Image by René Schindler from Pixabay

If you read my first post, you have also read that we are now fully living that scene from that never-ending wake-up scene in the movie Groundhog Day.

This hasn’t changed, but some things have definitely surfaced and we observe some happenings that now feel surreal.

I am writing this episode as I think that some are not aware of what is happening on social media channels such as YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and so on.

A few might know this about me but in my teenage and even later years, I was always labeled as a rebel. In some cases even know I consider myself a rebel, by not fitting in any of the groups and always choosing freedom.

In high schools I was going late classes, sometimes with roller blades, green hair, but also set up CD burning (back in 1999) activities that involved illegally downloaded music or movies. Well, those were really interesting days and I can say, I took full advantage of them. My first jobs straight out of high school were contract designer for notary public and were followed by becoming a sex shop store manager, a sales assistant at a mobile communications store, and so on.

It took me some time to realize that these all have contributed to the current state in which I am currently and have contributed tons of experiences that some might never experience.

Getting back to our subject, which is directly impacting your business’s future…

Whenever we find some characters disturbing or not, we need to take a look into the background of the situation. Pages with millions of followers, videos of millions of views are taken by owners of these social media channels.

How does this affect you? Well, we are all creating content for social media and in the past 5 or so years, companies have been relying on social media to host all their content and having company websites just for the sake of creating and about and contact page.

While our company has not done this due to the nature of our activity (news sharing), the service descriptions that you only list to social media or the video that you created in order to describe what you do, could be at the risk of vanishing forever. With this vanishing, your financial investment and time invested in these projects are now also down the drain.

Why? Because of certain community “guidelines” that are now being implemented by the large social media companies. It goes without saying that the first step has been taken to ensure “misinformation” is not seen by the free audience, but in many cases, these filters are judged by AI.

I can only say my examples and some of the connections that have reported such errors. I like posting funny and sarcastic memes on my personal Instagram and Facebook timeline. Among which the following:

Funny, right?

Well, this image was flagged as misinformation on both my Instagram and Facebook accounts and has been taken down.

I wish I could express the fear that I’ve felt when this happened as it is not funny at all. A humorous, sarcastic content has been taken down because it is affecting the community standards of the two social media channels that I’ve mentioned above.

If this is the case, what is next? This is a new level of censorship and believe me, this is the new normal. We can talk about it in a few years and hopefully, I am wrong with this statement.

OK, so how does this affect you?

We have the David Icke, Dan Erickson, and Artin Massihi cases. (bear with me)

Although some might find the posts and declarations of David Icke as delusional or not down to earth, we need to take a look at the essence of what happened.

His page had 91723 likes, 39264 talking about it and it’s been the “official Facebook page for ground-breaking Author & Public Speaker”. This still pops up in search results until it will vanish and only be found on the deep web.

We all know a thing or two about how much financial effort it takes to build up a social media page that has almost one million likes/followers. That effort was done by the individual or company which certainly involved several paid advertisement campaigns from which Facebook benefited directly. Those efforts are now lost due to the fact that “Governments and social media sites alike grapple with the fine balance between stemming harmful narratives and allowing freedom of expression. But experts point out that they can do both with effective moderation and collaboration.”

What does this mean, it means that if they find your content harmful based on their current agenda, they can remover it or ask you to remove. See my example of the funny meme!

Overall, this would be fine, but removing a page in which financial investments are now lost is another thing.

An almost similar case is with the video by Dan Erickson and Artin Massihi, who’s video was taken down by YouTube for not encouraging tight lockdowns which are in the guidelines of WHO and serve as the Bible for YouTube moderators.

If we dig deeper into this, this wasn’t harmful information in any case as 7-8 days later, WHO representative Dr. Mike Ryan, has highlighted Sweden’s strategy in fighting Covid-19 as representing a possible ‘future model’ for countries to follow in adapting society to the virus.

A video with +9 million views which has been in the interest of the public has been censored for the reason that it has not fitted the guidelines of the particular moment in time.

It could happen to you

While you might not find this relevant, you need to ensure that your investments are protected and you are not losing content that you have maybe built in the past 10 years.

