By 2027, the live video market is expected to surpass $184 billion. And brands are taking notice. By the end of 2018, marketers were using live video as part of their social media strategy. Since then, this number has likely grown as brands continue to use a number of online platforms to stream virtual events, Q&As, and other content that their audiences will value. Although brands are jumping on the live video bandwagon, you might still wonder if live video is really worth investing in. After all, creating any video costs your company time and money. Additionally, measuring the ROI of a live video can be tricky. Before you decide to implement live video planning and production into your strategy, you’ll need to learn more about this content’s consumers, how often they watch this content, and which platforms they primarily use to stream it. Learning about your prospective audience’s live video behaviors will allow you to consider a strategy that offers them valuable content while meeting them on the platforms they’re already on. To give you insight on how often and where general internet users watch live video, I conducted a survey of more than 400 people using Lucid software. In the survey, I asked two questions: “How often do you watch live videos?” and “Where do you watch live video most often?” How Often Consumers Watch Live When I asked consumers how often they were watching live video, I didn’t expect a large percentage to say they were consuming it more than once or twice weekly. As a marketer and social media user, I was expecting that only a few people would regularly stop everything and devote time to watching streams on fast-paced online platforms. However, when I looked at the results, I was surprised by how frequently consumers were actually watching live videos. According to the data, 57% of those surveyed watch live video at least three times per week, while only seven percent said they never watch live video. Data Source While the result above is fascinating to think about, you should keep in mind that this is just a survey of one small group of consumers rather than a representation of the global internet user population. Additionally, just because our pool of consumers regularly watches live content, this doesn’t necessarily mean they’re watching branded content. Although you should take this result with a grain of salt, the data above, combined with mounting research that shows how live video is growing, signifies that this format might be more than just a trend. . Although you should consider your budget, audience, and the time involved in a live video strategy before your create or plan content, this result indicates that you might want to keep this tactic on your radar. Where Consumers Watch Live Video Now that you know live video is capable of generating solid viewership, you might be wondering where the best place to stream your first video actually is. You’ll want to pick a platform with a high user base, but you’ll also want to make sure that the site you choose has an audience that aligns with the audience you want to engage with.. When you start by picking the best platform for your brand and audience, you can learn what it takes to be engaging on this site, and adapt your content from there. But, simply choosing a platform can be easier said than done. At the moment, almost all of the top social media platforms — including Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Reddit, and now even TikTok — have live streaming features. Additionally, emerging platforms like Twitch.tv have gained notoriety for primarily hosting live content. To help you identify a few platforms worth looking into, I asked the same Lucid participants. “Where do you watch live videos most often?” While the results about how often consumers watched live video surprised me, I wasn’t as shocked when I discovered where they were watching their content. The platforms with the biggest audiences, and the most mature live streaming tools, took the lead. These platforms were YouTube (48%), Facebook (20%), and Instagram (13%). Data Source One thing that did surprise me was that fewer people were viewing live videos on Twitter. Although the platform isn’t primarily known for live streaming, Twitter’s company was one of the first to invest in it with the 2015 acquisition of Periscope. Although some platforms were less popular than others in this poll, you shouldn’t necessarily rule them out. For example, if your most engaged audience is already on Twitter, or your followers love your B2B content on LinkedIn, you could consider testing those platforms first since you might already have a great sense of what those audiences will engage with. Or, if you’re selling a B2C product, you might want to focus on the bigger, broader networks like Facebook or YouTube since they have a large range of audience demographics. As you plan your next live video event, here’s a look at what other brands are doing on popular live video platforms. The Top 3 Platforms Consumers Use to Stream Live Video YouTube As the world’s second-largest search engine, YouTube’s more than 2 billion-person user base is incredibly broad. This means that almost anyone will log on to YouTube and search its content for a number of different reasons. Aside from being one of the oldest and biggest online platforms out there, YouTube’s also offered a live stream feature, called YouTube Live, since 2011. YouTube Live allows users to broadcast live content to viewers. With this live video feature, you can share unfiltered moments, as well as allow the audience to participate with real-time comments and reactions. Live videos on YouTube are recorded, appear on profiles and feeds like any other video upload, and can be watched even after the stream has ended. Below is a great example of a live video launched by Adobe as part of its Sketch Party series. During each Sketch Party stream, Adobe

