
Finally the CCSSI standards (math and ELA) get the rough treatment they deserve in a 30 page white paper. The new draft is out this week. I'm sure it will be the best one yet, but the foundation is rotten, so I'm not expecting much.Leveling up in the survival game Icarus is a crucial element. Each level grants the player one talent point and three blueprint points.
As with most survival games, the start of Icarus can be somewhat brutal. You will want to level up as quick as possible so that you can obtain talents and blueprints to enhance your survivability.
Obtaining experience in Icarus is a fairly simple and straightforward affair. Everything you do gives you experience points. Be it hunting, crafting or gathering. Every action matters when it comes to accumulating levels. That said, certain things can certainly get you experience early way faster.
One very fast method is to just chop tree downs. All this requires is a stone axe, some food and an area with a lot of trees. Chop trees until they start to fall. When they start to fall, just move on to the next tree without stopping to split the logs. This should get you a lot of experience fairly fast early on.
Alternatively, you can kill two birds with one stone if you do stop to chop down the logs and obtain wood. When your stamina runs out, you can stop to craft wood walls with the wood you’ve collected. This gives you something to do while you wait for your stamina to regenerate, but also prepares you for setting up your base later.
This is a bit of a silly method, but it can help get some experience quickly. It can even be done in combination with the previous method. Simply find an easy to craft recipe and craft as many as you can. Arrows and walls are good examples of easy recipes. Then break them all down, which gives you half of your resources back to craft more. You can get into this loop of crafting and dismantling until you run out of materials. It’s an easy way to get some experience.
Mining is another simple method. It’s not quite as fast, but it does require the least effort and attention. Simply obtain a stone pickaxe and start hitting rocks with it. It’s as simple as that, making it one of the easiest ways to get experience early on.
Later on when you have more resources at your disposal, you’ll want to start hunting. Animals give a lot of experience, specially predators. This is, of course, much riskier than the other methods. But once you can get the hang of hunting down predators, you’ll be getting lots of experience very fast. Transition zones that are between biomes tend to have animals in larger numbers, so they’re your best bet if you’re feeling confident.
2020 began as an ambitious year for all businesses. Then Taal happened. Then COVID 19 happened, and essentially turned the country and the world on its head.
As a business that deals with Marketing, we sort of expected to get parked as a priority. After all, many businesses remain closed, and those that are open are seeing fewer customers. Usage of recreation and retail facilities such as restaurants, malls, resorts, and cinemas plunged 82 percent in the country from February 29 to mid-April, compared to the baseline period covering January 3 to February 6. Filipinos also frequented pharmacies and groceries less often, with mobility dropping to 60 percent during the same period.
The flipside to that coin is that we dealt in Digital Marketing – and we knew the digital industry would be big winners in a situation where we were all locked down. Shopify – an e-commerce platform had been seeing Black Friday levels of traffic even before lockdowns began. A few weeks in and Amazon was all over the news as the clear winner in a quarantined economy.
If you’ve asked yourself, “Should I still continue with my SEO?” the short answer is: absolutely!
Why? The same reason why other businesses are closing: it’s because everyone’s still indoors. And when people are indoors, they’re usually online.
Ever since the nationwide lockdown was implemented, mobile data usage has surged in the country. According to Rappler, there was a 13.4% jump in mobile WiFi use during the first week of the enhanced community quarantine. That’s no surprise as social distancing and mobility restrictions have pushed people to stay connected to the outside world through their smartphones.
Online shopping has also become the new norm. While it isn’t new and people have been doing it for the past decade, the current health crisis has pushed people to purchase both needs and wants online. There are also products that have seen major increases in sales that weren’t very popular pre-pandemic. For instance, according to The ASEAN Post, some of the products that have been selling online like hot cakes in the Philippines include computer equipment and gym equipment. Search activities for dumbbells increased by 80 percent within only the second half of March.
We’ve even seen clients in the condo space begin at 40% sold pre-pandemic all the way to 96% sold during the downgrade to MECQ.
These trends show if brands want to stay afloat during and after COVID-19, they’ll need to stay connected with their audience. But how do you adjust your SEO efforts for success during these trying times without hurting your wallet?
As the world shifts to the new normal, consumers are spending more time online evaluating the items they want to purchase, adapting to the work from home setup, and reading updates on the pandemic.
As a result, this is the best time to evaluate your SEO strategy. Here’s a quick guide to crafting a COVID-proof SEO strategy that will help you stay connected with your target audience without putting a strain on your budget.
This mostly affects businesses that rely on some sort of local presence online and brick-and-mortar businesses that rely on foot traffic for their revenue. Listings are typically a user’s first touch point via Google Search or Google Maps when conducting branded searches, and it’s important to provide searchers with accurate information, especially if they don’t make it to your website.
The listings also serve as citations for your website. Google looks not only at the accuracy and quality of your listings, but also their consistency with your website and with one another. Google also announced that they will start prioritizing reviews of critical edits to business information on a Google My Business listing, especially for health-related businesses.
Change your Business Hours to reflect closures or any changes to store operations.
Add information to your Business Description explaining how your business has been or will be affected by the pandemic.
Create a Google My Business Post with business changes and additional details.
If you’ve got extra time on your hands, it’s also a good time to conduct an audit of all your other online listings.
Make sure all business information is identical across platforms. Check Yelp, Yellow Pages, Manila Craigslist, and other popular free listing sites.
Check for any new listings that may have been user-generated or auto-created.
Conduct a reputation check. Catch up on reviews and respond to them — both positive and negative. Customers look at responses just as much as the reviews.
Moving forward, set up Google Alerts to stay on top of auto-generated listings and reviews.
It’s safe to assume that consumer spending has become somewhat volatile in the past few months.
Essentials like food, toiletries, protective clothing, and disinfectants are prioritized over non-essential products and services. While certain non-essential e-Commerce stores will undoubtedly experience hits to their bottom line, it’s crucial to understand how your customers’ needs have changed and learn how your offerings can still provide value.
Are users still searching for your brand, or are searches shifting to non-branded?
Which products or services are experiencing the biggest changes in search volume or traffic?
Check out Google Trends to keep an eye on any emerging patterns in industry-relevant search behavior that you can address with fresh content on your site.
The current search landscape boils down to two things: understanding the new questions your customers have, and making sure you have the solutions or answers to those questions. If you can’t answer their questions, it’s likely that somebody else will.
However, while you can certainly adjust your messaging on certain products or services, do not instill fear in your customers. There’s a huge difference between being relevant and fear-mongering.
Despite the nationwide quarantine, there has been a notable increase in web traffic, email marketing open rates, and customer-initiated conversations. This suggests that online users are interested in learning new things about your brand and what you offer.
So instead of focusing on promotions, consider nurturing your relationship with customers by turning your website into a reliable source of valuable information. Start putting out educational content like how-to guides.
Additionally, you can also have a page or an entire section of your website dedicated to the COVID-19 pandemic. You don’t have to update visitors about the current COVID-19 on goings.
Rather, you can focus on how your business is contributing to COVID-19 prevention and the steps you’ve taken to combat the pandemic. For instance, if you’re a restaurant, you can explain the precautions you’ve taken to ensure safety for both employees and customers. Creating pandemic-centric content will help instill trust in your brand — long after COVID-19 is over.
Have you got any industry experts on your team? Now is the perfect time to capitalize on their expertise and create engaging, well-researched