Today, I will write about something very different from what I usually focus my content on: history, geopolitics and other related material. Today, I will discuss the book Foundation, first published in 1951 by Isaac Asimov.
This book is very relevant, and people who enjoy politics, geopolitics, and culture will find it inspirational for its pertinent cultural and political impacts, which affect our modern-day societies around the globe equally in developed nations.
These topics are the decline and fall of empires, the decay of culture, technological advancement and the belief that the best days of civilisation are behind them.
This attitude is very much in ascendancy within the United States of America and other Western nations, particularly amongst the Anglo-Saxon-speaking peoples.
Foundation by Isaac Asimov
Foundation Book Series
Foundation is a novel by Isaac Asimov, first published in 1951. It was the first volume of his famed Foundation trilogy (1951–53), describing the collapse and rebirth of a vast interstellar empire in the future universe.
This original book trilogy takes heavy inspiration from the 18th-century historian, essayist and member of the British Parliament, Edward Gibbon, author of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in 1776.
In turn, Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy inspired the creation of the Dune trilogy by Frank Herbert and Star Wars created by George Lucas and set the framework of what we now consider contemporary science fiction.
What is so fascinating about this trilogy is how it depicts the decay of the Galactic Empire in contrast to the new rising Galactic Empire in the form of the Foundation and the planet Terminus; this has many modern-day and ancient themes, such as why societies choose to fail.
Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series also showed that nations and empires declined because the citizenry stopped believing in the Empire. Due to long-term and systemic decisions happening over centuries, nations fail.
We can see contemporary examples of this happening with China, Germany and the British all feeling the effects of not producing replacement generation and the collapse of national confidence.
Roman Empire Map
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
All civilisations, nation-states, and their institutions eventually collapse or are permanently destroyed and reformed again in different iterations by their successor states or dynasties, especially in places such as China, with its long and bloody history of over 4,000 years.
For the Roman Empire its fall began long before Germanic tribes crippled the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century with the final collapse in 476 A.D.
The event that destroyed the Roman Empire happened after its victory against Carthage in the Third Punic War, also called the Third Carthaginian War (149–146 BCE), the third of three wars between the Roman Republic and the Carthaginians.
Empire that resulted in Carthage’s final destruction, its population enslavement, and Roman hegemony over the western Mediterranean.
However, what destroyed the Roman Empire was internal political decay and the inability of its leadership to resolve its problems peacefully and democratically, which started with the murder of Tiberius Gracchus in 133 BCE.
The reason he was killed was due to intending to reform the economic system within the Roman Empire with more and more concentrated within the Roman senatorial classes and also due to Fears of Tiberius’ popularity and his willingness to break political norms led to his death, along with many supporters, in a riot instigated by his enemies.
For people reading this within the United States and many other nations around the globe, you can see clear links between the inability of people to communicate and resolve the issues peacefully and, in the long term, civil wars, murders and the nation’s collapse.
If you are interested in these topics and big ideas, the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov is the book for you; it will leave you pondering many thoughts related to our modern-day society and why Nations fail.
The way I approach my writing is first to understand the brief I have been given and the time the project needs to be completed and make sure I meet the needs of the client, organisation and the aims of my writing as well as the research.
Understanding any topic in depth requires typically reading 25 books; alternatively, online newsletters, educational videos and other sources from a professional expert can be used to supercharge a writer’s knowledge.
I have worked as a writer and doing research since late 2020 and have four years of experience at the University.
I’ve been writing since 2014 in academic style and since late 2020 as a copywriter; this is writing that sells, which in basic terms means the written word is tailored to a target audience to meet their needs and sell products or services.
A copywriter’s other skill is ensuring that our writing can be understood and be apparent by targeting the body of the copy to meet a target audience’s needs. For example, the average reading age in the United Kingdom is nine.
But if I’m writing for a mainstream magazine or newspaper like the Guardian, the reading age is 14 years old, partly because people that read newspapers are readers.
The critical skill of a writer is to be concise but to make sure that our writing can be understood and is easily readable.
Another skill set I have developed is essay writing, using the Harvard and APA styles, and I also experienced using the Associated Press style.
I’ve also developed digital and interview skills that modern writers require using social media, SEO and video and recording software.
The experiences I have gathered relevant to my writing is my time at Successful Mindset LTD; this was a three-month contract I wrote on mental health, disability and incorporating the needs of the vulnerable workplace.
What I learnt most and experienced was information on the most vulnerable people in our societies and how they still face discrimination and misunderstanding.
This kind of topic is very personal to me because I am dyslexic and use a speak-to-write software that I still get people thinking that I am simple and not writing my head. That’s why this kind of topic inflames my passions.
Another critical experience is my time at Nat Cent doing social research, where I developed my interview skills and communication abilities to understand the needs of drivers.
This is relevant to writing because, as a writer, it can be essential to gather interviews and information by directly speaking to other stakeholders or members of the general public, depending on the nature of the writing role.
My relevant Experiences outside of work are that I have written two books that expanded my research skills.
In horror movies, there are typically common themes such as the hot girlfriend, scenes of a sexual nature, the Jock and protagonists of heroes and heroines killed by making intelligent choices, dumb choices or even no choice at all.