It’s a defining human impulse — the desire to quantify the world around us. And given the pending 2020 U.S. Census, it seems a fitting time to contribute. Recently, my team did just that: Like our astronomic ancestors under ancient skies, we looked outward and began to count. What did we count? Every marketing agency in America. Sort of. Truth be told, it would be foolish to declare an exact tally. Our source was online listings, so there’s plenty of margin for error. Some agencies get gobbled up by competitors two weeks after you count them. Others shutter in the real world but endure online. And some never existed; they were always empty shells, built by hustlers with an UpWork account, pronouncing their “team” ready for your next big project. What I can say is this: America is home to at least several thousand marketing agencies. We trawled 6,000 listings, and analyzed 600 websites and LinkedIn company profiles, to cover as many disciplines as possible. Those include: Advertising Branding Content Marketing Design PR SEO/SEM Social Media Web Design Web and App Development We gathered a number of measurements, too, including: Agency size Agency age Agencies per capita Top disciplines Hourly rates Gender distribution in leadership Homepage hero images Company names Company taglines You’re encouraged to read the full report. Below, I’ll share our four key takeaways from the state of marketing agencies in America in 2020. I encourage leaders and contributors alike: sit back, take a breath, and think big thoughts about your trajectory in the agency universe. 1. Preserve What’s Special as You Grow Our analysis found 77% of agencies have 10 to 49 employees, and 18% of agencies have 50 to 249 employees. I wonder how many in the smaller range wish they could get to the next level, and how many big agencies long to be small again? Like rock bands, do agencies graduate to playing arenas, only to find themselves slumped over a shrimp buffet backstage, longing for their leaner, grimier club days? It raises the fundamental question: What do we lose as we grow? Small agencies should anticipate the challenge and make a vocal commitment to certain values that can be threatened when scaling. Big agencies should take stock. What’s been sacrificed — agility, focus, community? Pick something that once defined you, that you want back. Make it a 2020 goal. 2. Anticipate Lifespan and Legacy On average, a dog will live 10 to 13 years. As for a marketing agency? Not much longer. In America, 61% of marketing agencies are between five and 19 years old, after which the population drops off significantly. Why is that? Think about what influences an agency’s lifespan. How much is external versus internal? Are agencies barely outliving dogs because markets and technology tend to evolve beyond their original mastery? Or because 20 years roughly aligns with the sweet spot of a human career and visionary founders struggle to make their businesses outlive them? In either case, there’s lots to anticipate and act on at various points in the lifespan of an agency. Be mindful of where the heart is in your agency — its center of energy. If it comes from a single charismatic founder, beware. The heartbeat of an organization should be sustained by many people. Take an unflinching look at the evolution of markets and technology around you, since the beginning. Just because you mastered something that was new five years ago doesn’t mean you’re positioned to master what’s around the corner. A long life depends on lots of planning (and a little luck). 3. Don’t Just Hire Women — Empower Them to Lead This topic is a monster, and certainly deserving of much more attention than I’ll give it here. But I’d like to share a candid note about how our agency was founded, and what it means for gender equality in agency leadership. The founders of Digital Third Coast are both men. They worked together at an early iteration of a digital marketing agency, early in their careers. They left that agency and ventured out to start their own business. For the purposes of our analysis, we classified our agency as having “all men” in leadership. In this case, the highest identifiable tier of leadership is “owner”, and there are two owners, both men. Our owners are conscientious, fair, and progressive. They value contributions of women as much as men, they hire women regularly, and they give women opportunities to lead in our organization. But none of that changes where they started. When they were at their previous agency, they looked around and found each other, among other men. The numbers are abysmal in the agency world, as they are in so