10 Reasons You Should Love Blogging
- 15 Oct, 2018
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Blog posts are a great way to get recognised within your community and share your voice. Here are the top 10 reasons you should love writing blog posts.
Anyone can make one:
For better or worse, anyone can write a blog post about anything they want. Everyone has a voice and the best voices will rise to the top.
The writer can show their personality:
In blog posts, the writer has more leeway to add in their voice and personality than other types of writing.
Blogs are a great form of mass communication:
You can help people, learn new things, entertain your audience— the possibilities are endless and amazing. Blogging opens up all of these to a very wide audience.
You can make money:
Get the right blog going and you can make a lot of money through advertising and sponsored posts.
It allows people to craft better thoughts:
Instead of reading haphazard, uneducated Facebook statuses, it’s much better to see people’s thought process in a well-written blog post.
You can establish a community:
Blogging allows you to connect with other individuals who share the same interests. Sharing ideas and opinions within your community helps establish yourself as a thought leader.
Good for SEO:
Keeping content on your site fresh and relevant, you can use your blog to boost the search engine ranking (SEO) of your site and your business.
It brings people back to your site:
If your blog is strong enough and updated regularly, people will come back looking for more and bring traffic back to your site as well.
It’s free:
It costs you a grand total of zero dollars to post to the blog, so if you have something to say, there’s nothing to stop you.
You can establish yourself as a thought leader:
A blog is a great place for your original thoughts, and it can be a wonderful way to show off your individuality. If people like your ideas, you can become a thought leader in your industry!
What else do you love about blogs? Let me know!
For better or worse, anyone can write a blog post about anything they want. Everyone has a voice and the best voices will rise to the top.
The writer can show their personality:
In blog posts, the writer has more leeway to add in their voice and personality than other types of writing.
Blogs are a great form of mass communication:
You can help people, learn new things, entertain your audience— the possibilities are endless and amazing. Blogging opens up all of these to a very wide audience.
You can make money:
Get the right blog going and you can make a lot of money through advertising and sponsored posts.
It allows people to craft better thoughts:
Instead of reading haphazard, uneducated Facebook statuses, it’s much better to see people’s thought process in a well-written blog post.
You can establish a community:
Blogging allows you to connect with other individuals who share the same interests. Sharing ideas and opinions within your community helps establish yourself as a thought leader.
Good for SEO:
Keeping content on your site fresh and relevant, you can use your blog to boost the search engine ranking (SEO) of your site and your business.
It brings people back to your site:
If your blog is strong enough and updated regularly, people will come back looking for more and bring traffic back to your site as well.
It’s free:
It costs you a grand total of zero dollars to post to the blog, so if you have something to say, there’s nothing to stop you.
You can establish yourself as a thought leader:
A blog is a great place for your original thoughts, and it can be a wonderful way to show off your individuality. If people like your ideas, you can become a thought leader in your industry!
What else do you love about blogs? Let me know!
Our 'AccessToFilm' closed solution is not intended to REPLACE open captioned shows. Deaf audiences in the US have made it clear that open captions are the preferred method of cinema access. They've tried closed solutions and the general consensus is that the user-experience - with the current crop of caption glasses and displays - is just not good enough.
Our closed solution is a more customer-focussed one that would run ALONGSIDE open captioned shows, to provide access to the 95% or more of shows that - even with a vast increase in open captioned shows - will always be inaccessible.
It's an app - to fill the gap.
At any one time, almost every person, in almost every cinema, has a caption-displaying device on their person. People - particularly young people - bring their smartphones everywhere and that's unlikely to change. The 'AccessToFilm' solution utilises this expensive, customer-provided tech solution and combines it with an inexpensive cinema-side streaming device & software to enable cinemas to auto-recognise any open 'AccessToFilm' apps in a particular auditorium.
The AccessToFilm package will consist of cinema-side integrated software, a hdmi-to-wifi transmitter,
plus a customer-side smartphone app.
The software will convert a film’s subtitle track and AD narration audio track into data.
This text/mono audio data will be streamed - via the transmitter - to all AccessToFilm apps enabled
on smartphones or smartglasses in the auditorium where the film is being screened.
The cinema-side streamer/software controls the customer's smartphone. It automatically switches to silent, dims the screen, and disables the camera & notifications, before displaying the correct captions/subtitles for each film (and trailer) in each auditorium. The customer simply needs to open the app. The app automatically closes when the film has finished.
Each cinema will know exactly how many people have utilised the 'AccessToFilm' app for each screening. The cinema-side software integrates with each cinema's TMS system and provides valuable detailed data: Each app user's customer ID, which film, cinema, screen, time they've attended, frequency of use, frequented locations etc.
Because it's mainly a cinema-side streaming/software solution, with software-only on the device-side, the AccessToFilm solution can easily be developed to be compatible with any existing or future SmartGlasses caption solutions.
