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Friday, April 7, 2017

Facebook Marketing - Overview

Utilizing Facebook for your digital marketing strategy is without doubt one of the best ways to connect and grow a social following online. Being one of the largest social media platforms, it provides insight into its users’ interests, likes, dislikes, personal life and buying behavior. This large database of information can be tapped into by your business or organization to generate high quality leads, sales enquiries and traffic to your website.

Facebook Marketing - Profile Page Setup

We will discuss, in this chapter, how to choose the most optimized page that will suit your venture.

Choosing which page suits your venture

The first step to ‘create a page’ on Facebook requires you to select the page category. While all of the pages have the same look and feel, they have different information and features that you can highlight and promote.

Facebook Marketing - Page Navigation

After completing the initial setup, you will be redirected to your new Facebook page. Apart from the information you provided in the setup process, it will look rather empty. In this chapter, we will show you how to navigate through different areas of the page so that you are comfortable with modifying and utilizing the functionalities

Facebook Marketing - Ad Options

There is a lot of flexibility when it comes to choosing the types of ads you want to produce for your Facebook page. This will depend on what you are offering for the campaign and the type of audience you want to promote. Over the last couple of years, Facebook has spent a great deal of time and effort to adjust the types of ads it offers to really be tailored to suit the needs of business owners and users.

Facebook Marketing - Ad Management

To create a new advert when you are on your Facebook page, click on the dropdown arrow next to the notification toggle and go down to “Create ads”. This will open up the ads manager toolkit.

Facebook Marketing - Page Promotion

Let us now discuss in detail about creating a Facebook Social Media Marketing (SMM). When looking to promote your page, you need to clearly define a strategy on what you are looking to achieve. This can be done by −
  • Clearly defining your goals and objectives.
  • If you already have a Facebook page — Conducting an audit to find out what is working and what is failing.

Facebook Marketing - Personal Branding

The actions that you do in a public domain, shapes the way in which people perceive you. No matter how much we try to ignore the fact, people do judge others around on what they see. They may judge you based on your actions. This has become more apparent with the actions that you perform on the social media platform. The posts that you share, the photos that you upload and the content that you share does affect your personal branding. It is always important to create a strategy that is aligned with the way you want to be represented.

Facebook Marketing - Identify Targets

Identifying your target audience is important as it helps you narrow down on the people who see your posts to the ones that care the most. When you are using the ad creator, Facebook assists you in breaking down the target audience based on location as well as demographics like age, interests, and gender. You will also be able to target your ad based on what people do on the Internet outside of Facebook.

Facebook Marketing - Quality Posts

Creating quality posts plays a very important role. With this, you reach out to the people who are interested to follow your page and stay up to date with the content that you have to offer. There are different ways you can keep people engaged and entertained and it is necessary to offer a range of different formats that will keep people coming back and wanting more quality posts.

Facebook Marketing - Post Frequency

Post frequency is something that does not have a definitive answer. Finding the sweet spot for the amount of posts you should make per week will strongly depend on how your audience is engaging in the content you share. On one hand, if you are publishing one post per week, this will probably be not enough to keep the users from recognizing your online presence. But on the other hand, if you publish five posts per day, users will probably find this annoying and this could detract them from staying as a follower.

Facebook Marketing - Likes Philosophy

Getting likes from the posts that you publish are great, to a certain extent. It is now undeniable that social media is a viable method of marketing and a great way to grow your brand and generate more traffic and income for your business.

Facebook Marketing - Create Fans

With over 1.55 billion active Facebook users each month, it is important for your business page to be able to tap in to your target market and start growing a fan base. Although this may be a daunting task initially, as the page grows in good content it should also increase in popularity.
Growing a solid fan base is important because −

Facebook Marketing - Engaging Fans

When you are looking to engage your audience, you need to ensure that you have content that will drive users to stay interested in your posts. Even if someone is a fan of your page, if they are not interested in your posts they can un-follow your posts from there news feed and will not see anything that you post.

Facebook Marketing - Call-to-Action

The main goal of the call-to-action button is to bring businesses’ most important objective to the forefront of its Facebook presence. You can utilize the call-to-action button to send your fans to any link that you desire. This is a great way for people that visit your page to straight away interact and gain access to your pages’ primary objective.

Facebook Marketing - Video Promotion

Video promotion provides a different dimension to your social media campaign. Whilst content and images are static, a video can provide entertainment and education in a faster and for some users more interesting way. Even if it is not something you have initially done with your Facebook page, it might be good to try and create a video that is in alignment with your brand and see what kind of feedback you get.

Facebook Marketing - Tricks

There are many different ways to gain traction and get new fans on Facebook, the most successful campaigns have always been the ones that have been the most creative. The best advice to be given when looking to create a marketing strategy is to create a campaign that is unique and stands out from the rest but at the same time being concise and to the point of your brand identity.
Following are the different ideas that can be implemented to grow your Facebook page.

Facebook Marketing - A/B Testing

A/B testing, also known as split testing, is a method of working out which part of your post works the best with your audience. It splits the post from its −
  • Headline
  • Body copy
  • Images
  • Call-to-action
  • A combination of the above

Facebook Marketing - Analytics

Facebook analytics, also known as insights, provide you with very important statistical analysis of how your campaigns are going and what sort of engagement your posts are receiving.
Following is an image of the front page of the analytics section. It gives you an insight if your audience is large enough. In addition, it also helps you know the types of devices your audience uses and you can also have a track of the page/video views.

Facebook Marketing - Quick Guide

Facebook Marketing - Overview

Utilizing Facebook for your digital marketing strategy is without doubt one of the best ways to connect and grow a social following online. Being one of the largest social media platforms, it provides insight into its users’ interests, likes, dislikes, personal life and buying behavior. This large database of information can be tapped into by your business or organization to generate high quality leads, sales enquiries and traffic to your website.

Facebook Marketing - Useful Resources

The following resources contain additional information on Facebook Marketing. Please use them to get more in-depth knowledge on this topic.

Useful Links on Facebook Marketing

Discuss Facebook Marketing

This tutorial is designed to make the audience understand how Facebook can be used as a digital marketing tool. It also explains how Facebook provides insight into its users’ interests, likes, dislikes, personal life and buying behavior. In addition, it also provides a large database of information that can be tapped into by your business or organization to generate high quality leads, sales enquiries and traffic to your website.

Email Marketing - Overview

In this tutorial, we will be focusing on the world of "Email Marketing". There are many reasons why email marketing is a must-have in your digital marketing strategy. We will discuss how experts have used email marketing as a core tactic in their digital strategies.

Email Marketing - Mailing List

What is Mailing List?

A mailing list is simply a list of addresses to which the same information is being sent. If you were a magazine publisher, you would have a list of the mailing addresses of all the subscribers to the magazine. In the case of an electronic mailing list, we use a list of email addresses from people interested in hearing about or discussing a given topic.
There are two types of Email Mailing Lists −

Organizing Mailing List

It is very important to organize all the email addresses that you have gathered. All you have to do is to combine all the emails you collected in one single mass Email List, so that in the end, you have got all subscribers in one single file. I prefer to use MS-Excel for combining the list. After combining the list, you may need to export it in text or a CSCV file as required by your Mailing Client.

Email Marketing - HTML & Text Emails

Having an HTML email does not hurt your deliverability as long as you have two things − a properly coded HTML email and a plain-text version.
The results confirmed what we assumed: HTML emails decreased open rates. What was interesting, however, was that not only were HTML emails receiving lower open rates than their plain-text counterparts, the more HTML-rich an email was, the lower its open rate.

Email Marketing - Newsletters

Newsletters are a shortened form of newspaper and informational letter. Generally used to describe a periodic publication distributed by e-mail to an opt-in list of subscribers. Newsletters are normally used by organizations or owners of a Website to communicate with their readers.
Some companies may sell targeted ads within their newsletters. Bear in mind, if you are going to send a Newsletter to subscribers then balance your newsletter content to be 90% educational and 10% promotional.

