3D Printing: From Small Business Production to the iPhone Shoe

 

By Abbey Peschel

 

English: RepRap v.2 ‘Mendel’ open-source FDM 3D printer (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

3D printers may be changing the world of production forever. According to “Fabricated: The New World of 3D Printing,” these devices offer on demand production to people in a huge variety of fields. From doctors and professional designers to students and small business owners, users across the economic spectrum may soon see their work becoming easier and more customized.

 

While many have posited that cheaper, easier to build 3D printers would result in heavy home use, “Fabricated” suggests a different hypothesis. Instead of a printer in every kitchen, authors suggest that the world will see greater individualization in marketing and promotion fields, medical fields, and even every day consumer products. Most people won’t create their own specialized objects: instead they’ll have them printed by a specialist, then purchase them through an ordinary store or online retailer.

 

Many industries have already seen some of these effects already. For instance, custom-printed prosthetics have been targeted as a way to make these devices more comfortable to wear and more effective for their individual owners. Marketing companies are experimenting with printing three-dimensional logo images and other promotional products in substances ranging from chocolate to resin.

 

One designer in Amsterdam has even printed a shoe designed to hold an iPhone. According to Alan Nguyen , the shoe was created as a legal test. While the design is wholly original in itself, its purpose is to hold a device that has been fiercely defended by intellectual property lawyers. The iPhone shoe also includes elements of other case designs for the Apple product, as a mash-up and tribute to their original designers.

 

This type of printing also poses other potential quandaries. With designers creating and uploading the plans and instructions for all kinds of devices, anyone with a printer could potentially create one of those objects. When this is applied to scans of copyrighted or patented items, home and small business fabrication suddenly poses a much greater intellectual property risk. The possibility of 3D printed weapons and other black market items adds to many experts’ concern.

 

No matter what issues arise in relation to three-dimensional printing, however, it’s certain to expand horizons and change many people’s idea of how manufacturing works. The days of identical mass-produced objects may be giving way to a world of exciting new custom-created products.

 

Abbey Peschel is a Boston-area printing and marketing specialist. You can find her on Twitter @Abbey_Peschel

 

 

 

Why I Like the New Facebook Insights

Facebook is tweaking its Insights again, and from what I’ve seen so far, it’s a change for the better.  Here is a breakdown of what’s changing:

• The People Talking About This metric has been broken out into people engaged, the number of unique people who’ve clicked on, liked, commented on or shared your posts, and other page activity, which includes Page mentions, check-ins and posts by other people on your Page.
• Virality (the percentage of people who created a story from your page, divided by the total number who’ve seen it) has been replaced with engagement rate, which is the percentage of people who saw a post that then clicked on, liked, commented on or shared it.
• Viral reach (the number of people who saw a post from a story published by a friend)  is included as part of organic reach, with total reach broken down into paid and organic reach.

I like several aspects of the new Insights. The graphics are simpler and easier to understand. You can see at a glance how many likes your page has gotten, your total reach for the last week, and how engaged your followers have been:

I also think Facebook has greatly improved their reporting of individual posts on a page. As you can see below, it’s much easier to see how well your fans have been engaging with your posts:

The photos above came from the overview section of Insights. Facebook also breaks down the numbers by Page:

You can also see when your fans are online. Facebook breaks this info down by day and time, so you can see when your content is getting the most reach. Now you can easily see at a glance when your audience is online, so you can make sure to post when they’ll be most likely to see your content:

And if you’re still not sure which type of posts get the most engagement, Facebook gives you that info in a new graphic format too:

Facebook is slowly rolling out the new Insights to users. If you get the option to try it out, be careful. Facebook says, “if you choose to participate in the new Page Insights, you can go back to the old version at any time, but you won’t be able to switch back to the new version until it’s available to everyone.”

What do you think of the new changes? I think it’s definitely going to help Page Admins map out a better strategy to boost engagement on their page. I have to admit that I haven’t paid as close attention to Insights for my own page as I should, but that’s definitely going to change now!

3 Easy Ways to Get Ideas for Your Company Blog

Stuck for ideas on what to write about for your company’s blog?  It’s a common complaint, especially if you don’t think of yourself as a writer. But no matter what your industry or profession – be it plumber, landscape lighting contractor or chiropractor – you can come up with plenty of articles for your blog if you focus the topics on these three areas:

• Price/Cost
• Problems
• Comparisons

Price/Cost Blog Topic

Many businesses that sell services, or expensive products, are reluctant to talk about their prices online. They prefer to discuss pricing with prospective customers in person or on the phone.  The reasoning is that their prices may scare off potential customers, who perceive the product or service as being too expensive. Or, businesses may be afraid that their competition will undercut them.

Here’s the problem with this type of thinking.

Why worry that someone can’t afford your products/services? Not everyone can. That’s just a fact of life. You should be more concerned about doing the best job you can, so you’ll attract people who CAN afford your products/services.

As for the competition — well, they probably know your prices already.

You don’t have to mention specific prices in a blog article, but you can talk about pricing in more general terms, such as:

• Pricing forecast for your industry
• Compare price ranges of two different products
• New vs. used in terms of pricing

Write about Problems

Do your customers ever have problems with your products or services? Maybe you already have a list of Frequently Asked Questions that deal with problems on your website. These make great material for blog articles.

