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August 1, 2017

Top 8 Best Online Image Editors to Create Engaging Social Posts

We have come a long way since the time of cameras which uses film roll. Today, we all have that relative or at least have a friend who owns a high end DSLR Camera. Photography has become hobby for many and it is estimated that more than 80million photos are being uploaded to Instagram every single day. Going with that statistics, at least 1 million photos among it will be hash tagged under #photography. When professional cameras and mobile cameras capture the best photos, they can, technically, we, as a user, depend on many online image editors to edit our photos to perfection. Today I am going to share with you the list of top 9 online image editors.

The Adobe products like Photoshop, Lightroom etc. offers best desktop image editing experience, none of them comes for free and requires good hardware to support seamless interaction. So, using such products doesn’t seem like a viable solution if your requirement is just to increase the brightness, add a text or may be tweak the basics little bit. This is where the Online Image Editors comes into life. They are very light weight, supports light to heavy editing options (depending on the application), loads in browser and some even offers cloud storage feature.

Top 8 Online Image Editors

PicMonkey

Starting off the list with my personal favourite PicMonkey. I have been using PicMonkey for years now and I have seen the changes they have incorporated over the years. Started off as a simple image editing tool, picmonkey now supports lot of options and includes a paid upgrade to ‘royale account’ which unlocks lot more options and even lets you store your photos on the cloud.

To start, register an account with them. The interface is simple and straight forward. There are basic edits you can perform, add texts, apply overlays, add textures and frames, and an option to do touch up as well. For the premium users, there are exclusive fonts, effects and unlocks more options in each category. The primo touch up tools will help you as wrinkle remover, eye tint and mascara. You can do erase unwanted portions out of your image, mirror effect and professional templates. There are mobile apps for both iOS and android available. I use picmonkey for quick edits like; adding a text, general touch ups and edit my portraits.

Pixlr

Pixlr is like free version of Photoshop for me and its one of the best, fully functional online image editors. The best part is, it’s online editing tool which is very easy and convenient to use. There are two versions of it; the pixlr editor and pixlr express. Both versions are free to use and there is no upgrade option to premium. The pixlr editor gives you photoshop like interface with almost every option made available for the users. There are layers, there is the left side tool bar, you can even create new blank file and start working on your creativity.

The pixlr express on the other hand, is designed for quick edits. You can make basic adjustments, add some effects, apply overlay, borders, stickers and even texts. If you are looking for some quick touchups, then pixlr express is the best option. Like pickmonkey, pixlr is available for both android and iOS as well. Without a doubt, Pixlr is one of the best top online image editors.

Meme Generator:

Memes are the viral contents on internet these days. They are everywhere, whenever there is something good or bad happens memes pop up from nowhere. The images used in most of the memes will be same and who knew, there exists categories for each meme based on the image it comes with. If you are a follower of memes then you might be familiar with an image of a kid “success kid”, willy wonka, Grumpy cat, troll face etc. Let’s say, you have an idea for meme in your mind. It is too much work to collect all the images required, open the image editors and add texts etc.

The folks at Memegenerator has come up with an option to create your own memes. They have the largest collection of memes, images and creating a meme is very easy. You can choose or upload an image, add text to it and finally share.

Pablo

Unlike the other online image editors, Pablo is very straight forward. It has some basic options to make your image better. Open the app, add an image, add some filters, you can add texts/quotes and finally select the size of the image, save and share.

The best part about Pablo is the option to select the size as per your purpose. There are options to switch to Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter sizes. This will help you edit on the image which looks exactly the same when it goes live. This tailor fit images for social networking sites will eliminate the need for last minute cropping.

Recite

Have you ever encountered a situation where you have a quote/text in mind and you need to put it in the presentable format? Well, recite is a simple website which lets you create beautiful images with your quote on it.

Just go to the Recite website, enter your text and click on Create. You will see your text is now added to predefined sets of templates from which you can choose the best one you want. The only downside I see, there will a logo of recite along with text “made with love @recite.com” which cannot be removed. There is no other option to go premium which should have had an option to disable the logo.