Email Marketing - Announcements

Email is a fantastic way to announce a new product or service your business is offering. The key to getting your audience excited about your latest business offering is by answering these four questions in your next product announcement email.
  • What is it?
  • Why should I care?
  • What’s included?
  • How do I get it?

Email Marketing - Event Invitation

Events and emails go hand in hand. Whether you host an open house, charity gala, webinar or a customer appreciation day, the best way to promote your event and invite guests is through email invitation. It is similar to what you have been doing for all your other emails. The following image shows a sample template of an email invitation.

Email Marketing - Content

Email Copywriting

Email marketing involves a unique form of copywriting that a lot of people, especially when just starting out, have some difficulty planning and executing. There are many similarities with other forms of copywriting, but there are also some unique opportunities and pitfalls as well. These articles will examine some of the elements of writing for email marketing and walk you through the basic steps of crafting your message.

Email Marketing - Landing Pages

Email marketing is a powerful tool in itself, but it would be adding to the elegance with the use of landing pages. These pages are the ones which you put on your website that customers can link to from your email. Landing pages are an extensively detailed image of your email campaign with more info, more images, and even a purchase option, so recipients can buy what you're selling.

Email Marketing - Spam Compliance

What is CAN-SPAM?

In this chapter, we will give you the history of what CAN-SPAM is and tell you what you need to do in order to achieve CAN-SPAM compliance.
In 2003, as inboxes were being flooded with unwanted email spam, the United States federal government took action with the passing of the CAN-SPAM law. CAN-SPAM stands for Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003. Essentially, the law set forth a number of requirements that need to be met in order to send commercial email to customers.

Email Marketing - How to Avoid Spamming?

Following are the rules that must be followed to avoid being marked as SPAM −
  • Using phrases like “Click here!” or “Once in a lifetime opportunity!”
  • Excessive use of exclamation points!!!!!!!!!
  • USING ALL CAPS, WHICH IS LIKE SCREAMING AT THE TOP OF YOUR LUNGS VIA EMAIL (especially in the subject line).

Email Marketing - Avoid Being Blacklisted

In this chapter, we will discuss a few points that will help you to avoid being blacklisted −
Single Opt-in − Make the consumer opt-in for your service. Do not waste your time gate crashing, be sure you are invited. Whenever, customer visits your site provide them with the option of 'opt-in' for receiving your promotional newsletter.

Email Marketing - Service Providers

Where Email Marketing Industry is Standing?

Have you ever stopped to think about what happens to your email message after you press "Send"? If you're just sending your own personal emails through Gmail or your email app, your emails likely get routed through your email service's ‘Simple Mail Transfer Protocol’ (SMTP) service to your email recipient's email service's SMTP service.

Email Marketing - Automation

Scheduling

A better feature you would find in most of the service providers. It is very useful, if you are going to make a massive blast of discount on a Black Friday or on Happy New Year and so on. This feature will automatically send your email at the specified date and time.

Email Marketing - Metrics

Segmentation

Segmentation is the art of splitting your list into different groups. These segments consist of people with similar characteristics. Segments can then be emailed reflecting the content and timing appropriate to them. Segmenting your lists helps you get better response rates (open & click). By sending messages to targeted groups within your lists, your recipients will find your campaigns more relevant, hence these appropriate campaigns get better results.

Email Marketing - Follow UPS

Strengthen Relationships with Email Marketing

Here are the keys for building and maintaining strong customer relationships and strategic steps to keeping customers engaged and invested in your business. Email marketing strategies can make or break your relationship with customers, which is why it’s vital to ensure, you’re sending the right messages in a timely manner.

Email Marketing - Tips

How to Manage a Mailing List?

This part requires you to get yourself ready for doing some technical work. Until now, you have got all concepts; now it’s time to start doing some practice. Before starting your very first email campaign, you have to gather all emails addresses into a Text file or in an Excel sheet. A lot of major email marketing providers support these two formats. If you have a database of MS-Access, which consists of names, DOB, emails and zip code.

Email Marketing - Certifications

Many students ask what are the benefit of certification exams and becoming certified. Is it really worth the time and money? Certification is not a requirement for every field, and many fields do not have a nationally certifying body that offers certification. For those industries that do have a certification available, is it really necessary?

Email Marketing - Quick Guide

Email Marketing - Overview

In this tutorial, we will be focusing on the world of "Email Marketing". There are many reasons why email marketing is a must-have in your digital marketing strategy. We will discuss how experts have used email marketing as a core tactic in their digital strategies.

Email Marketing - Useful Resources

The following resources contain additional information on Email Marketing. Please use them to get more in-depth knowledge on this.

Useful Links on Email Marketing

Discuss Email Marketing

In this tutorial, we will be focusing on the world of "Email Marketing". There are many reasons why email marketing is a must-have in your digital marketing strategy and also reveal how experts have used email marketing as a core tactic in their digital strategies. Through this tutorial, we will learn a lot of things and you can also become a little professional in this field, if you practice what we are going to discuss in this tutorial.

Digital Marketing - Overview

In simple terms, digital marketing is the promotion of products or brands via one or more forms of electronic media. Digital marketing is often referred to as online marketing, internet marketing or web marketing.

Digital Marketing - SEO

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is the process of getting traffic from the free, organic, editorial, or natural search results on the search engines. Simply put, it’s the name given to the activity that attempts to improve search engine rankings. In many respects, it's simply quality control for websites.

Digital Marketing - Social Media

Social media today is essentially word-of-mouth marketing. Getting people to connect with you online in the social arena helps spread the word about what your company is and what are your products and services.

Digital Marketing - Content

Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience. It ultimately aims to drive profitable customer action.

Digital Marketing - Email

In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email marketing. It usually involves using email to send ads, request business, or solicit sales or donations.
Any email communication is considered as email marketing if it helps build customer loyalty, trust in a product or company, or brand recognition. For instance, when a company sends a commercial message to a group of people using electronic email mostly in the form of advertisements, requests for business or sales, or donation solicitation.

Digital Marketing - Mobile

Mobile marketing is marketing on or with a mobile device, such as a smartphone. Mobile marketing can provide the customers with time and location sensitive, personalized information that promotes goods, services, and ideas.

Digital Marketing - Pay Per Click

Pay Per Click, commonly known as PPC, refers to a model of internet marketing in which advertisers pay a fee each time one of their ads is clicked. Pay-per-click is calculated by dividing the advertising cost by the number of clicks generated by an advertisement. The basic formula is −
Pay-per-click ($) = Advertising cost ($) ÷ Ads clicked (#)

Digital Marketing - CRO

CRO stands for Conversion Rate Optimization. Whatever may be the ultimate goal of your website, a conversion is the successful completion of that action. CRO is the process of optimizing the site to increase the likelihood that visitors will complete a specific action.
Conversion Rate is a key metric in e-commerce, as it reveals the percentage of the site’s total traffic completing a specific goal. The higher the conversion rate, the better.

Digital Marketing - Web Analytics

Web Analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis, and reporting of Internet data for the purposes of understanding and optimizing Web usage.
The focus of web analytics is to understand the users of a site, their behavior, and activities. The study of online user behavior and activities generate valuable marketing intelligence and provides −

Digital Marketing - Facebook

Facebook has 1.28 billion active users and is currently the largest social network – that adds up to a lot of potential brand exposure.

Digital Marketing - Pinterest

Pinterest helps people discover things in a simple, visual way. Pinners might find something they love while browsing your boards, scrolling through a category you’re listed in or searching for you directly.

Digital Marketing - Twitter

With hundreds of millions of users and over 500 million tweets being sent each day, there is a great opportunity for businesses to reach a global audience of new and existing customers through Twitter.
Twitter is a social communication tool where people broadcast short messages.