Horror movies are infamous for their characters making stupid and reckless choices. For instance, they get themselves and their friends killed in the 2019 movie Child’s Play, a reboot of the Chucky horror movies that started in 1988 and the final instalment in 2017.
In the rebooted version halfway through Child’s Play, Andy’s mother, Karen, realises Chucky is evil and could avoid all the deaths if she just destroyed the possessed doll.
In what cultures list latest piece, we will see protagonists making the wise decisions of not treading around in dark attics or having raunchy activities in the middle of the woods, like Chris Hemsworth having sex in The Cabin in the Woods horror movie released in 2011.
Protagonists are not just those who survived and got lucky; heroes and heroines who succeeded were jocks and psychopaths like Amanda Young from The Saw movies. So, the question is, what did these characters do to warrant survival?
Blair Witch is a demonic being that uses an energy field to kill its victims; to survive, victims must not look at the Blair Witch for her powers to work; the Blair Witch kills by using telekinesis powers by moving objects that can kill the protagonists.
To survive, the protagonists, James Donahue, Lisa Arlington, Peter, Ashley Bennett, Talia and Lane, use mirrors and the video of the camera recording device to manoeuvre and try to escape death by the Blair Witch.
They did this by focusing on corners and the reflections and recordings from their devices. Survivors, instead of directly using their eyes to see, they just looked into the camera recorder to move around their location.
Unfortunately, everybody is killed, but this is an excellent example of how the protagonists use imaginative thinking to survive Blair Witch for several hours before succumbing to their deaths.
In this movie, Elizabeth Moss, who plays Cecilia Kass, is stalked and gaslighted by her seemingly deceased ex-boyfriend, who is being played by Oliver Jackson-Cohen, who portrays the character Adrian Griffin after he acquires the ability to become invisible.
To survive, Cecily stabs herself with a pen to draw blood. She pretends she has committed suicide to lure the invisible man into a trap where she uses water to make the invisible man temporarily visible.
The Invisible Man is only invisible when he’s not exposed to any liquids or matter like paints and rain that would show his appearance.
The invisible man is not translucent and can be made visible in rainy weather, so Cecily made it possible to briefly see him so she could detect him and then inflict him with an injury with a pen and then she was finally able to kill him by inflicting four gunshots.
It’s a great example of a protagonist making intelligent decisions and not just enabling them to survive longer but finally killing their enemy
In the horror universe of A Quiet Place, at the beginning of the movie, it makes it clear that the world has been infested with monsters, and the only way for people to survive is to remain quiet to avoid any detection.
The lead characters in this movie are a married couple and their children. John Krasinski plays the father, Lee Abbott, and the mother is portrayed by Emilia Blunt, who plays the mother, Evelyn Abbott.
Beginning of the plot of the movie, their young four years old child Beau Abbot is killed due to the noise created by a toy rocket; throughout the film, after this event, the mother, Evelyn Abbott, finds out she’s pregnant.
To survive the pregnancy’s noise, the protagonists use fireworks law away all the monsters during the birth.
Successfully everybody managed to survive, and so did the baby due to successfully outthinking the alien monsters that tried to kill them; the ending has Evelyn picking up a shotgun protector of her family.
The more profound message within the movie The Invitation is about the transfer of wealth and that old money must come from an element of pain; this is shown in this movie by Dracula, who uses his wealth to control families that provide him women to be his vampire brides.
The protagonist and hero of our movie Evia played by Nathalie Emmanuel, survives, becoming a servant of Dracula during the movie’s climax by drinking the blood of Dracula and copying his powers; during this moment, she stabs Dracula in the chest, weakening him.
In this movie universe, Dracula grants his wives his powers by having them willingly drink his blood. Evia does this but refuses to allow him to drink her blood after she turns into a vampire because it would give Dracula more powers.
Evia proved to have made a smart decision because it enabled Evia to destroy the brides of Dracula and finally kill Dracula by kicking him into the flames.
In this remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, originally released in 1974, our protagonist Erin Hardesty is a 17-year-old girl, the main protagonist and sole survivor of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Jessica Biel portrays her.
To outsmart Leatherface, Erin Hardesty ran into a slaughterhouse, and after fighting Leatherface off, she hid between two split-open pig carcases. After this, Leatherface moves pigs and finds her; she then goes to the freezer and hides inside one of the meat lockers.
As Leatherface searched the area, he managed to locate where Erin was. Still, he was distracted by a pig’s squeal in a nearby locker which allowed Erin to get the upper hand, hacking at him wildly with a meat cleaver until she succeeded in cutting off his right arm, disarming him and allowing her to escape him.
She had a panic attack and flailed about frantically in the street until she was rescued by a nearby trucker named Big Rig Bob. When the man began driving towards the Cele Community Canter, Erin began to freak out, realising the truck’s direction, and then grabbed the wheel, forcing him off the side of the road.
To outsmart the zombies, the main protagonists are a slacker and musician, Dave, played by Alexander England, and a schoolteacher, Caroline, played by Lupita Nyong’o.
The main characters have taken children on a school trip to ensure that all the children survive throughout the apocalypse and return to their parents safely.
