Strategic Planning Process and Models

Just like planning to go for a trip on an unfamiliar journey, strategic planning is used in business organizations as a map to help establish ways to achieve the set goals. The process of strategic planning involves examining the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of the organizations.Advertising We will write a custom assessment sample on Strategic Planning Process and Models specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More After examining, a strategic plan for future operations is developed. For an organization to get to its desired destination in growth there has to be a strategic plan to help carve a path to follow. Strategic planning helps an organization to know where it intends to go over a specific period. This also maps-out how the organization intends to get there and helps to establish whether the organization achieves its goal in the end. Strategic planning is very different from a business planning. A strategic plan fo cuses on the whole business unlike a business plan that focuses on a precise agenda (Bradford and Duncan). A strategic plan is a living and dynamic process (Bradford and Duncan). Strategic planning models include the Michael Porter’s Five Forces, the Adrian Slywotzky’s Value Migration, and the W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne’s Blue Ocean Strategy. Michael E. Porter from Harvard business school formed the porter’s five forces analysis in the late 1970s (Bradford and Duncan). Based on industrial organization economics, the five forces analysis focuses on the competitiveness and attractiveness of a market (Tracy). An attractive market therefore is one, which has high-level profitability while the opposite is true for an unattractive market. Of the five forces analysis, the first three are influenced by external competition while the remaining two are influenced by internal threats (Porter). Porter referred to his theory as the Porter’s Five Forces, â €˜micro environment’ (Porter).Advertising Looking for assessment on business economics? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More These include factors that closely influence an organization’s ability to make profit and effectively serve its customers (Porter). Nonetheless, industry attractiveness does not really mean that all organizations in that market niche make an equal profit margin. Companies apply individual business models to enable them compete with the rest in the industry. Core competencies allow companies to achieve greater profit margins than the normal industrial average. The airline industry is a low profitability industry but individual organizations apply unique business strategies that enable them go above the industry average (Porter). The porter’s five forces entail three forces that are influenced by the horizontal competition (Porter). They include the threat of substitute products, the th reat from already established rivals, and the threat of new entrants (Porter). The remaining two forces on the hand are vertical completion. These are the bargaining power of the suppliers and the bargaining power of the customers (Porter). Below is a graphical representation of the porter’s five forces (Porter). Adrian Slywotzky’s Value Migration is shifting of value-creating forces (Slywotzky). The organization shifts to designs that satisfy the clients better. Concisely, it entails creating as much value as possible for the customer. This is achieved only by providing products and services that effectively satisfy the needs of the consumers. Value migration as described by Slywotzky is in three categories. They are, value flows between companies, value flows between companies, and value flows between business models within a company (Slywotzky).Advertising We will write a custom assessment sample on Strategic Planning Process and Models specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More Value flows between industries may be shown by flows from hospitality to transport industry. Between companies, a good example is from Corel word perfect for Microsoft (Slywotzky). A good example of value flows between business designs would be from IBM mainframe computers to IBM PC’S with system integration (Slywotzky). With value migration, there are three stages involved and they are, value inflow stage, value stability stage, and value outflow stage. Value inflow is the value borrowed from other organizations or different industries. Value stability on the other hand is a situation where there is a competitive equilibrium. This means that the market share and the profit margins are at equilibrium. Lastly, the value outflow shows that the organization has lost its value in the industry through factors such as the outflow of talent and other vital resources (Slywotzky). The value chain is represented by all actions that add utility to the consumer and may be internal or external (Slywotzky). Monitoring the linkage between the value chain activities assures the organization of a harmonious chain. However, calculating or determining value is quite difficult considering that the consumers can only determine the value. This makes a value subjective (Slywotzky). To work around it, the relative market value of a firm is considered as the level of success of an organization in value creation. Blue Ocean Strategy is yet another widely used strategic planning model. A blue ocean is created when an organization comes up with value innovation that enhances the values of both the consumers and the company at the same time (Kim).Advertising Looking for assessment on business economics? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More In blue ocean strategy, competition is less imperative since it involves innovation of unexploited markets. Here the demand is created as opposed to the earlier described strategies where demand is sought after. This provides for unlimited opportunities for rapid growth and profitability (Kim). In view of the blue ocean strategic planning, competition based strategies are not sufficient for high performance sustenance (Kim). W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne acknowledge that while competition based strategies are imperative, they are not sufficient (Kim). They argue that organizations have to go beyond competing to create their own market. This will help enhance growth and enable firms to realize new profits and opportunities for rapid growth. Their model is based in contrast with the environmental determinism view/ structural view. The determinism view assumes that industrial conditions are inevitable and that firms must find ways to compete with these conditions (Kim). They argue th at with such strategies, one organization’s gain is the other loss since in competition each firm tries to outdo the other. The blue ocean strategy is opposed to the normal capture and distribution of wealth. Rather, it supports the creation of wealth. This strategy focuses on restructuring the industrial structures and market boundaries to enhance value. This view is popularly referred to as the Reconstructionist view (Kim). Organizations in W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne’s view must think outside the box and surpass the limitations of the industrial structures. This strategy assumes that out there is a large untapped demand. The only challenge is how to create the demand focusing on value innovation rather than competing (Kim). In this model therefore, competition is irrelevant (Kim). Through the expansion of the demand, there is a great deal of wealth creation, which creates a possibility for increased profits. The later model of strategic planning is of an innovat ive nature while the earlier discussed models are competitive in nature. That is the greatest difference between the blue ocean strategy and the other two. Works Cited Bradford and Duncan. Simplified Strategic Planning. Washington, DC: Chandler House, 2000. Print. Kim, Chan. Blue Ocean Strategy. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 2005. Print. Porter, Michael. The Five Competitive Forces That Shape Strategy. Boston, MA: Harvard business, 2008. Print. Slywotzky, Adrian. Value Migration: How to Think Several Moves Ahead of the Competition Hardcover. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1996. Print. Tracy, Brian. The 100 Absolutely Unbreakable Laws of Business Success. San Franscisco, CA: Berrett, Koehler Publishers, 2000. Print. This assessment on Strategic Planning Process and Models was written and submitted by user Madripoor to help you with your own studies. You are free to use it for research and reference purposes in order to write your own paper; however, you must cite it accordingly. You can donate your paper here.

