#i am a sleepy first and foremost above everything

[snixx]

*starts drafting a rant on tumblr dot com* *writes a few hundred words* *is overcome by lethargy and omg doesn't sleeping sound so much more fun than this because im never going to get everything i want to express down and it's gonna feel forever incomplete* *lets it rot in my drafts forever and ever*

#girlblogging.pdf #i am a sleepy first and foremost above everything #but yeah just did the thing again #my drafts are a hellscape #so many incomplete rants in there i appreciate people who can consistently write full on rants #i adore reading rants but theyre so much work. critiquing and being a hater is so much work #because you have to be so careful about not accidentally including/excluding some harmless thing you didnt want to target #i mean dont get me wrong ive posted a few of them too #they usually get like 2 notes lol but its more for myself i like having it written down somewhere so im not overwhelmed when someone inevi #- tably asks my thoughts on a topic #and its frustrating stewing in my annoyance #but yeah anyway #i like ranting into the void its so satisfying when i feel like ive gotten my thoughts out semi fully somewhere #like processing all my thoughts takes away that power they have to frustrate me because i know im annoyed but cant fully express why #but yeah i am bad at completing them. thats the drawback of not being able to stay angry for long the sleepy always overpowers the rage #its a blessing and a curse #blessing cause im mostly pretty chill #curse because it WILL comeback to annoy me later if i dont fully process it

[edda-grenade]

Sleep.

Adaar and Solas attempt fadewalking for the first time.

#feral verse, 2000 words. on AO3.

They were lying on a hilltop in the forest, on a fur to keep the cold of fall at bay. Well, Adaar was lying down—Solas had sat up to give her a curious look.

“You wish to leave?”

“No! I mean, yes, kinda—maybe—I don’t know.” She groaned and covered her face with her hands.

“You seem very happy, here,” he said, in that slow, careful way he had.

“I am! I am. I don’t want to leave my family, or this place, or you—”

“Me?” His voice cracked, just a little. Adaar glanced at him from between her fingers.

“Yes, obviously. I know you like to pretend you’re some lone wolf apart from all living creatures or whatever, but you’re my friend, alright? You’re not getting out of that so easily.”

“I don’t—pretend…” He sighed, his skin staining with blush, the faint freckles even fainter. His lips twitched like he was trying not to smile, until he gave up and his mouth crooked. Adaar loved it when that happened. She was pretty good at making it happen, too.

“You do not wish to leave, but?”

Now she sighed and clamped her hand over her eyes again. It was easier in the dark, unwatched.

“The world is so big and so full of things I don’t know,” she said softly, “and I want to learn everything.”

“Adaar…”

She hadn’t figured out if she loved that yet—the way he said her name sometimes, how he looked at her. Like she was the sun coming over the horizon, or a thunderstorm in the distance, or the wind dancing through the fields so hard it sang. At least that’s what she imagined the expression would look like on her face—an expression that was meant for immense and somewhat unfathomable things, not for a single person.

“There is a way I could show those things to you. Not all of them, of course—but more than what is accessible to you right now.”

Adaar sat up so quickly her head spun a little.

“I’m listening.”

He explained, and her head continued to spin, although for different reasons. Lucid dreaming, delving into the Fade like into a cave, how the deeper you went the older the memories imprinted upon the Fade would be…

It sounded ludicrous. Like magic, if she had never heard of it before. It sounded amazing.

“Can we just do that?” she asked. “Right now?”

Solas gave her another weird look; his eyes wide and searching for a brief moment.

“I—yes. Come with me.”

They left the little barren hilltop that poked above the forest behind and instead descended into the small cave Solas had chosen as his resting place. She’d tried often to convince him to join her family at the settlement, but he’d steadfastly refused every time. It didn’t bother her as much anymore—the cave looked more and more like an actual home these days, with a fire pit and cooking tools, shelves he’d carved out of the rock to hold utensils using a spell she hadn’t quite figured out yet herself, and a warm, dry place to sleep.

Solas had a ball of light bobbing in the air above his shoulder, and gazed down at the bedstead. It was cozy: a pallet of hay covered in cowhide, with a blanket and fur to keep warm in winter. It was also not nearly big enough for both of them. At least not if they intended not to share breathing space.

“There’s a bigger bed at home, you know,” Adaar said. “Actual walls and a door, too.”

“I would prefer to try it here. I have set the requisite wards quite often, and I’m familiar with the peculiarities of the Fade in this place.”

She shrugged, glancing around at the runes and sigils he had marked into the walls of the cave. “Yeah, makes sense. I’m just saying, you can get familiar with the farm, too. There’s space for you, it’s not a problem.”

“I’m aware, since you keep reminding me so diligently.”

“It keeps being true.”

She smiled a little at how that statement made his ears dip and his head turn away so she wouldn’t see his face. He cleared his throat.

“I have never… attempted to teach this to anyone else.”

“Because you didn’t want to, or because there was no one you could teach it to?” She hesitated, thinking of his arguments with Lavellan's Keeper. “Or because no one wanted to learn it?”

He let out a low breath. “All of the above,” he replied quietly, “at one point or another.”

Adaar slapped her hands together to resist the urge to hug him, then clapped her palms briefly onto his shoulders because not touching him at all was even more frustrating than being shrugged off. “First time for everything. How do we start?”

Solas showed her how to set the wards—they’d talked about spellwork like it before, but mostly in abstract terms. It took a good while, because she kept stumbling over new questions, like how specific a ward could be, how permanent, how big a space it could cover… They were halfway into designing one that might be used to keep beetles out of the grain, until they managed to get back to the task at hand.

She settled on the bedstead with crossed legs while Solas puttered about by the fire pit and brewed a concoction he insisted wasn’t tea to help them fall asleep. Then she got up again and started pacing, as much as was possible, because her legs were too jittery to sit still. She was just glad most of the cave was high enough that she didn’t have to stoop—she halted, gazing at the stone close above her.

“Solas, did you shape the ceiling, too?”

“What do you mean?”

“The rock here has a different texture.” She reached up to touch it and closed her eyes, searching for that low echo of past magic—and found it. “And it’s been worked with magic.”

“…A little. It is not your fault you are so tall.”

A smile bit into her cheeks. “Aw, that’s sweet.”

“It was a practical consideration,” he muttered, but he didn’t sound like he was actually put out. “You insert yourself into others’ spaces inevitably, it was only a matter of time until you would find your way into this one.”

“That almost sounds like a criticism.”

“An observation. Foremost.” He handed a steaming cup of the not-tea to her, then sipped from his own. She breathed in the smell—chamomile, juniper, and something spicy she didn’t recognize—then exhaled a bit of frost across it to cool it down before taking a sip.

Solas was watching her when she looked up from the cup.

“Something wrong?”

“No, it is simply… nice, to see how certain magic has become easier for you.”

“The frost? Yeah, I barely have to think about it anymore.” She blew a puff of snow into his face to demonstrate. Solas startled, grimacing, and wiped the rapidly-melting crystals from his cheeks.

“Sorry,” Adaar said, very earnestly. “Couldn’t resist.”

He shook his head and grumbled something in Elvish, but he was smiling again. That small, helpless, trying-not-to smile. They finished their cups, put them aside, and regarded the bedstead again.

“I shall take the fur, next to the pallet,” said Solas.

“I thought the point was to fall asleep more easily? And to sleep more deeply?”

“Yes.”

“Then why make it harder on yourself? We just gotta… scrunch up a little, it’s gonna be fine.”

There was a long silence.

“I am not used to sleeping among other people,” Solas said finally, his tone even. He wasn’t used to other people—flesh-and-blood people, that was—in general, Adaar suspected, but she kept it to herself. Right now was probably a bad time to bring that one up.

“Alright, no spooning then,” she said instead and sat down and stretched out along one side of the bedding. Then she remembered she had to get rid of her shoes, untied them, and hucked them against an empty wall. Lying down, the scent of lavender became obvious amid the hay and fur; sprigs had been stuck to the corners to keep bugs away. She’d told him about that trick months ago.

It really was cozy; warm and inviting. She curled onto her side, drawing her feet up, and patted the mattress next to her. Slowly, Solas joined her, folding himself up so he took up even less space than usual. It was still a tight fit, especially since he tried to avoid any real contact beyond the brush of fabric.

“I will attempt to find you once we are dreaming,” he said. “With our current physical proximity it should be an easier task.”

“There’s really nothing else to it? We just fall asleep?”

“It is… difficult to put into words. Question your dreams, if you can. The key is to become aware—awareness begets agency, which in turn begets control.”

Adaar tugged the fur and blanket up to cover them. “Alright. Sleep well?” There was a flash of a smile on Solas’s face before he closed his eyes.

“I shall see you soon.”

It was not soon. Adaar’s mind refused to quiet, anticipation thrumming in her limbs. She kept shifting, unable to relax, and she worried she’d spend the entire night sleepless, when she finally woke up again to a dark, quiet cave. 

She must have fallen asleep at some point, then? So was this the Fade? It didn’t feel different. She was sleepy and bleary-eyed just as she would be when waking up in the middle of the night, and a cursory examination of the cave with a bit of conjured light—a spell that behaved no differently than any previous time she’d used it—told her it looked exactly as it had when they had bedded down. Except…

Solas lay tucked against her front, his body warm, his breathing even. His temple rested against her collarbones and his folded legs leaned against her hips. He was curled up as he’d been before, but now it seemed less about making himself smaller, and more about fitting into the curve of her body.

Adaar stared into the darkness. That was… unexpected. Solas didn’t seek out physical contact. Sure, he usually melted into it for one or two seconds when it was offered before pulling away, but nothing like this.

Cautiously, she tried to brace herself on her elbow to get a better look, both at the cave and at him. She bit down on a sharp inhale when pins and needles erupted in the limb, breathing through it with care until the sensation passed. But even on a thorough second look, nothing changed. The cave was still the cave, nothing remotely immaterial about it, and Solas still slept soundly, curled up against her.

Part of her wanted to wake him up. Let him know it hadn’t worked, at least not yet, and try to figure out what might be changed, because merely the thought of consciously walking in the Fade was enough to make her heart beat faster.

But he looked so much younger in his sleep. His features softened and relaxed, like he might actually be at peace. Adaar wasn’t sure she had ever managed to catch him this unguarded. When they were together, it felt like he hardly stopped watching her.

She let out a small sigh and settled back down, gently wrapping one arm around his waist. Hopefully that wouldn’t upset him, if he woke up before her come morning. Right now at least, a soft, sleepy noise slipped from him, and he rolled even more thoroughly into her embrace.

#don't worry solas is gonna get slammed with the pining soon enough #feral verse #adaar #solas #saar gets her own tag #inquisitor x solas #soladaar #time for those tags to make a regular appearance in this verse :3c #art tag #fanart #fic tag #fic related #dragon age #dragon age inquisition #da:i

[clairelutra]

stars are falling all for us (1/1)

Summary: In which Noctis saves Luna. Ageswap!AU

(ao3 link)

When Noctis met Lady Lunafreya of Tenebrae, she was eight, and he was twelve.

He'd thought she was kind of weird at first, with her too-formal way of talking and her somber stare and her talk of Kings and Oracles and destinies, but then he'd decided to call her 'Luna' and it had made her giggle, and a piece of her had lodged itself so deep in his heart he'd never dig it back out again.

Not that he'd tried much.

The thing was... the Oracle was invincible. The Oracle was a child prodigy who pulled off miracle after feat after triumph, otherworldly magic and worldly salvation poured into the shell of a young girl. The Oracle had awakened Shiva when she was ten, had begun traveling to cure the Scourge when she was twelve, had become a public figurehead when she was fourteen.

In the eyes of the world, the Oracle wasn't quite human.

But Luna was just a girl.

And it was that Luna that wrote to him in their shared notebook. That Luna was scared of the whole world and forging through it anyway, sometimes confessing her worries in shaky handwriting and apologizing with borders of animal stickers, sometimes sheepishly asking for advice after barely packing a tightly scrawled story within the confines of the paper, sometimes covering her whole page with sketched flowers and mountains and people and letting her innocent musings and gentle poetry weave through the cracks.