Easel.ly

Infographics are everywhere, they are great for sharing information. I personally love going through infographics. There will be charts, graphs, colorful fonts to represent important information. The greatest challenge about creating infographics is that, it takes lot of time to create, a ton of creativity should be applied, you also should know what are the right tools to be used and if done by someone else, it will cost you a lot of money.

Head over to Easel.ly, a platform which is trusted by many universities which includes Stanford, Harvard and companies like IBM, Boeing etc. To create a customized infographic; choose a template from the list of 1000s, start changing the texts and images on the template as per your data and you are ready to share it to the world. It’s easy, convenient and free to use.

Canva

Canva is one of the best online image editors in this list. While writing this post, I have tried it personally. To start using Canva you should register first. Once you are past the register screen, you will be presented with thousands of templates, categorized perfectly, to choose from. I tried designing a Facebook post and it was super easy.

The basic account is free to use, there is also a premium account which will let you access more than 300,000 free photos and illustrations. This is clearly for professionals and I am satisfied with the basic version.

Social Image Resizer Tool

Uploading photos to social media platforms can be little tricky sometimes. Especially when the image size for each platform is different. I always had trouble when trying to update my cover picture or twitter header image since these pictures should be of right size. If it isn’t then most of the time, the important parts of the image will get cropped.

Using social Image resizer tool you can generate favicon, crop images to fit to twitter(header image), facebook (cover photo) and more.

Why Xamarin Proves to Be Perfect for Enterprises

Android

Editorial Team

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July 24, 2017

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Why Xamarin Proves to Be Perfect for Enterprises

The problem for companies to support their applications on multiple platforms like Apple, Android and Windows Phone is increasing. Xamarin, previously Microsoft’s partner and now acquired by it, is proving to be the perfect solution for enterprises that want to develop their applications.

This transition from old-school methods to Xamarin for mobile application development didn’t take much time, since developers are understanding the framework’s advantages. The use of Xamarin is proving to be better than languages used for native development, such as Objective-C, Swift and Java.

Below are the reasons why and how Xamarin has succeeded in grabbing the attention of developers and enterprises as fast as it has, and why many enterprises are now moving towards using Xamarin for mobile application development.

A More Efficient Mobile Programming Language

The use of C# (C-sharp) in Xamarin for application development has been a great source of attraction for enterprises. This easy-to-use and flexible language provides some great benefits for developers. The use of C# itself somewhat ensures the success of mobile applications designed using this language. There is arguably less work for developers to do, and the outcomes are much better and achieved quicker. So, the developers can ensure quick time to market and can manage more projects faster.

Another benefit along with speedy work is that C# supports asynchronous programming (async). This feature allows applications to be quick and responsive, and the feedback recording time is reduced, unlike other languages where callbacks are used.

As C# is rated among the best languages, it is definitely positive for Xamarin.

Cross-platform Work Made Easier

Since the language is designed in such a way that it can be used across all mobile platforms, the quality of programming has enhanced. Developers can focus more on devices and other technology rather than work on each platform separately. The shared application logic is also used in this procedure to help getting information and feedback from all the platforms.

C# has increased developers’ potential. Developers have less things to worry about, and with lower time pressure, they can perform better. The language used in Xamarin is easier to use, and any developer working with other languages can cope with this one easily. Working cross-platform enables developers to work on all the platforms simultaneously and fix any bugs, if any, and all of that can be dealt with in a single developing environment.

This benefit has convinced many large enterprises to use Xamarin, with many more planning to do so. The time-saving factor can be crucial for enterprises when they have to provide quality work to a lot of people. At such times, a handy yet professional business partner like Xamarin and Microsoft can come in to bring bigger value. According to Xamarin, enterprises are flooding in towards them. According to their stats, their platform is used by 20% of Fortune 500 companies in 120 countries. This gives us an idea of how quick Xamarin has been gaining success so far.

The Test Cloud

The Test Cloud by Xamarin makes it possible to perform tests on quite a large number of real devices at the same time. This helps developers to recognize almost all the bugs there are. The time saved with this feature can be used on other projects and can boost up the application launching phase for enterprises.