Digital Marketing - Linkedin

LinkedIn can be a powerful tool for individuals and companies looking to make new connections, generate leads, and build their brand. In addition to being a great way to recruit new talent, LinkedIn marketing is a likely top marketing tool to employ for B2B businesses. It consistently proves to be the platform of choice for marketing product launches and lead generation.

Digital Marketing - Youtube

YouTube is no longer a new platform; it’s over ten years old! However, it is seeing tremendous growth. If it isn’t already a part of your online marketing strategy, it needs to be. But what types of YouTube videos should you be making? The key is to find the place where, what your brand stands for and what your audience cares about intersect.

Digital Marketing - Google Adwords

Google AdWords is a marketplace where companies pay to have their website ranked right with the top organic search results, based on keywords.
The basic gist is, you select to promote your brand based on keywords. A keyword is a word or phrase the user searches for, who then sees your ad. Your ads will only show up for the keywords you pick.

Digital Marketing - Google Analytics

Do you have a blog? Do you have a static website? If yes, then you need Google Analytics. This tool can do so many things. Even if you just use it for the most basic of information, you can learn a lot about your website visitors and traffic.
A quick glimpse at Google Analytics can tell you −

Digital Marketing - Quick Guide

Digital Marketing - Overview

In simple terms, digital marketing is the promotion of products or brands via one or more forms of electronic media. Digital marketing is often referred to as online marketing, internet marketing or web marketing.

Digital Marketing - Useful Resources

The following resources contain additional information on Digital Marketing. Please use them to get more in-depth knowledge on this.

Useful Links on Digital Marketing

Discuss Digital Marketing

Marketing of products and services through the use of digital technologies, mainly through the internet, including mobile phones and other digital medium falls under the umbrella of digital marketing. This tutorial explains how you can use popular social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+ to promote your business and create greater awareness about the products and services you offer.

Conversion Rate Optimization - Definition

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is a process of analyzing the data, statistics and website insights to improve the performance. Simply stating, it is increasing the percentage of converted visitors on your website.
You need to figure out the potential in your website. Search for what users are looking for and how you can fulfill their need to the fullest.

Conversion Rate Optimization - Basics

When it comes to tracking conversions, several things need to be kept in mind. Let's elaborate it with an example. You operate a business of selling upholstery. A customer comes to you to check for the products. The shopkeeper behaves gently and he finds the product quality good as well as the price. Still the customer feels the urge to surf the market to avail more options. The customer visits you time and again without purchases.

Understanding Your Customers

No matter what the quality of your product/service is, it won’t capture the market unless buyers don’t believe in it. To persuade them you need to know what they are into. You need to figure out what your customers need.

Conversion Rate Optimization - Goals Setting

You need to determine what success is to you. In other words, you need to find out what are your goals. A goal is a metric to find out whether your website is helping your business in yielding profit. Goals can be also termed as −
  • Leads
  • Sign-ups
  • Account creation
  • Downloads
  • Cart, etc.

Conversion Rate Optimization - Myths

Though a lot of people know the potential of Conversion Rate Optimization, still there exists hype and misconceptions about CRO.

Debunking Myths

  • CRO Uses Best Practices − Conversion Rate Optimization is not just following best practices. It is also about implementing what is a boon for your business. It is a thorough analysis based on insights and testing. As mentioned in the previous chapter, a CTA (call-to-action) button in red color may not work for all.

Conversion Rate Optimization - Plans

When optimizing for improving conversion, generally the following two techniques are followed.
  • CRO Tactics
  • CRO Plans
When implementing CRO tactics, you have a list of quick fixes like a call-to-action button color and suggestion. You rely on tips and tricks and wait for the result. It is as if you are applying flukes actually while implementing these tactics. The customer behavior takes a backseat over here. You have no action plan ready. You just keep going depending on guesses and intuitions.

User Experience and Funnel

User experience is a visitor’s attitude towards your website. It shows the user involvement and attitude about using a particular product or page. To convert in maximum numbers, you need to set an exemplary user experience. This can be achieved simply by providing the users with their exact need without hassle and within 2-3 clicks.

Conversion Rate Optimization - Landing Page

In this chapter, we will discuss in detail what a landing page is, what are its uses and also how to create one.

What is a Landing Page?

A Landing page is any page where a visitor lands when guided through any channel. For instance, a person after clicking a paid advertisement lands on a page. That is a landing page. It is an entry point of any website, irrespective of the category it belongs to.

Reducing Bounce and Exit Rates

Often encountered in spite of all efforts the visitors come and go without returning back? Yes, it happens a lot. Even after offering millions of pages to them they do not stay for long, it is needed to change this trend for better.

What is Bounce Rate?

It is a metric that represents the number of the visitors who visit your website and then quit instead of continuing to view other pages within your website. They just traversed a single page for a short span.

Testing and Optimization

In this chapter, we will discuss how to do CRO testing and optimization. We will also talk about the various funnel stages and how to create tables.

How to Do It?

For testing and optimization, we have to first decide where to test and how to prioritize our goals and then optimize them accordingly. Your testing should revolve around customer centric perspective.

Measuring Results

In this chapter, we will be discussing on how to measure the results and simplify statistics of the testing done on the website.

Understanding Statistics

Researchers may or may not understand statistics. But, A/B Testing tool proves to be a savior by simplifying those statistics. So a lot of calculation can be avoided. Most of the testing tools are consistent in using a 95% criteria as a successful goal completion.

Conversion Rate Optimization - Tips

Being a marketing champion, needs a well-laid strategy, planned tests, great gut feeling, calculations and lot of efforts put in the right direction.
Following are some pointers which will be helpful in becoming a successful optimizer.

Conversion Rate Optimization - Conclusion

Optimization is strategic and cyclical, but there is always a room for improvement. You are never done testing. Intuition and gut feeling works but till a limit. Testing with zeal and plan will certainly yield good results.

Conversion Rate Optimization - Quick Guide

Conversion Rate Optimization - Definition

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is a process of analyzing the data, statistics and website insights to improve the performance. Simply stating, it is increasing the percentage of converted visitors on your website.
You need to figure out the potential in your website. Search for what users are looking for and how you can fulfill their need to the fullest.

Conversion Rate Optimization - Resources

The following resources contain additional information on Conversion Rate Optimization. Please use them to get more in-depth knowledge on this.

Discuss Conversion Rate Optimization

Conversion Rate Optimization, also commonly referred as CRO in short, is basically the exercise of increasing sales and prospective leads from any website. The added advantage is that it can be done without increasing the percentage of website visitors. By improving or by optimizing the website conversion rate,

Content Marketing - Overview

Content marketing is known by many names such as inbound marketing, corporate journalism, branded media, native advertising, and customer publishing to name a few. However, the basic idea behind the strategy remains the same, i.e., to create and distribute content that engages and attracts a targeted audience, while encouraging them to take action which is profitable to a business.

Content Marketing - Target Customer

Identifying your target audience is the easy part. What is more challenging for a business is to understand the pain points of its customers. Once you grasp the problems of your consumers and understand their requirements, you would be able to come up with perfect solutions to cater to those particular requirements.

Content Marketing - Content Creation

Marketing gurus and pundits have often repeated the line that it’s the company that tells a better story wins and not the company which is bigger in size. This truism is even more relevant today with the growth of new forms of online media, which have empowered consumers like never before.

Content Marketing - Media Channels

By media channels, we mean the platform you decide to use in order to market your content. This is an important step of your overall content marketing strategy because the channel also determines what content you must create. For instance, if the channel is a blog, then the content you can create are feature stories, product announcements, etc. Similarly, if it’s your website’s Facebook Page, then the content can be images, status messages, weblinks, etc.