She was delicate and precious and vulnerable and it drove him up the wall that no one else seemed to see it—or care.

But if advising her and cheerleading her in secret helped, he could do that. If she needed consoling or reassuring or sympathy, he could do that too. If offering to kick the ass of anyone who made her sad meant that he was offering to take on the whole world for her, well...

Someone had to do it.

But for eight long years, he was an ocean away. Words were all he had to give her, and the pain of helplessness set up shop right over that piece of her. She deserved all the good things in the world, deserved to be cherished and protected until she was ready, and if he could switch places her, he would do it in a heartbeat. If he could join her quest to keep her safe then that was all he dreamed of. If he could pay a price for her to wake up somewhere safe and warm with no prophesies or duties or pain to weigh on her slight shoulders, he'd have paid it ages ago.

And that was why he was so profoundly relieved to learn that they'd gotten engaged. Sure, it'd be on paper more than anything else, but even if he barely ever saw her, he could still do things like send the Kingsglaive with her, pay her way to better hotels, and make sure she had decent food on the road.

All he had to do was get to Altissia.

And then everything went to shit.

He wasn't quite paying as much attention as he probably should be to his battle with a literal god, but the altar where Luna stood was crumbling with every one of the Hydrean's brutal passes and he was milliseconds from warping down there, grabbing her, and getting the hell out, city be damned.

(The flicker of the look on her face when she'd met his eyes after her speech was still stuck in his mind—heartbreak and resignation and gratitude—and it was making him want to crawl out of his skin.)

But she was standing, standing, bleeding but standing, and there was a rampaging Astral in front of him who wasn't listening and technically he had bigger problems.

And then she wasn't standing anymore, stumbling to her knees and stilling, and Noctis went cold all over.

He was warping down before he'd made the conscious choice to do so.

A blink between and she was in her arms, unbearably fragile and terrifyingly cold.

"Noctis? The Hydrean—"

But Noctis was looking behind her.

"My, my. Saving the girl instead of the city? How downright heroic of you."

Ardyn, with all his slime and crooked edges and unscrupulous leers, was entirely too close to Luna, Noctis decided. That he was getting closer was untenable.

"Now what kind of look is that? I'm only here to he—"

Ultima materialized in Noctis's palm, the tip pointed at Ardyn's throat as close to the jugular as Noctis could manage with numb, slippery fingers and shaking hands.

The smile on Ardyn's face froze, then slunk away. "Tetchy, are we?"

"Get lost."

"Now—"

"Get. Lost."

Luna let her nose dip into the crook of Noctis's neck, her hands feebly fisting in the material of his shirt, silent and trusting.

There was a long moment in which Ardyn wasn't smiling at all, and the cold, calculating look it left behind was almost comforting in its honesty. It said that he was sizing up how easy it would be to kill them, and whether it would be worth it in the end.

That was okay. Noctis was analyzing what Ardyn's fighting style might be like and running through possible ways to get Luna to solid, unwrecked ground so he could fight without worry.

Then the tension released, Ardyn's oily leer making a reappearance as he rocked back on his heels. "Then might I offer the happy couple my congratulations?"

"No."

A flicker of irritation. "A few words of advice then."

"No." Noctis bared his teeth. "Get lost."

Ardyn shrugged it off in a too-graceful motion. "Have it your way, I suppose."

Noctis didn't lower his sword until Ardyn had reboarded the Niflheim ship and the whine of the engines had faded into the crashing waves.

"Hey," he said as soon as he could breathe again. "You okay?"

Up this close, it was obvious to anyone who cared to look that Luna wasn't. Even below the new pallor, her eyes were fever-glassy, her grasp painfully weak. Her own breathing rasped, sitting like her body didn't want to hold her up anymore.

"Leviathan—" she started, then blinked and gave her head a little shake. Behind them, the waves claimed another few of the altar's stones. "No, the— the ring. Your father sent me to deliver the ring."

The ring.

Noctis felt sick.

The Ring of Lucii. The ring that no one but Lucian royalty was supposed to wear, that smited all others—if Luna had been carrying it since Insomnia went down...

She fumbled a chain from around her neck, pulling it over her head and setting its makeshift pendant, the thick-banded ring Noctis had seen on his father's hand all his life, in her open palm. On some metaphysical level, it smelled like death.

Death that was connected to the Oracle's magic, and slowly but surely siphoning it away and taking her lifeforce with it.

Noctis picked up the ring, unceremoniously snapped the chain, and jammed it on his finger, shoving his own magic into it to sever the link.

The results were immediate.

First and foremost, Noctis had an intense urge to go take a nap. The demands of the ring settled under his skin like a cool mist, a gentle downer. It took him a minute to adjust to it, the press of other on his brainstem only coming to bear once the sleepiness had passed—and that was an unpleasant ordeal all on its own.

In the time it took Noctis to acclimate to that, Luna started breathing easier. It was impossible to miss it up this close. How much of it was because he'd taken the ring and how much of it was because the seas had calmed, he didn't know—

—because the seas had calmed. Leviathan had traded city-wrecking for just hovering above the altar, inscrutable.

Then she spoke, that screeching-grinding-otherworldly language of the Astrals, and Noctis was the one burying his face in the crook of Luna's neck this time, a splitting headache crashing over him in the waves Leviathan was known for.

And then it was over, and Luna had just enough time to shout a thank you! at the goddess before she was gone.

The tempest subsided, indiscriminately dropping boats and debris alike into the water.

"...Ow," said Noctis plainly.

The delicate shoulder that pressed against his nose shook with laughter. Quiet laughter, but clear laughter. Already her lungs sounded better.

He raised his head, and—

She was smiling. Dark eyelashes beaded with seawater, blonde hair plastered against her forehead and temples, full mouth resting in the happy curve it was just made for.

—and he wanted to cry.

"You're okay," he said, his voice cracking as the realization hit his numb chest in full.

"I am," she murmured, rasping but reassuring.

"You're okay," he repeated, trying to convince himself because this was all so real and yet not real at all. He cupped her face, feeling the soft give of her cheeks, the strength of the muscles in her jaw, the solid reality of the bone below it—she felt real. "You're okay," he marveled.

"Mhm," she agreed, her smile taking a turn for the fond.

The tears barely stopped as a lump in his throat before they were blurring his vision and making hot tracks down his cheeks through the wet chill.

He brought their foreheads together so he could feel the hot rush of her breath on his face, see those eyes up close. His voice broke into a whisper when he said, "You're okay."

There was a subtle strength coming back into her delicate fingers, and he could feel it when she reached up to curl them around his wrist. "And so are you."

And so they were.

She'd grown during the ten years he'd spent in the crystal.

Obviously—she was twenty-six now, not sixteen. If Prompto and Gladio and Ignis had changed and matured in the past decade, then it could only be expected that she would double it.

It still put a funny swoop in his stomach to see her like this, grounded and graceful and steady.

"You're staring," she noted with a musical lilt.

Noctis flinched, flustered. Power and wisdom of a hundred late kings and he still got shy around her. Smiling sheepishly, and he said, "You're... pretty nice to stare at."

It made her blush, and the sight sank into his heart about as much as his ego.

It was a quiet moment in the middle of the rebuilding efforts—one of those moments when he could slip into the apartment across from his and watch Luna press flowers or help her clean her counters or play human pillow while she napped—and it was in this particular moment that it occurred to him that... there was no reason why he couldn't kiss her.

Aside from the bit where she was all the way across the table from him and it would be a lot of work to get up and walk around to her side, but in general. In the spirit of it.

And in the spirit of that...

"We should get married," he decided, apropos of nothing.

She paused, paper-thin sylleblossom held halfway between the press and the big paper envelope where she was keeping them until she got a better storage case. "Pardon?"

Aw hell, even if kissing her wasn't jumping the gun, this definitely was. "I mean." He cleared his throat. "We're still engaged, aren't we?"

"That was not our choice," she said, bemused. Which was probably a clear enough answer on its own. "And the point of it is rather defeated at this point, is it not?"

"...Yeah, I guess." He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye as she put the pressed sylleblossom away. He didn't really want to give this up without getting a clear no, but what could he say?

Luna spoke again before he could decide. Blushing rosy enough to match the pink carnation in her hand, she confessed, "I... I think I'd rather like to marry you though, if you found it agreeable."

"Yeah?" Noctis rose out of his chair. Suddenly, he found that it was worth the effort of walking to her side of the table for the sake of kissing her. Weird how these things happened.

She nodded, flushing a little deeper. She was always beautiful, but he could watch the little crease at the corner of her mouth for hours right now. "It... it would put the people's minds at ease if you were to take a queen, after all, and a wedding might be just the thing to lift their spirits in a time like this."

He half-leaned, half-sat against the edge of the table next to her chair. "That's pretty... rational."

She nodded, a slow, tiny motion, her fingers curling on the worn, polished wood of the old table as she stared at them like they held the secrets of the universe.

Not that the view from here wasn't pretty nice, but he wanted to see her face, and it gave him the perfect excuse to touch her. Trailing his knuckles over the curve of her jaw, he encouraged her to look up at him. "...Can I still kiss you?"

That corner of her mouth jumped into a shy smile. "...If it would please you."

If the words in themselves were cool, then the eager, almost possessive way her arms circled around his neck to yank him closer sure wasn't, her nails scratching his back through his thin t-shirt and her cheek warm in his palm.

Warm, warm, warm and heady, seductive in its innocence and calming in its fervor. It had him bracing his weight against the back of her chair before long, and then on the table too, that piece of her in his chest heavy and aching and needing and singing.

"All those years ago... I was so excited to marry you," she whispered between kisses. "I think the servants must have become quite sick of me by the time came, I could talk of little else. I... I loved you so, and I was f-finally going to see you again, and it was like this. I only wished..."

"Only wished what?" he asked in a croak. Maybe he'd give her anything she asked right now, anything at all, but that wasn't special. That was just a given.

He wanted a bed. Not for sex, just so he could wrap her in a million blankets and protect her from everything that came her way, But then, that was just a given, too.

The smile was back again, and he could taste it this time. "Only wished that you had been the one to ask me."

Of all the—

He pulled back as far as she would let him so he could squint at her.

She diverted her eyes, flushing deeper again. She looked distractingly kissed.

There was really only one reply he could give to that.

"Hey Luna," he breathed, resting his forehead against hers. "Will you marry me?"

It was unfair how delighted she looked. He was almost tempted to ask again.

"Yes," she breathed.

"Good," he said fervently, and kissed her again.

#lunoct #ffxv #lunafreya nox fleuret #noctis lucis caelum #final fantasy xv #my fic #belated crosspost #see ao3 posting for real commentary lmao

[jacksonhenry297]

How to Keep Your Google Home Quieter at Night

Do you want to make your Google Home speak gently at night? If yes, then you have come to the right place. Google Home is no doubt one of the best smart AI-enabled speakers around the globe. However, when the night comes, it may speak out with its standard volume, which is loud enough to irritate you at night. 

Suppose the night has come, and you are getting sleepy, you just calmly tell Google Home to turn off all lights in your house, but it shouts out loud for confirmation, disturbing everyone in your home. Your wife tells you to throw it away from your home after getting disappointed by its annoying loud sound.

You need to understand that it is just a machine and will do everything that you tell it to. If you have not done anything to make Google Home’s volume lower at night, then it is not its fault. You need to tell it that you want it to be quieter at night. However, this could be tricky if you don’t possess prior knowledge about it.

Worry not, we are here to help! In this article, we are about to show you a simple way to make your Google Home smart speaker silent at night. 

Let’s get in…

Solution 1: Turning On Night Mode on Google Home

If you want your Google Home to keep calm and speak gently during night hours, night mode is the one-stop solution. This night mode can be adjusted according to your sleep time, and you can decide when it turns on and turn off automatically.

You need to schedule it as per your desire and requirement. You will also be able to tell Google Home about the amount of volume you want at night as per desire. This is, without any doubt, the best way to make your Google Home silent at night. 