The Xamarin Test Cloud also provides a dashboard with several metrics and detailed reporting methods which also help to fix bugs and make sure to provide applications which are totally optimized for end users’ experience.

Ultimate Hardware Support

Different types of APIs and plugins in Xamarin help developers to exclude almost all compatibility issues for different devices. Tests can be run much easier and for many devices at the same time. Compatibility of hundreds of devices on different platforms can be checked and modified in less time through these features. This is because Xamarin provides native-level support for all types of device hardware from general to specific. This helps developers to add up more native functions into applications.

The use of C# language and native libraries along with .Net facilities also provides developers with an option to reuse codes for other platforms. The time saved through no switching between the platforms, keeps developers away from hassle and helps to focus on what is necessary, which is of course end user experience.

Xamarin is the Future

According to Iflexion, Xamarin has a promising future. Many say that with the technology and advancement that Xamarin has brought, it is obvious that in the future people will start to learn about Xamarin more and the pace will keep increasing. The traditional languages have their own benefits and are definitely here to stay, but the ease and proficiency provided by Xamarin will soon make its way through, if not already.

Top 9 Best Smartphone Tripod Mounts for Smartphone Photography

Gadgets

Sreerag Nampoothiri

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July 24, 2017

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Top 9 Best Smartphone Tripod Mounts for Smartphone Photography

Smartphones has revolutionized the way we interact with the world. This whole new perspective in which we watch the world is quite interesting and thrilling. Saying that, people want to share their valuable life moments with the people and therefore, smartphone camera plays an important role in this situation. Being a vlogger and an Instagram story creator, I usually use a selfie stick for capturing and curating stories of my lifestyle. Though most of the devices these days comes with Optical Image Stabilization, for serious videography you should depend on smartphone tripod mounts.

Talking about Smartphone Tripod mounts, you will find a whole lot of them in many online shopping sites. When it comes to quality, most of them will underperform. Finding a reliable one for your professional as well as personal use is really important especially, when your hundreds of dollars’ worth smartphone is what you are risking. On a personal note, my friend broke his iPhone screen when it fell out of one of those cheap selfie sticks he bought from a tourist place. Long story short, he ended up paying 15000 INR (200$). To avoid that, I have here is a list of smartphone tripod mounts; the standard ones, the funky ones, easy to carry ones and multi-utility ones.

Smartphone Tripod Mounts

Joby GorillaPod Hybrid

Starting off the list by Joby GorillaPod, one of the most trusted smartphone tripod mounts in the world. Used by many professionals Joby GorillaPod Hybrid is feature rich, easy to use and comes with ton of accessories. The first thing you will notice is how flexible and how easy you can mount this on any surface. The wrappable legs with rubberized ring and foot grips gives you stable grip on any sort of surface.

This particular product is specially designed for DSLRs however, you can use smartphone tripod mounts which packs along with the box to plug in your smartphone. Features include; accurate control over your shooting with 90 and 360 panning. The smooth panning ensures there is no tilt or jerkiness to your video/photo. There is a bubble level indicator to ensure the device is in perfectly par with the ground level. Joby GorillaPod Hybrid is the only tripod in its class to use durable Japanese medical-grade ABS plastic and German TPE.

Square JellyFish Spring Tripod Mount

Square JellyFish Spring Tripod Mount comes with a complete kit for your smartphone photography. The accessories include micro ball head, jelly legs micro tripod. Here is a picture of the same with above mentioned accessories.

This smartphone tripod mounts can hold smartphones up to 3 5/8 inches wide. The device is small enough to fit in your pockets. The 4 springs inside provide better grip and secure hold for your expensive tech piece. The universal tripod screw mount allows the spring tripod mount to easily attach to any of the standard tripods. Switching from Horizontal to Vertical is as easy as turning the screw. If combined with one of the tripod mounts, the Spring Tripod Mount can act as a good desk stand for your smartphone.

Ztylus Smartphone Rig

Ztylus Smartphone rig is one of the perfectly stylish smartphone tripod mounts. To start with, this tripod mound is a multi-purpose yet well-build piece of accessory you can ever buy. I got to say, there has been a lot of thought process that is put out while designing the product. Take the comfortable grip for example; with the ergonomic feel, which will definitely improve your handheld photos and videos.

