Shining a Light on LinkedIn’s Dark Underbelly: One Man’s War on Scammers
One person is more than enough to make a difference. That’s the mantra that drives Jay Jones to expose the dark underbelly of LinkedIn filled with scammers preying on desperate job seekers. To date, his relentless pursuit of those with nefarious intentions has helped to take down 4,000 fake job ads and uncover scammers posing … Read more
Transform Your Website: How Micro-Interactions Improve User Experience
Ten to 20 seconds. That’s how quickly you must make a good first impression with website visitors. Fail to hold their attention, and you won’t get a second chance. They’ll be off to your competitors in search of more engaging content. Welcome to the fast-paced digital world, where attention spans are fleeting, and competition is … Read more
Dabbling in Gothic Horror Proves Good Fit For Author
The literary snob in Jeff Vande Zande ignored the idea brewing in his brain for most of the summer of 2020. How could he possibly think about putting those thoughts on paper when they were—gasp! —so far off from the genre he usually pursued? With five novels under his belt, most fell neatly into the literary … Read more
Fake News: How Engagement Pods Breed Disinformation
Engagement pods aren’t a new phenomenon. Social media fakefluencers have relied on them since 2016 to boost their popularity online with bought followers, likes, and comments to create the illusion of a large and captivated audience. However, these social media influencer wannabes aren’t the only ones leveraging the power of engagement pods to get noticed … Read more
Fake It Until You Make It: One CEO’s Cautionary Tale About Engagement Pods
By all accounts, Jason Hill was a skillful entrepreneur with a hot new idea on his hands. He’d created an app that reverse-engineered the scheduling process to enable instant networking, allowing entrepreneurs and business owners to easily connect with experts through 1:1 phone calls, fostering valuable relationships and creating endless opportunities. Now, he just needed … Read more
Bad SEO Practices Can Ruin Your Rep
Dishonest. Sneaky. Unethical. Call it whatever you want, but the strategy remains the same. When businesses manipulate SEO practices to deceive consumers, they risk harming their reputations and customer base. Unethical SEO practices extend far beyond Black Hat SEO techniques like keyword stuffing and paid backlinks. They are more duplicitous, often deliberately misdirecting consumers to … Read more
The F-Word Factor: When Should Brands Swear
It’s not your imagination. Brands swear a lot more frequently in their copy these days. It’s not a stretch to suggest that potty-moth copy is making a comeback. It used to be taboo, except for the occasional well-placed damn. Writers would not have thought about ever including the gasp-inducing f-word in their sales copy at … Read more
Ella’s Way: Turning The Page On Kindness And Acceptance
Ella’s Way is more than a children’s book initiative. It’s a heartfelt mission born from the passion and experience of retired nurse Sherry Cerino. Her long career in pediatric and adult medicine exposed Cerino to individuals of all ages with complex needs and disabilities, developing her strong passion for respect and tolerance of differences. She … Read more
AI Content Detectors: Claims VS Reality
Just last year, organizations were dropping their writers like hot potatoes to generate free content using AI tools. Entire marketing departments were getting the old heave-ho in favor of ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and other generative AI. The love affair was brief. It didn’t take long to realize AI can’t replace skilled human writers. They began … Read more
AI-Generated Content: Friend or Foe in SEO
Social media platforms are filled with AI content creation gurus singing the praises of tools like ChatGPT. They offer step-by-step instructions on how anyone can gain Google’s favor by following their guidance. Technically, some of their techniques work (even if just temporarily). One of the latest brags online is how easy it is to boost … Read more