Address each problem in a separate article and of course, provide the solution.  Try writing a, “How NOT to…” article for your business  as well as a “How to…” article and explain the problem and solution with each one.

Odds are, for every product or service you sell, you can come up with at least 3-6 articles  that relate to problems.

Compare and Contrast Articles

A third strategy to use for coming up with blog articles is the compare and contrast style.  Write about pros and cons of buying your services/products. Present the best and worst products, services, etc. in your industry and justify your reasoning. If you offer a low-price item versus a  more expensive one – contrast the two and make the case for when people should buy the inexpensive one, versus the deluxe model.

The key in all of these articles is to demonstrate your expertise about your products/services and your industry. Also, keep in mind the Golden Rule of Blogging: “they ask, you answer” which means you will endear yourself to your readers and prospects if you address customer questions and problems in your blog.

Get Organized

Before you write your next blog article, take time to make a list of article titles based on the three categories I’ve mentioned here: Price/Cost, Problems & Comparisons. Use an editorial calendar to plan out when you’ll publish each article. This way, you can finally stop stressing about what to write about and concentrate on providing useful content for your prospects and customers.

If you enjoyed this article, please share it on Facebook, etc.

How to Share Status Updates with LinkedIn Groups

Got an event you want to promote to more than one LinkedIn group? Want to share a great quotation with several LinkedIn groups at the same time?

LinkedIn makes it easy to share articles with more than one group at a time. You’ve probably seen the LinkedIn share button on blog posts before, right? And if you’re reading a discussion in a LinkedIn group, you can easily share it with another group by hovering your mouse over the bottom of the discussion to bring up the “More” tab. When you click “more,” a dropdown menu comes up with an option to “share link.” As you can see in the image below, you can check the box that says “Post to group(s)” and then type in the name of the groups you want to see the article.

No Link? No Share

If you start a discussion in a LinkedIn group and don’t add a link to it, the option to share to groups goes away. When you click on the “more” tab now, you only get the options to “Flag as promotion,” “Flag as job,” or “Delete.”

The only way I’ve seen to share with multiple LinkedIn groups from a group is to copy the status update, go to the next group you want to see the information, and paste the content as a new discussion.

There’s just one problem with this tactic. It is tedious and time-consuming!

Hootsuite to the Rescue

I’ve been asked about this problem by several people lately, and I will tell you what I told them. The only way I’ve found to share an update with more than one LinkedIn group at the same time is to use a third-party tool that allows posting to LinkedIn groups. The one that I use is Hootsuite. As you can see in the image below, I selected three LinkedIn groups in the Hootsuite dashboard. I typed in an update and now all I have to do is either send it now, or schedule it for a future date.

That’s my solution. Have you found another way to share with more than one LinkedIn group at the same time? If so, please share it in the comments below.

Related articles

• 7 LinkedIn Tips For Using Groups Feature Effectively (business2community.com)
• 7 Must-Haves to Grow an Audience Via LinkedIn Groups (business2community.com)

How to Ensure Your Video Sales Letter Converts

By Gloria Rand

Looking for a way to sell more products online? Use a Video Sales Letter. Why? Here are 3 reasons:

• It’s easier to get your point across with video than with text or audio
• You can build trust and connect with potential customers
• Video converts better than straight text

Don’t get the wrong impression. It’s not that easy to generate sales with video. Otherwise, everybody would be doing it. 

Why Employees Need to Update their LinkedIn Profiles

Some good friends and former co-workers of mine learned an important lesson last week, and that is to always keep your LinkedIn profile updated. They are now out of a job, due to a buyout. They were part of the Miami production staff of Nightly Business Report, the award-winning PBS business news program that was recently purchased by CNBC. The show will continue to air on PBS stations across the country, but it will be based out of New Jersey. Last Friday was the last show co-produced out of Miami and New York, and the last day of work for the Miami staff.

5 Reasons Why Your Business Needs an Editorial Calendar

Ever since Google’s Panda update, content marketing has become all-important since businesses have been told that they need to come up with original content for their websites. But the challenge lies in creating that content. If you don’t have a plan in place, you may find yourself struggling to come up with ideas for the next week’s blog post or your company newsletter.

How to Share Articles to Multiple LinkedIn Groups

Posting blog articles to LinkedIn groups is a great way to share useful information with the other group members. But if you belong to more than one group, it can be cumbersome posting to each individual group. There is a way to share articles with more than one group at a time.

3 Common SEO Mistakes and How to Fix Them

By Gloria Rand
Worrying about the latest algorithm change from Google won’t make a difference to your website’s search ranking if you’ve made a common SEO mistake like optimizing for common words or using your company name as the title tag for every page on your website. Here are three other SEO mistakes to avoid, and how to fix them:

How Email Can Help Increase Facebook Followers

Want a quick and easy way to generate more followers for your Facebook business page?

Use email!

Invite your list of contacts to follow you on Facebook. If you use an email service provider like Constant Contact, you may find a template already created with a Facebook graphic that you can use. As a Constant Contact partner, I can attest to this fact. They have several Facebook templates, including ones that say “Find me on Facebook.”