Here’s how to set up Night Mode on Google Home Smart Speaker:

Keep in mind that if you have more than one Google Home in your home, you will need to enable and set up this night mode in every single speaker one by one. There is no way to enable night mode on all Google Home devices at once, and you will have to do it manually, which is not that hard.

Here’s how to enable Night Mode on Google Home to make it quieter in the night:

1.      First and foremost, on your smartphone that is linked to your smart speaker, launch the Google Home app.

2.      Then, select the device on which you want to enable the Night Mode.

3.      If you want to enable it on all devices, you have to enable this mode on all of your devices.

4.      One tap on any Google Home speaker in the app, press on the Settings icon located on the upper-right side.

5.      Scroll downwards and find Night Mode.

6.      Then click on that.

7.      Now there is a toggle switch that has to be pressed in order to enable Night Mode.

8.      Next, set the duration for the Night Mode using the “Night mode is active” section.

9.      Adjust the volume of Google Home during the night hours using the slider. 

10.  Select all weekdays so that night mode will work every night. Obviously, you will go to sleep every night, no matter if it’s the weekend or not.

11.  Once that is done, your night mode is ready to do the job every night. You can also tweak the settings of Google Home Night Mode anytime you wish. If your Google Home has a LED light on the top, you can also decrease it via the LED dimming slider.

From now on, you won’t hear the louder voice from Google Home, and even if you ask it something to do, it will speak out very softly so that no one freaks out.

Solution 2: Grouping in Rooms

Another solution to make Google Home speak calmly in the night is to group your Google Home or Google Nest Hub and in the room where your smart lights are installed. So when you ask Google Home to kill the lights in the same room where your smart speaker is, it will confirm and reply gently. In this setup, it will not shout loud to wake up everyone in your house.

Not only that, when you have the Google Home in the same room where smart light is installed, but you can also ask “Ok Google, turn off the lights” rather than saying “turn off the living room lights.” It will allow you to use fewer words while commanding it to turn off the lights.

All you need to make sure is that your all smart lights are grouped. This will allow you to kill the lights of your all house in single voice command.

However, if the smart lights on your house are not grouped, then follow the below instructions to group them:

1.      Launch the Google Home app on your smartphone that is linked to your Google Home speaker.

2.      Then choose the appliances that you want to add to your room. 

3.      After that, go to Add to a room button.

4.      Follow the on-screen instructions to add the light to a group of your room.

Make sure to group all devices that you want to turn off with a command in the night using the same method as mentioned above. Also, add other Google Homes to this group.

Now you will be able to ask Google to turn off these all devices before lying on your bed, and Google Home will not shout this time.

Conclusion

In this article, you learned that there are mainly two ways to make your Google Home quieter at night- the first method is simple as you have to enable the night mode only. This is indeed the best way to make your Google Home speak gently at night so that everybody can enjoy the silent night.

The other method is also not that hard at all once the initial grouping of your smart light is done. After that, it becomes easy to say, “Hey Google, turn off the lights.” 

That’s it, thanks for coming here!

Jackson Henry. I’m a writer living in USA. I am a fan of technology, arts, and reading. I’m also interested in writing and education. You can read my blog with a click on the button above.

Sourse- Google Home

#Google Home

[batterology]

Currently crying over my math homework (why did I think taking a 5 week summer class was a good idea 😭) so I could really go for some like super fluffy stony with lots of cuddling; maybe they're watching a movie; maybe Tony is a sleep deprived mess and Steve cuddle attacked him to get him to sleep; I just want fluffy stony haha

sometimes tony cries over math too man it’s okay we’ve all been there

The whole couple thing is still new, and Steve’s trying his damnedest to respect Tony’s private space. Tony’d been so hesitant when they first decided to try out this relationship. There’d been an entire speech.

“I’m going to fuck it up,” Tony had told him, eyes big and scared and hopeful. “I’m going to be gone too much for business and forget to come to bed and I’ll talk during the best parts of movies and—well, I probably won’t forget your birthday. Or, maybe I will, but c’mon, the Fourth of July? God, I’m probably going to forget your birthday—”

“Tony,” Steve had said, a hand on Tony’s jaw and a smile on his face, big a dopey. God, he never thought he could be so happy in this new century, never thought he could look at another person and think, I’m home. “It’ll be fine. We’ll work on it, together.”

“No,” Tony had said, “I’m going to lock myself in my lab and disappear for days at a time, but sometimes that’s what I have to do, that’s just how I am and—”

And so Steve had promised to respect his space, and Tony had sworn on Maria’s grave to honestly try to be where he said he would be when he said he would be there. And it’s been going pretty well considering it’s him and Tony, but SI’s in the middle of a crisis—which is fine, Tony told him he’d be pretty busy until the metaphoric fire was extinguished, but there was clear communication and everything. The crisis has been going on for two weeks, though, and four days ago Tony blacked out the lab and stopped letting people in.

Technically, Steve knows he has a master override as the leader of the Avengers, but he trusts Tony, he does.

If he makes it to five days in blackout mode, though, Steve might just break down the door.

Steve’s thoughts are interrupted by the chime of the elevator. He looks over from where he’s sitting on the couch and it’s Tony. Steve’s heart jumps like it does whenever he’s been away from Tony for too long, and he’s on his feet before he even realizes, grinning at his boyfriend.

“Tony,” he says. Tony stumbles out into the penthouse, eyes glassy, no evidence that he’s heard Steve at all. Steve’s smile softens and he steps forward to get in Tony’s path. It’s ridiculously adorable, really, the way Tony’s hair stands up like a sleepy mad scientist and the smudge of whatever-that-is high on his cheekbone. Tony blinks at Steve’s mouth a couple times—not suggestively, that’s just eye-level for Tony—before looking up to meet Steve’s eyes.

“Hey there, Shellhead,” Steve says. “All done saving your company?”

He means for it to be teasing, but Tony just stares back at him grimly.

“I started fucking up the vector calculations, Steve,” he says insistently. “JARVIS locked everything down? He said it was a protocol for when I’m mentally impaired, but this is just mutiny—I’m not done yet—”

“I’m sure you’re just tired,” Steve reassured him. “JARVIS will let you back in after you’ve eaten and slept a little. Right, JARVIS?”

“Of course, Captain.”

“The vectors,” Tony says again and—fuck, no, wait, those are actual tears in Tony’s eyes. Steve doesn’t know anything about vectors, but he knows that messing up the calculations is going to make Tony cry real tears in about four seconds. Steve is definitely not equipped to deal with this.

“Hey, whoa,” he says quietly. He reaches out and Tony melts into the hug, head in the crook of Steve’s neck and taking such deep breaths that Steve knows he’s crying for real now. “We’ll figure this out, okay?”

“Okay,” Tony says, his lips brushing right above Steve’s collarbone. Not that kind of situation, he tells his body firmly.

“You’re working yourself into the ground, you just need a little rest is all.”

Tony sways, even with Steve holding him, and Steve ushers him to the couch and sits him down before turning towards the kitchen.

“Steve?” Tony says, sounding slightly panicked over his backdrop of general stress.

“Shh,” Steve says, and briefly rests his hand on top of Tony’s head (even though his hair is admittedly disgusting). “Right back, okay?”

“Mm-hm,” Tony mumbles, so Steve gets a tupperware container full of leftover Hawaiian pizza and three bottles of purple Gatorade, and brings them back to where Tony’s sitting exactly as Steve left him.

“Pizza for breakfast?” Tony blinks at the container of still-cold pizza. (Steve swears he’s not being rude, this is how Tony insists he likes his leftover pizza.)

“It’s 3 PM,” Steve says.

“Pizza for breakfast,” Tony says again. “Wow, thanks.”

Steve hands him a Gatorade first, and then snuggles up to him on the couch. Pizza maybe isn’t the best choice of food right now, but Tony needs calories first and foremost—Steve doesn’t even want to know the last time he ate—and Steve can always get real food after Tony’s slept.

Steve gets Tony leaning against him and puts a hand in his boyfriend’s hair, combing out the knots and working out the clumps of what might be motor oil, even if it is a little gross. Tony picks a piece of pineapple off the pizza and pops it in his mouth after drinking half the first bottle of Gatorade. Steve really, really hopes he plans to eat more than just the pineapple, but he’s not going to press the issue right now.

“JARVIS, wanna start up whatever’s next on the list?” Steve asks a couple minutes later.

“My pleasure,” JARVIS says and, oh, right, they’re in the middle of the original Star Trek. Tony makes a happy humming sound next to him. They settle like that for almost half an hour before Tony speaks again, heavy and warm against Steve’s shoulder.
“M’sorry,” he says.

“Nope,” Steve says. “This isn’t one of those things you have to be sorry for. I’m happy to help.”

Tony’s quiet for another couple of minutes, and Steve thinks he’s definitely nodded off this time, his breathing deep and even, but he breaks the silence once more, sounding at least half asleep.

“Thanks, Winghead.”

“Anytime,” Steve says. He’s not sure if Tony hears him or not, but when he checks a few seconds later, Tony’s out like a light.

#stony #winterlysoldier #prompts #thank you for the prompt tho i love this

[ashafriesen]

Why Is Club Med Bali A Perfect Gift To Moms?

Club Med Bali

I think I have mentioned an umpteenth number of times that with our nuclear setup and hectic schedules, we are a millennial family that bond very well over a vacation when we leave our work aside and our baggages behind. That’s why you would see us holidaying more often. I tend to plan my holidays at the beginning of the year as per everyone’s schedule and sometimes it’s places to see, sometimes it’s the experience that we head out for.

However, travelling with kids of any age can be a task. If they are younger they are like attachments and if they are older then their interests vary. Mostly, on family holidays I end up feeling exhausted. But what if I share with you a holiday which takes me away from all this, gives me peace of mind(yes, big usp), me time and keeps everyone happy still? When I read about Club Med being all inclusive, I didn’t realise that the extent to which it can go beyond all stay, food, liquor and activities.(Yes all that is included!!!). It wasn’t only good for me but sharing why my Club Med Bali experience is what you will love as well;

First and foremost, they are super kid-friendly no matter what the age and this puts you at ease almost instantaneously.

If you a new parent. Unlike every other holiday you might have been to, your baby packing would have exceeded your own. Here at Club Med, they have something called the Baby Welcome Kit, which has everything you need from baby cot, to baby bath, bottle warmer, potty and collection of baby bath products. Over and above that you get your very own Bugaboo stroller which is all yours during the stay. You can even order homemade baby food. You can even head for some peace by asking for an expert baby-sitter. Have I mentioned they are trained in early childhood? You realise how much of a relief this is? I remember my travel to Goa when the little one was just 6 months and all I remember doing was feeding, cleaning and putting my baby to sleep. Wondering why didn’t I discover this place sooner.

pic credit- The Bugaboo Stroller for Babies

Parent to a toddler or preschooler? There is a kid’s club with a whole list of activities. You can enroll the kids and they are kept busy by the G.O.(Gentle officer) who are trained in early childhood education through the day. You might wonder what to do with all that free time?

Mini kit for kids

Kids club

Have teens or pre teens? Now since I am a mom to a teen, I know how difficult it is to keep them interested or engaged or even drag them away from their devices. However, There is trapeze, wind surfing, kayaking, water polo, soccer bump, kite crafting, kite flying, time quest, family yoga session, tennis, archery, swimming, local cooking class and the list is endless. They also have a seperate kid’s club section dedicated to them and activities for teens.

Soccer bump

Archery

Amazing amount of me-time– if your kids are taken care of, you are off the hook to enjoy that glass of sangria in peace looking at the sunset, go for that soulful yoga class or relax with spa. Have I already tempted you enough?

When a Bubble party brings out the kid in me

Couple time– You can relax together, head to the night party once the kids are carefully tucked in. I don’t think couples get to party together properly after kids. There is always sleep cycle to be taken care of or there would be cranky kids. While I was travelling alone for this trip, I could clearly see possibilities.

They have an after party every night!!

