Impact of lockdown on my life

On March 20, 2020, I had received a job offer in Hyderabad from an upcoming company that had a lot of promise. The operations' manager in that firm told me that I was selected as a content writer and I would get an offer letter in the first week of April stating the same. I was feeling gung-ho and looking forward to joining this new firm.

The Indian PM, Narendra Modi, announced a Janta-curfew on March 22, and followed it up with a lockdown, beginning from March 25. No one in the country had suspected until then that COVID-19 had become a pandemic. Only when I watched the foreign TV channels, such as BBC and CNN, it had become clear to me that this was no usual virus like swine flu or other such infections that were restricted to a few regions of the world and could be contained easily. Meanwhile, the person who offered me a job became incommunicado. All my calls and emails to him remain unanswered to date.

It had also become evident to people around the world that Coronavirus was akin to Spanish flu, an infection that occurs once in a century, that will have a devastating effect on the entire planet. I began to notice that people around me had become very circumspect and started carrying hand sanitizers along with them. Let me state here that, as a person, I get sensitized to issues a bit later than my peers.

But when it began to sink in me that I was living when history was being made, I began to flinch. When I realized that I was not without company at this watershed moment for the world at large and that most citizens of this planet were also as much part of it, I stopped feeling victimized. It, however, felt strange when I looked at the strangely empty roads. It was as if I was having a long-lasting dream, and this feeling, truth be told, has not yet gone away.

Now, I have begun to accept that life will not be 'normal' as it was only a couple of months ago. I have yet to come to terms with the fact that social distancing will be the new normal and the face of air or rail travel is going to change forever. There are many more things that will not be the same in the days to come. They are hard to foresee right now. Not only for me but millions of others globally.

 Importance of content in the ever-growing digital world

In this millennium, we have been witness to advances in the technological world at an exponential pace. This is only bound to accelerate in the future.

In such a scenario, if businesses wish to grow and expand their reach globally, they need to reach out to prospective clientele and communicate with them effectively to convert them into customers.

Most of today's consumers use digital devices, like PCs/laptop and mobile devices, for both professional and personal use. This makes it imperative for businesses to disseminate information about themselves by creating content that is both informative and engaging on digital platforms, such as websites, with blogs, videos, podcasts, infographics, and social media channels, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram, among others.

In this context, companies must concentrate on producing top quality content that can be marketed well using effective online marketing strategies. Once they do that, they can establish their organizations as the most dependable in their fields of expertise.

The content must communicate about the products or services they offer and also should be able to convince them to opt for their services over their competitors. Recent studies have shown that most of them will spend a considerable amount of time to read and view content online. For any product or service, about 80 percent of the customers will strive to understand the context of the content better by exploring links to related topics though hyperlinks or ones that are posted at the end of an article.

Most consumers of services online base their purchases on online content. This process also entails seeking suggestions of friends offline and on social media platforms. The content providers, therefore, should provide them interesting content that makes for easy reading to allow them to digest it easily and later recall it without much effort.

It is thus incumbent on companies to ensure they produce content that is meticulous and highly informative. It should answer all the questions that the readers may have and instill in them a craving for more information on the services/products they offer.

Companies could provide facts and figures relevant to the topic to make a lasting impact on your readers. When necessary, they should stir human emotions by including in the content real-life examples or allusions to popular tales to which an audience in a particular region of the world can relate to.

They need to make the content search engine friendly so that the article is accessible to numerous readers. When they do that, a wide audience will read and share it. They need to post it in formats to make it easy for sharing with their family and friends.

Before producing content, businesses should understand their target audience and how their organization will go about addressing their issues. These aspects are necessary for them to create engaging content and to connect with the people who will most likely be reading it. Also, they have to ensure to emphasize the unique selling proposition (USP) of their services. Once they achieve that, their posts will stand out and their enterprises can then concentrate on the branding of their services.

Types of content and their benefits

Although we classify content broadly as textual, audio-visual and pictorial, they can, for clarity's sake, be sorted further into blogs, E-books, videos, infographics and guides, among others.

Blogs, informally written formats of content, when presented properly can capture the attention of audiences that businesses target. With their absorbing content, they help businesses to connect with their readers more efficiently. This, in turn, can convert them into customers. But blogs need to be written and posted regularly to sustain the bonds created.

E-books, also known as electronic books, are effective tools for marketing and are made available in PDF or HTML format. The primary purpose of an E-book is to provide answers. Within E-books, content is presented using bullet points, infographics and images to engage readers.

Infographics, on the other hand, have content with a lot of facts and figures, like flowcharts, maps, timelines, that must be visually pleasing, easy-to-understand and shareable. Here, content is divided into sections to keep statistics and information apart. It should be embellished with due care by employing people with informed aesthetic senses.

Videos are an effective form of content for obvious reasons. Video content will showcase a company's products or services as they are. They can convert more prospects into customers. Importantly, they can be shared.

Guides are help manuals and are akin to lengthy blog posts. They will be more instructive and should be designed as per the audience of a particular vertical. The content should be compelling, relevant and should aim to inform the readers lucidly on the service or product. Guides can include graphics, screenshots and other elements to improve the engagement with the audience.