The adjustable phone holder can be extended to a maximum of 3.5” inch. There is also a cold shoe mount on the top to attach things like the mic or lighting etc. The universal tripod mound makes it easy to attach to any tripods out there.

Saramonic SR-BSP1 Aluminium Smartphone Holder

If you are looking for some premium smartphone tripod mounts then, the Saramonic SR-BSP1 Aluminum Holder is one of the best out there. The aluminum body makes the device one of the most reliable in the list. The fit and finish of the product is also something you will definitely love. The foam padded grip handle gives you fatigue free hold while shooting.

The product has a universal design, which can fit almost all size of phones. There is a female mounting threads and cold shoe mount for your accessories.

Shoulderpod S2

The shoulderpod S2 is the successor of ShoulderPod S1, the one which already revolutionized the market. The S2 comes as a multipurpose tool for creative travelers and story tellers. The high quality wooden handle grip is one of the notable feature.

The ShoulderPad S2 can act like a smartphone tripod mount, filmmakers handle and also as a mobile stand both in portrait and landscape mode.

Glif tripod Mount

What makes Glif Tripod Mount stand out from rest of the pack is the unique release lever mechanism. Upon opening this lever, the jaws move freely making it easily to load and remove your device. When you close the lever, it automatically tightens across your device.

You can shoot both in portrait and landscape mode. The extensibility level on this device is very flexible. The Glif has a total of 3 tripod mounts, which allow you to add additional accessories, like a microphone or light, or our own hand grip and wrist strap. If you purchase the full set, you will get a solid cherry wood hand grip, paracord and leather wrist strap.

Istabilizer Smartmount Tripod adaptor

The iStabilizer is a simple smartphone tripod adaptor. It is clearly not a multi-purpose accessory. The good part thought is, the iStabilizer can fit in almost all size of phones. This little device can extend upto a width of 3.5”inch.

There are two universal tripod mounts, one on the side and other on the bottom. This will help you mount your smartphone either in portrait or landscape mode. There are no other accessories for this adaptor. It’s just a simple tripod adaptor.

RetiCAM Tripod Mount

If you think the list is over then you are wrong. The RetiCAM tripod mount is one of the top rated phone mounts on Amazon. The metal construction reassures strength and makes it more reliable for you purpose. Unlike the other locking mechanism, springs to keep phones in between the jaws, this one uses steel bolt.

The V grooves leaves extra space for the buttons. Its very light weight and easy to use. As a bonus, manufacturer is also providing a travel case for the RetiCAM. It comes with several adaptors like Mini Ball head, hot shoe adaptors making it easy to mount on any standard tripod or on top of DSLRs.

CaseStar Tripod Mount

The CaseStar Tripod mount sure is one of the best Smartphone tripod mounts in the market. However, size wise, this one will be a bit hard to carry around especially, if there are lot of travel involved. This tripod mount can even fit iPad, which explains the size.

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The adjustments are made using screw, ensuring your device is securely locked in place. The device standard screws allows various tripod mounts to be attached.

Hotstar Brings Game of Thrones Season 7 Faster than Torrents

Internet

Sreerag Nampoothiri

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July 24, 2017

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Hotstar Brings Game of Thrones Season 7 Faster than Torrents

Game of Thrones is one of the most anticipated TV series in the world. Every year when the Season trailer goes live, people goes crazy about it. The YouTubers will celebrate with creating videos which would dig deep into every single element of the trailer, trying to find hidden clues or, sometimes, curate their own version of the story. We all know Game of Thrones is HBO exclusive and when it reaches Indian audience, the obscene scenes and other foul languages will be blurred and beeped. So, to watch GoT in its full glory, most of the audience will depend on torrents. Since the torrents services are shutting down day by day, it has become very difficult for the GoT fans to get a glimpse of the episodes. Well, I got to say, the ‘Winter is here’ in India now. Thanks to Hotstar, India’s leading video on demand service provider, for making Game of Thrones available for the India audience. The best part, Hotstar promises to deliver every episode for the audience to within few minutes of its US telecast.