How to Repurpose Content and Make the Most of Your Marketing

How to Repurpose Content and Make the Most of Your Marketing As content marketers, we all have too much to do, and not enough time to get it done. We’re also under pressure to deliver high-quality content our audiences want. That content also needs to be distributed across an ever-growing array of channels. If you’re working on a small team, that pressure is further magnified.  When resources are limited, you have to stretch everything you have to succeed. So, how can you produce awesome 10X content when your time is limited? Try turning one piece of content into five (or more). Why Should Marketers Repurpose Content? Repurposing content simply means taking one asset and reusing it somewhere else. That sounds simple enough in theory, but it can get tricky in execution. To really make it work, it helps to produce content with repurposing in mind, so you can easily slice and dice it into different formats. The benefits to repurposing content are considerable, too. When you focus your energy on producing one awesome asset (say, an in-depth blog post or video), you’re likely to produce a better piece of work than you would by dividing your attention across every platform you’re responsible for. By creating said content with repurposing in mind from the beginning, you can reuse pieces of it elsewhere without your audience feeling like you’re cutting corners. That frees you up to focus on doing one thing really well, while still getting tons more work done with way less effort. In this post, well show you how to repurpose your way to content marketing nirvana. How to Repurpose Content And Make the Most of Your MarketingGrab Your Free Content Repurposing Guide + Infographic This post goes deep into the content repurposing process. However, there are tons of different ways you can repurpose content. In fact, there are far too many to cover in this post alone (and once you get started, youll probably come up with even more of your own). So, we thought youd enjoy this bonus guide packed with 50 content repurposing tips. That way, youll have the process and the inspiration you need to create more awesome content in less time than ever. Plus, weve included a detailed infographic on all things repurposing for you to keep on hand as a reference.Start By Building Your Content Repurposing Toolbox In this post, we’ll show you some tools you can use to help with your content repurposing process: Google (free): Self-explanatory. Google Analytics (freemium): It’s free. It’s powerful. We’re 99% sure you’re already using it. PrintFriendly (free): This is a great tool for turning blog posts into PDFs. Paste in any URL, click a button, and you're done. SlideShare (free): Turning existing content into a slide deck is a great way to maximize the mileage of your efforts. BuzzSumo (paid, optional): This is one of the best content research tools out there. It’s awesome for finding top-performing content for a given keyword. (paid, optional): We have a few features in our own platform that can help with this process, too. We'll talk about those at the end. Step 1: Create a Piece of Large-Scale 10X Content If you’re unfamiliar with the term â€Å"10X content,† it refers to the idea of creating content that’s ten times better than anything that already exists. In order to create that kind of content, you’ll need to buckle down and focus deeply on producing something truly exceptional. Focus deeply on producing something truly exceptional.Start With Keyword Research If you’re working with limited time, money, and resources, you’ll want to make the most of every minute you’ve got. Starting with strong keyword research gives you hard data to ensure people are going to care about the content you’re creating before you get too far into your process. Recommended Reading: The Ultimate Content Marketer's Guide to Keyword Research How to Improve Your Keyword Research With Latent Semantic Indexing This is the Marketing Research Process That Will Take Your Content to the Next Level Apply the Skyscraper Technique One of the fastest ways to create a piece of 10X content is to apply the Skyscraper Technique. Coined by Brian Dean of Backlinko, it’s an easy and repeatable process for creating the best stuff possible on a given topic. Here’s how it works in simple terms: Review the top ten search results for your chosen keyword. Make a spreadsheet (or just make mental notes) of what information each post contains. Pay attention to missing information, lack of important details, or types of content that are missing from each post (videos, infographics, etc.). Write your own post that includes all the information a person searching for that topic would need. Add resources that are missing from existing content. In short, create something that is objectively better-researched and more resourceful than anything else that currently exists. There are a couple different ways you can find top-performing content (so you can scope out your competition): Do a simple Google search. It's free and easy. Use BuzzSumo. Sometimes, what gets shared on social media can differ from what ranks highest in organic search. So, use BuzzSumo to find all the top-shared content on social media for a given keyword. This can help you find even more inspiration than using a search engine alone. The team at Duct Tape Marketing put together this video to demonstrate how it works and help you get started: While success isn’t guaranteed, if you follow this process correctly, you should start to see results. Recommended Reading: How to Improve Your Content With the Skyscraper Technique Craft a Solid Outline Here at , we never write a blog post without an outline. They’re essential for saving time by figuring out what you’ll cover, before getting started and realizing your ideas are a disorganized mess. Plus, outlines also make it easier to break your post down into sections so you can think more clearly about how each piece might be reused somewhere else. Recommended Reading: The 10-Minute, 10-Step Solution for the Best Blog Outline Then, Write the Crap Out of Your Blog Post Remember, our goal here is to start off with one awesome 10X piece of content. An ordinary, run-of-the-mill blog post isn’t going to cut it here. You’ll need to dig deep and produce something truly great. Furthermore, you’ll need to write while keeping repurposing in mind. Your post should: Be substantial. That’s probably going to mean it’s at least 1,500 to 3,000 words in length. That’s not because longer posts are inherently better, but because you’re probably going to need that kind of length to include all the information your post will need. Be relevant. Make sure you’ve selected keywords and a topic your audience cares about. One idea here is to look through your Google Analytics account, see which content has received the most traffic or conversions and try coming up with something similar. Be better than anything else that currently exists. This is a tall order, but it might be more achievable than you think. We’ll get into this in our next section. Recommended Reading: The Ultimate Blog Writing Process to Create Killer Posts How to Write a Blog Post: Your 5-Point Checklist to Rock a Perfect Post Design Visual Content You Can Use Elsewhere Whether you’re creating your own images or working with a designer, include graphics you can share elsewhere in your post. Those could include: Quote graphics Infographics Instructional images and how-to illustrations Blog title header graphics Stat graphics The key is to create graphics that both: Can be embedded inline in your post. Makes sense in context on your social channels. Here's an example of a tweet from our Twitter profile that uses an instructional graphic from this blog post: Heres how to build new marketing habits https://t.co/F08Y2Vq3sG pic.twitter.com/2IfOluQdrz (@) February 19, 2017 Here's another one for a landing page, where we took the page's header graphic and made a Twitter-friendly version: We put together over 100 free templates just for you with our new marketing resource library! 📚 https://t.co/hWVVfr8Cww pic.twitter.com/nVWEzRUBw0 (@) February 21, 2017 We’ll cover this further in a bit, but for now, take a look through this post (or most others on our blog) for more examples of what we’re talking about. Recommended Reading: How to Make the Best Social Media Images the Easy Way How to Attract an Audience With the Best Blog Photography Tips (+128 Images) How to Make the Best Blog Graphics (For Non-Designers) Step 2: Optimize Your Post for Repurposing Now that you’ve got a draft of your post complete, let’s see how we can use pieces of it on other channels and platforms. Use Your Email Introduction in Your Email Newsletters Consider crafting your intro with an email-friendly conversational tone. That way, you can easily copy and paste it into your email software, tweaking it slightly as necessary. This will likely only work if your emails are text-heavy rather than image-based. If you send a lot of plain text emails though, this can be an immense time-saver. Recommended Reading: How to Write Irresistible Blog Post Introductions That'll Keep Your Readers Reading Turn Your Blog Post Into Inspiration for a YouTube Video You’ve heard the cliche that a picture is worth a thousand words. That means video has to be worth like, what, half a library? Well, something like that. Anyway, what we’re getting at here is if someone wants to read about a topic, someone probably wants to watch a video about it, too. So, shoot a video based on your blog post. That’s something we’ve done in the past with our video series, and it makes time spent on ideation go a lot quicker: You can even use your blog post as the basis for your script (if you’ll be scripting out your post). If you’re wondering exactly how you could turn a blog post into a video, try this: Break down the main points of your blog post. Ask yourself, â€Å"What are the main takeaways I want someone to learn from reading this?† List them out. Write a condensed script or outline that you could read through in under ten minutes (give or take). Shoot your video. If you don’t have access to a videographer or professional gear, use your phone. Get something together that will show your audience what you’re trying to tell them with your blog post. Recommended Reading:  How to Make a Video Content Marketing Strategy to Boost Your New Series Reuse Your YouTube Video on Facebook and Twitter Alternately, you might want to shoot your video natively for Facebook or Twitter. For our purposes here, let’s say you’ve shot a five-minute video for YouTube. If you wanted to get further mileage out of it, consider sharing that video directly on Facebook too, or break it down into smaller chunks and create a mini-video series for Twitter. Recommended Reading: How to Get Started With Twitter Video Marketing How to Do Facebook Video Marketing the Right Way Use Your Blog Post Intro For Your YouTube Description If you created a video to include in your blog post, use your introduction for your YouTube description. Substantive YouTube descriptions are important for a few reasons, including: Improving your YouTube SEO. Clearly communicating to viewers what your video is about. Giving your YouTube videos a clean, complete, and professional appearance. Like reusing blog post content for email, feel free to adjust your wording as necessary to work within the context of a YouTube description. At the very least, your blog post can give you a solid foundation to dramatically cut down on writing time for YouTube. For example, the description we used for this video ... ... came straight from the introduction to the blog post we created for it: Reuse Graphics on Social Media When you’re creating graphics for your blog post, create a few different versions sized appropriately for your social networks. If you need a primer on the best sizes for every network, we’ve got you covered. Also, consider which types of graphics you could both embed in your blog, and share on social media. Long infographics are great for Pinterest, while quote graphics and images with quick stats are a good fit for Twitter. Here's an example of a blog post graphic we repurposed on Twitter: #Content tip: get more ideas by leveraging expertise outside your marketing department. https://t.co/TeMRAAyz4r pic.twitter.com/n5igyugwQJ - (@) July 14, 2017 How to Repurpose Content and Make the Most of Your Marketing As content marketers, we all have too much to do, and not enough time to get it done. We’re also under pressure to deliver high-quality content our audiences want. That content also needs to be distributed across an ever-growing array of channels. If you’re working on a small team, that pressure is further magnified.  