This could be a perfect mom’s gang getaway with or without kids. While the pool, spa, party scene, beach, Bali and all the fun makes it a great girly vacation, if you don’t have an option to leave your little one behind then guess what, this makes that work too. Just sign them into the kids club, bond with them on some family activities which the club plans and once they are tired and sleepy, hit the floor hard with your girl gang ;).

I did manage to party. Do you realise how rare it is for a mom?

Of course, I was posing for this one but this does define my mental state there.

Did I mention that they have Indian food too?

Bali is one of those laid vacations where families can explore culture and still have a lot of time on hand to kill and that makes this a great choice.

With 80 Club Med resorts, spread across Europe, Asia, Africa, America or the Caribbean you are spoilt for choice when it comes to destinations.

Have you started packing your bags, yet?

Here is a travelogue to cue you in.

  The post Why Is Club Med Bali A Perfect Gift To Moms? appeared first on Maa of All Blogs.

Why Is Club Med Bali A Perfect Gift To Moms? published first on https://parentcenternetwork.tumblr.com/

[jessette20]

Brand Loyalty: The Secret Behind Razer's 10 Million+ Followers

What would you give to have an audience of over 8 million Facebook fans, 3 million Twitter followers, 2 million Instagram followers and customers all around the world? Brands dream of building a massive following, but few ever succeed.

So when a company is able to build brand loyalty and a community of raving fans who engage on social media, show up to live events and recommend products, it’s pretty impressive. One brand that has done this all extremely well, is Razer.

Razer sells hardware for gamers. Whether it’s a controller, keyboards or even a phone, Razer has become the go-to source for gamers looking for new gear.

But their success didn’t happen overnight.

It took over a decade for Razer to establish brand loyalty and build a community of people that not only are willing to buy their products, but become bonafide “fanboys” for the company.

Love @Razer Naga MMO mouse for everything.

— Andrew Wall (@AwallDigital) May 29, 2018

@Razer Help, my cat loves your products. Spade is also a very sleepy boy. #razer #CatsOfTwitter #Cat pic.twitter.com/VtBBbWdc8D

— KittyToLitty (@KittyToLitty) May 25, 2018

In this post, we’re going to do a deep dive into how Razer created so much brand loyalty in such a competitive industry. Plus we’ll take a look at how they’ve successfully used social media to engage with their audience and grow the business.

What is Brand Loyalty?

Brand loyalty is when people have a strong affinity toward a particular brand. Brand loyalists are repeat buyers of a specific brand and will consistently buy from them over competitors.

The idea behind brand loyalty is to keep people coming back and to increase the life time value (LTV) of every customer. Companies build brand loyalty through a variety of tactics, including:

Rewards and loyalty programs

Providing great customer service

Offering affiliate programs

Customer marketing

In the simplest terms, brand loyalty comes down to your ability to consistently meet the needs of your customers. If you become a trusted resource for the products they buy, they’ll come back to you every time they’re in need of what you sell.

Brand Loyalty Examples

Before we dive into the specifics of Razer’s brand loyalty, let’s take a look at some examples from other companies as well.

Apple

The brand loyalty people have toward Apple is well documented. People wait in line for hours, sometimes days in order to get their hands on the latest iPhone. Some have even had the iconic logo tattooed on their body. One survey even found 59% of iPhone users buy their devices out of “blind loyalty.”

Essentially, these brand loyalists buy Apple products solely because it’s a new Apple product.

So you probably see how beneficial brand loyalty can be. The ability to get people to buy your product without even considering alternatives means quicker sales and fewer lost opportunities.

but guess what ?….. we’re still using Apple https://t.co/BP7dumPgtn

— #LoveFromJand 🇳🇬 (@jesuisjoy_xo) May 18, 2018

Chipotle

People love Chipotle so much they were willing to eat it during an E. coli scare. Now that’s brand loyalty.

And who can forget this viral video of a kid professing his love for the Mexican grill chain?

Aside from making delicious food, Chipotle does quite a few things to win over the stomach’s of hungry people.

For one, they’re very transparent about their ingredient sourcing, business practices, sustainability and more. With people more concerned about animal cruelty and food quality than ever before, Chipotle’s choice to be open and honest about what’s going into the food they serve puts customers at ease.

When you consider the fact that many other restaurants aren’t so transparent about where their food comes from, it makes a compelling case for people to choose Chipotle over the alternatives.

Chipotle also does plenty more like offer discounts to teachers, medical staff and other promotions that make customers feel appreciated and coming back for more.

Zappos

Zappos has earned a stellar reputation for their amazing customer service over the years. So it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that customers are loyal to them over other shoe retailers.

Yeah I order a lot on Amazon but for shoes I am pretty loyal to Zappos. Fast shipping, free returns, amazing customer svc.

— Kimberly Ratliff (@kimberlyratliff) April 13, 2018

Just how loyal are their customers?

Well, an old report showed that 75% of Zappos purchases are from return customers. And 44% of new customers heard about the company through word of mouth. You don’t achieve numbers like that without going above and beyond for your customers.

For example, there’s one story of a customer who needed to return shoes to Zappos but didn’t have time because her mother had recently passed away. After finding out what happened, Zappos paid to have a courier come pick the shoes up and do the return at no extra cost. But it didn’t stop there. Zappos also sent a basket arrangement to the customer to pay condolences for her loss.

That small gesture likely resulted in a lifelong customer, who went on to tell friends and family about her great experience with Zappos.

Our data showed that 75% of people are likely to share a good brand interaction on social media.

That data is more than proven when you take a look at the conversations going on about Zappos on Twitter:

@Zappos customer service is the best ❤️

— Kayla Josefiak (@kayla_jo20) May 25, 2018

In order to further solidify their excellent customer service and grow brand loyalty, Zappos takes the time to respond to their compliments on social media as well.

Oh stop, you're making me blush. *AU pic.twitter.com/fLdPpiLcrx

— Zappos.com (@Zappos) May 25, 2018

Providing excellent service is a simple and very effective way to improve brand loyalty. So the next time you have a customer interaction, keep in mind it could have a long term impact.

Those are just three examples of brands with loyal customers. Next, let’s do a deep dive into the main subject of this piece, Razer.

The Secret Behind Razer’s Booming Brand Loyalty

Ok, so let’s talk about Razer’s brand loyalty. They have customers around the globe, and brand enthusiasts that engage on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Twitch and their Razer Insiders forum.

Not to mention their in-person events draw huge crowds.

What’s more, Razer’s audience is growing at a rapid pace. On Instagram alone, they’re averaging 3-5K new followers every day.

Stacking them up against a competitor, Corsair, we an see just how amazing their engagement numbers are by comparison.

Perhaps most important of all, their brand sentiment is very positive on social media.

Looking at numbers is cool, but the question you’re all wondering is, how are they doing it?

What makes people flock to Razer over competitors? How does Razer average over 100K engagements per Instagram post? Here are some tips on how to build brand loyalty like Razer:

Find Your Niche

Razer makes it crystal clear who their products are for. They’re not marketing to college students looking for a school laptop or people that just want a computer to browse Facebook. They make products for gamers, period.

One of the key elements of earning brand loyalists is a shared belief. Razer’s community loves Razer products, but they’re even more attached to gaming. By branding itself as the company for gamers by gamers, there’s an instant connection to their target audience. They feel that Razer “gets them.”

Using our Listening tools, we took a look at the top hashtags people use when Tweeting about Razer (we excluded Tweets from Razer’s own Twitter handles):

Gaming is a common theme, which shows Razer has nailed their target audience.

Think about your brand. Who’s your target audience? Is it clear that the products you provide appeal to a specific customer?

If you want to build brand loyalty and build a community like Razer, you need to find the common thread that connects your audience. It can’t just be something they kind of enjoy. It has to be something they’re passionate about.

Speak Directly to Your Audience

In addition to deciding their niche, Razer also has an in-depth knowledge of their audience. You can see it first and foremost through their products, which are constantly ranked at the top of lists for best gaming products.

Beyond the products they make, Razer’s knowledge of their audience and industry is also evident in the way they speak to their followers on social media.

You don’t create Facebook posts like that unless you know your audience. With pretty much every social media post, ad or other content Razer puts out, they speak directly to their core of gamers.

The average person might not understand some of their references, but Razer’s perfectly ok with that because the people they want to reach get it.

Bring Influencers Into Your Community

Want to know how to boost the credibility of your brand and community? Team up with people your target audience is already familiar with. That’s one of the tactics Razer used to grow its e-sports team, Team Razer.

Team Razer is made up of a group of established e-sports teams. It’s a win-win situation for all parties. Razer gets more credibility in the e-sports world by aligning themselves with teams that already have a respected reputation. For instance, Razer recently announced two new teams joined Team Razer: the Immortals who have over 130K Twitter followers, and the Los Angeles Valiant with over 70K.

The announcement Tweets from these teams alone generated a ton of engagement:

BIG NEWS: We're excited to welcome @Razer to the #IMTeam as our new peripheral and smartphone partner. These 📱 and ⌨️ are 🔥 https://t.co/m55Dg3I4qr pic.twitter.com/AkmKEZb4dx

— Immortals (@Immortals) May 17, 2018

BIG NEWS: We're excited to welcome @Razer to the #VALLA family as our new peripheral partner. Not going to be a hard decision to equip this Legendary drop. 👌 ⌨️ https://t.co/bp2M6tqqWY pic.twitter.com/ZI75m2eIwr

— Los Angeles Valiant 👼 (@LAValiant) May 17, 2018

The people who follow these e-sports teams are also gamers. If they weren’t using Razer products before, they’re probably much more likely to now that the teams they follow are endorsing them. In fact, one study found 70% of millennials are influenced by peer recommendations to buy products.

Team Razer players and ambassadors also Tweet about the brand, which gives them added exposure. In a world where organic reach is on the decline, getting other people to Tweet about your brand significantly amplifies your reach.

On est présent derrière la @Team_Vitality @TeamRazer pour la final LOL à la @DreamHackFR #DHOpen #DHFR18 #TeamRazer pic.twitter.com/PB1bTjpr1B

— Maxime Guilloizeau (@Tamao_41) May 21, 2018

The partnerships don’t just benefit Razer though. The players receive financial backing, exposure and free products.

The concept of using influencers or celebrities to build brand loyalty isn’t a new concept. In fact, Twitter itself blew up from celebrities like Ashton Kutcher using it to speak to their audience.

You can do it too by finding influencers that have clout with your target audience. Don’t just look at follower count. Make sure they align with your brand and the partnership makes sense for everyone. Check out this guide to learn more about finding the right influencers for your brand.

Be Open With Your Community

It’s hard to be loyal to a brand you don’t trust. Transparency is key for establishing brand loyalty.

Back in 2013, Razer had an incident that’s a nightmare for every retailer. A coupon code that allowed customers to get 90% off their orders somehow got spread across the internet. The coupon code was clearly released by mistake, but Razer didn’t realize it until thousands of orders had been placed.

At that point, most companies would have likely just canceled all the orders since it was an error. Razer stuck to their brand values of putting the customer first and agreed to honor the coupon.

The loss obviously hurt their bottom line, but their decision to honor the discount earned them great PR and built a whole level of support and loyalty from their community.

While extreme cases like this are rare, the main takeaway is Razer was very transparent about what happened and what they’d do to fix the situation.

Had they been secretive and not faced the problem head on, the outcome could’ve been completely different. Instead of earning new customers and strengthening their brand loyalty, they could’ve just as easily gone out of business.

Another example of Razer stepping up and being open was in 2016. The brand had a bit of a social media fail when they sent a Tweet poking fun at Apple’s Macbook release. While some of Razer’s fans didn’t have a problem with the Tweet, they still issued an apology when they realized many people found the Tweet offensive.

We apologize for the SD reader joke. To those who were offended, it was intended as a lighthearted turn of phrase that missed the mark.

— R Λ Z Ξ R (@Razer) November 2, 2016

Razer was clear and honest about what their intentions were with the Tweet and acknowledged it was probably in poor taste. Their response was overall well-received and their community appreciated their transparency.

