test play for their latest online game and to allow their client to purchase the test play credit online using credit card. The price for each credit is RM5. 

Initially, my client has planned to use credit card payment to sell this credit online.

But to setting up the online payment gateway maybe too time consuming for this short term service, and most of clients may not have credit card yet at their age (age between 16 to 20). So how do EVERWORKS solved for this client?

We at EVERWORKS.com has suggested to use our premium SMS short code (such as 32886, 33886, or 36886 in Malaysia) to sell the game credit. 

But how to incorporate with their online business? In our proposal, we will integrate our SMS gateway with my client's existing servers (server that manage and generate activation code), and pass the activation code to our SMS servers.

So, if anyone request the test play credit in their website, the website will instruct the users to purchase it by sending in a SMS command such as GAME 1 to 32886. Our gateway will then reply the mobile user the activation code via SMS, and charge the RM5. User can key in the activation code on the web page to continue their game. 

4G LTE is growing very fast ......  From the recent report by research firm, Wireless Intelligence has revealed that there are now 100 million 4G LTE connections across the globe. According to the research specialist, there are now 163 LTE networks operating in 70 countries.

Furthermore, these figures are expected to increase to more than 400 networks in 120 countries by the end of 2017. Operators in countries such as Australia, Canada, Japan, South Korea and the US have so far been principle drivers of this industry growth, with 90% of the international LTE connections market.

“Around 100 LTE networks have launched last year globally and as many are expected to launch this year,” said Joss Gillet, senior analyst at Wireless Intelligence.

Gillet also predicts that there will be in excess of 900 million LTE connections globally by December 2017, reaching one billion in the first half of 2018.

Read More