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Grab your cup of coffee or spot of tea, because Michael Murray, Cheetah Mobile’s Director of Ad Sales, will be first up on The Guardian Stage on Wednesday, March 22nd at 9:30AM. Michael’s presentation, “Transitioning to Vertical Video,” will share Cheetah Mobile’s insights in the shift to focus on vertical video advertising. With the help of artificial intelligence technology, Cheetah Ads can help brands find the perfect audience at the right time. Unlike other vertical video ad offerings, Cheetah Ads covers all mobile moments, from pre-social AppLock interactions, in-social experiences like musical.ly and live.me, content moments in News Republic, to utility apps like Clean Master and CM Security. In the second half of the session, Cheetah Mobile’s UK Sales Director, Michael Smith, will lead a panel discussion about the state of vertical video advertising.

People were surprised when Amazon announced its first brick-and-mortar bookstore in November 2015. Then came No. 2, 3 and 4.

Sixteen months later, Amazon just confirmed to Recode that it is now working on store No. 10 — a location at the Bellevue Square shopping center across Lake Washington from Seattle. Plans for this new location were found in building permits flagged by the building contractor site BuildZoom.

« We are excited to be bringing Amazon Books to Bellevue Square in 2017, and we are currently hiring store managers and associates, » an Amazon spokesperson said.

If it wasn’t clear before, it is now: Amazon really likes the traction it has seen in the four stores that have opened so far and is committed to becoming a physical retailer at scale. New locations are opening in places like Chicago, New York City and the suburbs of New Jersey later this year.

That doesn’t mean the stores still aren’t puzzling. Why does Amazon – bookstore killer – want to become a physical book purveyor? One smart take has been that the stores are as much about selling Amazon devices like the Echo and Kindle as they are about selling books.

When I visited the Seattle location last month, these devices were indeed on display in the physical center of the store. Amazon’s Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky also admitted as much on the company’s last earnings call.

« We test, we innovate, » he said. « We think the bookstores, for instance, are a really great way for customers to engage with our devices and see them, touch them, play with them and become fans. So we see a lot of value in that as well. »

Amazon also showcases some electronics accessories from the AmazonBasics brand in the first Seattle store, as well as items like food processors in the cookbook section.

The stores are also an indirect showcase for the Amazon Prime membership program, because Prime members pay considerably less for books than non-members do. Industry insiders speculate that Amazon could also eventually expand its « just walk out technology » from its new Amazon Go convenience store to Amazon Books locations, as well.

Amazon may never get to the 400 locations that a mall operator mentioned last year, but they are continuing to expand at a fast clip.

According to their website, Amazon Books currently has open stores in:

1) San Diego, California
2) Portland, Oregon
3) Dedham, Massachusetts
4) Seattle, Washington

Amazon says its stores are coming soon to:

5) Walnut Creek, California
6) Chicago, Illinois
7) Lynnfield, Massachusetts
8) Paramus, New Jersey
9) New York, NY
10) Bellevue, Washington — this one just announced

AFTER the official approval of the antitrust authorities, the business partnership of Bosch Security Systems and Sony Corporation in the field of video security solutions became effective by Feb. 1, 2017—xcept for in China where the partnership will start on April 1, 2017. Both companies will now focus on strengthening their collaboration that was first announced in November 2016.

The partnership entails a both sales and marketing cooperation as well as a technical collaboration. As part of the sales and marketing partnership, Sony’s video security sales and marketing associates joined a newly formed dedicated team within the Bosch Security System organization. Sony`s video security customers, in all markets except Japan, will be served and supported by this sales and marketing team. “We are happy to welcome these experienced colleagues in our organization and are convinced we will further grow the business with Sony’s products by providing excellent support and service to our customers”, says Michael Hirsch, Vice President for Sales and Marketing of the Sony Security Business within Bosch. “We are delighted that Sony’s video security customers are now being supported by Bosch Security Systems. We are moving forward with this partnership which will feature jointly developed products that fully leverage our industry-leading expertise in video image quality and performance”, adds Toru Katsumoto, Deputy President of Imaging Products and Solutions Sector, President of Professional Products Group, Sony Corporation.

Regarding the technical cooperation, both companies are aiming to set new standards with regard to high resolution video imaging, combined with excellent light sensitivity, complemented by Bosch’s expertise in built-in video analytics and latest bitrate management techniques. In March 2017, Sony will launch eight new Full-HD (1080p) video security cameras within its sixth generation (G6) range of network cameras, meeting the ever-increasing demand for greater image clarity within the video security market. New G6 cameras’ high sensitivity capabilities ensure that the color integrity of images is maintained even in extreme lowlight situations. At the same time, Bosch is updating its portfolio concerning video analytics and bitrate management. Starting as of May 2017, all network cameras from the IP 4000 series will be equipped with built-in video analytics as a standard as well as latest bitrate management techniques combined with H.265 video encoding, reducing bitrate by up to 80 percent. Both Sony’s and Bosch’s innovations will be presented at the ISC West 2017 (April 5-7) in Las Vegas, USA.