When resources are limited, you have to stretch everything you have to succeed. So, how can you produce awesome 10X content when your time is limited? Try turning one piece of content into five (or more). Why Should Marketers Repurpose Content? Repurposing content simply means taking one asset and reusing it somewhere else. That sounds simple enough in theory, but it can get tricky in execution. To really make it work, it helps to produce content with repurposing in mind, so you can easily slice and dice it into different formats. The benefits to repurposing content are considerable, too. When you focus your energy on producing one awesome asset (say, an in-depth blog post or video), you’re likely to produce a better piece of work than you would by dividing your attention across every platform you’re responsible for. By creating said content with repurposing in mind from the beginning, you can reuse pieces of it elsewhere without your audience feeling like you’re cutting corners. That frees you up to focus on doing one thing really well, while still getting tons more work done with way less effort. In this post, well show you how to repurpose your way to content marketing nirvana. How to Repurpose Content And Make the Most of Your MarketingGrab Your Free Content Repurposing Guide + Infographic This post goes deep into the content repurposing process. However, there are tons of different ways you can repurpose content. In fact, there are far too many to cover in this post alone (and once you get started, youll probably come up with even more of your own). So, we thought youd enjoy this bonus guide packed with 50 content repurposing tips. That way, youll have the process and the inspiration you need to create more awesome content in less time than ever. Plus, weve included a detailed infographic on all things repurposing for you to keep on hand as a reference.Start By Building Your Content Repurposing Toolbox In this post, we’ll show you some tools you can use to help with your content repurposing process: Google (free): Self-explanatory. Google Analytics (freemium): It’s free. It’s powerful. We’re 99% sure you’re already using it. PrintFriendly (free): This is a great tool for turning blog posts into PDFs. Paste in any URL, click a button, and you're done. SlideShare (free): Turning existing content into a slide deck is a great way to maximize the mileage of your efforts. BuzzSumo (paid, optional): This is one of the best content research tools out there. It’s awesome for finding top-performing content for a given keyword. (paid, optional): We have a few features in our own platform that can help with this process, too. We'll talk about those at the end. Step 1: Create a Piece of Large-Scale 10X Content If you’re unfamiliar with the term â€Å"10X content,† it refers to the idea of creating content that’s ten times better than anything that already exists. In order to create that kind of content, you’ll need to buckle down and focus deeply on producing something truly exceptional. Focus deeply on producing something truly exceptional.Start With Keyword Research If you’re working with limited time, money, and resources, you’ll want to make the most of every minute you’ve got. Starting with strong keyword research gives you hard data to ensure people are going to care about the content you’re creating before you get too far into your process. Recommended Reading: The Ultimate Content Marketer's Guide to Keyword Research How to Improve Your Keyword Research With Latent Semantic Indexing This is the Marketing Research Process That Will Take Your Content to the Next Level Apply the Skyscraper Technique One of the fastest ways to create a piece of 10X content is to apply the Skyscraper Technique. Coined by Brian Dean of Backlinko, it’s an easy and repeatable process for creating the best stuff possible on a given topic. Here’s how it works in simple terms: Review the top ten search results for your chosen keyword. Make a spreadsheet (or just make mental notes) of what information each post contains. Pay attention to missing information, lack of important details, or types of content that are missing from each post (videos, infographics, etc.). Write your own post that includes all the information a person searching for that topic would need. Add resources that are missing from existing content. In short, create something that is objectively better-researched and more resourceful than anything else that currently exists. There are a couple different ways you can find top-performing content (so you can scope out your competition): Do a simple Google search. It's free and easy. Use BuzzSumo. Sometimes, what gets shared on social media can differ from what ranks highest in organic search. So, use BuzzSumo to find all the top-shared content on social media for a given keyword. This can help you find even more inspiration than using a search engine alone. The team at Duct Tape Marketing put together this video to demonstrate how it works and help you get started: While success isn’t guaranteed, if you follow this process correctly, you should start to see results. Recommended Reading: How to Improve Your Content With the Skyscraper Technique Craft a Solid Outline Here at , we never write a blog post without an outline. They’re essential for saving time by figuring out what you’ll cover, before getting started and realizing your ideas are a disorganized mess. Plus, outlines also make it easier to break your post down into sections so you can think more clearly about how each piece might be reused somewhere else. Recommended Reading: The 10-Minute, 10-Step Solution for the Best Blog Outline Then, Write the Crap Out of Your Blog Post Remember, our goal here is to start off with one awesome 10X piece of content. An ordinary, run-of-the-mill blog post isn’t going to cut it here. You’ll need to dig deep and produce something truly great. Furthermore, you’ll need to write while keeping repurposing in mind. Your post should: Be substantial. That’s probably going to mean it’s at least 1,500 to 3,000 words in length. That’s not because longer posts are inherently better, but because you’re probably going to need that kind of length to include all the information your post will need. Be relevant. Make sure you’ve selected keywords and a topic your audience cares about. One idea here is to look through your Google Analytics account, see which content has received the most traffic or conversions and try coming up with something similar. Be better than anything else that currently exists. This is a tall order, but it might be more achievable than you think. We’ll get into this in our next section. Recommended Reading: The Ultimate Blog Writing Process to Create Killer Posts How to Write a Blog Post: Your 5-Point Checklist to Rock a Perfect Post Design Visual Content You Can Use Elsewhere Whether you’re creating your own images or working with a designer, include graphics you can share elsewhere in your post. Those could include: Quote graphics Infographics Instructional images and how-to illustrations Blog title header graphics Stat graphics The key is to create graphics that both: Can be embedded inline in your post. Makes sense in context on your social channels. Here's an example of a tweet from our Twitter profile that uses an instructional graphic from this blog post: Heres how to build new marketing habits https://t.co/F08Y2Vq3sG pic.twitter.com/2IfOluQdrz (@) February 19, 2017 Here's another one for a landing page, where we took the page's header graphic and made a Twitter-friendly version: We put together over 100 free templates just for you with our new marketing resource library! 📚 https://t.co/hWVVfr8Cww pic.twitter.com/nVWEzRUBw0 (@) February 21, 2017 We’ll cover this further in a bit, but for now, take a look through this post (or most others on our blog) for more examples of what we’re talking about. Recommended Reading: How to Make the Best Social Media Images the Easy Way How to Attract an Audience With the Best Blog Photography Tips (+128 Images) How to Make the Best Blog Graphics (For Non-Designers) Step 2: Optimize Your Post for Repurposing Now that you’ve got a draft of your post complete, let’s see how we can use pieces of it on other channels and platforms. Use Your Email Introduction in Your Email Newsletters Consider crafting your intro with an email-friendly conversational tone. That way, you can easily copy and paste it into your email software, tweaking it slightly as necessary. This will likely only work if your emails are text-heavy rather than image-based. If you send a lot of plain text emails though, this can be an immense time-saver. Recommended Reading: How to Write Irresistible Blog Post Introductions That'll Keep Your Readers Reading Turn Your Blog Post Into Inspiration for a YouTube Video You’ve heard the cliche that a picture is worth a thousand words. That means video has to be worth like, what, half a library? Well, something like that. Anyway, what we’re getting at here is if someone wants to read about a topic, someone probably wants to watch a video about it, too. So, shoot a video based on your blog post. That’s something we’ve done in the past with our video series, and it makes time spent on ideation go a lot quicker: You can even use your blog post as the basis for your script (if you’ll be scripting out your post). If you’re wondering exactly how you could turn a blog post into a video, try this: Break down the main points of your blog post. Ask yourself, â€Å"What are the main takeaways I want someone to learn from reading this?