many other sectors of business. But female leaders don’t materialize out of thin air, and we won’t reach a state of equality through promotions alone. If we flipped a switch and suddenly every marketing agency in the country with 250+ employees had all-female C-suites, these numbers would barely budge. This is a small business problem, not a corporate problem. We need an industry, economy, and society where young women feel empowered tostart their own businesses, just as our owners once did. A challenge for agency leaders: right this minute, are there women in your organization who are working and growing with other women, in substantive ways, who may one day feel empowered to venture out on their own? There should be. 4. Make an Authentic First Impression On a (slightly) lighter note — can we end the scourge of stock model photography? Please. In a world defined and dominated by user-generated content and the unprecedented intimacy and access of social media, agencies should not be representing themselves with sterile stock imagery. The homepage hero image is an enormous opportunity. Marketing agencies in America do various things with it. Most show people, objects, or places. You might see a light bulb, a group of people standing around a table, or a city

70% of companies are actively investing in content marketing, and 60% regard it as an important part of overall strategic planning. These points emphasize the need for a strong content marketing strategy. A strategy is only as good as its tools. If you have a winning strategy, but unreliable resources to pull it all together, your plan might fall apart at the execution level. The challenge isn’t creating a strategy, but rather, finding the perfect tools to help you manage and work through your plan. You need tools to provide accurate metrics, the insights that will inform better decisions, and come ready with the customization options that will make your dashboard a functional asset. Here’s a list of analytics tools that will help you measure the impact of your content marketing. If you’re looking for customizable metrics, social media ROI, team collaboration, and SEO information, these tools are here to help. Content Marketing Analytics Your campaigns should be tracked every step of the way — not only for your benefit, but your audiences’. To continuously delight your customers, you have to know what’s working and what’s not. That’s why the tools you’re using to analyze results are so important — you get a better picture of who your customers are and how they interact with your content. Whether it’s a Twitter campaign, an email newsletter, or a new batch of offers, your strategy depends on content marketing to connect with customers. 1. HubSpot Marketing Hub Price: Starts at $40/mo. for Marketing Hub Starter HubSpot’s Marketing Hub was designed with the busy content marketer in mind. This set of tools offers robust analytics software to help you keep track of performance in one place. For example, you’ll be able to track customer lifecycles from beginning to end and configure reports by contact or company. This will help you analyze trends your customers display as time passes. Image Source Additionally, you have the tools to track website activity and analyze web behavior in a page-by-page breakdown. Locate the traffic sources that are most beneficial in bringing in customers with the metrics tool, and if you want to access this data based on a specific region or URL, you’ll have those options available. HubSpot’s analytics tools help you figure out how to drive value and target your campaigns so you’re performing campaigns that are going to bring you the most benefit. You’ll have nearly everything you need to make data-driven marketing decisions. 2. Buffer Price: Starts at $15/mo. for Buffer Pro Buffer’s content marketing analytics offer you the option to build reports according to your goals. You can add or remove custom metrics on the performance of numerous social media accounts. With these reports, you can export those reports for shareability. Image Source Your reports will be updated on a daily basis, so you can be sure you’re receiving timely data. Buffer’s analytics are designed to help you see channel performance at a detailed level, from one dashboard. The software offers engagement metrics for each account individually. This helps you gain an intricate understanding of how customers are interacting with social content. You can measure stories, posts, and hashtag performance, as well as access the demographics of your audience across channels. 3. Google Analytics Price: Free Google Analytics has an expansive system of tools for content marketing analysis. For example, you can use the software to access insights that are unique to campaigns you run with the search engine. The intuitive interface is easy to pick up, and it can be used to understand the performance of your content on multiple platforms. The analytics tool integrates with Google’s array of business software, so you can access insights in one place. 