The first jointly developed products are expected to be launched in 2018. “We are looking forward to delivering best-in-class video security solutions to our customers for both existing and new market segments”, says Gert van Iperen, President of Bosch Security Systems.

The Bosch division Security Systems is a leading global supplier of security, safety, and communications products and systems. In selected countries Bosch offers solutions and services for building security, energy efficiency and building automation. About 9,000 associates generated sales of roughly 1.8 billion euros in 2016. Protecting lives, buildings and assets is the major aim. The product portfolio includes video surveillance, intrusion detection, fire detection and voice evacuation systems as well as access control and management systems. Professional audio and conference systems for communication of voice, sound and music complete the range. Bosch Security Systems develops and manufactures in its own plants in Europe, Americas and Asia.

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It’s unusual to find a business that is not on social media, although it’s not unusual to see many businesses doing social media in inefficient, time wasting ways.

The recent Sensis Social Media Report found that while 69 percent of Australians use social media, only 49 percent of small/medium businesses are making the effort –- compared with 79 percent of big businesses.

So, with social media such an important business tool, why are many companies still getting it wrong?

In the recent past, there was a huge division between what was seen as ‘traditional media’ compared to ‘social media.’ Global futurist and author Anders Sörman-Nilsson told The Huffington Post Australia brands who still believe there is that separation, aren’t taking social media seriously as an important business tool.

« Understanding that social media is now considered traditional media is more important than ever for businesses. The customer journey is no longer linear and a large chunk has already been completed by digital due diligence by the time they interact with a brand’s sales representative, making well-executed online touch-points absolutely essential, » Sörman-Nilsson said.

Anders Sörman-Nilsson

« Don’t divide digital and traditional market budgets. Don’t create internal friction and politics by having digital and traditional silos who are adversaries. The two need to play together – seamlessly. The CMO or marketing director should oversee all aspects and ensure the digital and analogue channels complement each other. »

Marketing expert Fleur Filmer told HuffPost Australia that digital and traditional marketing methods should be mutually supportive.

« Twenty years ago, we wouldn’t have separated the print media, television and radio budgets as they would all have formed the total marketing mix and were all complimentary. As digital technology is part of our everyday lives, digital marketing is simply one more element and can’t be used as a marketing silo or in a marketing vacuum, » Filmer said

« The marketing budget must include all facets of the marketing mix that are relevant to your business. If you are serious about marketing, you will utilise all of the tools available to you and relevant to your target market. »

But marketing experts often have to persuade businesses to take social media more seriously, or they’ll risk being left behind.

Fleur Filmer

« Many businesses start with misconceptions such as, ‘Everyone is on social media so we must be on social media,’ or ‘Social media is a cost free, easy way for us to automatically attract more customers/clients, » Filmer said.

« It doesn’t take long for the reality to hit home to those businesses and it is at that stage that their social media presence is relegated to the ‘too hard basket. Where businesses come unstuck is their misunderstanding of their marketing strategy. Without a strategy that incorporates the tools required by businesses to ‘speak to’ their target market, they’ll soon find that their token social media presence will do them more harm than good. »

Businesses are advised to operate social media messaging in the same way as traditional media; in an organised fashion. Sörman-Nilsson said you must still allow for humanity and responsiveness.

« It’s all about order, discipline, and a bit of cheekiness. Tools like Hubspot, Hootsuite and Buffer enable companies to schedule tweets, LinkedIn Updates, and blog promotions in a disciplined fashion, » Sörman-Nilsson said.

Tijana87 via Getty Images

Sörman-Nilsson’s Tips

• A picture says 1,000 words. While keywords and great, engaging content is still important for the SEO algorithms in Google, the way to success is through HEO (Human Engagement Optimisation)
• Video is king. Mobile video distribution is growing exponentially and for good reason. If a picture says 1,000 words, video says 1,000 pictures.
• Radio isn’t being killed by the video star. Podcasts are a great way to tune into audiences who are on the move. A mobile person on a commute may not be able to view a video, but they will gladly listen to inspirational or mind-shifting content, interviews, and rants.
• Make it strategic and inspirational. Whether B2B or B2C, as customers, consumers all crave transformational and deeply empathetic content that educates and empowers businesses to make smarter decisions.
• Seamlessness. Social media is only one aspect of the deeply empathetic design of customer journeys, which should be moving customers and prospects from awareness to engagement to evaluation to decision, and finally, to usage and loyalty, whereby both digital and analogue media augment each other.