This is why, in my opinion, it’s best to not rely on social media channels to host your content, videos, etc. Always have the back up on your company site. Not embedded from a social media channel (I know it’s easier and more advanced for sharing content), but you need to have this as a backup.

You don’t need to be against draconian lockdowns or be a conspiracy theorist to be subject to this ever-growing in numbers policies that we now see being implemented. Remember, these might be the new normal and it will continue until the social media giant realize they’ve gone too far and this is not why they started in the first place.

This also brings me to another idea I have been telling people for years. If you are building a company website, buy a domain, hosting, build it, and synchronize it later to newly built social media accounts. Not the other way around. Believe me, when I say, there are hundreds of thousands of companies that don’t own a company website, just have social media pages. We must not rely 100% on these social media channels as this is not there true purpose (even if now they make you think there are).

This is why all these episodes are written first on our website and afterward uploaded to LinkedIn Articles.

Join me again next week when we will talk about brand reputation management (personal and company level)

Until then, I would like to thank you for your time and wishing you a great Sunday!

All the best to you!

Zoltán

Subscribe to my Journal and Posts here

The Hipther Journal by Zoltán – episode 1 (Demand attention)

The beginnings

There are so many things going on at the world right now and even if we are flooded with information it feels like that never-ending wake-up scene in the movie Groundhog Day which was released in 1993, starring Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell.

While at our company are buried deep in many projects and personally working on most of them, I just realized that we are in 2020 and it’s about time, I start a series of articles about some of the things we discover through our entrepreneur journey, give tips and bring the latest information from several trending industries.

Introduction

Why now? Well, I feel so motivated right now and have so many ideas I want to share with you all. All I ask is you check back here sometime to see what are the new things I am writing about on a weekly base.

The current crisis has taken us by surprise and I feel like it was just yesterday when we were hosting our conference in Prague and our delegates were getting used to the extra hygiene measurements which were place by the hotel.

This was on the 6th of March and was just a few days away from the date on which the Czech government banned gathering of all types. I guess I can say we were lucky and managed to host our conference just in time.

I have to tell you that on the 6th of March, I was telling everyone that asked about our next two events in Tallinn, that there is nothing that can stop us from hosting those conferences. Unfortunately, nobody could have predicted that these lockdowns and travel restrictions would last until May, so we had to adapt to a new phase.

We quickly took measures and surveyed our connections, from which we got the feedback that we should postpone our events and the new dates should be at least in Q3. So, on the 18th of March, we announced the launch of our virtual conferences.

By this time, you might think that this piece is about our conferences, but please bear with me, there is information coming.

Just a week after we announced our conference, one of our competitors has also launched a digital conference and surprisingly, it is a week before ours is scheduled. Not to mention that we have seen most of the topics from our agenda being placed on their agenda. I guess, that sometimes, being first at something, doesn’t really mean much these days, but at least we feel good inside and know that we are doing things that are adopted by many.

As it happens, we have many projects that are on hold and have been planned to be implemented by 2025, so we decided to start work on some of them and launch early in order to cope with such demanding times. This is how our expansion has started into new regions and we are soon announcing more developments.

Getting back to my earlier questions (why now?), above is a description of the past 2-3 weeks during which we planned 2 live conferences for August, 3 virtual conferences, launched 3 websites, redesigned 4 websites and also hosted a first webinar (which felt pretty good, actually). In the meantime, I also enjoy time with my wife, 2 dogs, 3 cats, and also run every second day.

Many of you know me from starting out in the gaming industry and if you connected with me or started following my LinkedIn profile, you have found out that now myself and the team are involved in several other industries.

As we are getting to the subject of the first episode of the weekly journal, I would like to point out that idea came to me this morning, while washing the dishes and I will not add this description in the next episode 🙂

Demand attention

A few years ago I have discovered that each industry has its groups that are well tied together in helping each other. I mostly refer to the media and events sector which are the driving force of all industries.

So, here are some things you as an entrepreneur, startup founder, or marketing manager in the media/events industry should know when starting out.