4. SimilarWeb Price: Free plan, or starts at $199/mo. SimilarWeb provides traffic and engagement industry standards and tells you where your website stands among them. This information is useful for discovering how your performance stacks up against that of competitors’. Image Source With SimilarWeb’s software, you’ll be able to break down the numbers of your content by daily active users, sessions per user, use time, and their rank. Discover more information about your audience, like their web behavior and interests, to improve acquisition strategy. When you have a deep understanding of how to acquire customers using SimilarWeb’s tools, you’ll know what type of content is most interesting to them. 5. Moz Price: Starts at $99/mo. for Moz Starter Moz measures the impact of your SEO-optimized content. You’ll gain insight about how your work is ranking among others in your industry and what keywords are the most effective to use in your strategy. Image Source Moz’s software will track your site’s keyword rank and how visible it is over time to learn what is and isn’t performing well among audiences. Additionally, track how competitors are ranking on search engine results pages; This will help you spot how they aren’t reaching customers and where you can reach them in your campaigns. Use Moz’s detailed reports to see how your content is reaching audiences and what you can do to improve that reach. 5. Hotjar Price: Starts at $89/mo. for 2,000 page views a day Use Hotjar to track sessions on your site. Hotjar provides heat maps of how and where customers are spending their time when they visit your website. They create real-time videos of how visitors are moving and clicking through your site. Image Source This allows you to hone in on what content is catching your customer’s eye. You can also track conversions and make inferences about which stage in the buyer’s journey customers might be leaving. 7. SEMrush Price: Starts at $99/mo. for Pro Though this tool is used for SEO tracking, it’s super helpful for digital marketers. Use it for tracking keyword performance in your latest campaign or to learn what language is grabbing your customers’ attention. Image Source SEMrush also provides tools for monitoring brand mentions. So if people are talking about your company online, in a LinkedIn post,

Posted by morgan.mcmurray It’s been a few years since we last asked you to tell us what you love (and don’t love so much) about the Moz Blog, and since then our company, our industry, and our world have undergone massive shifts.  With so much having changed, we wanted to be sure we’re still living up to the high standards we set for this blog, and that we’re still providing as valuable an experience as we can for you all. That’s where you come in today. To help us serve you better, please consider going through the survey below, which asks about who you are, what challenges you face, and what you’d like to see more of on the Moz Blog. We’ll publish the results along with our takeaways in a few weeks, and will use them to guide our work going forward. From all of us at Moz, thanks in advance for your time! TAKE THE SURVEY Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don’t have time to hunt down but want to read!

In marketing, it seems like the word “brand” is used a lot — the leading brand, off-brand, personal brand … you get the picture. But there’s often confusion around its meaning in business. What does it entail? Should you hire an expert? Most of all — branding is expensive, right? Not exactly. As it turns out, there are some creative ways to brand your business effectively without a ton of cash. And while it can require an investment of time, the ROI won’t go unnoticed — in some cases, it can actually help you save money, while also growing your business. Building your brand is a crucial part of developing your business. It’s the foundation of giving your organization a voice, identity, value, and awareness among consumers. And, thanks to the plentiful number of resources, tools, and platforms available today, a brand build might not be as burdensome (or costly) as some think. So read on, and see how you can use the following seven steps as a guide for your brand build. How to Brand Your Business on a Budget You don’t have to break the bank to grow and maintain a brand. In fact, you can complete most of these tips without spending money. The most important things to remember when brand building are to keep your customers in mind and deliver messages that support your company’s mission. Below, let’s discuss a budget-friendly way to grow better on a budget. 1. Create a persona to understand your audience. You’ve probably heard that knowing your audience is the key to creating marketing messages that appeal to them. A great way to get to know them? Create a buyer persona — a semi-fictionalized representation of the values and characteristics of your ideal customer. Personas outline the challenges of that customer and where your business fits in to solving their problems. Below is an example of a buyer persona, Marketing Macy. Notice how my persona lists demographics, like age and education, as well as tools needed for the day-to-day, like a CRM. The needs, goals, and behavior of your potential customers dictate how you convey your product or service. So for Macy, I want to focus on a B2B strategy that caters to her goals of lead generation and brand building. Understanding those goals helps you determine what kind of media your personas are