What both of our heroes do to survive and stop the children from becoming Scooby snacks for zombies is, throughout the movie, pretend that it is all just an elaborate game for the children’s entertainment.
Caroline and Dave tell the children that it is just an elaborate game of tag and that to survive the game, in this case, so zombies do not kill the children; they must try to avoid being touched when playing the game.
Throughout the movie, Miss Caroline keeps up this façade, and the children never catch on to the zombie apocalypse. This is smart because the kids never panic or discover what is happening.
At the start of the zombie apocalypse, our main protagonist Oh Joon-woo played Yoo Ah-in, would not have survived if he did not make two critical choices to survive the zombie apocalypse.
They used his social media to post their location, address and other information so that they could be rescued at the end of the movie by their nation’s military.
The second great decision Oh Joon-woo made was that rather than buying a new Xbox or PlayStation, he instead spent money on purchasing a remote-control aerial drone.
This helps them to survive, and help another survivor Kim Yoo-bin played by Park Shin-Hye, also survives due to the drone due to Joon-woo connecting a wire to each other’s buildings to transfer food.
The drone also prevents Kim Yoo-bin from being eaten by a zombie trying to climb the building when she is unconscious. Unfortunately, the drone did not survive the movie; the main protagonist’s quick thinking helped them survive the apocalypse and be rescued by the South Korean military.
Planet Terror is a horror and zombie movie that is outlandish in how its protagonist Cherry Darling played by Rose McGowan, makes the wisest decision, so she survives after suffering an injury.
She survives after having her leg eaten by the infected, and the character uses their skills as a dancer and modifications to her leg to kill the infected enemies.
After having surgery which removes infected flesh, leaving her with a stump, she replaces the missing limb with a chair leg which she uses significantly to kill enemies.
Towards the movie’s end, her missing limb is again replaced with a heavy machine gun, which she uses to damage and mow down multiple enemies with extreme prejudice.
She also uses her experiences as a pole dancer and stripper to perform various moves that are used to fantastic effect on-screen to kill the infected hordes.
In an over-the-top scene, Cherry Darling uses her leg rifle to set off an explosion that propels her in the hair like Batman when gliding.
In the newest instalment in the Predator franchise movies, we are introduced in this action and horror movie to our main protagonist Naru played by actress Amber Midthunder; she is a Comanche woman, and the film takes place in the year 1710 CE in North America.
Throughout the movie, her tribe is being hunted by an enemy that is an alien called the Predator, which she kills and survives by making innovative choices and tactical decisions to kill a stronger enemy.
This movie is similar to the Revenant release in 2015, which stars Leonardo DiCaprio, with the protagonists trying to survive the enemy and the hospital environment.
Naru innovates by using her Tomahawk as a grappling hook hawk to survive being sucked into a mud pit; the weapon is used multiple times because when she throws the weapon, she can pull on a rope that returns the Tomahawk to herself, which she can use again.
Another great way the protagonist makes the smartest decisions when facing the Predator is to take a tribal drug called Tutsia; it renders her invisible to the Predator’s detection because somehow the drug makes it so you cannot see her body heat making her effectively invisible.
After having sexual intercourse, the protagonist, Jay Height, played by Maika Monroe, is pursued by a supernatural being with the power to kill; to survive, she must have sex with other individuals so that this demonic being will not continue to pursue her.
What Jay Heigh had to do to get rid of this poltergeist she has sex with other people, which in this case, sends the paranormal being after somebody else to torment.
Finally, Jay has sex with another protagonist Paul who is played by Keir Gilchrist, who then goes on to have sex with a street worker.
This is an intelligent decision to survive against the supernatural horror by bypassing the curse onto a prostitute; she will then sleep with multiple people, and if the other person is killed, she will keep passing the curse on to others.
If the person, the street worker, passes the curse on to is killed, the curse will then return to the prostitute, and in turn, she will keep passing this phenomenon on to her paying customers.
What Jay and Paul did was wrong, but it was smart to escape the supernatural being at the end of the movie by letting other people die.
When it comes to movie franchises, in this case, horror movies, film studios would give the audience what they want from sequels and prequels of their favourite movies.
In film trilogies, for example, the ten Fast and Furious movies and two spin-offs have been a phenomenal success by giving the audience what they want and not being ruined by listening to fans.
Alternatively, the Alien franchise created by Director Ridley Scott spawned the Alien and Prometheus franchises. Both petered out due to fan service and the reputation of story arcs in the later movies that lacked originality.
The plots of the movie Alien 2, Alien Resurrection, and Alien Covenant are just repetitions of the movies Aliens (1986) and the original Alien movie 1979 or some other combinations of the first two movies.
1.Alien covenant
Alien Covenant (2017) was created due to the performance of the first movie Prometheus (2012), which was to be more of an original developing series of films being linked partially to the original Alien franchise bringing new creativity to the franchise.
The failures at the box office led to Director Ridley Scott and 20th Century Fox Entertainment Studios deciding to take the franchise in a new direction, scrapping the original plot for the Prometheus trilogy.
Instead, they returned to the old format, redoing what was already successful in the original Alien movies.