† List them out. Write a condensed script or outline that you could read through in under ten minutes (give or take). Shoot your video. If you don’t have access to a videographer or professional gear, use your phone. Get something together that will show your audience what you’re trying to tell them with your blog post. Recommended Reading:  How to Make a Video Content Marketing Strategy to Boost Your New Series Reuse Your YouTube Video on Facebook and Twitter Alternately, you might want to shoot your video natively for Facebook or Twitter. For our purposes here, let’s say you’ve shot a five-minute video for YouTube. If you wanted to get further mileage out of it, consider sharing that video directly on Facebook too, or break it down into smaller chunks and create a mini-video series for Twitter. Recommended Reading: How to Get Started With Twitter Video Marketing How to Do Facebook Video Marketing the Right Way Use Your Blog Post Intro For Your YouTube Description If you created a video to include in your blog post, use your introduction for your YouTube description. Substantive YouTube descriptions are important for a few reasons, including: Improving your YouTube SEO. Clearly communicating to viewers what your video is about. Giving your YouTube videos a clean, complete, and professional appearance. Like reusing blog post content for email, feel free to adjust your wording as necessary to work within the context of a YouTube description. At the very least, your blog post can give you a solid foundation to dramatically cut down on writing time for YouTube. For example, the description we used for this video ... ... came straight from the introduction to the blog post we created for it: Reuse Graphics on Social Media When you’re creating graphics for your blog post, create a few different versions sized appropriately for your social networks. If you need a primer on the best sizes for every network, we’ve got you covered. Also, consider which types of graphics you could both embed in your blog, and share on social media. Long infographics are great for Pinterest, while quote graphics and images with quick stats are a good fit for Twitter. Here's an example of a blog post graphic we repurposed on Twitter: #Content tip: get more ideas by leveraging expertise outside your marketing department. https://t.co/TeMRAAyz4r pic.twitter.com/n5igyugwQJ - (@) July 14, 2017 How to Repurpose Content and Make the Most of Your Marketing As content marketers, we all have too much to do, and not enough time to get it done. We’re also under pressure to deliver high-quality content our audiences want. That content also needs to be distributed across an ever-growing array of channels. If you’re working on a small team, that pressure is further magnified.  When resources are limited, you have to stretch everything you have to succeed. So, how can you produce awesome 10X content when your time is limited? Try turning one piece of content into five (or more). Why Should Marketers Repurpose Content? Repurposing content simply means taking one asset and reusing it somewhere else. That sounds simple enough in theory, but it can get tricky in execution. To really make it work, it helps to produce content with repurposing in mind, so you can easily slice and dice it into different formats. The benefits to repurposing content are considerable, too. When you focus your energy on producing one awesome asset (say, an in-depth blog post or video), you’re likely to produce a better piece of work than you would by dividing your attention across every platform you’re responsible for. By creating said content with repurposing in mind from the beginning, you can reuse pieces of it elsewhere without your audience feeling like you’re cutting corners. That frees you up to focus on doing one thing really well, while still getting tons more work done with way less effort. In this post, well show you how to repurpose your way to content marketing nirvana. How to Repurpose Content And Make the Most of Your MarketingGrab Your Free Content Repurposing Guide + Infographic This post goes deep into the content repurposing process. However, there are tons of different ways you can repurpose content. In fact, there are far too many to cover in this post alone (and once you get started, youll probably come up with even more of your own). So, we thought youd enjoy this bonus guide packed with 50 content repurposing tips. That way, youll have the process and the inspiration you need to create more awesome content in less time than ever. Plus, weve included a detailed infographic on all things repurposing for you to keep on hand as a reference.Start By Building Your Content Repurposing Toolbox In this post, we’ll show you some tools you can use to help with your content repurposing process: Google (free): Self-explanatory. Google Analytics (freemium): It’s free. It’s powerful. We’re 99% sure you’re already using it. PrintFriendly (free): This is a great tool for turning blog posts into PDFs. Paste in any URL, click a button, and you're done. SlideShare (free): Turning existing content into a slide deck is a great way to maximize the mileage of your efforts. BuzzSumo (paid, optional): This is one of the best content research tools out there. It’s awesome for finding top-performing content for a given keyword. (paid, optional): We have a few features in our own platform that can help with this process, too. We'll talk about those at the end. Step 1: Create a Piece of Large-Scale 10X Content If you’re unfamiliar with the term â€Å"10X content,† it refers to the idea of creating content that’s ten times better than anything that already exists. In order to create that kind of content, you’ll need to buckle down and focus deeply on producing something truly exceptional. Focus deeply on producing something truly exceptional.Start With Keyword Research If you’re working with limited time, money, and resources, you’ll want to make the most of every minute you’ve got. Starting with strong keyword research gives you hard data to ensure people are going to care about the content you’re creating before you get too far into your process. Recommended Reading: The Ultimate Content Marketer's Guide to Keyword Research How to Improve Your Keyword Research With Latent Semantic Indexing This is the Marketing Research Process That Will Take Your Content to the Next Level Apply the Skyscraper Technique One of the fastest ways to create a piece of 10X content is to apply the Skyscraper Technique. Coined by Brian Dean of Backlinko, it’s an easy and repeatable process for creating the best stuff possible on a given topic. Here’s how it works in simple terms: Review the top ten search results for your chosen keyword. Make a spreadsheet (or just make mental notes) of what information each post contains. Pay attention to missing information, lack of important details, or types of content that are missing from each post (videos, infographics, etc.). Write your own post that includes all the information a person searching for that topic would need. Add resources that are missing from existing content. In short, create something that is objectively better-researched and more resourceful than anything else that currently exists. There are a couple different ways you can find top-performing content (so you can scope out your competition): Do a simple Google search. It's free and easy. Use BuzzSumo. Sometimes, what gets shared on social media can differ from what ranks highest in organic search. So, use BuzzSumo to find all the top-shared content on social media for a given keyword. This can help you find even more inspiration than using a search engine alone. The team at Duct Tape Marketing put together this video to demonstrate how it works and help you get started: While success isn’t guaranteed, if you follow this process correctly, you should start to see results. Recommended Reading: How to Improve Your Content With the Skyscraper Technique Craft a Solid Outline Here at , we never write a blog post without an outline. They’re essential for saving time by figuring out what you’ll cover, before getting started and realizing your ideas are a disorganized mess. Plus, outlines also make it easier to break your post down into sections so you can think more clearly about how each piece might be reused somewhere else. Recommended Reading: The 10-Minute, 10-Step Solution for the Best Blog Outline Then, Write the Crap Out of Your Blog Post Remember, our goal here is to start off with one awesome 10X piece of content. An ordinary, run-of-the-mill blog post isn’t going to cut it here. You’ll need to dig deep and produce something truly great. Furthermore, you’ll need to write while keeping repurposing in mind. Your post should: Be substantial. That’s probably going to mean it’s at least 1,500 to 3,000 words in length. That’s not because longer posts are inherently better, but because you’re probably going to need that kind of length to include all the information your post will need. Be relevant. Make sure you’ve selected keywords and a topic your audience cares about. One idea here is to look through your Google Analytics account, see which content has received the most traffic or conversions and try coming up with something similar. Be better than anything else that currently exists. This is a tall order, but it might be more achievable than you think. We’ll get into this in our next section. Recommended Reading: The Ultimate Blog Writing Process to Create Killer Posts How to Write a Blog Post: Your 5-Point Checklist to Rock a Perfect Post Design Visual Content You Can Use Elsewhere Whether you’re creating your own images or working with a designer, include graphics you can share elsewhere in your post. Those could include: Quote graphics Infographics Instructional images and how-to illustrations Blog title header graphics Stat graphics The key is to create graphics that both: Can be embedded inline in your post. Makes sense in context on your social channels. Here's an example of a tweet from our Twitter profile that uses an instructional graphic from this blog post: Heres how to build new marketing habits https://t.co/F08Y2Vq3sG pic.twitter.com/2IfOluQdrz (@) February 19, 2017 Here's another one for a landing page, where we took the page's header graphic and made a Twitter-friendly version: We put together over 100 free templates just for you with our new marketing resource library! 📚 https://t.co/hWVVfr8Cww pic.twitter.com/nVWEzRUBw0 (@) February 21, 2017 We’ll cover this further in a bit, but for now, take a look through this post (or most others on our blog) for more examples of what we’re talking about. Recommended Reading: How to Make the Best Social Media Images the Easy Way How to Attract an Audience With the Best Blog Photography Tips (+128 Images) How to Make the Best Blog Graphics (For Non-Designers) Step 2: Optimize Your Post for Repurposing Now that you’ve got a draft of your post complete, let’s see how we can use pieces of it on other channels and platforms. Use Your Email Introduction in Your Email Newsletters Consider crafting your intro with an email-friendly conversational tone. That way, you can easily copy and paste it into your email software, tweaking it slightly as necessary. This will likely only work if your emails are text-heavy rather than image-based. If you send a lot of plain text emails though, this can be an immense time-saver. Recommended Reading: How to Write Irresistible Blog Post Introductions That'll Keep Your Readers Reading Turn Your Blog Post Into Inspiration for a YouTube Video You’ve heard the cliche that a picture is worth a thousand words. That means video has to be worth like, what, half a library? Well, something like that. Anyway, what we’re getting at here is if someone wants to read about a topic, someone probably wants to watch a video about it, too. So, shoot a video based on your blog post. That’s something we’ve done in the past with our video series, and it makes time spent on ideation go a lot quicker: You can even use your blog post as the basis for your script (if you’ll be scripting out your post). If you’re wondering exactly how you could turn a blog post into a video, try this: Break down the main points of your blog post. Ask yourself, â€Å"What are the main takeaways I want someone to learn from reading this?