consuming, what motivates them, and where they “live” online. This information allows you to develop a compelling, effective brand that reaches the right people. Make your own buyer persona with HubSpot’s free MakeMyPersona tool, which guides you through a series of questions about your ideal customer. The tool is fun, interactive, and meant to get you thinking critically about who you want to reach with your brand and how you want to reach them. 2. Develop an identity and voice for your brand. Once you’ve identified your buyer personas, your brand can start to take shape. Create a brand identity — what makes your brand, your brand — and its voice, which is the tone you use in any copy or public communication. Developing brand voice and identity is similar to constructing your personas. But instead of answering questions about your target audience, you’re answering questions that are more introspective to your brand: What are your company’s values, what do they represent, and how do you want people to talk about you? When you answer these questions, focus on creating content that supports them. Craft compelling emails, blogs, social posts, and multimedia that reflect your company’s mission, values, and how you want to appear to customers. For example, if one of your values is to be accessible to customers, communicate contact information on social media pages and answer service questions that appear in comment sections. Developing your voice comes through in the copy of that content. Are you going to use conversational language that relates to customers? Or will it be more beneficial to reach your audience from a technical standpoint? For example, one of my favorite brands to follow is Glossier, a beauty company with a great understanding of brand voice. When I tag the company in a photo on Instagram, I usually get a reply with one of their famous logos: An emoji version of a smile and wave (🙂👋). This logo appears on the bottom of marketing emails and packaging, keeping the brand consistent across multiple formats. Even if you’re not starting from scratch, establishing a strong(er) brand voice can be valuable. Just take operating system software service Android, for instance: Their 2019 rebrand was a logo re-up, making the design cleaner and modern: Image Source The logo came from a need to speak to a shift in audience. Initially, Android’s target audience was the developer, but instead, the company has become more consumer-facing. The change was bred from this analysis. 3. Map out a consistent social media presence. So, we know who your personas are. And now, we have an idea of what and how to create messaging that connects with them. But where are they? Since you have a clear picture of what your audience is interested in, next, figure out where they’re spending the most time on social media. We’ve talked about how effective it is to reach people where they’re already present, and that includes their online behavior. Don’t worry, you don’t have to play Inspector Gadget to figure out where your audience spends time online. Check out competitors — see where they’re most active (and how their language may or may not connect to audiences). Additionally, look at how your audience interacts with social media. For instance, the highest percentage of U.S. men and women who use Facebook are between the ages of 24 and 35. So, if your persona fits that bill, focus your strategy on Facebook. If you find the majority of your audience prioritizes one social network, you’ll have an idea of where to allocate your resources. But don’t ignore other sites. When you build

As inbound marketers, content plays an important role in attracting attention and building trust with prospects. Our content can come in many different formats, and the format we choose can speak volumes about the research and ideas within. Interactive content has become increasingly more popular as brands try to cut through the noise and keep prospects’ attention long enough to deliver a message. What Is Interactive Content? Interactive content is a type of content created not just for consumption but also engagement. It’s designed to prompt action and participation from the audience. The benefit being a higher likelihood of harnessing the audience’s ever-decreasing attention span by publishing stories with interactive elements so they gain an active role in consuming information. By dazzling the audience with an unexpected experience, you can increase engagement, on-site dwell time, and social share rates. Types of Interactive Content Quizzes Interactive Video Surveys and Polls Calculators Gamified Content In theory, any type of content can incorporate interactive elements. Interactive marketing requires ingenuity and innovation, and here are some of the ways interactive content currently shows up on the web:  Quizzes By their very nature, quizzes are interactive since input is required from the audience in exchange for valuable personalized content. Interactive Infographics Unlike static infographics, interactive infographics prompt the audience to take their own journey through the information being presented.  Interactive Video Video viewing is often a passive activity, but interactive videos can improve engagement and enhance the experience. This is done by adding 360 views, audience controls, or embedded content and interactivity.  