Content Marketing - Editorial Calendar

Content marketing is a long-term strategy and an editorial calendar helps you plan your strategy in an organized fashion. The calendar will contain details such as −
  • List of the kinds of content you have or need to create, including the dates when they will be created and published

Content Marketing - Style Guide

A content marketing style guide is a document which standardizes your content creation guidelines. From the colors of your brand, the key phrases you use for call to action buttons to the spelling and punctuation usages, everything is documented and standardized by a style guide.

Content Marketing - Basic Tools

Content Marketing tools come in different shapes and sizes. What will work for you is totally dependent on your business requirements and the scope of your content marketing strategy. The tools listed below cover the three central aspects of content creation, management, and optimization.

Content Marketing - Challenges

Developing the perfect content marketing strategy for your business is not easy. You have to accurately identify your target customers and understand their problems. You have to define your media channels and build editorial style guides. You have to make sure that your story will resonate with your audience without misleading them.

Content Marketing - Tracking Success

Whether you’re creating a content marketing strategy for your own business or a client, the primary questions still remains - What’s the Return on Investment (ROI)? For all the efforts you’ve put in your content marketing strategy, the ROI needs to be positive.
What constitutes ROI varies from business to business. However, every successful content marketing strategy needs to answer at least one of the three crucial questions listed below:

Thursday, April 6, 2017

Content Marketing - Blogs

What is Blog?

A blog is an excellent tool for creating and publishing content. It can be your website’s home base or a hub for your content, where you can write posts such as product announcements, service guides, thought leadership articles, press announcements, and more. It is basically a platform for you to share your ideas and thoughts with the world.

Content Marketing - Lifecycle Emails

What are Lifecycle Emails?

Lifecycle emails are basically permission-based emails that offer value to your customers. When your customers sign-up for your product or service, you can prompt them for these email subscriptions.
eNewsletters are typically distributed weekly or monthly. Let’s look at when and why you can send these emails.

Content Marketing - eNewsletters

What are eNewsletters?

Like lifecycle emails, eNewsletters are also permission-based emails that offer value to your customers. When your customers sign-up for your product or service, you can prompt them for these eNewsletters' subscriptions.

Content Marketing - WhitePapers

What is a Whitepaper?

A whitepaper, also called a research paper, is a kind of an extended report which focuses on a particular topic, elaborates it, and explains it in detail.

Content Marketing - Case Studies

Both whitepapers and case studies are primarily B2B marketing content, however there is a thin line of difference in the way they work.

What is a Case Study?

Case studies feature a client story, narrating how a client used your product or service to achieve its business goals.

Content Marketing - eBooks

What is an eBook?

An ebook is like a whitepaper but it is more informal, loose, and more playful. The language used is more everyday talk and is designed in a visual manner. The content must be entertaining and easily consumable with bold headlines, callouts, and bulleted lists.

Content Marketing - Digital Magazines

What is a Digital Magazine?

A digital magazine is a periodical, which is something in between a PDF and a traditional magazine. It can be a fortnightly or monthly magazine containing a variety of content from articles, videos, podcasts, and more.
A digital magazine is an awesome tool for presenting a ton of content that you already have but don’t want to host on your main website. For instance, you can create a digital magazine consisting of infographics,

Content Marketing - Mobile Apps

What are Mobile Applications?

Mobile as well as web-based applications are awesome tools for marketing your content to a populace, which is increasingly using their smartphones instead of their PCs to access the Internet.

Content Marketing - Web Apps

What are Web-based Applications?

Though mobile apps are in the trend, you should not limit yourself to these. You should also create web-based applications, which are built to serve a specific use and customer base; and can be accessed from desktops, laptops, and even mobiles.

Content Marketing - Podcasts

Podcast and webinars are spectacular pieces of content that can be easily consumed, by an audience, without any hassles. Unlike an online video, customers can listen to your podcast or webinar anytime, whether they’re driving or jogging. That being said, both podcasts and webinars can use videos. However, audio podcasts are more popular and preferred by most people, while a webinar typically is accompanied by online presentations.

Content Marketing - Webinars

In last chapter, we have learnt about podcast and how they can be used in content marketing. In this chapter we should learn about webinars.

What are Webinars?

A webinar, in contrast to podcasts, goes a bit further, as it is a participatory experience, where attendees can access the conference via a weblink or a meeting invitation.

Content Marketing - Infographics

What are Infographics?

Almost every business today creates a video or infographics as part of their content marketing program. In a business context, you can use videos to give customers a guided tour of your product or service. With infographics, you can help your customers understand a specific problem that you solve for them.

Content Marketing - Articles

What are Articles?

Whether they be the good old long-copy feature articles or the new-fangled, instruction based, step-by-step how-to ones, articles are essential to the success of your content marketing strategy. You can use articles to
  • Discuss industry trends
  • Offer solutions to typical concerns of customers
  • start a discussion

Content Marketing - Press Releases

What are Press Releases?

Like articles, press releases or online new releases as they are often called, are essential to provide your brand more exposure and recognition. Generally a press release comes under PR and marketing, and they help you to inform your potential buyers of your products and services.

Content Marketing - Social Media

How to Use Social Media Channels

Social media promotion has become an essential part of any content marketing strategy today. This includes B2B and B2C marketing aspects and covers different social media channels such as social sharing networks, video channels, photo sharing sites, online communities, and more.

Content Marketing - Examples

While there could be a thousand best examples of content marketing, we’ll discuss here three brands, who are creating the most compelling content, ideas, and strategies.

Content Marketing - Web Resources

There are plenty of web resources out there, but here we will highlight the top four resources for learning content marketing in a holistic manner. Since content marketing includes the whole gamut from content creation, search engine optimization and data analysis, the resources included here also have specialization in one or two of these areas.

Content Marketing - Quick Guide

What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is known by many names such as inbound marketing, corporate journalism, branded media, native advertising, and customer publishing to name a few. However, the basic idea behind the strategy remains the same, i.e., to create and distribute content that engages and attracts a targeted audience, while encouraging them to take action which is profitable to a business.

Content Marketing - Useful Resources

The following resources contain additional information on Content Marketing. Please use them to get more in-depth knowledge on this topic.

Useful Links on Content Marketing

Discuss Content Marketing

Content Marketing is all about creating and distributing content that engages and attracts a targeted audience, while encouraging them to take action which is profitable to a business. This is a brief tutorial that explains how you can use content marketing to your advantage and promote your business.

A/B Testing – Overview

A/B Testing (also known as Split testing) defines a way to compare two versions of an application or a web page that enables you to determine which one performs better. It is one of the easiest ways to analyze an application or a web page to create a new version. Thereafter, both these versions can be compared to find the conversion rate, which further helps in finding the better performer of these two.

A/B Testing – How it Works

You can monitor the visitor’s actions using statistics and analysis to determine the version that yields a higher conversion rate. A/B Testing results are usually given in fancy mathematical and statistical terms, but the meaning behind the numbers are actually quite simple. There are two significant methods through which you can check conversion rates using A/B Testing −

A/B Testing – Why to Use?

A/B Testing is used to make business decisions based on the results derived from data, instead of just making predictions. It allows you to create variations of your website or app and then helps you to confirm or discard your decision to make changes.

A/B Testing – What to Test?

A/B Testing is about creating multiple variations of an application or a website and then comparing all these versions using samples to determine the best variation that has the maximum conversion rate. There are different types of variations, which can be applied to a web page or an application.

A/B Testing – Process

A/B Testing comprises of a set of processes that one must follow sequentially in order to arrive at a realistic conclusion. In this chapter, we will discuss in detail the steps of A/B Testing process that you can use to run tests on any web page −

A/B Testing – Collect Data

The data from Google Analytics can help you to find visitor behaviors. It is always advisable to collect enough data from the site. Try to find the pages with low conversion rates or high drop-off rates that can be improved. In this chapter, we will discuss a few tools which can be used to collect data for A/B Testing.