† List them out. Write a condensed script or outline that you could read through in under ten minutes (give or take). Shoot your video. If you don’t have access to a videographer or professional gear, use your phone. Get something together that will show your audience what you’re trying to tell them with your blog post. Recommended Reading:  How to Make a Video Content Marketing Strategy to Boost Your New Series Reuse Your YouTube Video on Facebook and Twitter Alternately, you might want to shoot your video natively for Facebook or Twitter. For our purposes here, let’s say you’ve shot a five-minute video for YouTube. If you wanted to get further mileage out of it, consider sharing that video directly on Facebook too, or break it down into smaller chunks and create a mini-video series for Twitter. Recommended Reading: How to Get Started With Twitter Video Marketing How to Do Facebook Video Marketing the Right Way Use Your Blog Post Intro For Your YouTube Description If you created a video to include in your blog post, use your introduction for your YouTube description. Substantive YouTube descriptions are important for a few reasons, including: Improving your YouTube SEO. Clearly communicating to viewers what your video is about. Giving your YouTube videos a clean, complete, and professional appearance. Like reusing blog post content for email, feel free to adjust your wording as necessary to work within the context of a YouTube description. At the very least, your blog post can give you a solid foundation to dramatically cut down on writing time for YouTube. For example, the description we used for this video ... ... came straight from the introduction to the blog post we created for it: Reuse Graphics on Social Media When you’re creating graphics for your blog post, create a few different versions sized appropriately for your social networks. If you need a primer on the best sizes for every network, we’ve got you covered. Also, consider which types of graphics you could both embed in your blog, and share on social media. Long infographics are great for Pinterest, while quote graphics and images with quick stats are a good fit for Twitter. Here's an example of a blog post graphic we repurposed on Twitter: #Content tip: get more ideas by leveraging expertise outside your marketing department. https://t.co/TeMRAAyz4r pic.twitter.com/n5igyugwQJ - (@) July 14, 2017 How to Repurpose Content and Make the Most of Your Marketing As content marketers, we all have too much to do, and not enough time to get it done. We’re also under pressure to deliver high-quality content our audiences want. That content also needs to be distributed across an ever-growing array of channels. If you’re working on a small team, that pressure is further magnified.  When resources are limited, you have to stretch everything you have to succeed. So, how can you produce awesome 10X content when your time is limited? Try turning one piece of content into five (or more). Why Should Marketers Repurpose Content? Repurposing content simply means taking one asset and reusing it somewhere else. That sounds simple enough in theory, but it can get tricky in execution. To really make it work, it helps to produce content with repurposing in mind, so you can easily slice and dice it into different formats. The benefits to repurposing content are considerable, too. When you focus your energy on producing one awesome asset (say, an in-depth blog post or video), you’re likely to produce a better piece of work than you would by dividing your attention across every platform you’re responsible for. By creating said content with repurposing in mind from the beginning, you can reuse pieces of it elsewhere without your audience feeling like you’re cutting corners. That frees you up to focus on doing one thing really well, while still getting tons more work done with way less effort. In this post, well show you how to repurpose your way to content marketing nirvana. How to Repurpose Content And Make the Most of Your MarketingGrab Your Free Content Repurposing Guide + Infographic This post goes deep into the content repurposing process. However, there are tons of different ways you can repurpose content. In fact, there are far too many to cover in this post alone (and once you get started, youll probably come up with even more of your own). So, we thought youd enjoy this bonus guide packed with 50 content repurposing tips. That way, youll have the process and the inspiration you need to create more awesome content in less time than ever. Plus, weve included a detailed infographic on all things repurposing for you to keep on hand as a reference.Start By Building Your Content Repurposing Toolbox In this post, we’ll show you some tools you can use to help with your content repurposing process: Google (free): Self-explanatory. Google Analytics (freemium): It’s free. It’s powerful. We’re 99% sure you’re already using it. PrintFriendly (free): This is a great tool for turning blog posts into PDFs. Paste in any URL, click a button, and you're done. SlideShare (free): Turning existing content into a slide deck is a great way to maximize the mileage of your efforts. BuzzSumo (paid, optional): This is one of the best content research tools out there. It’s awesome for finding top-performing content for a given keyword. (paid, optional): We have a few features in our own platform that can help with this process, too. We'll talk about those at the end. Step 1: Create a Piece of Large-Scale 10X Content If you’re unfamiliar with the term â€Å"10X content,† it refers to the idea of creating content that’s ten times better than anything that already exists. In order to create that kind of content, you’ll need to buckle down and focus deeply on producing something truly exceptional. Focus deeply on producing something truly exceptional.Start With Keyword Research If you’re working with limited time, money, and resources, you’ll want to make the most of every minute you’ve got. Starting with strong keyword research gives you hard data to ensure people are going to care about the content you’re creating before you get too far into your process. Recommended Reading: The Ultimate Content Marketer's Guide to Keyword Research How to Improve Your Keyword Research With Latent Semantic Indexing This is the Marketing Research Process That Will Take Your Content to the Next Level Apply the Skyscraper Technique One of the fastest ways to create a piece of 10X content is to apply the Skyscraper Technique. Coined by Brian Dean of Backlinko, it’s an easy and repeatable process for creating the best stuff possible on a given topic. Here’s how it works in simple terms: Review the top ten search results for your chosen keyword. Make a spreadsheet (or just make mental notes) of what information each post contains. Pay attention to missing information, lack of important details, or types of content that are missing from each post (videos, infographics, etc.). Write your own post that includes all the information a person searching for that topic would need. Add resources that are missing from existing content. In short, create something that is objectively better-researched and more resourceful than anything else that currently exists. There are a couple different ways you can find top-performing content (so you can scope out your competition): Do a simple Google search. It's free and easy. Use BuzzSumo. Sometimes, what gets shared on social media can differ from what ranks highest in organic search. So, use BuzzSumo to find all the top-shared content on social media for a given keyword. This can help you find even more inspiration than using a search engine alone. The team at Duct Tape Marketing put together this video to demonstrate how it works and help you get started: While success isn’t guaranteed, if you follow this process correctly, you should start to see results. Recommended Reading: How to Improve Your Content With the Skyscraper Technique Craft a Solid Outline Here at , we never write a blog post without an outline. They’re essential for saving time by figuring out what you’ll cover, before getting started and realizing your ideas are a disorganized mess. Plus, outlines also make it easier to break your post down into sections so you can think more clearly about how each piece might be reused somewhere else. Recommended Reading: The 10-Minute, 10-Step Solution for the Best Blog Outline Then, Write the Crap Out of Your Blog Post Remember, our goal here is to start off with one awesome 10X piece of content. An ordinary, run-of-the-mill blog post isn’t going to cut it here. You’ll need to dig deep and produce something truly great. Furthermore, you’ll need to write while keeping repurposing in mind. Your post should: Be substantial. That’s probably going to mean it’s at least 1,500 to 3,000 words in length. That’s not because longer posts are inherently better, but because you’re probably going to need that kind of length to include all the information your post will need. Be relevant. Make sure you’ve selected keywords and a topic your audience cares about. One idea here is to look through your Google Analytics account, see which content has received the most traffic or conversions and try coming up with something similar. Be better than anything else that currently exists. This is a tall order, but it might be more achievable than you think. We’ll get into this in our next section. Recommended Reading: The Ultimate Blog Writing Process to Create Killer Posts How to Write a Blog Post: Your 5-Point Checklist to Rock a Perfect Post Design Visual Content You Can Use Elsewhere Whether you’re creating your own images or working with a designer, include graphics you can share elsewhere in your post. Those could include: Quote graphics Infographics Instructional images and how-to illustrations Blog title header graphics Stat graphics The key is to create graphics that both: Can be embedded inline in your post. Makes sense in context on your social channels. Here's an example of a tweet from our Twitter profile that uses an instructional graphic from this blog post: Heres how to build new marketing habits https://t.co/F08Y2Vq3sG pic.twitter.com/2IfOluQdrz (@) February 19, 2017 Here's another one for a landing page, where we took the page's header graphic and made a Twitter-friendly version: We put together over 100 free templates just for you with our new marketing resource library! 📚 https://t.co/hWVVfr8Cww pic.twitter.com/nVWEzRUBw0 (@) February 21, 2017 We’ll cover this further in a bit, but for now, take a look through this post (or most others on our blog) for more examples of what we’re talking about. Recommended Reading: How to Make the Best Social Media Images the Easy Way How to Attract an Audience With the Best Blog Photography Tips (+128 Images) How to Make the Best Blog Graphics (For Non-Designers) Step 2: Optimize Your Post for Repurposing Now that you’ve got a draft of your post complete, let’s see how we can use pieces of it on other channels and platforms. Use Your Email Introduction in Your Email Newsletters Consider crafting your intro with an email-friendly conversational tone. That way, you can easily copy and paste it into your email software, tweaking it slightly as necessary. This will likely only work if your emails are text-heavy rather than image-based. If you send a lot of plain text emails though, this can be an immense time-saver. Recommended Reading: How to Write Irresistible Blog Post Introductions That'll Keep Your Readers Reading Turn Your Blog Post Into Inspiration for a YouTube Video You’ve heard the cliche that a picture is worth a thousand words. That means video has to be worth like, what, half a library? Well, something like that. Anyway, what we’re getting at here is if someone wants to read about a topic, someone probably wants to watch a video about it, too. So, shoot a video based on your blog post. That’s something we’ve done in the past with our video series, and it makes time spent on ideation go a lot quicker: You can even use your blog post as the basis for your script (if you’ll be scripting out your post). If you’re wondering exactly how you could turn a blog post into a video, try this: Break down the main points of your blog post. Ask yourself, â€Å"What are the main takeaways I want someone to learn from reading this?