The Star India Private Ltd owned Hotstar is India’s largest premium streaming platform with more than 100,000 hours of drama and movies in 9 languages, and coverage of major global sporting event. At a monthly subscription rate of Rs 199, Hotstar will deliver you most of the famous contents from around the world right at your laptop or smartphone. Hotstar is already partnered with HBO, Disney, Showtime promises to deliver better and most exciting contents for the Indian audience. The premium subscription will let you access to the famous HBO Originals TV Series like; Veep, Sex and the City, Silicon Valley etc.

To celebrate this, on a humorous note, the company has launched a series of marketing ads with a theme ‘Torrents Morghulis’, which rhymes with the famous ‘Valar Morghulis’ from Game of Thrones, that translates to ‘All Torrents Must Die’. There is also one more advantage of watching GoT in Hotstar, the subtitles. Getting the proper subtitles for the downloaded torrent file is always a headache and with Hotstar, this is no longer an issue.

The Game of Thrones Season 7 first episode, released on July 17^th, is already streaming in Hotstar for the Indian audience. Unfortunately, being one of the popular makes Game of Thrones also one of the most illegally downloaded content around the world. If you a new customer then, you can take test ride of the Hotstar content free for the first month. After that you should pay a rental charge of Rs 199/month to enjoy the services uninterruptedly.

Top 4 Instagress Alternatives for Your Instagram Account

Social Media

Sreerag Nampoothiri

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July 21, 2017

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The closing down announcement by Instagress has left many marketing folks in Instasphere stranded. Leaving them all with one big question; What’s the best Instagress alternatives to use to boost up the online presence on Instagram. Instagress was one of the most popular automation tool which lets you put your profile in auto pilot mode. This will help you gain more followers, comments and likes for your updates etc. Since this whole process against the community guidelines of Instagram, it was the giant itself who requested Instagress folks to close their operations. Their goes the history and now let’s come back to find a solution for this. Today, I have managed to find top 4 instagress alternatives for your Instagram account.

For starters, a bot is something which resembles to a spam account. Botting is the process of connecting your account to various automation software which will automatically likes, follow and comment images on behalf of you. Depending upon the features of the tool, you can also focus on niche area of your business. This whole process will gain you more followers over the time and your campaign is a success. Many businesses and emerging celebrities do this trick to boost up their profile. While nothing in the market is as good as Instagress, I have tried my best to come up with these 4 Instagress alternatives.

Instagress Alternatives or Instagress replacement

Iconosquare

Iconosquare is an Instagram marketing and analytics tools. This is one of the best Instagress alternatives you can find currently in the instasphere. As you connect your Instagram account with Iconosquare, it will take bit of a time (max 1 hour), depending upon your Instagram account, to fetch all the details. This is a paid service but you will get 14 day trial period.

The dashboard is informative with a lot of options on the left navigation bar. There is an Analytics option which will give you details about how your content is performing, Average likes/comments received. The best part of this Instagress Alternatives is that there is an option to add competitor profiles, which will help you compare your growth with the other guy. There is an option to export all these reports. Other options are comment tracker, schedule posts, search etc. The pricing for Elite account starts at $261/year and for beginners, the Plus account is priced at $81/year.

Sprout Social

Sprout Social is just an analytics tool. Unlike the Iconosquare, Sprout social is the best Instagress Alternatives. Not only it work as instagress replacement but also it support almost all social media profile not just Instagram. It fetches data from all social media site and gives you a dashboard view. By connecting your different social media accounts all your messages and feeds will be visible as a single stream of update.

Another great advantage of this instagress replacement tool is the publishing options. You can publish on all social media profiles all at once or schedule it. Before posting you get to edit the post content depending upto the social media platform. Maybe you don’t want to use that many hashtags in a post which is intended for Facebook, things like that. I find the search option very powerful, you get to enter the location where you want to search, Keyword/People search and finally set a search radius in miles/km.

Sprout Social alternatives to instagress is free to try on 30 days’ trial period. The premium account is $99/month, the corporate account is $149/month and the Enterprise account is $249/month.