Good for you. The joke were childish. Even though some of the response were just as childish I like that you act older than 14.

— TomWolf (@TomWolf) November 2, 2016

The process of building your brand isn’t always going to be full of sunshine and rainbows. You’ll make mistakes that may upset your biggest fans. By being honest, up front and facing the issues head on, you can turn these issues into opportunities to strengthen and grow your brand loyalty like Razer.

Connect in Real Life

While most brands communicate with their audience online, there’s an entirely different experience when you meet up in person.

One of the best things Razer did was establish a presence at live events. Whether it’s expos, gaming tournaments or other in-person events, Razer shows up and engages with their audience.

When the company itself can’t make it out to tournaments and conventions, thanks to Team Razer they’re still able to be represented all across the world.

Make sure to cheer for @Team_Vitality!!! 🐝 They’re in the #LoLOpenTour Grand final here at @DreamHackFR!

#VforVictory #TeamRazer 🐍 pic.twitter.com/W0o8p8kZ8e

— Team RΛZΞR (@TeamRazer) May 21, 2018

Even though the company is based in San Francisco, sending Team Razer to various events has allowed them to take their brand global. Our Listening report showed that people are Tweeting about Razer from all around the world.

If your company can afford to attend events, sponsor meet ups for your community or do other things to gather your biggest advocates and brand evangelists in-person, it’s a wise move.

Give Back to Your Audience

In order to maintain and grow brand loyalty, you need to give back. Not only does it show your appreciation for your customers’ engagement and support, but it also incentivizes them to keep advocating for your brand.

When Razer hit 8 million fans on Facebook, they launched a Community Appreciation Giveaway. They spread the giveaway across multiple channels including Twitter, Instagram, Razer Insider, Reddit and more.

In addition to that massive giveaway, the company often teams up with other brands and partners on contests and giveaways.

Participate in our Razer Phone giveaway in partnership with @Razer to celebrate the Tekken Mobile x Razer event livestream! The winner will be revealed Thursday April 19th at 4PM PDT on @Twitch at https://t.co/V16bu7jcU9! Join now: https://t.co/9ecnCGBThm! pic.twitter.com/Yo8sMRRoCG

— Tekken Mobile (@TekkenMobile) April 11, 2018

GIVEAWAY ANNOUNCEMENT! Thanks to @razer I’ll be giving away a Razer Quartz SET to 1 lucky winner! 1 – Quartz Blackwidow Tournament Edition Keyboard 1 – Quartz Lancehead Tournament Edition Mouse 1 – Quartz Invicta Mouse Mat 1 – Quartz Kraken Pro V2 Headset 1 – Quartz Kitty Ears! pic.twitter.com/rOlFYx1EJL

— cυppcaaĸe (@WoWcuppcaake) May 22, 2018

Some brands use contests and giveaways to build up their social media following. But once they reach a number of followers they feel comfortable with, the freebies slow down or stop altogether.

Take Razer’s approach and give back to your community year-round so they feel appreciated and motivated to keep engaging.

How Razer Dominated Social Media

Social media plays a huge role in brand loyalty for Razer. You always hear horror stories of shrinking organic engagement on social media.

While it’s true that social networks have made it more difficult for brands to get content seen organically, Razer is proof that you don’t always have to rely on social media ads for engagement.

Their social media posts consistently receive hundreds, if not thousands of likes, comments and shares, because they’ve built a loyal fanbase that looks forward to hearing from them.

Let’s take a look at why Razer is dominating social, and how your brand can do the same.

Don’t Put All Your Eggs in One Social Media Basket

From our quick search, we found at least nine social media accounts owned by Razer on just Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

The profiles are separated by different pillars of the business. First, they have an official company profile for all the major networks, including Reddit. Then, they have separate profiles for their e-sports team, Team Razor.

Since Twitter is often a place people go for customer support, Razer created an official customer support Handle.

The last group of profiles we found are the official accounts for Razer’s physical store in San Francisco.

One of the biggest benefits of having multiple social profiles is it allows people to follow the accounts most relevant to them.

Just imagine if Razer tried to squeeze all the info for these separate parts of the business into a single profile on each network. It’d be much more difficult for their followers to get the info they actually care about.

For instance, someone who bought a laptop from Razer might be interested in following their customer support Twitter profile. But a person that only cares about the e-sports aspect of the company probably doesn’t want Tweets about scheduled maintenance in their timeline.

RazerID and https://t.co/4p5WLtzFmg will be undergoing a scheduled maintenance on Mar 25, 2018 7 PM PST to Mar 26, 2018 1 AM PST. During this time, you will be unable to login to any Razer software and services and websites will be unavailable. We apologize for the inconvenience.

— RΛZΞR Support (@RazerSupport) March 23, 2018

And a person in Wisconsin likely has very little interest in what’s going on at the Razer store in San Francisco.

Come on down to RazerStore to get your hands on one. Stocks will be running out soon, be one of the first to own the smallest 15.6" gaming laptop in the world.#RazerStoreSF https://t.co/BbWWFgfYsZ

— RazerStore @ SF (@RazerStore) May 22, 2018

Creating multiple social media profiles also makes Razer less reliant on any one platform. For instance, if they start to see a decrease in Facebook engagement, they still have Twitter and Instagram pages to keep their social presence active.

It also gives them the freedom to test different types of content on each social network. While a lot of brands simply repost the same post to every profile, Razer varies it up.

For instance, to promote the new Razer Blade product, they posted this to Twitter and Facebook.

But on Instagram, they used the carousel feature to show multiple pics of the new product.

It’s the gaming laptop you know and love—evolved. Learn more about the all-new 15.6” Razer Blade 🔗 Link in bio #razer #razerblade #gaming

A post shared by RΛZΞR (@razer) on May 22, 2018 at 12:29am PDT

If you take a look at the Tweet promoting the new product, you’ll also notice they use different copy than they did for the Instagram caption.

Ultra Fast. Ultra Small. Ultra Powerful. The next generation Razer Blade is here: https://t.co/RjA7rfQJAW

Game brilliantly on the new edge-to-edge 15.6’’ 144Hz Full HD display, powered by 8th Gen @intel Core processor and @NVIDIAGeForce GTX 10 Series graphics with Max-Q design. pic.twitter.com/JtdBaE7nVH

— R Λ Z Ξ R (@Razer) May 22, 2018

When you’re building brand loyalty, you need a great understanding of what works for your audience on each social network. The best way to get that data is with a social media analytics tool like Sprout Social. You can see detailed breakdowns of how your content performs on each platform, and even measure them up against each other.

If they were to notice their videos get more engagement than photos, their social team might be compelled to use video more by integrating Instagram Stories or Live.

Creating a strategy for all your profiles is a lot easier when you have data to show what works on each.

Go Where Your Audience Is

Keeping with the previous tip, when you’re trying to decide which social networks to engage on, think about where your audience is.

Had Razer pigeon-holed itself to the standard Facebook, Twitter and Instagram formula, they would’ve missed out on some big opportunities to connect with some of their most loyal customers on other networks.

For instance, Razer has its own Subreddit community. Reddit can be a difficult channel for brands to build momentum, but it has a huge community of dedicated gamers and people into e-sports, many of which have brand loyalty to Razer.

If your customers want to advocate for your brand on platforms besides Facebook and Twitter, consider establishing a presence on those channels. Beyond giving your community a place to talk, it’s also an opportunity to learn about what they want and need, as well as the issues they experience.

Razer also makes it easy for people to contact them by including a link to their customer support on their Subreddit page.

Additionally, Razer is on Twitch, which makes perfect sense given their industry and audience.

Find out where your loyal customers and target audience spends their time on social media, then jump on those platforms and engage. Not sure where to start? Take a look at our guide that details the demographics of all the major social networks.

Provide Next Level Social Customer Support

Part of building brand loyalty is making your audience feel heard. That’s why prioritizing social customer support is crucial. When you ignore your audience, >you risk losing brand loyalty and chasing customers off to competitors.

Since social media has become people’s top choice for customer support, it’s more important than ever for brands to be active and responsive on social.

Razer does an amazing job replying to customers on social media, Twitter in particular. As we mentioned earlier, Razer has a separate Twitter account for customer support. They even use the Twitter bio of the official company profile to point customers to the support handle for any questions.

Creating a separate Twitter handle for customer support keeps your main feed uncluttered, and makes it easier to manage customer issues.

Just having a customer support profile isn’t enough though. You need to respond quickly and actually help your customers. It’s called “support” for a reason. And Razer is quick to reply to people on Twitter. A quick glimpse of their replies shows their support team is pretty active.

Response time is crucial on social. Our data shows that customers expect a reply within four hours or less. Unfortunately, most brands have an average response time of 10 hours. Yikes!

Here are a few tips you can use to respond to customers quicker.

First and foremost, make sure you’re actively monitoring your response time and response rate. Sprout has two extremely helpful reports for this:

Engagement report

Team report

The engagement report shows your overall engagement rate and response time.

You also see the data broken by day and hour.

Taking this more granular look allows you to spot trends in when your social team might be lagging. For instance, in the screenshots above, it’s clear that something is going on Tuesdays and Wednesdays that’s causing a significant delay in response times. With that data, you start to dig into the cause.

That’s when our Team Report comes in handy.

The team report shows data on individuals on your team. This is ideal if your brand has multiple people in charge of managing your social profiles.

You see which team members take the longest to reply, or who’s ignoring the most messages.

One metric in this report that’s easy to overlook, but very important, is reply thread size. This measures the amount of back and forth your team members go through for each support issue.

Ideally, this number should be as small as possible.

Since Twitter and Facebook conversations are public, the goal of your replies should be to push the conversation to a private channel like a DM or email. That way you can get more details about their issue and avoid filling your social stream with long conversations.

Razer always tries to route support issues to DM, where they can follow up in detail.

Hi. Let's get this taken care of. Which version of Synapse are you currently using? Please send us a short video clip over DM so we can take a look at what happened. We'll take it from them.

— RΛZΞR Support (@RazerSupport) May 23, 2018

Another tip to keep in mind is to monitor your brand mentions. That doesn’t mean just when someone @ messages you on Twitter. You need to monitor any mention of your brand or products regardless of whether or not you were tagged.

Beyond missing out on customer service issues, you could also miss opportunities to engage with influencers.

For example, a lot of major publications talk about Razer on social, but don’t always @Mention them. If Razer only monitors @Mentions on Twitter, they’ll miss out on huge shoutouts like this one from Engadget.

Hands-on with the new Razer Blade and Razer Core X pic.twitter.com/mEPFaQT7Aq

— Engadget (@engadget) May 22, 2018

The Tweet has a ton of engagement and mentions Razer’s products, yet the brand failed to reply or engage. They may have missed the Tweet because they aren’t monitoring every mention of their brand name. Luckily, this is a simple fix.

One way is by using Twitter’s advance search operators.

That query shows Tweets that mention the exact phrase, “razer” but don’t tag the Razer handle.

While that’s a quick way to spot untagged mentions, the problem is it’s difficult to manage all the conversations. Plus, a company like Razer likely has multiple phrases they want to monitor. It’d be a pain to have to manually search every time.

With Sprout’s monitoring tools, you can save searches for specific brand keywords and queries.

Then you’ll see all the latest Tweets for specific phrases or hashtags. No more missed mentions!

Like we said earlier, overlooking questions or comments from customers is a quick way to ruin your brand loyalty. Make sure that you’re actively monitoring all mentions of your brand on social media.

Are Your Customers Loyal?

Brand loyalty doesn’t happen overnight. As we’ve seen with Razer, it can take years of putting out quality products, engaging with your audience and slowly building a community to get customers to see you as the go-to brand in your industry.

The benefits of brand loyalty are more than worth it though. Getting customers who fight for your brand as if it were there own is something you can’t put a price on. Take notes from some of Razer’s tactics and apply them to your brand, and eventually you’ll have an army of loyal advocates that consistently choose you over the competition.