1. Be unique and never forget to remain unique

It’s not hard to be unique when starting your business! Just think about it! We are all unique in a way and you should add that personal touch to your business. Whenever you are starting out a blog, news site, or start hosting conferences, add your personal touch to it. That touch that makes you unique.

Once you start getting noticed and you start meeting like-minded peers, do not let yourself be influenced. This is the easiest path to destroying every idea you have ever had and start doubting yourself. This is why I stressed on adding this part, never forget to remain unique! You will be tented to copy your “competitors” methods, but keep in my what I’ve said above, they might be part of the small group and they may have never dealt with the problems you encounter when building your brand.

2. Keep doing your thing 

I’ve had days when I wanted to quit and if I reconstruct those days, they were mostly about seeing “competitors” being praised and not being noticed, but I always kept going. I assure you that if you get this feeling, you should not feel disappointed, you should use that feeling to help you fuel your motivation.

You also need to know that you can be the most popular person among your connections and still have at least 40% of them wanting to see you fail. Not to mention your “competitors”.

There is saying that goes like this: “I thought about quitting, but then I noticed who was watching.”

And if this doesn’t fuel your motivation, then think about why you got started in the first place. What was your motivation?

This is the main point of my subject, demand attention. If some media outlets don’t want to mention you, build more traffic and reach a bigger audience. If you focus on this, you will outgrow the “competitors” and soon, you will realize that you never needed them to help you spread the word.

3. Build with the possibility of reinventing

The current times we are living are teaching us a very important lesson, those who can reinvent and adapt are always safe.

In the next period or even now, we are seeing the collapse of several businesses. This is sad news, but don’t think that everybody is like you (feeling sorry about others). Some might enjoy this and use it as leverage to get ahead. It’s a wild jungle out there and you need to know that nobody is protecting you.

So, when facing such a crisis (not saying that this is the last one), just go back to the drawing board and see how you can reinvent and adapt your business to the current needs).

A couple of weeks ago, I’ve asked a financial advisor about a problem, and believe me the only concern now for everyone is saving money. But, there are two ways in which you can do that. Adapting your budget to the minimal needs but don’t cut back on expansions and reducing staff costs.

We are going with the first choice and trying to develop more services in order to keep at the float and keep the team intact. Which reminds me, always build a team, even if it’s a small one with people that think alike. This is no secret and of course, you can read this in tens of thousands of articles, but I think that having a team which dedicates more then they are asked, are the ones that you should start working closer.

While this first article is based mostly on my own experiences which I’ve encountered, I would like to invite you to subscribe to my journal and keep your eyes open for my next article where we will talk about owning your company’s online content. (you will see why with lots of examples)

Until then, I would like to thank you for your time and wishing you a great weekend!

All the best to you!

Zoltán

 

Subscribe to my Journal and Posts here

 

One-Stop Agency for multiple industries, expands to the Americas with the launch of a powerful news outlet.

We are excited to announce our expansion to the Americas.

The expansion is based on the launch of GamingAmericas.com, a news outlet dedicated exclusively to the North, Latin, and South American markets.

“We have been covering news from the North, Latin, and South American markets for almost two years and we have taken this step to further increase the clarity of communications. While we have long been established in the regions via our tech industry reporting, the time has come for our gaming-focused activities to be expanded in these regions. Our editorial team is excited by this move and will continue to provide quality reporting around the subjects of the gambling industry in the Americas” stated Zoltán Tűndik, Co-Founder and Head of Business at Hipther Agency.

The news outlet also features an online business directory that is dedicated to companies that are active in the region. You can add your company at a discounted rate on the following link.

For further advertising inquiries, make sure to reach out to Andrada Bota (B2B Sales Executive at Hipther Agency).

Editorial / PR Submissions: [email protected]

Image by Rainer Süvirand from Pixabay

Baltic and Nordic AI, Blockchain, Fintech, and Gaming companies are battling for 60 award categories at two dedicated awards in Tallinn, Estonia.

Hipther Agency, parent brand of European Gaming Media and Events and PICANTE Media and Events is bringing all the action to Tallinn this May.

The one-stop agency is running two conferences in the first business week of May and both of them are featuring special awards ceremonies which are going to reward the hard work of companies in the Baltic and Scandinavian (Nordic) regions.