Hootsuite

Started as a free service, Hootsuite is quite popular in the social networking world. This Instagress Alternatives tool manages all your social media profiles at one place and becomes a instagress replacement. The beautiful and neatly organized dashboard is a great way to give you a birds eye view on what is happening across different social media accounts.

The Instagress Alternatives tool gives you flexibility on things like bulk scheduling, real-time analytics, team assignments, other app integrations etc. The ability to support team is one of the nice things about Hootsuite. This means you get to add your teammates, assign positions to them (Limited, Editor, Advanced etc), and work on social media profiles together with this Instagress Alternatives. Team assignments are a nice feature which allows the admin to assign posts to work among the team members. You also get to track how the work in progress is happening too. The service comes on a 30-day trial basis after that, you have pay for the service.

Agorapulse

Agorapulse also does the same thing as others in the list. The dashboard lets you options like Inbox, Publishing, Monitoring, Reports, CRM etc. The one highlight feature of this Instagress Alternatives service is the ability to conduct contests across your social media profiles. The dashboard allows you to view all your feeds at one place. The automated moderation feature, if enabled, will automatically work on the rules which makes the system hide, flag or assign content even when while you sleep. You can publish to multiple social media accounts from one single publishing window.

The CRM tab is quite useful in finding out things like, who is your best fan, ranks your followers based on their social media presence, ability to categorize the audience etc. Now talking about the unique feature; contests tab. This allows you to set up Facebook quiz application, Facebook photo contest, Lottery win app, personality test app, coupon app etc. All these are for engaging and rewarding your followers. The pricing is also not as steep as others in the list. The basic account will cost you $49/month.

When it comes to Instagram, its better you keep out of botting as it won’t make any impact on your activities. All you could do is, showcase you are having more number of followers. The tools listed above could not possibly do botting work for you or act 100% like Instagress Alternatives. But, there are several other alternatives to instagress which could help you with increasing Instagram followers. Again, there are several risk factors with all those services which will gain you followers also, most of them will be bot account.

5 Ways Businesses are Benefiting from Self-Service Solutions

Technology

Guest Contributor

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July 21, 2017

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5 Ways Businesses are Benefiting from Self-Service Solutions

Self-service technology has become so common that most consumers no longer think of it as something new. From ATMs to supermarkets, hardware stores to retail stores, self-service solutions have become convenient to consumers. How about businesses?

For retail businesses that are looking to expand, self-service solutions offer benefits that help in the growth of a successful business. The use of self-service kiosks in the retail sector is steadily gaining more popularity as competing companies adapt to new strategies to increase revenue.

Here are 5 ways businesses are benefiting from self-service solutions.

Efficient and Cost-Effective Service

While the initial cost of rolling out self-service kiosks may seem high, implementation is efficient and cost-effective. Retail businesses that are moving to self-service technology are able to get fully integrated solutions that suit their specific needs and make their operations easier.

According to Meridian Kiosks, a provider of fully-integrated kiosks and self-service kiosk software, many retailers are opting for self-service kiosks and checkout solutions so as to provide better and efficient service at a lower cost.

Automated Customer Service Experience

Every customer enjoys having a convenient, hassle-free shopping experience. This gains even more relevance as advances in interactive self-service functions become part of the solution. Self-service kiosks offer automated customer service experience.

With the customer in control and kiosks containing integrated, advanced software, your business is able to offer a smoother and more effective interface and a better service experience. This leads to increased customer loyalty.

Valuable Customer Data

Self-service solutions like kiosks not only offer a straightforward checkout option for your customers but also provide a great opportunity for you to collect valuable customer data. This can be in the form of transaction statistics that provide a clear picture of customer purchase history or short surveys upon checkout.

The findings of a recent study published on TimeTrade, regarding customer experiences with retailers, reveal that there are plenty of opportunities for retailers to use customer data to improve the overall shopping experience. This data can be used to create a more effective marketing plan and better forecast sales by offering incentives and offers for particular products.

Additional Advertising Opportunity

What business doesn’t appreciate additional opportunities to market their brand? With self-service solutions, you can personalize your brand to fit what suits customers best. You already know what customers are buying, so you can simply showcase your brand strategically.