Alien Covenant abandons the character Elizabeth Shaw and destroys the alien engineer plot in a cloud of black particles at the start of Alien Covenant.
In the new movie, there was a heavy return of xenomorphs, face suckers, and action scenes that brought nothing new to the franchise and only made fans happy by giving them what they wanted.
Unfortunately, by listening to fans and delivering them a watered-down version of Alien Resurrection and the classic format of the Alien movies, it killed off the resurrection of the Alien franchise, and its intended spin-off franchise Prometheus killed off in the cradle.
There was a six-year gap between Halloween 3, The Season of the Witch (1982) due to underperformance at the cinema and Halloween 4, Return of Michael Myers (1988).
Due to the failures of Halloween 3, the studio tried to move away from the anthology format; unfortunately, the fan base cried foul about the changes to the Halloween horror movie trilogy, which ruined the films due to an outcry and studios listening to their fans.
Unfortunately, by listening to fans and returning to the slasher Horror movie format, the movie became a dud with the writers going on strike and the movie plot made in just 11 days.
However, this is not necessarily bad because Sylvester Stallone wrote the original Rocky movie in 1975. Within three days of Watching Muhammad Ali defeat Chuck Wepner.
What went wrong with this movie was the writers trying to give the fans what they wanted, but by giving them what they wanted, it ruined the film by listening to fans.
Instead of going with the original Intended for Halloween 4, which was the return of Michael Myers due to the spiritual energy created from fear enabling him to return, this plot idea had the blessing of John Carpenter, the original creator of the Halloween trilogy in 1978.
What made Holloween 4 a failure for studios was playing it safe and trying to satisfy fans by listening to fans, it led to the movie’s failure due to ultimately trying to play it safe.
3. Us
This psychological thriller is a mental movie, and horror drama focused on psychological elements that traditional slasher horror fans did not enjoy.
People were listening to fans wanting to see this horror movie partially due to the success of its director Jordan Peele with his previous successful horror movie Get Out (2017).
The horror movie US (2019) was ruined partially due to fans expecting the same finesse and quality which director John Peele gave to the horror movie Get Out, which he had been working on for over four years, Compared to the film US which was less than two years.
Due to the lack of development of the story and the characters battling their double ganger, the movie became surreal and vague, which meant that the viewers had to reach their own conclusions to understand the movie’s ending.
A successful film is to show rather than tell, which was what was expected after the success of Get Out ruined the movie.
The franchise Resident Evil originally began as a video game series which became a movie trilogy which has divided and has been controversial for fans due to the movies not incorporating plot points and characters from the original games.
In response to fans’ criticisms of the original Resident Evil movie (2002) was Resident Evil Apocalypse (2004), which aimed to start bringing in characters such as Jill and Carlos from the original Resident Evil games and bringing more elements from the game trilogy.
Unfortunately, due to production costs, villains such as Nemesis looked like Doctor Who villains of the 1970s and 80s, becoming recurring themes throughout the trilogy of movies.
So what ruined this franchise was listening to fans prevent the Resident Evil trilogy of films from reaching its true potential by becoming a franchise separate from the games, focusing on the zombie apocalypse, not the supernatural elements added throughout the trilogy.
5. Saw The Final Chapter
What began the failure of Saw the Final Chapter was studios listening to fans and cashing in on the 3D craze with a murky aesthetic throughout the movie so that it would appeal to 3D fans and the design choices that go into a 3D film.
The franchise was milking the last of its creativity with fan service and fanfiction using the character Dr Gordon who saw his foot off in the first Saw movie (2004), where fans believed for quite some time that he became an acolyte of Jigsaw.
The fans finally got this in Saw The Final Chapter (2010). Still, by this time, the plots of the trilogy of movies were becoming repetitious, repeating the same stories with Jigsaw acolytes trying to carry on his legacy.
What ultimately killed this franchise or, at the very least, placed it into stasis was the filmmakers listening to fans and not bringing anything new to the franchise due to a focus on fan service or fear of rocking the boat regarding the film format.
The Hostel is a horror movie where a secret organisation kidnapped and tortures backpackers on a trip. Director Eli Roths created the film, which brought along his fan base and expectations as one of the most fantastic horror movie makers by fans.
What killed this movie was people listening to fans and the overhyped being generated by fans raising expectations which any movie would find hard to live up to the imaginations of horror fans.
Fans are far from the only ones responsible for ruining this movie; the blame lies with the studio and the marketing team that got Quentin Tarantino to endorse this movie on advertisements and posters.
What happened with Hostel was the movie was oversold and undelivered by the studio by comparing it to movies like the Exorcist (1973), ultimately driving fans into a frenzy of expectations that made this movie a dud.
7. Land of The Dead
Director George A Romero was leading the movie project Land of the Dead (2005); he had over 40 years of experience directing and is the father of modern-day zombie-style movies.
His knowledge and expertise created a fan overhype with his new zombie movie, leading to the belief that he would re-energise and bring something new to the genre.
Instead, what in the film was plot lines such as intelligent zombies and the classic zombies eat brains and battle human dynamics that have been in countless zombie films.