Surveys and Polls If the audience wants macro data on a particular topic, they can be incentivized to take a survey. Then, both the survey (the input) and its results (your output) becomes consumable pieces of content.  Calculators In many cases, information itself may not be useful for your audience but rather how that information can be applied to their individual situation.  Gamified Content One of the best ways to turn content into an experience is by making it a game. Examples of this include playable game ads or interactive worlds.  You’re not confined to just these buckets, either. Interactive content is limited only by your imagination. Interactive Content Examples from Real Brands Each industry poses its own obstacles and unique characteristics, but share one common denominator: Interactive content works for all topics and audiences. 1. HubSpot’s Website Grader This personalized web experience allows users to type in their website and receive a detailed analysis based on different criteria. By pointing out specific pain points and providing actionable tips, the content turns into a lead-generator, getting the conversation between HubSpot and potential users started. How can you incorporate this into your content marketing? Personalization is key for building relationships with your audience. Pointing out opportunities for improvement and growth in an interactive way increases the trust your readers have that your brand is an expert in this topic and industry, which is easily done through interactivity. Think: “Show, don’t tell. 2. The Wall Street Journal Delivering a large amount of information is a challenge for content creators. This example from the Wall Street Journal does so using searchable, visual stats. The facts are arranged in a number of ways, including a recorded timeline for readers to hit “play” and simply watch. How can you incorporate this into your content marketing? Search is an interactive action on its own and can be easily incorporated into your content. Using search provides readers with a task to keep them engaged while presenting a healthy amount of information in a positive manner. Adding search options very much depends on the content you create, but tools like FlippingBook and Viostream make even PDF and video content searchable. 3. National Geographic Some of the most inspiring forms of interactive content match the topics they address. This example allows readers to follow the ancient cave paintings as if they are touring a prehistoric cave, with color-coded topics to provide insights. How can you incorporate this into your content marketing? Making history come to life can be a hard task. Don’t shy away from numbers and important facts, but don’t skimp on the imagery and engagement, either. Leave the canvas clear for creative imagery and video, while the text wraps the visuals but does not interfere. 4. Information is Beautiful Viewers love trivia about their favorite movies, and this is a visually appealing way to serve it to them. Breaking the movie down into specific scenes clarifies which parts are based on a true story, while color-coding gives readers a broader overview. How can you incorporate this into your content marketing? For a more holistic reading experience, allow readers to go back-and-forth between the small details and the big picture.    5. CNBC Adapting listicles to the age of video can be done by dividing a lengthy clip into Video Snaps. Each snap can be edited from a different video, and is assigned a customized title and color. Once viewed, readers can share the snap (or in this case, perhaps the side job) they enjoyed most on their social channels, or the entire article. How can you incorporate this into your content marketing? Instead of including full-length videos, cut to the chase (literally) and only include the parts that are truly instrumental to your message. Gone are the days of “skip to 1:32 to view this” video content. 6. The Solutions Project This interactive map presents data when hovering over specific states, and dives into the stats after clicking. This makes information that much more accessible, and gives readers the option to discover more, if they choose to do so. How can you incorporate this into your content marketing? For presenting a geographic distribution of data, create a interactive map to help readers visualize the topic. Check out free tools like Mapme and MapMaker Interactive to create your own. Using icons and uplifting design elements makes complicated topics seem more digestible. 7. Crown Courtroom This interactive animation aims (and succeeds) at educating readers about a potentially intimidating experience in a