A/B Testing – Identify Goals

The next step is to set your conversion goals. Find the metrics that determine whether or not the variation is more successful than the original version. Goals come from your business objectives, so as an example, if you have to increase the sale of clothes in terms of objectives, it can be as −
  • Clear product images.
  • Increase site visit rates.
  • Reduce shopping cart drop rate.

A/B Testing – Create Variations

As A/B Testing is about creating new versions of an application or a web page and then comparing all versions to see the conversion rate. You can improve the conversion rate by analyzing the statistics to check new variations.

A/B Testing – Run Experiment

It involves presenting all variations of your website or an application to the visitors and their actions are monitored for each variation. Visitor interaction for each variation is measured and compared to determine how this variation performs.
As discussed in the previous chapter, there are various tools that can be used to generate hypothesis and to run the variations −

A/B Testing – Analyze Results

Once the experiment is completed, next step is to analyze the results. A/B Testing tool will present the data from the experiment and will tell you the difference between how the different variations on a web page performs, and also if there is a significant difference between variations, using the help of mathematical methods and statistics.

A/B Testing – Tools

There are various tools that can be used to generate hypothesis and to run the variations, these include −
  • Visual Website optimizer (VWO)
  • Google Content Experiments
  • Optimizely

A/B Testing – Multivariate

Like A/B Testing, Multivariate Testing is based on the same mechanism, but it compares higher number of variables, and provides more information about how these variables behave. In A/B Testing, you split the traffic of a page between different versions of the design. Multivariate Testing is used to measure the effectiveness of each design.

A/B Testing – SEO

SEO is a method to display your website at the top of the page, when a search is performed for those relevant items. It includes the information that your website offers to the visitors and why webpage content is relevant to come at the top in a search result. Many potential customers feel that A/B Testing or Multivariate Testing will have an effect on their search engine rankings.

A/B Testing – Interview Questions

What do you understand by A/B Testing? What is the goal behind performing A/B Testing?

A/B Testing - Quick Guide

A/B Testing – Overview

A/B Testing (also known as Split testing) defines a way to compare two versions of an application or a web page that enables you to determine which one performs better. It is one of the easiest ways to analyze an application or a web page to create a new version. Thereafter, both these versions can be compared to find the conversion rate, which further helps in finding the better performer of these two.

A/B Testing - Useful Resources

The following resources contain additional information on A/B Testing. Please use them to get more in-depth knowledge on this.

Useful Links on A/B Testing

Discuss A/B Testing

A/B Testing is one of the best way to compare two or more versions of an application or a web page. It enables you to determine which one of them performs better and can generate better conversion rates. It is one of the easiest ways to analyze an application or a web page to create a new version that is more effective. This is a brief tutorial that covers the fundamentals of A/B Testing with suitable examples to illustrate how you can put it into practice.

Amazon Marketplace - Why Amazon?

There are various reasons why you should consider selling at Amazon Marketplace. In this introductory chapter, let us take a look at some of the prominent reasons why you should choose Amazon Marketplace.

The Amazon Advantage

Amazon is not just an online store, rather it’s a Marketplace! It is one of the oldest merchants on the web and has over 200 million customers worldwide. There are many potential buyers who put their trust in Amazon and prefer buying products from Amazon only, even if the product costs slightly higher than at other e-commerce sites.

Amazon Marketplace - Types of Account

You must certainly be investigating what choices you should essentially make before starting to sell your product. The very first choice you should make is about the type of account you should hold. Secondly, what product should you sell, and thirdly how should you manage the shipment and return for the product.
Amazon offers two types of accounts − Individual Account and Professional Account.

Amazon Marketplace - What to Sell?

You can find what to sell links on the Amazon webpage. There are huge number of products open to sale for both Individual and Professional account holders except for some marked by asterisk for which Individual account holders need to take prior approval. These are, however, open for Professional account holders.

Amazon Marketplace - Product Listing

Listing is an essential part of establishing your online selling business. It involves creating your product catalog by specifying the mandatory and striking details of your product. Listing your merchandise on Amazon gives your store visibility to countless shoppers online. It can be done in four ways −

Amazon Marketplace - Fees

In this chapter, we will discuss the types of fees that Amazon charges from the merchants who do business using its platform −
  • Variable Closing Fees
  • Amazon Fulfillment Fees
  • Referral Fees
Let’s discuss these in detail, starting with Variable Closing Fees.

Amazon Marketplace - Account Setting

In this chapter, we will discuss the two different types of Account Settings on Amazon Marketplace.

Individual Account

An individual Account is the least essentiality to sell products on Amazon. There is a referral fee attached, and in some cases, there is a variable closing fee. There are FBA charges if you are using the service and the shipping costs if you are shipping the product yourself.

Amazon Marketplace - Buy Box

All Amazon sellers want the coverted Buy Box. This is the same as all website holders want their website to rank on top of Google search. When a buyer searches for a product, there may be many sellers selling the same product with different offers.

Amazon Marketplace - Shipping Methods

The shipping method you use within Amazon is of your choice, considering it meets the customers chosen timeframe. As mentioned earlier, it is beneficial to go by FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) Service. The less time you spend each day arranging for proper packaging, the more time you will have in finding and listing new products.

Amazon Marketplace - Listing a New Product

If you want to list a new product in the Amazon catalog, then you need to follow the steps given below −
  • Click the ‘Create a new product’ button.
  • Select the category into which you want to list your product. Amazon then displays a list of sub categories.

Amazon Marketplace - Pricing Tools

If you want to save your time, do not go into setting the exact price. Set all the prices a little on the higher side − higher than the viable sales price of the product. Then using some pricing tool, modify the same as per the set of rules in the tool.

Amazon Marketplace - Get Highest Profit

Garnering highest profit is the ultimate goal of all the sellers and it should be, for this is something that draws most sellers to Amazon Marketplace. There are two key parameters in the formulation of a profitable business. They are −
  • Demand for your product, and
  • Margin on the sale.

Amazon Marketplace - Price Calculator

It is quite an effort to know how much revenue you can generate by selling a product on Amazon. Being one of the most popular marketplaces for online merchants, Amazon has a wide array of fees - marketplace account fees, variable cost fees, referral fees, shipping costs, etc.

Amazon Marketplace - Tax Handling

Calculation of Sales Tax

The basic question that comes to mind is how is the sales tax on Amazon calculated?
  • If a product is subjected to sales tax in the state in which it is shipped, the tax is calculated on the total selling price of the item.

Amazon Marketplace - Shipping Process

In this chapter, we will discuss the shipping process involved when you are on Amazon Marketplace.

Shipping Merchant Orders

When you go for fulfilling orders yourself, you need to ship the products to the customers. Amazon mails you as soon as your product is picked by the buyer. However, it may happen at times that you may not receive the email instantly and it may take up to 20 minutes to get the complete order information. Amazon informs you what you sold and at what price and the fee that you will be charged. Your duty is to ship the product to the buyer in time.

Amazon Marketplace - Seller Central

Amazon Seller Central is the web interface used by merchants to manage their orders. A person selling via the Amazon Seller Central is considered a third-party seller. Smart sellers use Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA). However, anyone can use the Seller Central and can retain full control of their product listings and pricing. There are four main management areas - Managing your inventory, handling sales, shipment of products, and dealing with returns.

Managing The Inventory

So far, we have discussed how to list a product, raise its sale, its shipment, etc. Let us now discuss how to manage the inventory while it is still in the Amazon system.
  • Open the Inventory Menu on the Seller Central. There will be two Manage Inventory options at the top to help you in managing your inventory, be it seller shipped or an FBA inventory.
  • Click the Filters button to view the type of item you want to see.

Amazon Marketplace - Creating Reports

Amazon provides reports for the sellers about the details of their sales.
  • You can find the Inventory report option in the inventory menu and an order report option in the orders menu.
  • You can see the FBA items in the active listings report which includes all the active listings.