This post Brand Loyalty: The Secret Behind Razer’s 10 Million+ Followers originally appeared on Sprout Social.

from http://bit.ly/2LlYXqg

#Social Media Marketing

[minnievirizarry]

Brand Loyalty: The Secret Behind Razer’s 10 Million+ Followers

What would you give to have an audience of over 8 million Facebook fans, 3 million Twitter followers, 2 million Instagram followers and customers all around the world? Brands dream of building a massive following, but few ever succeed.

So when a company is able to build brand loyalty and a community of raving fans who engage on social media, show up to live events and recommend products, it’s pretty impressive. One brand that has done this all extremely well, is Razer.

Razer sells hardware for gamers. Whether it’s a controller, keyboards or even a phone, Razer has become the go-to source for gamers looking for new gear.

But their success didn’t happen overnight.

It took over a decade for Razer to establish brand loyalty and build a community of people that not only are willing to buy their products, but become bonafide “fanboys” for the company.

Love @Razer Naga MMO mouse for everything.

— Andrew Wall (@AwallDigital) May 29, 2018

@Razer Help, my cat loves your products. Spade is also a very sleepy boy. #razer #CatsOfTwitter #Cat pic.twitter.com/VtBBbWdc8D

— KittyToLitty (@KittyToLitty) May 25, 2018

In this post, we’re going to do a deep dive into how Razer created so much brand loyalty in such a competitive industry. Plus we’ll take a look at how they’ve successfully used social media to engage with their audience and grow the business.

What is Brand Loyalty?

Brand loyalty is when people have a strong affinity toward a particular brand. Brand loyalists are repeat buyers of a specific brand and will consistently buy from them over competitors.

The idea behind brand loyalty is to keep people coming back and to increase the life time value (LTV) of every customer. Companies build brand loyalty through a variety of tactics, including:

Rewards and loyalty programs

Providing great customer service

Offering affiliate programs

Customer marketing

In the simplest terms, brand loyalty comes down to your ability to consistently meet the needs of your customers. If you become a trusted resource for the products they buy, they’ll come back to you every time they’re in need of what you sell.

Brand Loyalty Examples

Before we dive into the specifics of Razer’s brand loyalty, let’s take a look at some examples from other companies as well.

Apple

The brand loyalty people have toward Apple is well documented. People wait in line for hours, sometimes days in order to get their hands on the latest iPhone. Some have even had the iconic logo tattooed on their body. One survey even found 59% of iPhone users buy their devices out of “blind loyalty.”

Essentially, these brand loyalists buy Apple products solely because it’s a new Apple product.

So you probably see how beneficial brand loyalty can be. The ability to get people to buy your product without even considering alternatives means quicker sales and fewer lost opportunities.

but guess what ?….. we’re still using Apple https://t.co/BP7dumPgtn

— #LoveFromJand 🇳🇬 (@jesuisjoy_xo) May 18, 2018

Chipotle

People love Chipotle so much they were willing to eat it during an E. coli scare. Now that’s brand loyalty.

And who can forget this viral video of a kid professing his love for the Mexican grill chain?

Aside from making delicious food, Chipotle does quite a few things to win over the stomach’s of hungry people.

For one, they’re very transparent about their ingredient sourcing, business practices, sustainability and more. With people more concerned about animal cruelty and food quality than ever before, Chipotle’s choice to be open and honest about what’s going into the food they serve puts customers at ease.

When you consider the fact that many other restaurants aren’t so transparent about where their food comes from, it makes a compelling case for people to choose Chipotle over the alternatives.

Chipotle also does plenty more like offer discounts to teachers, medical staff and other promotions that make customers feel appreciated and coming back for more.

Zappos

Zappos has earned a stellar reputation for their amazing customer service over the years. So it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that customers are loyal to them over other shoe retailers.

Yeah I order a lot on Amazon but for shoes I am pretty loyal to Zappos. Fast shipping, free returns, amazing customer svc.

— Kimberly Ratliff (@kimberlyratliff) April 13, 2018

Just how loyal are their customers?

Well, an old report showed that 75% of Zappos purchases are from return customers. And 44% of new customers heard about the company through word of mouth. You don’t achieve numbers like that without going above and beyond for your customers.

For example, there’s one story of a customer who needed to return shoes to Zappos but didn’t have time because her mother had recently passed away. After finding out what happened, Zappos paid to have a courier come pick the shoes up and do the return at no extra cost. But it didn’t stop there. Zappos also sent a basket arrangement to the customer to pay condolences for her loss.

That small gesture likely resulted in a lifelong customer, who went on to tell friends and family about her great experience with Zappos.

Our data showed that 75% of people are likely to share a good brand interaction on social media.

That data is more than proven when you take a look at the conversations going on about Zappos on Twitter:

@Zappos customer service is the best ❤️

— Kayla Josefiak (@kayla_jo20) May 25, 2018

In order to further solidify their excellent customer service and grow brand loyalty, Zappos takes the time to respond to their compliments on social media as well.

Oh stop, you're making me blush. *AU pic.twitter.com/fLdPpiLcrx

— Zappos.com (@Zappos) May 25, 2018

Providing excellent service is a simple and very effective way to improve brand loyalty. So the next time you have a customer interaction, keep in mind it could have a long term impact.

Those are just three examples of brands with loyal customers. Next, let’s do a deep dive into the main subject of this piece, Razer.

The Secret Behind Razer’s Booming Brand Loyalty

Ok, so let’s talk about Razer’s brand loyalty. They have customers around the globe, and brand enthusiasts that engage on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Twitch and their Razer Insiders forum.

Not to mention their in-person events draw huge crowds.

What’s more, Razer’s audience is growing at a rapid pace. On Instagram alone, they’re averaging 3-5K new followers every day.

Stacking them up against a competitor, Corsair, we an see just how amazing their engagement numbers are by comparison.

Perhaps most important of all, their brand sentiment is very positive on social media.

Looking at numbers is cool, but the question you’re all wondering is, how are they doing it?

What makes people flock to Razer over competitors? How does Razer average over 100K engagements per Instagram post? Here are some tips on how to build brand loyalty like Razer:

Find Your Niche

Razer makes it crystal clear who their products are for. They’re not marketing to college students looking for a school laptop or people that just want a computer to browse Facebook. They make products for gamers, period.

One of the key elements of earning brand loyalists is a shared belief. Razer’s community loves Razer products, but they’re even more attached to gaming. By branding itself as the company for gamers by gamers, there’s an instant connection to their target audience. They feel that Razer “gets them.”

Using our Listening tools, we took a look at the top hashtags people use when Tweeting about Razer (we excluded Tweets from Razer’s own Twitter handles):

Gaming is a common theme, which shows Razer has nailed their target audience.

Think about your brand. Who’s your target audience? Is it clear that the products you provide appeal to a specific customer?

If you want to build brand loyalty and build a community like Razer, you need to find the common thread that connects your audience. It can’t just be something they kind of enjoy. It has to be something they’re passionate about.

Speak Directly to Your Audience

In addition to deciding their niche, Razer also has an in-depth knowledge of their audience. You can see it first and foremost through their products, which are constantly ranked at the top of lists for best gaming products.

Beyond the products they make, Razer’s knowledge of their audience and industry is also evident in the way they speak to their followers on social media.

You don’t create Facebook posts like that unless you know your audience. With pretty much every social media post, ad or other content Razer puts out, they speak directly to their core of gamers.

The average person might not understand some of their references, but Razer’s perfectly ok with that because the people they want to reach get it.

Bring Influencers Into Your Community

Want to know how to boost the credibility of your brand and community? Team up with people your target audience is already familiar with. That’s one of the tactics Razer used to grow its e-sports team, Team Razer.

Team Razer is made up of a group of established e-sports teams. It’s a win-win situation for all parties. Razer gets more credibility in the e-sports world by aligning themselves with teams that already have a respected reputation. For instance, Razer recently announced two new teams joined Team Razer: the Immortals who have over 130K Twitter followers, and the Los Angeles Valiant with over 70K.

The announcement Tweets from these teams alone generated a ton of engagement:

BIG NEWS: We're excited to welcome @Razer to the #IMTeam as our new peripheral and smartphone partner. These 📱 and ⌨️ are 🔥 https://t.co/m55Dg3I4qr pic.twitter.com/AkmKEZb4dx

— Immortals (@Immortals) May 17, 2018

BIG NEWS: We're excited to welcome @Razer to the #VALLA family as our new peripheral partner. Not going to be a hard decision to equip this Legendary drop. 👌 ⌨️ https://t.co/bp2M6tqqWY pic.twitter.com/ZI75m2eIwr

— Los Angeles Valiant 👼 (@LAValiant) May 17, 2018

The people who follow these e-sports teams are also gamers. If they weren’t using Razer products before, they’re probably much more likely to now that the teams they follow are endorsing them. In fact, one study found 70% of millennials are influenced by peer recommendations to buy products.

Team Razer players and ambassadors also Tweet about the brand, which gives them added exposure. In a world where organic reach is on the decline, getting other people to Tweet about your brand significantly amplifies your reach.

On est présent derrière la @Team_Vitality @TeamRazer pour la final LOL à la @DreamHackFR #DHOpen #DHFR18 #TeamRazer pic.twitter.com/PB1bTjpr1B

— Maxime Guilloizeau (@Tamao_41) May 21, 2018

The partnerships don’t just benefit Razer though. The players receive financial backing, exposure and free products.

The concept of using influencers or celebrities to build brand loyalty isn’t a new concept. In fact, Twitter itself blew up from celebrities like Ashton Kutcher using it to speak to their audience.

You can do it too by finding influencers that have clout with your target audience. Don’t just look at follower count. Make sure they align with your brand and the partnership makes sense for everyone. Check out this guide to learn more about finding the right influencers for your brand.

Be Open With Your Community

It’s hard to be loyal to a brand you don’t trust. Transparency is key for establishing brand loyalty.

Back in 2013, Razer had an incident that’s a nightmare for every retailer. A coupon code that allowed customers to get 90% off their orders somehow got spread across the internet. The coupon code was clearly released by mistake, but Razer didn’t realize it until thousands of orders had been placed.

At that point, most companies would have likely just canceled all the orders since it was an error. Razer stuck to their brand values of putting the customer first and agreed to honor the coupon.

The loss obviously hurt their bottom line, but their decision to honor the discount earned them great PR and built a whole level of support and loyalty from their community.

While extreme cases like this are rare, the main takeaway is Razer was very transparent about what happened and what they’d do to fix the situation.

Had they been secretive and not faced the problem head on, the outcome could’ve been completely different. Instead of earning new customers and strengthening their brand loyalty, they could’ve just as easily gone out of business.

Another example of Razer stepping up and being open was in 2016. The brand had a bit of a social media fail when they sent a Tweet poking fun at Apple’s Macbook release. While some of Razer’s fans didn’t have a problem with the Tweet, they still issued an apology when they realized many people found the Tweet offensive.

We apologize for the SD reader joke. To those who were offended, it was intended as a lighthearted turn of phrase that missed the mark.

— R Λ Z Ξ R (@Razer) November 2, 2016

Razer was clear and honest about what their intentions were with the Tweet and acknowledged it was probably in poor taste. Their response was overall well-received and their community appreciated their transparency.

Good for you. The joke were childish. Even though some of the response were just as childish I like that you act older than 14.

— TomWolf (@TomWolf) November 2, 2016

The process of building your brand isn’t always going to be full of sunshine and rainbows. You’ll make mistakes that may upset your biggest fans. By being honest, up front and facing the issues head on, you can turn these issues into opportunities to strengthen and grow your brand loyalty like Razer.

Connect in Real Life

While most brands communicate with their audience online, there’s an entirely different experience when you meet up in person.

One of the best things Razer did was establish a presence at live events. Whether it’s expos, gaming tournaments or other in-person events, Razer shows up and engages with their audience.

When the company itself can’t make it out to tournaments and conventions, thanks to Team Razer they’re still able to be represented all across the world.

Make sure to cheer for @Team_Vitality!!! 🐝 They’re in the #LoLOpenTour Grand final here at @DreamHackFR!