Romero needed more ideas for his movie Land of The Dead, which is a fantastic popcorn movie, but the fans’ expectations and what they wanted from the movie sadly ruined the movie.
Ultimately, the movie is unsuccessful with fans’ expectations of something new from the zombie genre after the successes of films like 28 Days Later (2002) and Shaun of the Dead (2004).
Glass (2019) is a psychological horror about a character with 24 personalities; the movie also works as a sequel movie Unbreakable (2000) and Split (2016), with both films starring Bruce Willis.
James McAvoy gives a star-stunning and transformative performance worthy of Daniel Day-Lewis however, the movie has oversold due to fans’ expectations, with this movie also being marketed as the long-awaited sequel to the film Unbreakable.
Unfortunately, throughout the movie, there were excessive twists, barren dialogue and expectations from the previous two films, which built up too many expectations for fans.
The partial weakness of the dialogue would be due to Bruce Willis’s deteriorating health; ultimately, the movie is good, but listening to the fan’s expectations ruined the film in the final act of the trilogy.
9. Army of The Dead
Director Zack Snyder created the movie Army of The Dead (2021), which was ruined by listening fans because of Snyders reputation as a director and being perceived as a potential saviour of the DC cinematic universe led fans to over hyping his movie projects.
Snyder’s previous success in the zombie genre in his movie Dawn of the Dead (2004) only increased fans’ expectations, and because people were listening to fans, it only meant Army of the Dead had further depths to fall.
Even before Army of the Dead was viewed, the movie was being promoted as a new cinematic universe, which fed expectations from director Zack Snyder.
Ultimately the movie was underwhelming in the predictable plot points with no big payoffs throughout the film due to fans’ expectations from listening to the news released before about the quality of this movie.
Michael Myers’s trilogy of horror movies ends after 45 years; in the final film Halloween End (2022), there have been many failures and few successes in the Halloween trilogy of movies.
Unfortunately, listening to fans’ expectations despite past failures only set this film up for failure With the confrontation when Laurie Strode and her tormentor Michael Myers not giving the fan base the satisfaction they were hoping for.
The previous Halloween movie Halloween kills (2021) even led to fans petitioning to remove the film, adding to a string of bad movies such as the Halloween Curse of Michael Myers (1996), Halloween Resurrection (2002), and Halloweens End, which has another petition to change the film.
Still, despite this, fans ruined this movie despite it having some improvements from the previous film again due to declining quality movie never really stood a chance.
The reasons range from ideological, practical, political and geopolitical; the role of this article is to understand the motivations of Nazi Germany (1933 to 1945), Imperial Japan (1894 to 1945), and Mussolini’s Italy 1922 to 1943).
This is a guest post by writer Jonathan Riley. Find out more about him on his Medium page, as well as his LinkedIn and his blog.
This article will focus on practical, geopolitical and political reasons behind the motivations of the imperial ambitions of the three Axis powers; this does not mean ignoring or undermining the atrocities committed by the Fascists and imperialists during and before World War II.
The Italian peninsula, the Japanese islands, and Germany do have similarities, these being mountainous terrains that make it harder to expand their populations. With Germany’s third of its territory, mountains can be seen in an inverted V on maps.
Japanese islands are mountainous; about three-fourths of the national land is mountains, and long mountain ranges form the backbone of the archipelago. For Italy, 40% of its land mass is also mountains.
To understand the reasons behind the actions of the Axis powers, it must be strongly emphasized that the economic free trade and globalization as we know it only existed in the creation of the American security blanket after World War II.
What this meant for most nations with access to the materials of industrialization was that the only way to survive was to secure trading markets by conquering territories.
This means that in the political orthodoxy of the time, the only real option for Germany, Japan and Italy was to go for and conquer new territories.
These are the motivations of the French, English, Dutch, and American Western expansion connecting America from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean.
If you would like to read the full article, please view this link to the History On The Net to read the full Article Axis Powers and Their Motivations to Go to War.
The omnichannel customer experience is essential because it retains 89% of its customers with a streamlined and consistent customer experience across all consumer contact points with products and services.
So, what does the omnichannel customer experience mean for businesses selling to customers? The answer is that all social media, all physical stores, and relevant infrastructure matches the customer experience across all contact points.
78% of shoppers now buy most of their products online; this means having a consistent omnichannel customer experience are vital for organisations wishing to sell their product and other services.
A great way to improve the Omni-channel customer experience is to put the customers first and to understand the customers’ needs by understanding the customer experience from the customer’s viewpoints and interactions.
Focusing on the user experience and the user experience design regarding the omnichannel customer experience and tailoring their experience for different users/customers would lead to greater engagement and conversion rates online and offline regarding sales.
A well-designed point of human-computer interaction and communication in a device can increase your website’s conversion rate by up to 200%.
Improving a website’s user experience design can enable a business to achieve a conversion rate as high as 400%, with 84% of customers saying a company’s overall experience is as important as its products and services.
Streamlining the omnichannel customer experience and conducting vigorous testing and monitoring of customers using company apps, social media and any contact points regarding online stores, company social media channels and any other customer contact points.
Then using this information to understand these customer interactions would improve the overall omnichannel customer experience using the disciplines of user experience design.