Amazon Marketplace - Managing Reviews

You have now mastered the art of selling on Amazon portal, including how a product sells, how to manage your inventory, etc. However, keeping your customer’s satisfied is equally important.

Customer Feedback

Satisfied customers keep buying from you. You are now tagged as a trustworthy seller. Good customer feedback leads to repeated sales. There are certain things like supplements, household needs, sports equipment, etc.

Amazon Marketplace - Your Amazon Rating

Amazon keeps an eye on the behavior of each seller to ensure they are performing well. If a seller falls too low on the rating scale, he/she won’t be selling on Amazon for long. Performance area has three parameters on the basis of which a seller is rated by Amazon. These are −

Amazon Marketplace - Selling in Bulk

In this chapter, we will discuss about selling the products in bulk on Amazon Marketplace.

Promoting Your Products

Once you start enjoying the sale of your product, you will have a quest to generate more demand for your product. You may want to stick to the following tips for the same −

Amazon Marketplace - Best Practices

To ensure that Amazon integration works smoothly with your store and you have a voluminous sale, there are a few best practices that needs to be taken care of.
You should keep the following in mind in order to use Amazon Marketplace in an effective way −

Troubleshooting Problems

There are many problems that will surface once you start the selling process. Following are some such problems and the ways to solve them.
  • Managing low sales − At times, despite selling a very good product you may not receive a very welcoming response from the customer, resulting in poor sales. Try to figure out the reasons for the same and implement the ways to increase the sales.

Amazon Marketplace - Important Terms

Following is a list of important terms frequently encountered on Amazon Marketplace −
  • Amazon Price Calculator − Pre-designed calculators by Amazon which are well equipped to help the sellers in determining their total profit on items after shipment and all monetary transactions.
  • Amazon Seller Central − Amazon Seller Central is the web interface used by merchants to manage their orders.

Amazon Marketplace - Quick Guide

Amazon Marketplace - Why Amazon?

There are various reasons why you should consider selling at Amazon Marketplace. In this introductory chapter, let us take a look at some of the prominent reasons why you should choose Amazon Marketplace.

Amazon Marketplace - Useful Resources

The following resources contain additional information on Amazon Marketplace. Please use them to get more in-depth knowledge on this.

Discuss Amazon Marketplace

Amazon, the E-commerce giant, is one of the oldest merchants on the web and has over 200 million customers worldwide. Amazon is the unrivalled marketplace to sell products online. It provides an excellent platform for conducting online business and has proved beneficial for both buyers and sellers.

Wednesday, April 5, 2017

wxPython - Introduction

wxPython is a Python wrapper for wxWidgets (which is written in C++), a popular cross-platform GUI toolkit. Developed by Robin Dunn along with Harri Pasanen, wxPython is implemented as a Python extension module.

wxPython - Environment

Windows

Prebuilt binaries for Windows OS (both 32 bit and 64 bit) are available on http://www.wxpython.org/download.php page. Latest versions of installers available are − wxPython3.0-win32-3.0.2.0-py27.exe for 32-bit Python 2.7 wxPython3.0-win64-3.0.2.0-py27.exe for 64-bit Python 2.7
wxPython demo, samples and wxWidgets documentation is also available for download on the same page.
wxPython3.0-win32-docs-demos.exe

wxPython - Hello World

A simple GUI application displaying Hello World message is built using the following steps −
  • Import wx module.
  • Define an object of Application class.
  • Create a top level window as object of wx.Frame class. Caption and size parameters are given in constructor.

wxPython - GUI Builder Tools

Creating a good looking GUI by manual coding can be tedious. A visual GUI designer tool is always handy. Many GUI development IDEs targeted at wxPython are available. Following are some of them −
  • wxFormBuilder
  • wxDesigner
  • wxGlade
  • BoaConstructor
  • gui2py

wxPython - Major Classes

Original wxWidgets (written in C++) is a huge class library. GUI classes from this library are ported to Python with wxPython module, which tries to mirror the original wxWidgets library as close as possible. So, wx.Frame class in wxPython acts much in the same way as wxFrame class in its C++ version.

wxPython - Event Handling

Unlike a console mode application, which is executed in a sequential manner, a GUI based application is event driven. Functions or methods are executed in response to user’s actions like clicking a button, selecting an item from collection or mouse click, etc., called events.

wxPython - Layout Management

A GUI widget can be placed inside the container window by specifying its absolute coordinates measured in pixels. The coordinates are relative to the dimensions of the window defined by size argument of its constructor. Position of the widget inside the window is defined by pos argument of its constructor.
import wx  

wxPython - Buttons

Button widget is most widely used in any GUI interface. It captures the click event generated by the user. Its most obvious use is to trigger a handler function bound to it.
wxPython class library provides different types of buttons. There is a simple, traditional button, wx.Button class object, which carries some text as its caption. A two-state button is also available, which is named as wx.ToggleButton. Its pressed or depressed state can be identified by eventhandler function.

wxPython - Dockable Windows

wxAui is an Advanced User Interface library incorporated in wxWidgets API. Wx.aui.AuiManager the central class in AUI framework.
AuiManager manages the panes associated with a particular frame using each panel’s information in wx.aui.AuiPanelInfo object. Let us learn about various properties of PanelInfo object control docking and floating behavior.

wxPython - Multiple Document Interface

A typical GUI application may have multiple windows. Tabbed and stacked widgets allow to activate one such window at a time. However, many a times this approach may not be useful as view of other windows is hidden.
One way to display multiple windows simultaneously is to create them as independent windows. This is called as SDI (Single Document Interface). This requires more memory resources as each window may have its own menu system, toolbar, etc.

wxPython - Drawing API

GDI+ (Graphics Drawing Interface), CoreGraphics and Cairo libraries form the framework of drawing API in wxPython. wx.GraphicsContext is the primary drawable object, using which various Device Context objects are created.
wx.DC is an abstract class. Its derived classes are used to render graphics and text on different devices. The Device Context classes are −

wxPython - Drag & Drop

Provision of drag and drop is very intuitive for the user. It is found in many desktop applications where the user can copy or move objects from one window to another just by dragging it with the mouse and dropping on another window.
Drag and drop operation involves the following steps −
  • Declare a drop target
  • Create data object
  • Create wx.DropSource
  • Execute drag operation
  • Cancel or accept drop

wxPython - Quick Guide

wxPython - Introduction

wxPython is a Python wrapper for wxWidgets (which is written in C++), a popular cross-platform GUI toolkit. Developed by Robin Dunn along with Harri Pasanen, wxPython is implemented as a Python extension module.
Just like wxWidgets, wxPython is also a free software. It can be downloaded from the official website http://wxpython.org. Binaries and source code for many operating system platforms are available for download on this site.

wxPython - Useful Resources

The following resources contain additional information on wxPython. Please use them to get more in-depth knowledge on this topic.

Useful Links on wxPython

Discuss wxPython

wxPython is a blend of wxWidgets and Python programming library. This introductory tutorial provides the basics of GUI programming and helps you create desktop GUI applications.

VBScript - Overview

VBScript stands for Visual Basic Scripting that forms a subset of Visual Basic for Applications (VBA).
VBA is a product of Microsoft which is included NOT only in other Microsoft products such as MS Project and MS Office but also in Third Party tools such as AUTO CAD.

VBScript - Syntax

Your First VBScript

Let us write a VBScript to print out "Hello World".
<html>
<body>
<script language="vbscript" type="text/vbscript">
   document.write("Hello World!")
</script>
</body>
</html>

Enabling VBScript in Browsers

NOT All the modern browsers support VBScript. VBScript is supported just by Microsoft's Internet Explorer while other browsers(Firefox and Chrome) just support JavaScript. Hence, the developers prefer JavaScript over VBScript.
Though Internet Explorer (IE) supports VBScript, many a times you may need to enable or disable this feature manually. This tutorial will make you aware of the procedure of enabling and disabling VBScript support in Internet Explorer.