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Why this decade is obsessed with the ‘S’ word?

What do the new-age startups have, that the businesses earlier did not? All startups want to succeed, obviously. The difference is in the way of doing things and the uniqueness of their ideas.

If I use the simplest of terms, the way to get to this done is through effective marketing. Getting great exposure for your brand starts with knowing your contacts, your audience, and your competition. Without them, you might as well throw in the towel now. However, the last thing you want to do is drain your entire budget on marketing.

Here are some marketing secrets. Check them out below and decide what works best for your startup-

1. Stay Focused on One Marketing Channel
Stop trying to be everywhere, and focus on one marketing channel that will give you the biggest bang for your buck. You can expand out later, but when you are first starting out, you must focus on the most important channel. That channel will likely differ depending on your goals, which you and your team will need to figure out, but start with one channel only. Be it a Youtube channel, Twitter or outdoor marketing, choose and focus; yielding results takes time.

2. Understand Your Customer’s Problem Better Than Your Competition
The easiest way to create breakthrough marketing in any industry is to understand your customer’s problem better than competition and your customer do. By being able to see this problem from multiple angles, you will have a long-term advantage when it comes to creating high-performance marketing campaigns. Meet, survey, take feed backs, make the customers feel cared about. Think from their perspective, this will go a long way.

3. Have In-Person Conversations
In-person networking and developing long-term relationships work: do customer interviews, meet with marketing influencers in your field and go to conferences. Relationships you develop now may take years to show return on investment, but it will be worth the investment. Good relationships get you your customers. Network, build the experience for the people who approach you.

4. Build It Into the Technology
If you are able to devise a few clever ways to build marketing efforts into your product, you are effectively eliminating a variable cost and turning it into a one-time fixed cost. If harnessed correctly, your user acquisition costs will exponentially go down as you as you scale. Technology can help you do many jobs in one go; such as tracking digital traffics, devising content strategies, building a customer database etc.

5. Segment, Schedule, and Measure
Are you trying to drive sales, build awareness or build technical credibility? Once you’ve ‘segmented’ your desired outcome by answering that simple question, build a detailed schedule for your social media platforms that includes the message and campaign duration. This prevents the ‘see what sticks’ method and provides a road map on what and when to measure. Don’t bore your customers with old ways of social engagement, feel free to design activities for a target audience and hence, measure the results.

6. Focus on PR
As Google demands high-quality inbound links from trusted sources, organic SEO is rapidly morphing into PR. A few media mentions can rapidly increase a site’s authority and visibility. Wasting money and time on low-quality SEO campaigns will not yield results, and investing in paid search or display requires an ongoing investment. Start with great PR, and enjoy the results for years to follow.

7. Utilize Your Employees’ Social Media
It is important to have your current employees market using their social media and contributing to the company’s social media. This is the cheapest and most authentic way to market your startup. Most of them won’t have a problem but if somebody does, you can introduce promotion targets and rewards.

8. Sell Results, Not Services
When marketing my video marketing company, I focus on the results and benefits we will provide, rather than the service alone. Rather than talking about the cameras or the editing software we use, we highlight the online results our videos have achieved for our clients, teach them why video marketing is important and how it will affect their bottom-line. People buy success stories not the protagonist, the message should be loud and clear. An exceptional services builds the brand.

9. Have a Consistent Online Presence
Whether you’re marketing your startup through blogs or social media, you must stay committed to your online presence. When our company first started, we published a blog post three times a week covering topics from how-to articles to mobile marketing news. By publishing content consistently, we built our reputation and positioned ourselves at the top of search rankings. This will allow customer engagement with your startup 24×7.

The best thing about having video marketing success on YouTube is that it lasts for a long period. This is because people discover videos on YouTube through searches and subscriptions. This creates a system in which your audience comes to you repeatedly. Therefore, a brand new software called Tuberank Jeet 3 has been released to help marketers get top rankings on YouTube and grab all the quality traffic they need.

Tuberank Jeet 3 is a powerful YouTube ranking system and with its third version, the entrepreneur tweaks its famous secret algorithm even stronger than the last version. More included features make it simpler to get video straight to the top of YouTube. It is designed to make ranking videos so simple that everyone can make it works.

All marketers have to do is just run it, and the software will guide them through everything they need to know to dominate any niche. If users aim for more revenues, traffic, free organic traffic, they need to gain the special advantages of Tuberank Jeet. Let us now take a look at the benefits that users can reap from Tuberank Jeet 3. Read on to find out more.