Attention span has declined since the creation of modern technologies, for example, smartphones (1994), the Internet became mainstream in the 1990s, and iPhone (2007).
According to research, our attention span is now 8.25 seconds. In 2000, it was 12 seconds. Now, it’s shrunk to 8.25 seconds. Scientists reckon we have shorter attention spans than goldfish, who can focus on a task for 9 seconds.
What this means in regards to improving the omnichannel customer experience is that by removing any roadblocks to customers purchasing and communicating with an organisation online will improve satisfaction and sales.
According to Accenture, the states found that 89% of consumers experience frustration at having to repeat their questions to multiple customer service representatives.
Therefore, the solution to improve the omnichannel customer experience is for a sales representative to have all the relevant information even if the customer Speaks to multiple people.
Information should be consistent across all channels regarding online communication and using various platforms.
A simple way to improve an omnichannel customer experience is to have better Wi-Fi spots or access to in-store Wi-Fi for customers with lousy Internet because customers like contacting friends or other individuals regarding their purchases.
38% of shoppers like to use their smartphones and make in-store purchases by comparing prices across multiple channels 30% of customers also reported they like to view social media in retail stores.
Unfortunately for customers, 52% say that poor mobile experience made them more unlikely to make online or offline purchases.
To compound the Internet connection problem overall, 90% of customers stated their Internet connection was very poor again; this highlights an immediate way organisations can improve their overall omnichannel customer experience by providing better Wi-Fi.
Customers now expect in-store and online services to happen without interaction with customer service being face to face with the use of self-serving and the information regarding any of their possible needs to be accessible across multiple channels online.
This book is aimed at people wishing to enter the Digital Marketing and Freelance Writing workspace.
This book contains information on publishing websites that hire freelance writers and how inspiring Digital Marketers and people wanting to break into different writing niches and get their start in this competitive sector.
Being a successful writer and freelancer is not just a skill set but also a lifestyle and commitment. In certain professions like history, you can spend 30 years not being involved in that skill set and still be able to return to that profession and meet the job requirements.
In contrast, niches like tech and copywriting and their relation to search engine optimisation, product, and new methods of marketing and selling products and services require Digital Marketers and writers to maintain up-to-date information on current trends.
Again if you wish to embark on a career as a freelance writer, please be aware there is a learning curve.
As I write this book, I am bringing together my experience in the Freelance Writing and Digital Marketing industry, which I experienced from November 2020 to March 2023.
To develop your skills, it will take six months and two years to prove yourself, build up experience with clients, and expand your portfolio of work.
This book aims to provide people wishing to become Freelance Writers, writers and Digital Marketers a blueprint for success in their first few years of entering this industry.
The first step is to choose success by putting some time each day into developing the newly selected skill set that you wish to build but remember that reading is a form of learning but only by doing the work can you truly grow as an individual.
Quotation “It is only when you take responsibility for your life that you discover how powerful you truly are.” Allanah Hunt
Quotation “When you think everything is someone else’s fault, you will suffer a lot. When you realize that everything springs only from yourself, you will learn both peace and joy.” Dalai LamaQuotation
“The moment you take responsibility for everything in your life is the moment you can change anything in your life.” Hal Elrod
Freelance Writing and Digital Marketing an Beginners Guide Kindle Edition link
When selecting a marketing strategy and the necessary philosophy and intellectual pursuit behind choosing a selling strategy to launch a successful marketing campaign that will sell products and services, you will have to select what methods you are prepared for as a seller and a marketer to live with.
Whether the strategy affected or damaged your personal brand or the products you hope to sell to consumers. Examples of marketing philosophy in this chapter will cover anti-marketing, negative marketing and stealth marketing.
They will also include real-world examples, which readers can view for themselves in the real world. Marketing and sales are a part of everyday life; whether or not we appreciate the fact or try to ignore it, to accomplish anything, there must be a monetary cause or a philanthropic behind any endeavour to be successful.
To be successful in marketing and generating the necessary sale, any writer or individual wishing to sell products or services must understand the nature of human beings. You will find very few communists and socialists in sales due to the environment requiring a strong element of realism.
This is not to criticise academia or other intellectual pursuits of the mind but in marketing, and these endeavours will require understanding human nature.
What is Meant by Philosophy and Intelligentsia?
Behind any marketing strategy, there is a great deal of research going into understanding target audiences and the nature of the people buying, people reading, and people consuming various products, which has led researchers to make deductions by looking at human psychology and employing knowledge of human behaviour into selling products more effectively to the people.
An example of this can be seen in the marketer and author Seth Godin’s philosophy of the Purple Cow. This is where a product must be adaptable and offer the customer benefits.
This intellectual and practical philosophy goes into the product that Seth Godin likes to promote with his marketing strategies offering the customer meaning.
This can be demonstrated in the legacy of Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple, who revolutionised society, whose understanding of marketing and what users want from products brought society the first smartphone and tablets.
This adaptability and adding features can help create a great marketing strategy for writers. The smartphone is not a phone; it is the sole sum of human knowledge, a camera and many other appliances in a handheld device.
If you can have a product with this kind of utility and then apply this to a marketing strategy, you will have a successful product that sells.