While both conferences have different audiences and feature different topics, the team is inviting interested parties to register for both conferences and spend a productive week in Tallinn, Estonia.

“It’s no longer a secret that we are uniting our two media and events brands under Hipther Agency and we are also launching new services and events which will help the entry of tech companies into the entertainment industry and vice versa. We are also organizing separate events for each vertical we cover and 2020 is our test year. We are happy to say that we are already seeing great results and feedback which helps us to build on the success and plan for the upcoming launches and the achievement of our goals by 2025” stated Zoltán Tűndik, Co-Founder and Head of Business at Hipther Agency.

TECH Conference Europe, the Baltic and Nordic Tech Awards 2020

The first event in the agenda is the Spring Edition of TECH Conference Europe (TCE), a platform and conference series that plans to tour the most innovative regions of the European Union by organizing 6 yearly events by 2025. The inaugural edition of the conference will be held on the 5^th of May at Radisson Blu Hotel Olümpia. You can register here!

The conference is also known as the TCE Baltics and will feature several panel discussions, keynote speeches, networking and learning possibilities, and a special awards ceremony. You can find more details by visiting www.techconference.eu

The Baltic and Nordic Tech Awards aim to reward the hard work of companies from the region which have shown important evolution in the fields of Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, and Fintech. You can find more details about the BTech Awards 2020 and the NTech Awards 2020 here.

Nominated companies have to battle a month of online voting which is now open for the public to decide who will reach the shortlists in each category.

You can view the list of nominated companies and vote for your favorites on this link.

The online voting stage will close on the 31^st of March at midnight and the top 5 companies in each category will advance to the shortlists.

The shortlisted companies are invited to join TCE Baltics where the final winners of each category will be decided by the attending delegates of the conference by a final voting stage.

MARE BALTICUM Gaming Summit, the Baltic and Scandinavian Gaming Awards 2020

The second event of the week is the 3^rd edition of the leading boutique style gambling industry conference of the Baltic and Scandinavian region, the MARE BALTICUM (Baltic Sea) Gaming Summit, which gathers gambling industry professionals, regulators, government official, operators and software/service providers for a full day of quality learning and networking.

MARE BALTICUM Gaming Summit will be held on the 7^th of May at the same hotel (Radisson Blu Hotel Olümpia) and you can register on this link.

The Baltic and Scandinavian Gaming Awards 2020 (BSG Awards 2020) is the most prestigious gambling industry awards ceremony which recognizes the most important companies in the region.

The online voting stage is now live and gambling industry experts are now invited to vote for their favorite operators, software provider and connected service providers of the casino and sports betting industries.

You can view the list of nominated companies and vote for your favorites on this link.

BSG Awards 2020 follows the same process, the online voting stage is set to finalize on the 31^st of March, and the final winners are decided in the same matter, but this time by the attendees of MARE BALTICUM Gaming Summit.

More details about the conference can be found on www.marebalticumgaming.com

We are excited to announce a partnership with IT Labs, a partnership that helps expand our service offering and also adds another step towards becoming a one-stop agency.

“Hipther Agency is built to include a platform of services that aim to help startups, mid-size companies, and even big companies gain the relevant exposure they need to increase their brand awareness. Among the services, we are happy to start offering scaling tools which come under the form of outsourcing services. IT Labs has over fifteen years of experience in the field and has accumulated a wealth of knowledge and skills, making them the perfect partner for our clients and future partners”, stated Zoltán Tűndik, Co-Founder, Co-Owner and Head of Business at Hipther Agency.

“When you have a business partner with whom you share the same vision, passion and have smooth cooperation, you know you’ve hit the jackpot. I can honestly say, that in Hitpher, we found that, and much more. I’m sure that in future we’re going to accomplish many great things together”, added Kostandina Zafirovska, General Manager of IT Labs.

The newly offered services include:

• Consultancy & technical strategy
• Innovative solutions development
• Big data & data science solutions
• Cloud & DevOps
• Mobile apps
• Graphic design & user experience

You can read more about the newly listed services and get in touch to start a collaboration on the following link.