 How A Toll-Free Number Can Change The Face Of Your Business

Small business owners or solopreneurs can reach out to the whole of the United States when they get a toll-free number from us. With a 1-800 number, you become a nationwide company and get to answer business calls on your smartphone, letting the callers think they have got through to an established business house. Meanwhile, you can continue to use your smartphone, both Android and iPhone, for your personal needs.

When prospective customers call you, you can conduct your business professionally, as the phone has features, like customized greetings and virtual extensions, despite being the only person having access to the number.

Furthermore, use a mobile app to answer and make business calls even while you are on the move. If you have partners, you can receive more than one call as you route the other calls to them while you are talking to one customer.

How it works

When a customer calls you, you get an alert on your smartphone. You can then answer it like your professional self. If they are trying to reach out to a particular department, act like you are answering from a different place after the automated greeting.

On the other hand, when you make a call, use the app so your customer sees the 1-800 number and does not know you are calling from your mobile phone.

If a customer texts on your toll-free number, respond with a text message using the same number.

You get a voicemail box along with your business number with a voicemail transcription facility. In case you have a missed call, the voice mail message is transcribed into a text format so you can read it. You can then respond to it accordingly.

The toll-free number also doubles up as a fax number, allowing you to send and receive faxes that arrive as faxes through any PC or a laptop. Faxes arrive as PDFs.

The toll-free number also offers various features, such as call recording, teleconferencing, and call blocking, among others.

Gender bias discrimination at the workplace

The talk that since we are in the 21st century, humans are more evolved is totally misplaced. If so, why does sex-based discrimination still continue to thrive at workplaces in India or even in the so-called developed economies of the world?

An unbiased observer can surely sense that employees, in general, treat their colleagues based on their gender across organizations of all types, including in the New Economy space. Thus, the number of males continue to overwhelm females in a workplace of any type. To add to it, sexual type-casting continues to be engendered by the popular culture where men are portrayed as being 'better' than their opposite-sex counterparts at managing, conversing and comprehending and resolving work-related issues, among others.

Sexual harassment is par for the course until women report such issues. Even here, the powers that be, must be inclined to initiate action against the guilty to prevent such problems from reoccurring. Meanwhile, the pay scales continue to hinge in favor of men because of the inherent biases.

Furthermore, during interviews, women have to contend with questions on how they would manage work-life balance. To cite an example; a female interviewee would have to answer questions on matters related to child-rearing while being at work.

Since these are systemic issues, it is not fair to blame the system as a whole. Instead, employers should handle such issues creatively by thinking unconventionally. They can combine them with proactive gender-sensitization measures. Employees need to have in-house classes on such sensitive matters just like they would on continual self-improvement or learning new skills.

The major deterrent against ill-treatment of women must, however, come from the government through enforcement of very stringent laws to bring the offenders to book. The guilty should also be made aware that inferiority of women is merely a misnomer that the society has propagated.

 How will the Indian business landscape benefit from coworking spaces?

Coworking is an ecosystem that entails a sharing of workspaces. In a coworking space, companies involved share both the infrastructure and expenditure. Experts in this arena aver that coworking locations also promote affiliation to a community where various stakeholders collaborate without being constrained by a supervisory structure, allowing them to be independent and flexible, unlike in traditional offices.

Brad Neuberg, a programmer in the San Francisco area, is given the credit for coining the term, as well as for engendering this concept. The trend of coworking is said to be gaining traction in all the major cities of India because of the advantages it offers, including the opportunity for networking and collaborating. For instance, in a coworking environment, companies can collaboratively hold conferences, seminars and expositions to attract large crowds that small companies cannot do when they operate individually. It is also easy for the enterprises, here, to develop the trust component as all of them would conduct business from a shared address.

According to the US Chamber of Commerce, coworking spaces lead to an improvement in productivity. The industry body feels that when small businesses operate from out of their homes, they tend to be less focussed as their kids or aging parents may divert their attention. Since many companies are working together, coworking environs would be more professional and could work round-the-clock by setting up in-house canteens. They could also have indoor sports facilities.

This could help India as office spaces, here, are constricted because of the high densities of population in all its major cities, without exception. Moreover, such places will allow for large parking spaces.

Meanwhile, companies that operate from coworking spaces can catch the eye of large corporations which may acquire them.

Large companies would also look to become part of such revolutionary trends by working along with small companies to access amenities that these environments will provide.

The future will see certain coworking spaces evincing interest to collaborate with enterprises in their related communities. These spaces will then become one-stop-shops for commodities or services in a particular area, leading them to become niche spots.

We are all well aware of how cumbersome travelling has become in this country's metropolitan cities. So, a niche destination that provides several facilities under a single roof will prove more attractive to Indian customers.

Millennials, who comprise almost half of India's workforce, will play a major part in the country's work culture in the future. As many Indians belong to this age-group prefer to be their own bosses, they are said to be the reason behind the rapid growth of coworking spaces. According to CBRE, a real-estate consultancy company, with a prominent presence in India, coworking spaces accommodated 10 percent of this country's workforce in the New Economy arena in 2019.

Moreover, since they come at a cheaper price, an increasing number of Indian entrepreneurs will embrace coworking spaces in the near future.

Metros, such as Bengaluru, Mumbai and Delhi, will have the most numbers of coworking spaces, followed by Chennai, Hyderabad and Pune, and Tier-2 cities, thereafter.