What is Anti-Marketing
When Anti-marketing is a solid strategy that goes against traditional conventions of marketing and instead makes fun of traditional advertisements with a tone of self-awareness with sarcasm, please be aware that some readers or viewers viewing sarcastic content may not understand.
When writing copy for online magazines or scripts, sarcasm, humour, and other cultural nuances may not translate well to a general audience due to different dialects, cultures, and micro-cultures within societies.
Also, there is autism to be aware of as well, which is also causing people who use social media, which requires the use of text which in the context has no nuance, which can cause people to have autistic symptoms or be unable to see the funny side regards to marketing.
Ultimately, marketing attempts to connect with customers and let them in on the inside jokey. For example, yes, indeed, the advertisement is about selling. When using humour as an advertising and marketing strategy, try to be aware of cultural sensitivities.
This can also be internal sensitivities as writers and marketers depending on your chosen profession, which can either be more related to the writing side and not necessarily more business side of marketing is that any written content you must first sell the body of work to internal stakeholders, managers and team leaders so there will be an element of office politics which can either be negative or positive depending upon your organisational culture.
Either way, regarding what may happen as long as the work sells, there should hopefully be few complaints. With modern technologies such as online and Google Analytics, the marketing team can easily gather data on any written content and how well it engages with potential customers.
What is Negative Marketing
Negative marketing is typically something that taps into the part of the human brain that assesses threats, weaknesses or anything negative because it is part of human nature. According to evolutionary psychology, humans seek the negative over the positive.
Human beings do this historically to survive and overcome adversity also; this means human beings are drawn to negative information, not quality of information, as can be seen in modern news media being predominantly negative because negative news stories sell more newspapers and lead to more viewership than positive news stories people don’t want to hear about good news.
This can also be seen in the way politics is run in the USA and the United Kingdom, with the major political parties of Republicans, Democrats, Labour, and Conservatives speaking predominantly about the negative sides of the opposite party because it is more efficient and people take this information in a lot easier than positive information.
Also, as human beings, we typically, according to the modern Wisdom Podcaster this Chris Williams human beings look for information and facts that support our worldview and other beliefs regarding news content and online information.
It goes even deeper than that when you are online, companies use online data to create a browsing experience that suits the customer’s needs, so if you type negative content, you will receive that which you search.
For example, if you type in hardwoods or sexualised images will start to receive this information in going into your Google browser, which is even more apparent on YouTube because the platform will send you information and content that already feeds the user’s interests and biases.
Negative marketing feeds on the ugly side of human nature. It is what provides people like Andrew Tate, an online influencer, the means to become rich and famous because he presents a negative attitude to women, feeds the negative biases of sexless men in their teens and 20s, and this is a negative feedback loop that feeds Andrew Tate brand and makes him richer. This can be seen again in the Fresh and Fit Podcast, Fox News and CNBC.
What is Undercover Marketing
Undercover marketing is also sometimes known as Stealth Marketing, where marketers disguise themselves as peers of the target audience.
This can be demonstrated in the 2002 Sony campaign, where actors were hired around cities asking strangers to take photos with them.
A perfect example I have recently seen of stealth marketing is when Emma Darcy and Olivia Cook, who play Rheanyra Targaryen and Alicent Hightower in the spin-off TV show Game of Thrones, which hired from 2010 until 2018 and its successor show the House of the Dragon, launched in 2022.
During the marketing for the TV show, Emma Darcy and Miss Cook showed great sales ability in promoting the show by not talking about the TV show; please view this clip where you can see clearly what these two actresses were doing was a perfect example of Undercover Marketing which is also sometimes referred to as Anti Marketing(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bntzdxHIixE&t=126s).
The Fundamentals of Marketing Philosophy
As customers become more business savvy and aware of the influences of big tech on their purchasing choices, our outside stimuli are changing the marketing environment from an outbound marketing strategy that large companies in the 1950s towards inbound marketing strategies.
An outbound marketing strategy is typically billboards, TV ads and any marketing material you will find out in the streets through your letterbox or anything directly or indirectly being sold to yourself without you first looking for the product.
Inbound marketing strategies are where the marketers try to build meaning concerning the product they wish to sell, and they focus on not telling customers what to buy but why they should buy the product due to it fulfilling their needs.
An easy example to understand inbound marketing is to think of Podcasters selling products on their TV shows when they have built a sufficient audience and developed trust and emotional connections with their listeners or viewers.
They leveraged this trust to create a sales funnel with their audience due to establishing legitimacy.
These kinds of inbound strategies are more effective than outbound marketing tactics because, with these tactics being used for over 70 years, we have become numb to their effects often you truly listen to online advertisements, TV advertisements or billboards.
However, with this being the case, there are still fundamental concepts that will always be relevant to marketing strategies: The production Concept, Selling Concept, Marketing Concept, Social Marketing Concept (Societal Marketing Concept), Product, Price, Place, Promotion, People, Process (or Positioning), Physical Evidence (or Packaging).
In this article, the reader will find what needs to be included in your cover letter to an employer regarding your past work experience and educational background.
It is important to tailor a cover letter to the need of the job position and keep it as short as possible unless it is the kind of position that needs a lot of details.