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Posted by MiriamEllis Image credit: Kenneth Leung, Michael Coghlan “Dried beans saw a more than 230% increase in demand and rice sales spiked by 166% in that same time.” – ABC How should a business operate now? Where is there work to be done? Economists are making stark predictions about the future of small businesses in the US, but at the same time, I live in a town without a courier service established enough to meet the mushrooming demand for home delivery. Frankly, it’s devastating reading headlines forecasting the permanent closure of 7.5 million American SMBs, but while absorbing these, I also spent six weeks shaking the Internet for bathroom tissue before locating some 1,400 miles away. Point being: Where there’s need, fulfilment can be a public good, and where there’s upheaval, any possibility is worth considering. Necessities are emerging in bold relief on the map of each town and city. Demand must be met by determined small entrepreneurs to keep society functional. If you have a strong desire to actively support communities in new ways, by either retooling your existing business or even launching a new one, the doors of opportunity are open: Tools and exercises can help you assess local demand, with the goal of building a stable business based on serving the public exactly what it needs most. What I see emerging is a marketplace that’s essentials first, luxuries second. With a consumer public struggling to get its basic needs met, you want to own the business that grows, sells, or markets the dried beans if you can determine they’ll continue to be a must-have in all times and seasons. Let’s think this through together today. Map local essentials One of the hard lessons so many of us have learned from the past few months is that our local communities are neither prepared for disasters nor sufficiently self-sufficient to meet all basic needs. Where is the wheat field, flour mill, yeast manufacturer “near me” so that I can bake enough bread to keep my household going instead of staring at “out of stock” messaging on the websites of remote major brands? If you’re considering becoming part of the local solution to this widespread problem, I’d like you to try this simple city planning exercise with me. Take out a pen and paper, or open a design program if you prefer, and map out the essential needs of your community. Your community could be your city, or could be a larger geographic area such as a county. Include everything you can think of that human society requires, from water and food, to skills of all kinds, with an emphasis on long-term sustainability. Your map may look very similar to mine, or it could have substantial differences: Once you’ve created your own map, answer these five questions: 1) Based on what I currently know, where in my community are the worst, ongoing local resource deficits? For example, in my community, we make too much alcohol for the residents to drink and don’t grow enough food for them to eat. 2) From what the present emergency is teaching me, which local resources have proven both essential and hard to access during a disaster? For example, there is only minimal manufacture of necessities in my town and a tax base that hasn’t been geared towards safety from wildfire. 3) Where would my existing skills and passions fit most easily into this map today? My skills, for example, would enable me to teach almost any business in town how to market themselves. 4) What new skills and assets would I need if I want to adjust my current offerings or move to a completely different role in my community? Let’s say I wanted to be an organic farmer instead of a local SEO — how could I transition? 5) If large-scale government planning fails to ensure that all members of my community have what they need to support life, what are my options for cooperating with neighbors at a local level to ensure my city or county is more self-sustaining? For example, my city has a Buy Local association I might tap into for large-scale, organized planning. From this exercise, I want you to be able to tell yourself and others a compelling story about what your place on the map lacks and what it requires to become more self-reliant, as well as begin to gauge where you might personally fit in contributing to solutions. Assess local demand Now it’s time to research specific demand. How do you know what’s most needed at a local level? Try these tools and exercises and take notes on your findings. 1. Center your own experience and see if it’s trending More than anything else, it’s your powers of local observation that will tell you most about business opportunities. Businesses exist to solve problems, and right now, the problem we’re confronting is local self-sufficiency during times of emergency as well as in better days. Here’s an example of a problem. My household eats legumes at least twice a day in some form. We’ve always been able to get dried beans, lentils, and peas in bulk from the grocery store. However, with the public health emergency, stores ran out of stock and we had to order boxed products from an international brand headquartered far away. I can check to see if the problem I’ve noticed locally is part of a larger phenomenon by looking at Google Trends: Sure enough, this tool is reporting a spike in demand for dried beans across the US in mid-March. Of course, this isn’t a reason to run out and start a new business, but the data can engender good questions like: Have I identified an anomalous spike in demand or a permanent need? Is there explicit value for customers if this demand could be supplied locally instead of via distribution/online channels? Are there already local companies fulfilling this demand? If I got into this line of business, who would my local