† List them out. Write a condensed script or outline that you could read through in under ten minutes (give or take). Shoot your video. If you don’t have access to a videographer or professional gear, use your phone. Get something together that will show your audience what you’re trying to tell them with your blog post. Recommended Reading:  How to Make a Video Content Marketing Strategy to Boost Your New Series Reuse Your YouTube Video on Facebook and Twitter Alternately, you might want to shoot your video natively for Facebook or Twitter. For our purposes here, let’s say you’ve shot a five-minute video for YouTube. If you wanted to get further mileage out of it, consider sharing that video directly on Facebook too, or break it down into smaller chunks and create a mini-video series for Twitter. Recommended Reading: How to Get Started With Twitter Video Marketing How to Do Facebook Video Marketing the Right Way Use Your Blog Post Intro For Your YouTube Description If you created a video to include in your blog post, use your introduction for your YouTube description. Substantive YouTube descriptions are important for a few reasons, including: Improving your YouTube SEO. Clearly communicating to viewers what your video is about. Giving your YouTube videos a clean, complete, and professional appearance. Like reusing blog post content for email, feel free to adjust your wording as necessary to work within the context of a YouTube description. At the very least, your blog post can give you a solid foundation to dramatically cut down on writing time for YouTube. For example, the description we used for this video ... ... came straight from the introduction to the blog post we created for it: Reuse Graphics on Social Media When you’re creating graphics for your blog post, create a few different versions sized appropriately for your social networks. If you need a primer on the best sizes for every network, we’ve got you covered. Also, consider which types of graphics you could both embed in your blog, and share on social media. Long infographics are great for Pinterest, while quote graphics and images with quick stats are a good fit for Twitter. Here's an example of a blog post graphic we repurposed on Twitter: #Content tip: get more ideas by leveraging expertise outside your marketing department. https://t.co/TeMRAAyz4r pic.twitter.com/n5igyugwQJ - (@) July 14, 2017

Testimonies of conversion Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Testimonies of conversion - Essay Example Converts to Islam are generally expected to observe hard work, ethical behavior, and conservative distinctions between men and women although there other mandatory fulfillments for converts. These include; Acknowledging that, the Holy prophet Muhammad is the last messenger of Allah and after him there is no other prophet of Allah who will come, that the Qur'ran is the last of the divine books revealed and all its contents are true, that all the teachings given by the Holy Qur'an in absolute and unambiguous terms are true and acceptable and that the life hereafter will involve one facing the fate of his or her good and evil deeds. Reasons for conversion. This depends on ones belief in the right path of god, the love of another or the fact that another faith may seem, according to the convert, to be promoting a different and better way of living. Conversion and marriage. Ideally, it is not a correct practice to embrace Islam for the sake of marrying only. Therefore, one should know at the first instance that conversion to Islam is not meant for marriage. People convert just to follow a set of beliefs different from those of other family members or friends this can be termed as rebellion. It may be because someone wants to change certain aspects in their life. Forcible religious conversion, conversion may also result through coercion as it was the case during colonization in the 18th century and other periods in history. In such times, refusal to convert to Islam resulted in the massacre, destruction, rape of women and enslaving of men. Context of conversion. In college, converts may meet Muslims and get interested in their culture and religion. This develops into deep Interest in learning more and studying Qur'ran. If helped by other Muslims, one gets converted easily at this stage. Social reasons. Generally Muslims, especially women are viewed as honesty, and of high morals this strength of morality impacts on non Muslims hence making many to want to convert. Conversion through friends. Friends can help one in reading the Qur'an and answering any questions about the religion therefore it is an important mode of conversion. Almost without exception, changing to a new religious orientation takes place through what is referred to as kinship and friendship networks in sociology. Conversion through impersonal methods of communication, this happens through the electronic and other forms of media such as television. By watching an Imam preaching in television or listening to Qur'an readings in radio, many are led into conversion. Disillusionment with the western society. Many people are confused and disillusioned especially in the west about the true religion vis--vis their culture. This has led many to convert to Isla

Criminal Justice Trends Evaluation Research Paper

Criminal Justice Trends Evaluation - Research Paper Example The crime levels involving cases of robbery, homicide, illegal drugs and other violent crimes statistically increased based on research data (Shaw, van Dijk, & Rhomberg, 2003). Anent to social injustices concerns are problems too on sex trade, (inclusive on problems on prostitution and pornography where the flesh trade considered consenting adults as ‘victimless crimes’ that are subject of ‘moral panics’) and of white collar crimes that ranges from forgery, corruption, identity theft using electronic devices, and money laundering. It’s unfortunate that white collar criminals, when caught, are not served with penal sentences but are only required to pay for the damages done to victims. Aside from the preceding prominent crimes, the United States is also confronted with crimes that have magnitude effects to civilian communities and to the state. Terrorism along with so called white collar crimes are also considered to be criminal offences, though sociol ogists consider the aforementioned to be ‘political crimes’ (Mueller, 2013). ... group, use of radiological threat, falsification of documents and other entailing effects that could victimize large number of civilian populace (National Counterterrorism Center, 2013). The Federal Bureau of Investigation likewise stated in its reports based on collated information from law enforcement agencies that there is an increase of 1.9 % of violent crimes in the last six months in 2012 (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2013). These violent crime cover murder, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. With regards to the property crimes, there is an increased of 1.5 percent in 2012 compared to the reported statistics in 2011 that include burglary, larceny-theft, and motor vehicle theft (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2013). Bank crimes statistics also showed that in 2011 alone, there are 5,014 robberies, 60 burglaries, and 12 larcenies which looted about $ 38.3 million dollars of cash and other valuable properties (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2013). Only 20% of t hese cases are recovered or solved by law enforcement authorities (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2013). According to statistical records, there are 6,088 persons involved in varied bank crime cases but only 3,263 persons are identified, of which 1,229 of 37% are involved in narcotics and 583 persons or 18% are recidivists of robbery, bank burglary and bank larceny cases (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2013). Aside from the increase of statistics on crimes, the advancement of information technology also made it easier for the commission of crimes since most of the transactions are done online and the criminals’ coordination or communication hasten their networking or their plans of carrying out their criminal designs (U.S. Department of Justice, 2013). Crimes can be undertaken by

Women And The Criminal Justice System

Women And The Criminal Justice System The aim of this work is to define the role factors such as gender, class, familial structure and prior victimization have in the awarding of justice to the female offender. It was found that the criminal justice system has traditionally been more lenient to the female offender based on two factors: gender and class and family structure. However, the criminal justice system finds itself in a legal and moral bind when it comes to prior victimization of the offender, and in differentiating between true victimization leading to a violent crime and the misrepresentation of such a previous state by the defending attorney. These findings should give an overall understanding of the criminal justice system with regards to female offenders and should form a framework within which such inequalities and discrepancies can be discussed. Introduction To better understand the criminal offender, it is necessary to understand the role the backgrounds of the offenders play in their path towards crime. The percentage of female offenders has increased in the recent past, and sociologists, criminal experts and the judiciary have grappled with the damning statistics. Various theories have been put forth to better understand the role race, class, family structure and victimization of the female offender have to play in the rise in crimes by the female gender. While a lot of work had gone into research into these themes individually, a deeper understanding of all these factors and the role they play in the treatment of women by the criminal justice system remains to be analyzed. This essay aims to explain these factors and the role the criminal justice system has to play in offering justice, and support to the female offender. The criminal justice system and the female offender According to sentencing statistics, nearly a third of women sentenced for indictable offences in 2000 received a community sentence compared with just under a quarter of men . It can be seen that the criminal justice system has traditionally been lenient on the female offender. In delivering justice, the background of the defendant, the role factors outside the purview of the crime that have contributed to the psycho-social development of the defendant are considered. However, various social and developmental factors also