#VforVictory #TeamRazer 🐍 pic.twitter.com/W0o8p8kZ8e

— Team RΛZΞR (@TeamRazer) May 21, 2018

Even though the company is based in San Francisco, sending Team Razer to various events has allowed them to take their brand global. Our Listening report showed that people are Tweeting about Razer from all around the world.

If your company can afford to attend events, sponsor meet ups for your community or do other things to gather your biggest advocates and brand evangelists in-person, it’s a wise move.

Give Back to Your Audience

In order to maintain and grow brand loyalty, you need to give back. Not only does it show your appreciation for your customers’ engagement and support, but it also incentivizes them to keep advocating for your brand.

When Razer hit 8 million fans on Facebook, they launched a Community Appreciation Giveaway. They spread the giveaway across multiple channels including Twitter, Instagram, Razer Insider, Reddit and more.

In addition to that massive giveaway, the company often teams up with other brands and partners on contests and giveaways.

Participate in our Razer Phone giveaway in partnership with @Razer to celebrate the Tekken Mobile x Razer event livestream! The winner will be revealed Thursday April 19th at 4PM PDT on @Twitch at https://t.co/V16bu7jcU9! Join now: https://t.co/9ecnCGBThm! pic.twitter.com/Yo8sMRRoCG

— Tekken Mobile (@TekkenMobile) April 11, 2018

GIVEAWAY ANNOUNCEMENT! Thanks to @razer I’ll be giving away a Razer Quartz SET to 1 lucky winner! 1 – Quartz Blackwidow Tournament Edition Keyboard 1 – Quartz Lancehead Tournament Edition Mouse 1 – Quartz Invicta Mouse Mat 1 – Quartz Kraken Pro V2 Headset 1 – Quartz Kitty Ears! pic.twitter.com/rOlFYx1EJL

— cυppcaaĸe (@WoWcuppcaake) May 22, 2018

Some brands use contests and giveaways to build up their social media following. But once they reach a number of followers they feel comfortable with, the freebies slow down or stop altogether.

Take Razer’s approach and give back to your community year-round so they feel appreciated and motivated to keep engaging.

How Razer Dominated Social Media

Social media plays a huge role in brand loyalty for Razer. You always hear horror stories of shrinking organic engagement on social media.

While it’s true that social networks have made it more difficult for brands to get content seen organically, Razer is proof that you don’t always have to rely on social media ads for engagement.

Their social media posts consistently receive hundreds, if not thousands of likes, comments and shares, because they’ve built a loyal fanbase that looks forward to hearing from them.

Let’s take a look at why Razer is dominating social, and how your brand can do the same.

Don’t Put All Your Eggs in One Social Media Basket

From our quick search, we found at least nine social media accounts owned by Razer on just Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

The profiles are separated by different pillars of the business. First, they have an official company profile for all the major networks, including Reddit. Then, they have separate profiles for their e-sports team, Team Razor.

Since Twitter is often a place people go for customer support, Razer created an official customer support Handle.

The last group of profiles we found are the official accounts for Razer’s physical store in San Francisco.

One of the biggest benefits of having multiple social profiles is it allows people to follow the accounts most relevant to them.

Just imagine if Razer tried to squeeze all the info for these separate parts of the business into a single profile on each network. It’d be much more difficult for their followers to get the info they actually care about.

For instance, someone who bought a laptop from Razer might be interested in following their customer support Twitter profile. But a person that only cares about the e-sports aspect of the company probably doesn’t want Tweets about scheduled maintenance in their timeline.

RazerID and https://t.co/4p5WLtzFmg will be undergoing a scheduled maintenance on Mar 25, 2018 7 PM PST to Mar 26, 2018 1 AM PST. During this time, you will be unable to login to any Razer software and services and websites will be unavailable. We apologize for the inconvenience.

— RΛZΞR Support (@RazerSupport) March 23, 2018

And a person in Wisconsin likely has very little interest in what’s going on at the Razer store in San Francisco.

Come on down to RazerStore to get your hands on one. Stocks will be running out soon, be one of the first to own the smallest 15.6" gaming laptop in the world.#RazerStoreSF https://t.co/BbWWFgfYsZ

— RazerStore @ SF (@RazerStore) May 22, 2018

Creating multiple social media profiles also makes Razer less reliant on any one platform. For instance, if they start to see a decrease in Facebook engagement, they still have Twitter and Instagram pages to keep their social presence active.

It also gives them the freedom to test different types of content on each social network. While a lot of brands simply repost the same post to every profile, Razer varies it up.

For instance, to promote the new Razer Blade product, they posted this to Twitter and Facebook.

But on Instagram, they used the carousel feature to show multiple pics of the new product.

It’s the gaming laptop you know and love—evolved. Learn more about the all-new 15.6” Razer Blade 🔗 Link in bio #razer #razerblade #gaming

A post shared by RΛZΞR (@razer) on May 22, 2018 at 12:29am PDT

If you take a look at the Tweet promoting the new product, you’ll also notice they use different copy than they did for the Instagram caption.

Ultra Fast. Ultra Small. Ultra Powerful. The next generation Razer Blade is here: https://t.co/RjA7rfQJAW

Game brilliantly on the new edge-to-edge 15.6’’ 144Hz Full HD display, powered by 8th Gen @intel Core processor and @NVIDIAGeForce GTX 10 Series graphics with Max-Q design. pic.twitter.com/JtdBaE7nVH

— R Λ Z Ξ R (@Razer) May 22, 2018

When you’re building brand loyalty, you need a great understanding of what works for your audience on each social network. The best way to get that data is with a social media analytics tool like Sprout Social. You can see detailed breakdowns of how your content performs on each platform, and even measure them up against each other.

If they were to notice their videos get more engagement than photos, their social team might be compelled to use video more by integrating Instagram Stories or Live.

Creating a strategy for all your profiles is a lot easier when you have data to show what works on each.

Go Where Your Audience Is

Keeping with the previous tip, when you’re trying to decide which social networks to engage on, think about where your audience is.

Had Razer pigeon-holed itself to the standard Facebook, Twitter and Instagram formula, they would’ve missed out on some big opportunities to connect with some of their most loyal customers on other networks.

For instance, Razer has its own Subreddit community. Reddit can be a difficult channel for brands to build momentum, but it has a huge community of dedicated gamers and people into e-sports, many of which have brand loyalty to Razer.

If your customers want to advocate for your brand on platforms besides Facebook and Twitter, consider establishing a presence on those channels. Beyond giving your community a place to talk, it’s also an opportunity to learn about what they want and need, as well as the issues they experience.

Razer also makes it easy for people to contact them by including a link to their customer support on their Subreddit page.

Additionally, Razer is on Twitch, which makes perfect sense given their industry and audience.

Find out where your loyal customers and target audience spends their time on social media, then jump on those platforms and engage. Not sure where to start? Take a look at our guide that details the demographics of all the major social networks.

Provide Next Level Social Customer Support

Part of building brand loyalty is making your audience feel heard. That’s why prioritizing social customer support is crucial. When you ignore your audience, >you risk losing brand loyalty and chasing customers off to competitors.

Since social media has become people’s top choice for customer support, it’s more important than ever for brands to be active and responsive on social.

Razer does an amazing job replying to customers on social media, Twitter in particular. As we mentioned earlier, Razer has a separate Twitter account for customer support. They even use the Twitter bio of the official company profile to point customers to the support handle for any questions.

Creating a separate Twitter handle for customer support keeps your main feed uncluttered, and makes it easier to manage customer issues.

Just having a customer support profile isn’t enough though. You need to respond quickly and actually help your customers. It’s called “support” for a reason. And Razer is quick to reply to people on Twitter. A quick glimpse of their replies shows their support team is pretty active.

Response time is crucial on social. Our data shows that customers expect a reply within four hours or less. Unfortunately, most brands have an average response time of 10 hours. Yikes!

Here are a few tips you can use to respond to customers quicker.

First and foremost, make sure you’re actively monitoring your response time and response rate. Sprout has two extremely helpful reports for this:

Engagement report

Team report

The engagement report shows your overall engagement rate and response time.

You also see the data broken by day and hour.

Taking this more granular look allows you to spot trends in when your social team might be lagging. For instance, in the screenshots above, it’s clear that something is going on Tuesdays and Wednesdays that’s causing a significant delay in response times. With that data, you start to dig into the cause.

That’s when our Team Report comes in handy.

The team report shows data on individuals on your team. This is ideal if your brand has multiple people in charge of managing your social profiles.

You see which team members take the longest to reply, or who’s ignoring the most messages.

One metric in this report that’s easy to overlook, but very important, is reply thread size. This measures the amount of back and forth your team members go through for each support issue.

Ideally, this number should be as small as possible.

Since Twitter and Facebook conversations are public, the goal of your replies should be to push the conversation to a private channel like a DM or email. That way you can get more details about their issue and avoid filling your social stream with long conversations.

Razer always tries to route support issues to DM, where they can follow up in detail.

Hi. Let's get this taken care of. Which version of Synapse are you currently using? Please send us a short video clip over DM so we can take a look at what happened. We'll take it from them.

— RΛZΞR Support (@RazerSupport) May 23, 2018

Another tip to keep in mind is to monitor your brand mentions. That doesn’t mean just when someone @ messages you on Twitter. You need to monitor any mention of your brand or products regardless of whether or not you were tagged.

Beyond missing out on customer service issues, you could also miss opportunities to engage with influencers.

For example, a lot of major publications talk about Razer on social, but don’t always @Mention them. If Razer only monitors @Mentions on Twitter, they’ll miss out on huge shoutouts like this one from Engadget.

Hands-on with the new Razer Blade and Razer Core X pic.twitter.com/mEPFaQT7Aq

— Engadget (@engadget) May 22, 2018

The Tweet has a ton of engagement and mentions Razer’s products, yet the brand failed to reply or engage. They may have missed the Tweet because they aren’t monitoring every mention of their brand name. Luckily, this is a simple fix.

One way is by using Twitter’s advance search operators.

That query shows Tweets that mention the exact phrase, “razer” but don’t tag the Razer handle.

While that’s a quick way to spot untagged mentions, the problem is it’s difficult to manage all the conversations. Plus, a company like Razer likely has multiple phrases they want to monitor. It’d be a pain to have to manually search every time.

With Sprout’s monitoring tools, you can save searches for specific brand keywords and queries.

Then you’ll see all the latest Tweets for specific phrases or hashtags. No more missed mentions!

Like we said earlier, overlooking questions or comments from customers is a quick way to ruin your brand loyalty. Make sure that you’re actively monitoring all mentions of your brand on social media.

Are Your Customers Loyal?

Brand loyalty doesn’t happen overnight. As we’ve seen with Razer, it can take years of putting out quality products, engaging with your audience and slowly building a community to get customers to see you as the go-to brand in your industry.

The benefits of brand loyalty are more than worth it though. Getting customers who fight for your brand as if it were there own is something you can’t put a price on. Take notes from some of Razer’s tactics and apply them to your brand, and eventually you’ll have an army of loyal advocates that consistently choose you over the competition.

This post Brand Loyalty: The Secret Behind Razer’s 10 Million+ Followers originally appeared on Sprout Social.

from SM Tips By Minnie https://sproutsocial.com/insights/brand-loyalty/

[kidsviral-blog]

How To Fill In, Shape, Tweeze, Trim, And Transform Your Eyebrows

New Post has been published on https://kidsviral.info/how-to-fill-in-shape-tweeze-trim-and-transform-your-eyebrows/

How To Fill In, Shape, Tweeze, Trim, And Transform Your Eyebrows

Brow down.

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Lauren Zaser for BuzzFeed Life / Via Jenny Chang for BuzzFeed Design

2. Joey Healy is one of the foremost eyebrow specialists in New York. He knows that eyebrows are not “one size fits all.”

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Lauren Zaser for BuzzFeed Photo

Healy’s been transforming brows unique to each person for years. Here, he shares his best tips for making over your eyebrows depending on what state your eyebrows are in currently (over-tweezed, sparse, thick, unruly, asymmetrical, etc.).

