Need to Know: eSports is Poised to be a Billion Dollar Industry

The eSports market is growing at an unsubstantiated rate, set to be an industry valued at more than a billion dollars in the next three years (in 2016, eSports was valued by Goldman Sachs at $500 million, and the market is expected to grow by 22% annually).

There has been a recent boom in commercial opportunities in the eSports industry, from merchandise to sponsorships to acquisitions of teams and leagues by networks, other gaming leagues, and team owners. This includes the new phenomena of having eSports matches being broadcast to sports networks, namely ESPN. The first night of the Overwatch grand finals was the first esports competition to be broadcast live on primetime television on July 27.

This is not the first eSports tournament to ever be played on an ESPN network, but this new broadcasting agreement does show a turn in the eSports world to a commitment for regular broadcasting eSPorts coverage on TV and digital platforms.

With the growth of streaming services like Twitch and the lucrative careers it has offered some of it’s more well-known streamers, like Ninja, Dr. DisRespect, Shroud, and others, eSports and video game viewership have been hotly discussed topics in the sports and entertainment world.

There is certainly a market for these streaming services, and if the primetime pickup of esports tournaments continues to grow, there may just be a space for those streamers that are not necessarily playing in tournaments.

The advertising and sponsorship community should be prepared for this, as the chances for these events to become as big as the Super Bowl may be just around the corner. Only time will tell if this will stay a consistent market, but we should all be ready to see a huge mainstream boom in the understanding of the potential that eSports have as a cultural staple and an economic opportunity.  

Like this post? Read more at http://steverenner.com/blog-2/

SEO vs Social Media Marketing

When you’re trying to increase your web traffic you may be wondering which is better for growing your traffic organically, social media marketing (SMM) or Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Is one better than the other? Both methods are continually changing and evolving, so the answer can’t really be gleaned simply.

Long story short, SEO and SMM are able to be successful on their own, but when used together have the potential to have the most influence on traffic. Essentially, by sharing content to your social media channels you should be driving traffic to your site.

Throughout the last few years, there has been an exponential growth of social media pages (Facebook and Twitter primarily) in the top 100 on Google.  An article by PrimeView states, “…SMM blogs should be receiving the majority of their visitors from social media channels, as it is their area of expertise …SMM-focused blogs perform better in organic search than SEO-focused blogs. The high levels of engagement SMM blogs receive from social media allow them to get more backlinks and referral traffic, which, in turn, helps them rank higher organically.”

This goes against Google’s stance that rank and social media presence are not correlated, showing that links with more social engagement can lead to a higher ranking. This does not mean, however, that more social activity is a way to “hack” your SEO, in fact, pushing too much low-value content on your followers can annoy them, leading to followers ignoring your posts or even unfollowing you.

So, as important as it is to post consistently, again we find that quality over quantity is key to adding value to the content you’re publishing, and key to getting post engagements and therefore improved SEO. With that, make a note that SEO should not be the focus of your social strategy and that content is still king for getting you ranked, as quality is the number one factor for Google rank.

When trying to grow your site traffic and developing content for SMM, it is crucial to put the work into placing keywords and links correctly so that your content will garner more backlinks and get more referral traffic from your social media followers. SEO appeals to an algorithm, but SMM appeals to people, so to really harness the power of both you must understand how these two key components to your marketing strategy are almost complete opposites, but yet interdependent. Content that is high ranking will bring in more search traffic, and by the nature of how the world of social media works, this search traffic will drive shares, comments and follows on your social channels.

Like this post? Read more at http://steverenner.com/blog-2/

Everything You Need to Know About iOS 12

iPhone users are getting excited for the impending release of the iOS 12 update. iOS 12 is not a huge departure from iOS 11, but it does include many new features that can change how you use your iPhone. Most people will have access to it in September, but you can download the pre-release software now to see some of these changes.

Notifications

iPhone notifications have been a point of contention for some time because they would show up individually rather than grouped by the source. With iOS 12, notifications will now be grouped together by app and by topic, making it easier to dismiss notifications from the dock.

Memoji

The iPhone X introduced animojis, but this goes a step beyond. Now you can create a personalized and animated emoji of yourself. (Think Samsung’s AR emoji) This feature is only available to iPhone X users.

Facetime

Facetime will now support calls with up to 32 participants. This is a lot of people to keep track of, but one feature that may help is that the tile of whoever is talking will be the biggest on your screen.

Speed boosts for older phones

iOS 12 will improve the speed of older models of iPhone (like the iPhone 6+) for keyboard opening, camera opening and app launching.

Siri

Siri, though still not the most highly intelligent personal assistant available on the market, is getting smarter, and now allows for customizations to create series’ of actions when you say a specific command. Read more here to see how it works.

CarPlay customization

If your car supports CarPlay, you can now choose between Google Maps and Waze for navigation, rather than just having to use Apple Maps.

Apple Books

Previously known as iBooks, the Apple reading platform has gotten a facelift and has been renamed  Apple Books.

Animoji additions

Still exclusive to the iPhone X, iOS will introduce more options for Animojis including the T-Rex, koala, tiger, and ghost.

Do Not Disturb at Bedtime

This feature turns off notifications at night so that you can answer a call or check the time without notifications popping up and interrupting your nighttime relaxation and sleep.

Screen Time

A new set of tools called Screen Time tracks your usage and allows you to set time limits for different apps, schedule breaks from screens, and see how much time you’re spending on your phone or iPad.

iMessage changes

In iMessage, you will now be able to add stickers and filters along with other added actions to make messaging more interactive.

Like this post? Read more at http://steverenner.com/blog-2/