contribute to the low rates of serious crimes by women . While men are not socially connected and do not traditionally worry about children, women are bound to their home and hearth and thus desist from violent crimes. This difference is important to the jury, who consider previous crimes and delinquent history when considering their judicial stance on the offender. Thus, women tend to have less severe judicial outcomes in the criminal justice system. The role of race and the female offender According to Koons-Witt and Schram: Two findings are notable in terms of offending differences among females: (a) race conditioned the relationship between offending group and victim(s) sex for robbery incidents and (b) race conditioned the relationship between offending group and the social distance between victim(s) and perpetrator(s) for aggravated assaults. The race of a person has a major role to play in the psycho-social development of the female offender. Racial characteristics such as social conditioning, parenting style, opportunities for education and social development and interaction with other races have always played a major role in the development of the offender. The criminal justice system has also traditionally, not only discriminated on the basis of gender, but also on the basis of race when awarding punishment for crimes, both non-lethal, and lethal. However, in the context of the female offender, unlike gender, race has not played a role in the severity of senten ce for a crime, which remains a factor only for the male offender. The effect of race is conditioned by gender while the effect of gender is not conditioned by race. However, the harsher treatment of racial minorities by the criminal justice system is confined more to men, and the lenient treatment of women is found for minorities and whites alike . Class and family structure and the female offender Women from the lower and working class have been a priori been excluded from the middle class in their expectations and prior social programming. While the women from the socially backward classes have never been placed in the good girl category, dissimilar to their middle class counterparts, the criminal justice system considers the class of the women while deciding punishment for a crime. Like race, social conditioning of women offenders depends largely on their social class and existing family structure. Social scientists have long associated class and life-expectations of women in work, at home and in the social context. Delinquency and crime are also associated closely with the class of the offender. The criminal justice system has always considered the class of the female defendant to award punishment. Victimization and the female offender Vieraitis, Kovandzic and Britto state: ..womens absolute status is significantly correlated with female homicide victimization rates by intimate partners.. . The role of victimization leading to crime by the female offender cannot be overemphasized. In many cases, the victim turns criminal and the psychological effects of the crime of the woman are an important parameter in understanding the development of the criminal mindset. In many violent crimes committed by women, the victim is mostly the intimate partner who has, in the past, been violent towards their partner. This progression of crime has a major role to play in the psychological and criminal development of the offender and makes it a tough case for the defending attorney and the criminal justice system. The fine delineation between preexisting conditions that lead to the crime and the absence thereof makes the awarding of justice difficult and at time, morally challenging. Conclusion The female offender is shaped by her gender, class, familial background and prior victimization. These factors have a major role to play in the psycho-social development of the offender. While the criminal justice system has traditionally been lenient to the female offender, the rise in crime by women has brought to light these differences and how justice is served to these offenders. A larger meta-analysis of the problem would yield sociological and psychological constructs that may help streamline the justice system to recognize and eliminate errors in jurisprudence.

Foundations of Learning and Collaborative Working Essay

â€Å"Discuss the concept of collaborative working within your professional area† To be able to understand the rationale, the different factors influencing the outcome of collaborative working and how this can be applied to Perioperative practice, it is important to have a sound understanding of the concept â€Å"Collaborative Working.† This concept has many terminological variations, one of the more frequently used is â€Å"Inter-professional working.† Hornby and Atkins (2000) state that collaborative working is â€Å"a relationship between two or more people, groups or organisations, working together to define and achieve a common purpose.† Barrett et al (2005) declares that inter-professional working is â€Å"the process whereby members of different professions and/or agencies work together to provide integrated health and/or social care for the benefit of service users.† Disregarding what is seen as the correct/incorrect terminology, the common denominator here is that all health care staff/ agencies’ are working together to provide the best healthcare possible for patients and service users. There have been many debates about the variation in terminology, Leathard (1994:5) refers to it as â€Å"terminological quagmire† that has been created due to rapid developments in practice, and in her analysis of terms, Leathard (1994:6) prefers to use the term multi-professional as it â€Å"infers a wider group of professionals.† In this instance the term â€Å"Collaborative working† will be used. Over the years there have been many drivers behind the rationale for collaborative working dating as far back as the 1960’s in the USA, where Henderson (1966) reports that â€Å"one hospital has weekly inter-professional ward conferences.† The idea of collaborative working is therefore not a relatively new concept. In recent years increased emphasis has been placed on collaborative working and the need to work together due to changes in technology, accountability and government reports. Technological advances such as telecommunication is now used by surg ical staff to live feed surgical procedures to other parts of the world. This has aided remote-area surgeons in their own practices (Shields & Werder 2002) Similarly, the introduction of the National Health Service (NHS) direct advice line has created a way in which doctors can consult patients over the telephone. However a study by the Economic and Social Research Council (2005) concluded that â€Å"telemedicine is disappearing† compared to NHS direct advice line. The introduction to new machinery which takes blood pressures automatically rather than manually, this and other technological advances have all required healthcare staff to change the ways in which they work collaboratively. On the other hand, Government reports also change the way in which healthcare professionals work as they are often mandatory measures. The NHS Knowledge and Skills Framework (KSF) was introduced in 1999 under the Agenda for Change. Day (2006) claims that the use of KSF will â€Å"enable team leaders to identify gaps in the knowledge and skills of their inter-professional teams.† KSF is an essential requirement carried out every year to ensure pay progressions. Collaborative working is also brought about by accountability. All healthcare professionals are governed by a professional body such as the Health Professions Council (HPC) in which it is their duty to ensure compliance with the legislation on the use of protected titles (HPC, 2008) Not only are registrants accountable to the HPC they are also accountable to statutory and criminal law which means healthcare professionals must interact with patients and staff on an acceptable level at the risk of being prosecuted for their actions. Another driver for collaborative working is seen through the ever scrutinizing media. A recent news report by Hughes (2011) titled â€Å"Emergency surgery patients’ lives at risk, say surgeons† is one of the many examples of negative media that is putting more pressure on healthcare professionals to work more collaboratively. On the other hand, many of the publi c viewers do not see the bias in the majority of these news reports and many examples of good collaboration is missed. Resulting from the rationale behind why people work together it is important to understand the ways in which people do work together. Safe Surgery Saves Lives was an initiative that arose in 2006 by the World Health Organization and in 2008 a Surgical Safety Checklist was released globally. Research proved that â€Å"postoperative complication rates fell by 36% on average† and the checklist has also â€Å"improved communication among the surgical teams.† (Haynes, B.A et al, 2009, Pg: 496) Many trusts also have a theatre list policy and this ensures that staff are working collaboratively to ensure the lists are correct, accurate and the most important procedures have been prioritised. The idea differentiates among the trusts, but is most commonly referred to as a â€Å"Group hug.† This is carried out each morning before any surgical procedures commence and it is a chance for staff to collaborate and share any ideas or concerns over that day’s list. A big part of collaborative work, especially in peri-operative care, is about recognising each other’s skills and importance thus the idea of â€Å"inter-professional learning.† Kenward & Kenward (2011, pg; 35-39) outlines the importance of mentors, stating that â€Å"mentors should act as role models for students of all professions.† Further promoting this the General Medical Council (2006) document on Good Medical Practice propounds that doctors also act as role models to try and â€Å"inspire and motivate others.† It is evident that there are many ways in which healthcare staff work together, however major issues are still identified around the factors that influence the outcomes of collaborative working. Miscommunication has been identified as a reoccurring problem. Certain behavioral patterns among peri-operative staff which included ignoring requests they did not understand, failing to seek clarification, failing to speak loudly enough to be heard an d communicating information to the wrong person. (Gardezi et al 2009, pg: 1390-1399) This can be fatal especially in the case of Elaine Bromiley who had undergone a routine sinus surgical procedure. Due to a breakdown in communication between surgeons, Elaine unfortunately died. A video titled â€Å"Just a routine operation,† (LaerdalMedical, 2011) released after the death of Elaine Bromiley, identifies the breakdown in communication between the surgeons and the theatre nurses who had actually witnessed the surgeon’s distress and suggested an alternative method to intubating the patient which was ignored. This concept has been previously recognised as â€Å"professional separatism.† D’Amour et al (2005) argued that because professional groups are educated separately they are then socialised into â€Å"discipline-specific thinking.