Still, recruiters are inundated with CVs and Cover Letters, so try to keep them as concise and easy to read as possible, depending on the country you are born in or working in.
The national reading age in the USA is 12 to 14 years old. In the UK, the reading age is nine years old, with The Guardian UK reading age at 14 years old people who read for a living tend to have better reading ability than the national average.
Still, again it depends on the position you are hoping to work in.
Dear Sir or Madam, I have been working as a writer since November 2020. I have gained experience in several writing niches, including News Writing, Protech, Entertainment Writing, UX writing, Art and Culture Writing and several other niches.
I also have experience using Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) when creating articles for online publications.
Furthermore, with the nature of writing, I have fantastic research skills and the ability to be a generalist when it comes to gaining new information and writing as an expert.
I have also worked as a copywriter; this is predominantly sales by print which is the ability to create content that can generate revenue online.
My predominant philosophy regarding content creation and marketing strategies has predominantly been the philosophy of Seth Godin and Inbound Marketing Strategies.
During my time in the writing profession, I have had to develop many skill sets, such as cold emailing to get information from different companies to verify that any articles I have written are correct or if they wish to give any statements.
One great experience I had was during my time at Successful Mindset, working on a temporary contract where I had to create online content, social media content, and documents for the CEO and others that are high earners earning with income of a least £50,000 a year as well as organisations to improve the in-work efficiency, mental stresses and hidden disabilities such as autism and its spectrum of conditions.
I also worked on improving the interview process for people who are particularly vulnerable or lack the developed social skills to succeed.
What I took from my time at this organisation was an understanding of disabilities, mental health and other facets related to understanding the workforce and improving companies’ abilities to cater to the diverse needs of their staff.
As a side note, during my time at Successful Mindset, I also covered work related to integrating immigrants into the United Kingdom’s society and a greater understanding of the problems in the U.K.’s National Health Service.
Also, when doing work for clients, I had to be aware of what they could and could not do due to the organisation’s culture that was unable to change or willing to make any changes due to funding or other reasons.
Pargarphe Two Work Experience
Most recently, I have worked at the leading provider of online professional courses, The Training Hub, where I have worked as a copywriter, proofreader and assistant editor.
In this role, they have to create lecture slides on mental health, hidden disabilities, the disabled, care for the elderly and issues related to tackling abuse in young children.
In this position, I had to use my keen eyes for details and use the appropriate language so that the readers could easily understand the content, so no passive voice in writing and no academic language unless it was reasonable and necessary for the lecture slides.
I have also, since January 2022, been working as a freelance magazine writer and ghostwriter for several publications, such as History On The Net, Author Publishing Magazine, History Is Know, Embrace The Suck, 087 Recovery Diaries, The Sybarite and others. During that time, I have written for financial-related topics, mental health, physical health and topic related to geopolitics, culture and History topics.
I have also learned to use APA referencing, Associated Press Style and have worked using academic journals and gathering information to write on different topics.
Concerning my educational attainment, I have a bachelor’s degree in politics and international relations, with my dissertation focused on why great powers lose small wars.
The overall degree was focused on the political economy of the globe, different cultures and histories that make up other nations, different civilisations and governments all around the world.
The degree also included understanding supply chains and how this affects international politics and the geopolitics of the globe.
For example, most of the world’s cobalt comes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
My other educational attainment since 2021 has been primarily focused on digital marketing, where I did a little seven cars by the courses for professional development online platform studying social media, inbound marketing strategies and how to use the Internet to build and monetise online audience to generate a revenue stream.
Other courses I did during this time were on copywriting and understanding writing not from the writer’s point of view but from the person reading my writing to create better-written content that sells products or services.
Final Paragraph and Conclusion
If you wish to ask me any questions, please get in touch with me by email or phone.
I will be happy to answer any questions regarding my experience because I have done much work in the writing field links into many other related skill sets such as Copywriting, SEO and digital marketing strategies, as well as other fields related to writing.
Thanks for your time. Yours sincerely, (Your Name Include Your Last Name as Well)
Robert Burns is an 18th-century Scottish and British poet who became a national figure due to the Scottish people trying to find an independent identity away from the United Kingdom.
Robert Burns was a British and Scottish national poet who composed songs in English and the Scottish dialect (yep — he was the guy who wrote Auld Lang Syne!).
Born and bred on Scottish soil, Burns Night is (appropriately) celebrated on the 25th of January each year — the same day Burns’ was born.
The Scottish national poet was also seen as a jolly Scottish figure within Scotland and a personality representing a separate identity from England.
Historically, England has dominated the union between England, the principality of Wales, Northern Ireland and the kingdom of Scotland to form the United Kingdom.
This has been the case since the Act of Union was passed in 1707 CE between Scotland and England, the Act of Union 1801 CE between the main British islands on the island of Ireland, and the Act of Union 1536 CE United the government of the principality of Wales with the Parliament based in Westminster.
Therefore, Burns Night celebrations have become synonymous with celebrating Scotland’s cultural contribution to the world.
Links
If you wish to read the full article, you can find it on this link to The Sybarite online magazine on Arts, Culture and History.