• Users can find niches and keywords that are not over-saturated and that they can rank easily for
• A user is able to know exactly how much traffic they can expect for their targeted keyword
• He or she can discover ideal title and descriptions for their video to attract as many viewers as possible
• The user is enabled to get the perfect tags to place in their video for maximum rankings and to appear on the sidebar of related popular videos
• Any user will have the ability to get 100% free organic traffic from YouTube search without having to pay anything on advertisements
• All videos users create are uploaded directly to YouTube, Vimeo or Dailymotion

Tuberank Jeet 3 is designed to be simple so that even newbies can rank videos by using the software. After purchasing the tool, marketers will be instructed to identify their niche. Next, they just have to follow the instructions inside Tuberank and then upload their video to the internet.

That is how easy and effortless it is. Users need not worry if they are not a video SEO expert or if they have not read a video SEO guide before. Tuberank Jeet will give its users the power to rank the videos they create from the first day.

According to the product’s creator, Tuberank Jeet 3 software can make video marketing work for:

• Video Marketers who want to get top rankings and boost their organic traffic with optimization that overcomes their competitors and puts them on the top videos sidebars.
• Bloggers who intend to drive visitors to their blog from YouTube by making simple slideshows targeting their articles keywords and dominating those keywords on YouTube with Tuberank Jeet.
• Ecom Marketers who plan to show off their products, target their niche keywords and gain organic customers without spending anything on ads.
• Offline Businesses aim to create videos targeting local keywords that help them rank higher on Google and get more visitors.

For more details, you could see Tuberank Jeet 3 software review.

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ROME—Finally putting an end to rumors and speculations, the Vatican confirmed today that Pope Francis will be going to Colombia in September, to help the country further cement the peace accords signed by the government and the FARC rebel group, a further step in putting to rest a five-decade old civil conflict.

“Accepting the invitation of the President of the Republic and the Colombian bishops, His Holiness the Pope Francis will make an Apostolic Trip to Colombia from 6 to 11 September 2017, visiting the cities of Bogotá, Villavicencio, Medellín and Cartagena,” a Vatican statement released on Friday said.

Archbishop Ettore Balestrero, papal representative in Colombia and Cardinal Rubén Salazar Gómez of Bogota, together with President Juan Manuel Santos, held a press conference in Colombia as the news was being announced in Rome.

“The pope wants to come to the encounter with Colombians, he’s coming for those who are in the cities and in the countryside and who have a different culture and needs; for the rich and the poor, for the young and the elderly,” Balestrero said.

“Undoubtedly, these will be days of grace, salvation for the country,” Salazar Gómez said. “The motto of the visit will be ‘Let us take the first step’.”

Official logo of Pope Francis’ visit to Colombia, presented on March 10. (Credit: Colombian bishops’ conference.)

The country, the cardinal said, will leave behind all its history of “violence, war, fighting [behind], to start walking together.”

“Knowing that he’s coming exclusively to Colombia, and that he’ll do so to bring us a voice of support to Colombians is a privilege that fills us with gratitude,” Santos said. “Those of us Colombians who profess the Catholic faith rejoice, but so do those who see in him and his words the spiritual leader of our time.”

Francis, Santos said, pushed the country to persevere in the search for peace, and he’ll arrive in a unique moment in the country’s history, to appeal for “unity, reconciliation, forgiveness, and above all, encounter.”

Encounter with “the teachings of Jesus,” and among Colombians, “as a society, as humans, as children of God.”

Pope Francis has spoken about wanting to visit this country since early on in his pontificate. Last year, coming back from his trip to Georgia and Azerbaijan, he said that he’d visit Colombia only when the peace process is complete.

“I said that when the peace process in Colombia is complete, I want to go, when everything is ‘bulletproof,’ that is – if the plebiscite succeeds – when everything is for sure, when there’s no turning back, that is, when the international world, all the nations, are in agreement that there’s no appeal, that everything is finished, I could go,” the pontiff said.

The plebiscite, in which the Colombian people had to vote yes or no to the original arrangement signed by the government of Juan Manuel Santos and the FARC, failed with the “no” winning. Since then, a new agreement has been signed, and was approved by Colombia’s Congress on November 30.

Negotiations with the country’s second largest guerrilla group, the ELN, are still ongoing.

On December 16, Santos and former president Alvaro Uribe, the leader of the Colombian opposition who didn’t agree with the peace treaty, met with Francis at the Vatican, in a mediation effort from history’s first Latin American pope.

In what was his third visit to the Vatican, Santos appealed to the Pope for support in ending a 52-year war that has killed more than 220,000 people and displaced millions.

According to Human Rights Watch, Colombia has the world’s second largest population of internally displaced people, with Syria heading the list. An estimated 6.8 million people have been forcibly displaced in the past decades.

“We need your help,” Santos said back in December. On the occasion, the president gave the pope a gift of a pen made from a machine gun bullet.

It seems the help will arrive in the form of a visit on September.

This will be the third time a pope visits Colombia, after Paul VI did so in 1968 and John Paul II in 1986.