3. Here are the tools he used:

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Lauren Zaser for BuzzFeed Life / Via Jenny Chang for BuzzFeed Design

1. Eyebrow Powder, for filling in thin or patchy spots. 2. Eyebrow Brush (with one angled powder brush and one spoolie brush), for applying powder and combing through hairs. 3. Eyebrow Scissors, for trimming long hairs 4. Tweezer, for tweezing stray hairs. 5. Eyebrow pencils (with a spoolie brush on the end), for correcting the shape of your brows and then filling them in. 6. Eyebrow serum, for growth. 7. Eyebrow highlighter, for underneath the arch of your eyebrow. 8. Clear eyebrow gel, for keeping your eyebrow hairs in place once you’ve groomed them. Not pictured: Eyebrow razor, or a dermaplaning tool, used for getting rid of extra hair on the face around the eyebrows.

4. First, use a tweezer (or an eyebrow pencil) and line it up against your face to map out where your eyebrow should begin and end on your face.

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Lauren Zaser for BuzzFeed Life / Via Jenny Chang for BuzzFeed Design

Step 1: Hold the tweezer vertically from the outermost part of your nostril straight up to your eyebrow. The place where the tweezer hits is where the head (or innermost part) of your eyebrow should begin. Step 2: Hold the tweezer horizontally at the top of each brow to make sure they’re at the same height. If they don’t match up, you can fill in the lower eyebrow to match the higher one. Step 3: Hold the tweezer diagonally from the outermost part of your nostril to the outermost part of your eye. Where the tweezer extends past your eye is where the tail (or outermost part) of your eyebrow should end.

5. For thinner eyebrows, follow these guidelines for filling in with a pencil. If you prefer to use an eyebrow brush and powder, the same guidelines apply.

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Lauren Zaser for BuzzFeed Life / Via Jenny Chang for BuzzFeed Design

Step 1: Using a pencil that is about one shade lighter than your natural eyebrow color, gently fill in the head of your eyebrow (at the head spot you found while mapping out your eyebrows). Use light, short strokes to mimic your natural eyebrow hairs. Step 2: Moving past the head, begin gently filling in the body of your eyebrow. This part is typically the most dense, so focus on just filling in sparse areas with pencil so you don’t overdraw. Step 3: Fill in the tail of your eyebrows and extend out past the outermost corner of your eye (to tail spot you found while mapping out your eyebrows). Step 4: Use a spoolie brush to brush through both eyebrows. This will blend in the pencil with your hairs to everything look uniform and natural. Step 5: Smile! Your eyebrows look great.

If your eyebrows are thin or sparse, you can apply a daily eyebrow serum to help them grow.

6. And for thick eyebrows, focus on grooming hairs around your natural brow.

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Lauren Zaser for BuzzFeed Life / Via Jenny Chang for BuzzFeed Design

Step 1: Tweeze below your natural brow by plucking out hairs, moving against the grain. Step 2: Tweeze above your brow to remove any thick, stray hairs above your arch. Step 3: If you need to, use an eyebrow razor from the side of your hairline to just above the top of your eyebrow to remove any thin, excess hair on your temples. Step 4: If you need to, use the eyebrow razor from the top of your forehead to above the head of your eyebrow, removing excess facial hair on your forehead.

To keep thick eyebrows in place all day, you can use a clear eyebrow gel.

7. Now, for the specifics. The eyebrow type you have will determine your grooming details.

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Lauren Zaser for BuzzFeed Life / Via Jenny Chang for BuzzFeed Design

Once you determine your eyebrow shape, follow the tips for your brows below.

8. For over-tweezed eyebrows: Focus on filling in sparse areas and getting rid of stray hairs.

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Lauren Zaser for BuzzFeed Photo / Via Jenny Chang for BuzzFeed Design

Tools You’ll Need: – Tweezer – Eyebrow Pencil – Duo Eyebrow Brush

Joey explained that to make over-tweezed eyebrows symmetrical, it’s all about addition and subtraction: Add to the sparse areas (the tail and the head) with a brow pencil and subtract the stray hairs (under the brow bone) with a tweezer. “Sometimes, eyebrows can look like Hawaii when they should actually like California,” he said. Once the brows were filled in with pencil, he combed through them with the spoolie brush to blend everything together and make them look natural.

9. The result:

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Lauren Zaser / Via BuzzFeed Life

“I didn’t touch my eyebrows for a couple weeks before this. The difference seems dramatic but I like them. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to fill in my eyebrows every day the way that Joey did (I’m lazy and also am pretty sure I’d mess it up if I was sleepy in the morning) but I’m definitely going to experiment more with it,” said Chelsea (above).

10. For those with a smaller forehead: Focus on maximizing the space between your eyebrows and your hairline.

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Lauren Zaser for BuzzFeed Life / Via Jenny Chang for BuzzFeed Design

Tools You’ll Need: – Tweezer – Eyebrow razor – Eyebrow brush and powder

Joey tweezed above her eyebrows to maximize the space between her eyebrow and her hairline, which made her small forehead appear larger and opened up her face. Her eyebrows were thicker at the head and thinner at the tail, so Joey filled in her tails with powder and a brush to balance out the proportions.

11. The result:

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Lauren Zaser / Via BuzzFeed Life

“I used to get my eyebrows waxed every couple weeks, but in the past few years I’ve taken to tweezing and maintaining them myself. It was good to see how much and where Joey filled them in, because I always just kind of wing it. And it was surprising to hear that he wanted to ‘maximize my forehead’ by tweezing above my brows because I didn’t even know that was a thing (though I DID know I have a tiny little forehead),” said Arianna (above).

12. For patchy eyebrows: Focus on uniform density.

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Lauren Zaser for BuzzFeed Life / Via Jenny Chang for BuzzFeed Design

Tools You’ll Need: – Tweezer – Eyebrow brush – Powder

Eyebrows don’t always grow in with the same thickness throughout. Joey first tweezed stray hairs around the main brow shape. He then suggested focusing on where the brows were naturally the most dense (in this case, at the center), then filling in the patchy parts (the head and the tail) with powder and a brush so the entire eyebrow was consistently thick.

13. The result:

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Lauren Zaser / Via BuzzFeed Life

“I’ve never gotten my eyebrows done before. The results to me don’t look drastic — it’s pretty subtle small changes. As someone who doesn’t wear makeup or put a lot of thought into how my eyebrows look, it was fun to take time to indulge that side of myself that I rarely pay attention to,” said Cates (above).

14. For eyebrows that are already thick: Focus on cleaning up around the brow itself.

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Lauren Zaser for BuzzFeed Photo / Via Jenny Chang for BuzzFeed Design

Tools You’ll Need: – Tweezer – Eyebrow razor

Joey groomed around Heben’s brows (above) to keep her them the main focal point of her face. He used a eyebrow razor above her brow to take away any baby hairs on her forehead, then used a tweezer to remove other stray hairs along her temple and above the arch of her brow.

15. The result:

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Lauren Zaser / Via BuzzFeed Life

“Joey mostly focused on creating a crisp, clean look. He respected the thickness of my brows (now that thick brows are ‘in’ because of white girls like Cara Delevingne *insert brown girl eye-roll here*) and worked with their natural arch to create a better look,” said Heben.

16. For eyebrows with no arch: Focus on using a highlighter and a pencil to create the appearance of an arch.

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Lauren Zaser for BuzzFeed Life / Via Jenny Chang for BuzzFeed Design

Tools You’ll Need: – Eyebrow powder – Eyebrow brush – Eyebrow highlighter – Tweezer

To accentuate the arch, Joey tweezed on an angle above Conz’s eyebrows (above), leaving the hairs at the highest point of her arch and tweezing diagonally down from the arch to the tail. Next, he used powder and a brush to make the arch more dense. Then he applied a dot of highlighter just under the arch and blended it into the skin. This drew up the eye and made it appear more open.

17. The result:

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Lauren Zaser / Via BuzzFeed Life

“I noticed that my eyebrows are popping out more and, in a weird way as a result, I see my face differently. They are darker and more visible than usual. I loved that he put some highlighter — is that what you even call it? — under my eyebrow to make it pop a little bit more. I love my eyebrows, I wanna show them off. I also love that the make over is so subtle that people are like, ‘You look soooo good, but your eyebrows look the same.’ It’s like, they are still my eyebrows but improved in a way that just makes my over all look better,” said Conz.

18. For unruly eyebrows: Focus on trimming really long hairs and tweezing underneath the head and the tail of the eyebrow.

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Lauren Zaser for BuzzFeed Life / Via Jenny Chang for BuzzFeed Design

Tools You’ll Need: – Eyebrow scissors – Tweezers – Eyebrow brush

Joey wanted to make Tanner’s eyebrows (above) symmetrical and get rid of any “crazy or messy” hairs along the way. “Men’s eyebrows don’t need to be overly groomed,” Joey said. Joey brushed Tanner’s eyebrows up with the spoolie end of the eyebrow brush. He focused on trimming excessively long hairs so Tanner’s eyebrows wouldn’t look unkempt. To open up the eye, he tweezed hairs that were under the head of the eyebrow, plus any stray hairs along the temple.

19. The result:

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Lauren Zaser / Via BuzzFeed Life

“This is the first time I’ve ever gotten my eyebrows done, and probably the last, ‘cause I’m incredibly lazy. That said, my eyebrows look bangin’ as hell right now. It’s pretty subtle. Joey said he didn’t want it to look like I had my eyebrows done, so they mostly just look much sharper and neater than before,” said Tanner.

20. For thick eyebrows that have “sprouts” at the head: Focus on filling in the head and cleaning up the tail.

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Lauren Zaser for BuzzFeed Life / Via Jenny Chang for BuzzFeed Design

Tools You’ll Need: – Tweezer – Eyebrow powder – Eyebrow brush

Mallory’s eyebrows (above) had “sprouts,” or very light, thin hairs at the head, and a more dense look at the center. Joey filled in her sparse areas for a bolder look overall. He tweezed any hairs beneath the tail of her brow for a cleaner look.

21. The result:

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Lauren Zaser / Via BuzzFeed Life

“Sometimes I pluck my brows, but normally I just attack them with little nail scissors, getting as close as I can to the root. Yeah…probably not the most effective way to groom them and definitely not as effective (obviously) as what Joey does! I think they look great and I’ll definitely try to put my newfound brow knowledge to good use, especially when it comes to filling in the outer portions of my eyebrows where the hair thins out,” Mallory said.

22. For round eyebrows: Focus on using a pencil to create an arch further away from the center of the eyebrow.

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Lauren Zaser for BuzzFeed Life / Via Jenny Chang for BuzzFeed Design

Tools You’ll Need: – Tweezer – Eyebrow pencil

Erin’s eyebrows (above) had an arch directly in their center, so Joey worked to move the arch over, which elongated her brow and opened up her eyes. He first tweezed stray hairs from underneath Erin’s eyebrows, then he used a light pencil to create an arch two-thirds of the way from the head of the brow. He filled in the rest of the brow with pencil to blend it all together.

23. The result:

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Lauren Zaser / Via BuzzFeed Life

“I gave Joey my pure, feathery, unplucked brows for this project and he handed me back twin masterpieces. One notable difference: My eyebrows didn’t look as ‘perfect’ as they do after threading but they looked more natural and full. You know, the Maybe-She’s-Born-With-It mystique,” said Erin.

24. All hail the brow master Joey Healy.

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Lauren Zaser / Via BuzzFeed Life

Eyebrow Expert: Joey Healy Makeup Artist: Maria Atubiga for Black Opal Models: Cates Holderness Chelsea Marshall Conz Preti Erin Chack Heben Nigatu Mallory McInnis Tanner Ringerud Arianna Rebolini

Read more: http://www.buzzfeed.com/augustafalletta/how-to-fill-in-shape-tweeze-trim-and-transform-your-eyebrows

[zanystarlightcreator-blog]

How consider A Songtaew In Chiang Mai, Thailand

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