VBScript - Placements

VBScript Placement in HTML File

There is a flexibility given to include VBScript code anywhere in an HTML document. But the most preferred way to include VBScript in your HTML file is as follows:
  • Script in <head>...</head> section.
  • Script in <body>...</body> section.
  • Script in <body>...</body> and <head>...</head> sections.
  • Script in an external file and then include in <head>...</head> section.

VBScript - Variables

VBScript Variables

Variable is a named memory location used to hold a value that can be changed during the script execution. VBScript has only ONE fundamental data type, Variant.
Rules for Declaring Variables:
  • Variable Name must begin with an alphabet.
  • Variable names cannot exceed 255 characters.
  • Variables Should NOT contain a period(.)
  • Variable Names should be unique in the declared context.

VBScript - Constants

Constant is a named memory location used to hold a value that CANNOT be changed during the script execution. If a user tries to change a Constant Value, the Script execution ends up with an error. Constants are declared the same way the variables are declared.

VBScript - Operators

What is an operator?

Simple answer can be given using expression 4 + 5 is equal to 9. Here, 4 and 5 are called operands and + is called operator. VBScript language supports following types of operators:
  • Arithmetic Operators
  • Comparison Operators
  • Logical (or Relational) Operators
  • Concatenation Operators

VBScript - Decision Making

Decision making allows programmers to control the execution flow of a script or one of its sections. The execution is governed by one or more conditional statements.
Following is the general form of a typical decision making structure found in most of the programming languages:

VBScript - Loops

There may be a situation when you need to execute a block of code several number of times. In general, statements are executed sequentially: The first statement in a function is executed first, followed by the second, and so on.
Programming languages provide various control structures that allow for more complicated execution paths.
A loop statement allows us to execute a statement or group of statements multiple times and following is the general from of a loop statement in VBScript.

VBScript - Events

What is an Event ?

VBScript's interaction with HTML is handled through events that occur when the user or browser manipulates a page.
When the page loads, that is an event. When the user clicks a button, that click too is an event. Another example of events are like pressing any key, closing window, resizing window, etc.

VBScript and Cookies

What are Cookies?

Web Browser and Server use HTTP protocol to communicate and HTTP is a stateless protocol. But for a commercial website, it is required to maintain session information among different pages. For example, one user registration ends after completing many pages. But how to maintain user's session information across all the web pages.

VBScript - Numbers

Description

Number functions help the developers to handle numbers in an efficient way and also helps them to convert their subtypes. It also helps them to make use of the inbuilt mathematical functions associated with VBscript.

Number Conversion Functions

Number functions help us to convert a given number from one data subtype to another data subtype.

VBScript - Strings

Strings are a sequence of characters, which can consist of alphabets or numbers or special characters or all of them. A variable is said to be a string if it is enclosed within double quotes " ".

VBScript - Arrays

What is an Array?

We know very well that a variable is a container to store a value. Sometimes, developers are in a position to hold more than one value in a single variable at a time. When a series of values are stored in a single variable, then it is known as array variable.

VBScript - Date and Time Functions

VBScript Date and Time Functions help the developers to convert date and time from one format to another or to express the date or time value in the format that suits a specific condition.

Date Functions

Function Description
Date A Function, which returns the current system date
CDate A Function, which converts a given input to Date

VBScript - Procedures

What is a Function?

A function is a group of reusable code which can be called anywhere in your program. This eliminates the need of writing same code over and over again. This will enable programmers to divide a big program into a number of small and manageable functions.
Apart from inbuilt Functions, VBScript allows us to write user-defined functions as well. This section will explain you how to write your own functions in VBScript.

VBScript - Dialog Boxes

What is a Dialog Box ?

VBScript allows the developers to interact with the user effectively. It can be a message box to display a message to a user or an input box with which user can enter the values.

Object Oriented VBScript

What is an Object

VBScript runtime objects help us to accomplish various tasks. This section will help you understand how to instantiate an object and work with it.

Syntax

In order to work with objects seamlessly, we need to declare the object and instantiate it using Set Keyword.
Dim objectname    'Declare the object name
Set objectname = CreateObject(object_type)

VBScript - Regular Expressions

What are Regular Expressions?

Regular Expressions is a sequence of characters that forms a pattern, which is mainly used for search and replace. The purpose of creating a pattern is to match specific strings, so that the developer can extract characters based on conditions and replace certain characters.

VBScript - Error Handling

There are three types of errors in programming: (a) Syntax Errors and (b) Runtime Errors (c) Logical Errors.

Syntax errors

Syntax errors, also called parsing errors, occur at interpretation time for VBScript. For example, the following line causes a syntax error because it is missing a closing parenthesis:
<script type="text/vbscript">

dim x,y
x = "Tutorialspoint"
y = Ucase(x

</script>

Runtime errors

Runtime errors, also called exceptions, occur during execution, after interpretation.
For example, the following line causes a runtime error because here syntax is correct but at runtime it is trying to call fnmultiply, which is a non-existing function:
<script type="text/vbscript">
  
  Dim x,y
  x = 10
  y = 20
  z = fnadd(x,y)
  a = fnmultiply(x,y)
  Function fnadd(x,y)
      fnadd = x+y
  End Function

</script>

Logical errors

Logic errors can be the most difficult type of errors to track down. These errors are not the result of a syntax or runtime error. Instead, they occur when you make a mistake in the logic that drives your script and you do not get the result you expected.

VBScript Miscellaneous Statements

There are few other important statements which helps the developers to develop an efficient script. Below are the list of statements tabulated and explained in detail with examples.
Category Function Name/Statement Name
Options Option Explicit
Script Engine ID ScriptEngine
variants IsArray, IsEmpty, IsNull, IsNumeric, IsObject, TypeName
Expression Eval,Execute

VBScript Questions and Answers

VBScript Questions and Answers has been designed with a special intention of helping students and professionals preparing for various Certification Exams and Job Interviews. This section provides a useful collection of sample Interview Questions and Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs) and their answers with appropriate explanations.

VBScript - Useful Resources

The following resources contain additional information on VBScript. Please use them to get more in-depth knowledge on this topic.

Useful Links on VBScript

Discuss VBScript

Microsoft VBScript (Visual Basic Script) is a general-purpose, lightweight and active scripting language developed by Microsoft that is modelled on Visual Basic. Nowadays, VBScript is the primary scripting language for Quick Test Professional (QTP), which is a test automation tool.
This tutorial will teach you how to use VbScript scripting language in your day-2-day life of any Web based or Automation project development.

Unix - Getting Started

What is Unix ?

The Unix operating system is a set of programs that act as a link between the computer and the user.
The computer programs that allocate the system resources and coordinate all the details of the computer's internals is called the operating system or the kernel.
Users communicate with the kernel through a program known as the shell. The shell is a command line interpreter; it translates commands entered by the user and converts them into a language that is understood by the kernel.

Unix - File Management

In this chapter, we will discuss in detail about file management in Unix. All data in Unix is organized into files. All files are organized into directories. These directories are organized into a tree-like structure called the filesystem.
When you work with Unix, one way or another, you spend most of your time working with files. This tutorial will help you understand how to create and remove files, copy and rename them, create links to them, etc.
In Unix, there are three basic types of files −
In this chapter, we will discuss in detail about directory management in Unix.
A directory is a file the solo job of which is to store the file names and the related information. All the files, whether ordinary, special, or directory, are contained in directories.
Unix uses a hierarchical structure for organizing files and directories. This structure is often referred to as a directory tree. The tree has a single root node, the slash character (/), and all other directories are contained below it.

Unix - File Permission / Access Modes

In this chapter, we will discuss in detail about file permission and access modes in Unix. File ownership is an important component of Unix that provides a secure method for storing files. Every file in Unix has the following attributes −
  • Owner permissions − The owner's permissions determine what actions the owner of the file can perform on the file.