Place your logos on your indoor and outdoor kiosk units or play short ads on the overhead screen when the kiosk is not in use. Use the more interactive self-service solutions to update customers on new products, merchandise offers, prices and even general business information.

Increased Return on Investment (ROI)

Self-service solutions are one among many options that retailers are considering to reduce labor costs and overheads. Running manned stations is costly. A single or even a small chain of self-service kiosks can make a huge difference in your business revenues.

With options like dual access points, self-service checkout, mobile app technology, remote management, bill payment and others, retail business owners are able to see increased Return on Investments (ROI) with smart self-service solutions.

The Way To Go

While every business is supposed to meet the expectations of all their customers, maintaining a profitable business is key to business owners. According to an MHI Global report, 64% of millennials prefer self-service. This means that the market is embracing self-service.

Self-service technology will play a huge role in achieving business growth and efficiency in the coming years. As a business owner, exploring and implementing the options available will benefit you in one way or another.

How To Effectively Use Instagram To Enhance Your Art

Social Media

Editorial Team

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July 18, 2017

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How To Effectively Use Instagram To Enhance Your Art

Thousands of people spend innumerable hours a day creating art. While many of these people will be doing it as a hobby, others will be utilizing it as an extra income. Whatever the purpose may be, you can push your art to a whole new level, just by incorporating Instagram, a leading social media platform, into your work operations. Believe it or not, some of the most popular artists got their start from social media platforms, such as Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.

Reaching A Broader Audience

As an independent artist, you probably spend most of your time with a paintbrush in your hand. This will leave you very little time to market your art, which could compromise your effort in bringing awareness to your creations. It truly does not require a lot of skills or time, just to take advantage of the benefits offered by Instagram. All you need to do is post images of your art on Instagram, which has more than 200 million users. Thousands of these users sign into their account each day, just to catch up on the happenings, news and communicate with others.

By taking advantage of this great opportunity to market your works, you can reach people from all over the world, increase your followers and draw attention from interested buyers.

Use Videos And Instagram

While many people enjoy viewing images, others prefer watching videos, because they offer more insight into different topics. You would be surprised with how many people you can attract with videos of your art. Now, this does not necessary mean that you should just go around your art room and capture moving footage of your creations. No, this means that you should actually record yourself painting. You can record yourself painting, while explaining each step of the process. Other up-and-coming artists can truly learn a lot from these tutorial videos, plus it will give you opportunity to increase your Instagram growth.

Interested buyers would also appreciate the fact that they can watch your works being developed from scratch. This might actually encourage them to purchase more, increasing your potential for increased sales. Once you create the video, you will need to post it on your Instagram page, where millions of people will be able to access it with ease.

Take Advantage Of Hashtags

Many people find hashtags annoying and feel it is a waste of time. However, this could not be farther than the truth, because these are wonderful tools that can be utilized for organization and exploring. Every time you post an image or video on your Instagram page, you should utilize a hashtag. By doing this you will be able to increase your post visibility, as well as your reach in the online world. It is best to create your own hashtag that will be relevant to your art. Any online marketing expert will tell you that hashtags are capable of making the images, content and videos you share on Instagram searchable and indexable.

Be Consistent

To increase your follower base, you will need to be diligent about posting content on Instagram. Now, there is a difference in relevant content and annoying content. Relevant content for you would include images of your art, information about specific types of paint and how to set up a good scene. These are things that art enthusiasts are interested, so they will gravitate to your posts.

Annoying content is baseless and has not meaning. If you do not have anything interesting to share with other Instagram users, just do not post. Marketing experts recommend posting at least five poses a week, but they must be relevant to your art.

Build New Relationships

Other Instagram users can help you spread information about your art. However, you will need to form solid relationships with these people to get them to assist you on your quest. Follow artists, oil and water paint manufacturers, art dealers, art teachers and graffiti artists. All of these people are probably already connected to hundreds of people online.

Every time they post, you should compliment and like the post, but be sure to make your compliments relevant to the specific posts. For instance, you would not comment about someone’s appearance, when they are trying to display their art. Instead, stick with comments that are related to the art and nothing more.