† Research concluded that 69% of respondents to a questionnaire they set out reported disagreement between surgeons and nurses. And that 53.4% reported experiencing aggressive behavior from consultant surgeons (Coe and Gould, 2008, Pg: 609-618) Thus meaning the outcomes of collaboration will suffer if all professionals do not interact and recognize the importance of other professionals’ skills. It is evident that collaboration and inter-professional working largely exists but with the constant changes in peri-operative practice as mentioned previously and the way healthcare is constantly observed, especially by the media, it is evident that collaborative working is a continuous development or a lifelong learning process. As technology changes and government policies are continually released it is inevitable that the ways in which healthcare professionals work together will also change and develop. References Barret, G, Sellman, D and Thomas. J (2005) Inter-professional working in Health and Social Care: Professional Perspectives. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Coe, R and Gould, D (2008) ‘Disagreement and aggression in the operating theatre.’ Journal of Advanced Nursing. Volume: 61, Issue: 6, Pg: 609-618. Day, J (2006) Inter-professional working: An essential guide for health-and social-care professionals. Cheltenham: Nelson Thornes. D’Amour, D, Ferrada-Videla, M, San Martin Rodrigues, L and Beaulieu, M (2005) ‘The conceptual basis for inter-professional Collaboration: Core concepts and theoretical frameworks.’ Journal of Inter-professional Care. Supplement: 1, Pg: 116-131. Economic and Social Research Council (2005) Telemedicine revolution is ‘disappearing’ from the NHS. [Online] Available at: www.esrc.societytoday.ac.uk. (Accessed: 8 October 2011) Gardezi, F, Lingard, L, Espin, S, Whyte, S, Orser, B and Baker, G.R (2009) ‘Silence, po wer and communication in the operating room.’ Journal of Advanced Nursing. Volume: 65, Issue: 7, Pg: 1390-1399. General Medical Council (2006) ‘Good Medical Practice guidelines: working in teams.’ [Online] Available at: http://www.gmc-uk.org/guidance/good_medical_practice/working_with_colleagues_working_in_teams.asp (Accessed: 9 October 2011) Haynes, B.A, Weiser, G.T, Berry, R.W, Lipsitz, Sc.D et al (2009) ‘A Surgical Safety Checklist to Reduce Morbidity and Mortality in a Global Population.’ The New England Journal of Medicine. Volume: 360, Issue: 5, Pg: 496. Health Professions Council (2008-09) Continuing professional development annual report. [Online] Available at: http://www.hpc-uk.org/publications/reports/ (Accessed: 8 October 2011) Henderson, V (1966) The nature of Nursing: A definition and its implications for practice, research and education. New York. Macmillan. Hornby, S and Atkins, J (2000) Collaborative Care: Inter-professional, interagency and interpersonal. Oxford: Blackwell. Hughes, D (2011) ‘Emergency Surgery patients’ lives at risk, say surgeons.’ BBC news. [Online] Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-15098114 (Accessed: 8 October 2011) Kenward, L and Kenward, L (2011) ‘Promoting Inter-professional Care in the Perioperative environment.’ Nursing Standard. Volume: 25, Issue: 41, Pg: 35-39. Proquest [Online] Available at: http://proquest.umi.com/ (Accessed: 9 October 2011) Laerdal Medical (2011) ‘Just a Routine Operation’ [Online] Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzlvgtPlof4 (Accessed: 9 October 2011) Leathard, A (1994) Going Inter-professional: Working Together for Health and Welfare. London: Routledge. Shields, L and Werder, H (2002 ) Perioperative Nursing. Cambridge University Press.

Induction in health and social care Essay

Explain why induction is important for practitioners, individual and settings. Induction process is very valuable and of great importance for any early year practitioner, individual or organization. In my opinion this is an ongoing process starting from the advertisement. a) For practitioners: The process of Induction is important for the Early birds in the nest so as to help them integrate into their roles in the organization quickly and effectively. They should be familiarized with the campus first. Like cafeteria, restrooms, classrooms, emergency exits etc. After that introduction with her new colleagues, rules and regulations, benefits and facilities that she will enjoy working here will follow next. Necessary trainings in safety and all her questions/ needs should be addressed. Induction is also very important for the new employees to let them know the organizational structure of the work place. The mission vision of the workplace is introduced and they are informed as to what quality drive is expected from them. They are given an opportunity to know where they stand in the crowd. The timetable of the CPDs and school extracurricular activities are handed out to them. They are given documents related to class they are going to start teaching. b) For individuals: Induction should not be limited to the new comer only rather it should be executed for the old employees as well. I would like to organize induction process at least twice a year. One before the new session starts in September, because they might need a lot of motivation and enthusiasm after spending 6-8 weeks holidays away from school. This can also be extended to 4-5 days. In this process we can review policies and procedure to refresh their minds and remind them of the goals they have to achieve throughout the year, in case of some policies being altered it’s a good time to share with them and get their opinion. Some new incentives can also be shared to boost up their energy and loyalty with the organization. This is a good time to introduce a new staff if there is any or if any staff member is promoted then he/she can be given induction about the new responsibilities attached  with the new position. c) For organizations: If the employees are properly inducted then they will work more efficiently and happily for the workplace. The progress of each child will be consistent and improved, as a result parents are happy and a reputation is built and demand of that work place will increase more in market. 1.3 Explain the link between induction process, qualifications and progression routes in the sector. Every workplace wants to ensure that they recruit new teachers that are most suitably skilled and qualified for their jobi This they do by a rigorous recruitment process. Then through a structured induction process the workplace prepares them for a new role and motivates them so that they give their best. This also helps the newbie to develop upon the knowledge and skills they already have. An effective induction helps the new staff to meet the core standards of the work place and provide a foundation for CPDs towards becoming a more effective teacher. The leader is responsible for selecting mentors for the induction process from the staff depending upon the requirements of the induction process. The mentors should have the skills, expertise and knowledge to coordinate the induction effectively. The  observations and notes taken from the induction process states where the new staff is standing and now what skills and abilities should be focused for further development. Thus the progression should continue to give the new staff a chance to enhance their qualifications and skill where they lack. 1.4 Analyze the role of the induction process in supporting others to understand the values, principles and agreed ways of working within a work setting The induction is a planned process which involves various members. The process of induction depends upon how clear and effective your induction policy is. The policy clearly states the role of each member involved in the induction process; and there is a checklist present for each phase. In this way let a newbie join at the beginning of the session or in the mid of the session every newbie is going to enjoy the induction process so that she understands all her duties and responsibilities adhered to the job. This newbie will learn all the tricks of the trade going on in the organization pretty well including the mission vision and what quality work is expected from her to derive learning and motivation from the students. It is not a one day process it depends the new recruit. If he/she is already an experience teacher then induction for a few weeks are enough but if it’s newly qualified teacher then induction can go as long as 1 term or may be more than that. However if the new teacher is not being monitored as it should be by the mentor or instead of mentoring the mentor has started dictating than induction process loses its effectiveness. It merely becomes a chit chat session If the induction is done effectively with the old staff members as well. One of the advantages of the process is that you get to know where your staff stands. The members of your staff are hard working but lacking in some skills or the other, there you can hold different workshops and training sessions by calling the expertise. Also during the session the mission vision, policies new or updated can be explained/refreshed so your team  members avoid mistakes and know what you expect from them during their tenure. In this way you can ensure quality education for your students by providing competent staff members. However this can turn the table over if the policy does not fully cover all areas of induction and that there is no checklist to keep track of the induction progress. 1.5 Analyze the role of induction in safeguarding individuals and others with a work setting One of the aims of the induction process is safeguarding individuals from any harm coming to them. If I were to head the process of induction in my setting then first and foremost I would make sure that I have all the policies updated and required for safeguarding, e.g. fire safety, health and safety, child protection policies etc. I would make sure that each member of my staff undergoes basic child protection and first aid training, to raise awareness that equips them to recognize and respond to child welfare concerns. This training would start soon after a staff is appointed. They would also be induced on how to deal with emergency situations such as fire. I would hold a fake fire alarm schedule so that the staff and the children know how to react in emergency situations. However, this might not be effective if a large number of staff is present as time can become an issue. But yes if the process is scheduled in batches then this can be overcome. Once it happened in a classroom a child who was usually active was feeling low and wanted to lie down from time to time. Had not my colleague taken child safety training she would have let him sleep but she quickly responded and dashed to the clinic by the time the child had collapsed in her arms. The Dr. called the parents and the child was taken in an emergency to a nearby hospital. The Doctors praised the teacher for timely help otherwise the child’s condition could have worsened. The parents later on admitted that the child had fever and that they gave him medicine which had a  sedative effect. In the end I would like to conclude that to make induction effective w.r.t. time, money and resources there should be an effective carefully planned induction policy and checklist. This policy should be revised from time to time and should also involve feedback from the staff in order to update and make the policy more effective. The team chosen should be carefully chosen according to their abilities. However If there is no check list or policies and procedures up to date or not in place or the mentor is not qualified and knowledgeable enough then the induction process will lose its spirit and it can go totally wrong leaving behind a mere chit chat session.