Unix - Environment

In this chapter, we will discuss in detail about the Unix environment. An important Unix concept is the environment, which is defined by environment variables. Some are set by the system, others by you, yet others by the shell, or any program that loads another program.
A variable is a character string to which we assign a value. The value assigned could be a number, text, filename, device, or any other type of data.

Unix Basic Utilities - Printing, Email

In this chapter, we will discuss in detail about Printing and Email as the basic utilities of Unix. So far, we have tried to understand the Unix OS and the nature of its basic commands. In this chapter, we will learn some important Unix utilities that can be used in our day-to-day life.

Unix - Pipes and Filters

In this chapter, we will discuss in detail about pipes and filters in Unix. You can connect two commands together so that the output from one program becomes the input of the next program. Two or more commands connected in this way form a pipe.
To make a pipe, put a vertical bar (|) on the command line between two commands.
When a program takes its input from another program, it performs some operation on that input, and writes the result to the standard output. It is referred to as a filter.

Unix - Processes Management

In this chapter, we will discuss in detail about process management in Unix. When you execute a program on your Unix system, the system creates a special environment for that program. This environment contains everything needed for the system to run the program as if no other program were running on the system.

Unix - Network Communication Utilities

In this chapter, we will discuss in detail about network communication utilities in Unix. When you work in a distributed environment, you need to communicate with remote users and you also need to access remote Unix machines.
There are several Unix utilities that help users compute in a networked, distributed environment. This chapter lists a few of them.

Unix - The vi Editor Tutorial

In this chapter, we will understand how the vi Editor works in Unix. There are many ways to edit files in Unix. Editing files using the screen-oriented text editor vi is one of the best ways. This editor enables you to edit lines in context with other lines in the file.
An improved version of the vi editor which is called the VIM has also been made available now. Here, VIM stands for Vi IMproved.

Unix - What is Shells?

A Shell provides you with an interface to the Unix system. It gathers input from you and executes programs based on that input. When a program finishes executing, it displays that program's output.
Shell is an environment in which we can run our commands, programs, and shell scripts. There are different flavors of a shell, just as there are different flavors of operating systems. Each flavor of shell has its own set of recognized commands and functions.

Unix - Using Shell Variables

In this chapter, we will learn how to use Shell variables in Unix. A variable is a character string to which we assign a value. The value assigned could be a number, text, filename, device, or any other type of data.
A variable is nothing more than a pointer to the actual data. The shell enables you to create, assign, and delete variables.

Unix - Special Variables

In this chapter, we will discuss in detail about special variable in Unix. In one of our previous chapters, we understood how to be careful when we use certain nonalphanumeric characters in variable names. This is because those characters are used in the names of special Unix variables. These variables are reserved for specific functions.

Unix - Using Shell Arrays

In this chapter, we will discuss how to use shell arrays in Unix. A shell variable is capable enough to hold a single value. These variables are called scalar variables.
Shell supports a different type of variable called an array variable. This can hold multiple values at the same time. Arrays provide a method of grouping a set of variables. Instead of creating a new name for each variable that is required, you can use a single array variable that stores all the other variables.
All the naming rules discussed for Shell Variables would be applicable while naming arrays.

Unix - Shell Basic Operators

There are various operators supported by each shell. We will discuss in detail about Bourne shell (default shell) in this chapter.
We will now discuss the following operators −
  • Arithmetic Operators
  • Relational Operators
  • Boolean Operators
  • String Operators
  • File Test Operators

Unix - Shell Decision Making

In this chapter, we will understand shell decision-making in Unix. While writing a shell script, there may be a situation when you need to adopt one path out of the given two paths. So you need to make use of conditional statements that allow your program to make correct decisions and perform the right actions.
Unix Shell supports conditional statements which are used to perform different actions based on different conditions. We will now understand two decision-making statements here −

Unix - Shell Loop Types

In this chapter, we will discuss shell loops in Unix. A loop is a powerful programming tool that enables you to execute a set of commands repeatedly. In this chapter, we will examine the following types of loops available to shell programmers −

Unix - Shell Loop Control

In this chapter, we will discuss shell loop control in Unix. So far you have looked at creating loops and working with loops to accomplish different tasks. Sometimes you need to stop a loop or skip iterations of the loop.
In this chapter, we will learn following two statements that are used to control shell loops−
  • The break statement
  • The continue statement

Tuesday, April 4, 2017

Unix - Shell Substitution

What is Substitution?

The shell performs substitution when it encounters an expression that contains one or more special characters.

Example

Here, the printing value of the variable is substituted by its value. Same time, "\n" is substituted by a new line −
#!/bin/sh

Unix - Shell Quoting Mechanisms

In this chapter, we will discuss in detail about the Shell quoting mechanisms. We will start by discussing the metacharacters.

The Metacharacters

Unix Shell provides various metacharacters which have special meaning while using them in any Shell Script and causes termination of a word unless quoted.

Unix - Shell Input/Output Redirections

In this chapter, we will discuss in detail about the Shell input/output redirections. Most Unix system commands take input from your terminal and send the resulting output back to your terminal. A command normally reads its input from the standard input, which happens to be your terminal by default. Similarly, a command normally writes its output to standard output, which is again your terminal by default.

Unix - Shell Functions

In this chapter, we will discuss in detail about the shell functions. Functions enable you to break down the overall functionality of a script into smaller, logical subsections, which can then be called upon to perform their individual tasks when needed.
Using functions to perform repetitive tasks is an excellent way to create code reuse. This is an important part of modern object-oriented programming principles.

Unix - Shell Manpage Help

All the Unix commands come with a number of optional and mandatory options. It is very common to forget the complete syntax of these commands.
Because no one can possibly remember every Unix command and all its options, we have online help available to mitigate this right from when Unix was at its development stage.

Unix - Regular Expressions with SED

In this chapter, we will discuss in detail about regular expressions with SED in Unix.
A regular expression is a string that can be used to describe several sequences of characters. Regular expressions are used by several different Unix commands, including ed, sed, awk, grep, and to a more limited extent, vi.

Unix - File System Basics

A file system is a logical collection of files on a partition or disk. A partition is a container for information and can span an entire hard drive if desired.
Your hard drive can have various partitions which usually contain only one file system, such as one file system housing the /file system or another containing the /home file system.

Unix - User Administration

In this chapter, we will discuss in detail about user administration in Unix.
There are three types of accounts on a Unix system −

Root account

This is also called superuser and would have complete and unfettered control of the system. A superuser can run any commands without any restriction. This user should be assumed as a system administrator.

Unix - System Performance

In this chapter, we will discuss in detail about the system performance in Unix.
We will introduce you to a few free tools that are available to monitor and manage performance on Unix systems. These tools also provide guidelines on how to diagnose and fix performance problems in the Unix environment.

Unix - System Logging

In this chapter, we will discuss in detail about system logging in Unix.
Unix systems have a very flexible and powerful logging system, which enables you to record almost anything you can imagine and then manipulate the logs to retrieve the information you require.
Many versions of Unix provide a general-purpose logging facility called syslog. Individual programs that need to have information logged, send the information to syslog.

Unix - Signals and Traps

In this chapter, we will discuss in detail about Signals and Traps in Unix.
Signals are software interrupts sent to a program to indicate that an important event has occurred. The events can vary from user requests to illegal memory access errors. Some signals, such as the interrupt signal, indicate that a user has asked the program to do something that is not in the usual flow of control.
The following table lists out common signals you might encounter and want to use in your programs −

Unix Questions and Answers

Unix Questions and Answers has been designed with a special intention of helping students and professionals preparing for various Certification Exams and Job Interviews. This section provides a useful collection of sample Interview Questions and Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs) and their answers with appropriate explanations.