THE PROBLEM:
It's estimated that less than a million tickets were issued to captioned cinema shows last year - far less than one percent of total UK & Ireland attendance.
There are TWO reasons for that low turnout:
1) It's a niche audience. There aren't millions of people with hearing loss out there of an age where cinema is considered an enjoyable social activity.
And 2) Lack of opportunities to attend. Many cinemas are reluctant to accommodate niche audiences of ANY kind at peak times, because attendance will be down. Therefore many captioned shows are provided at inconvenient times, when people are at work or in education, with only a handful on Friday or Saturday evenings.
Providing as little choice as possible - less than 1% of total shows - has not helped to attract and build an audience. A recent Independent Cinema Office survey found that 91% of respondents believed captioned provision in their area to be inadequate and 83% said they'd attend regularly if captioned shows were available to them at convenient times.
We believe that with very little effort and cost, the cinema industry can turn this around - provide a much-improved, welcoming service to people with hearing loss.
THE SOLUTION:
The 'AccessToFilm' solution we are proposing will - with industry support - enable ALL shows of all popular films, all day, every day, in almost every cinema, to be accessible to people with hearing loss. A vast increase in opportunities to attend - thousands of peak-time slots weekly, including hundreds of Friday and Saturday night shows, nationwide. We believe that by providing thousands more opportunities to attend, via a customer-friendly, fully-automatic service, attendance by people with hearing loss will more than double - to more than two million annually.
And it's not just people with hearing loss that can benefit from captions/subtitles. It's estimated that in the UK, around 2% of people cannot read or speak English well. In some areas it's as high as 10%. English-language subtitles can help people to improve their English. And children can benefit from subtitles. It's well-known that subtitles improve reading and literacy skills.
Our 'AccessToFilm' solution could also, with industry support, enable cinemas in the UK and beyond to provide a multi-language subtitle service to customers. Only 20% of the world's population speaks English. In the UK, English is NOT the first language of hundreds of thousands of people. Multi-language subtitles can enable millions of people worldwide to experience US & UK films in their OWN language.
Our solution can also provide a much better cinema experience to those with sight loss. It can provide audio description, enabling a customer to use their own smartphone and familiar earphones to hear a film's narration track, rather than the current solution - an unfamiliar receiver and clunky 'cans', which can muffle the regular soundtrack that is delivered via the auditorium speakers.
We believe that our innovative 'AccessToFilm' solution will provide the best customer experience of all closed caption and audio description solutions. We believe it is the quickest, easiest and least-expensive route for UK cinemas to provide a near-equal level of service to customers with hearing or sight loss. In theory, with industry support, our sustainable caption/description solution could enable 100% of UK cinemas and shows to be accessible.
As detailed in the Challenge Fund application form, we've helped the industry to improve access in the past. We would like to help further. We'd like to offer our service, to collaborate with the cinema industry, to help bring cinemas in line with US cinema, US & UK theatre and home entertainment access levels.
David Pope and Chris Higgs.
AccessToFilm Ltd
[900 words]
Our closed solution is a more customer-focussed one that would run ALONGSIDE open captioned shows, to provide access to the 95% or more of shows that - even with a vast increase in open captioned shows - will always be inaccessible.
It's an app - to fill the gap.
At any one time, almost every person, in almost every cinema, has a caption-displaying device on their person. People - particularly young people - bring their smartphones everywhere and that's unlikely to change. The 'AccessToFilm' solution utilises this expensive, customer-provided tech solution and combines it with an inexpensive cinema-side streaming device & software to enable cinemas to auto-recognise any open 'AccessToFilm' apps in a particular auditorium.
The AccessToFilm package will consist of cinema-side integrated software, a hdmi-to-wifi transmitter,
plus a customer-side smartphone app.
The software will convert a film’s subtitle track and AD narration audio track into data.
This text/mono audio data will be streamed - via the transmitter - to all AccessToFilm apps enabled
on smartphones or smartglasses in the auditorium where the film is being screened.
The cinema-side streamer/software controls the customer's smartphone. It automatically switches to silent, dims the screen, and disables the camera & notifications, before displaying the correct captions/subtitles for each film (and trailer) in each auditorium. The customer simply needs to open the app. The app automatically closes when the film has finished.
Each cinema will know exactly how many people have utilised the 'AccessToFilm' app for each screening. The cinema-side software integrates with each cinema's TMS system and provides valuable detailed data: Each app user's customer ID, which film, cinema, screen, time they've attended, frequency of use, frequented locations etc.
Because it's mainly a cinema-side streaming/software solution, with software-only on the device-side, the AccessToFilm solution can easily be developed to be compatible with any existing or future SmartGlasses caption solutions.
THE PROBLEM:
It's estimated that less than a million tickets were issued to captioned cinema shows last year - far less than one percent of total UK & Ireland attendance.
There are TWO reasons for that low turnout:
1) It's a niche audience. There aren't millions of people with hearing loss out there of an age where cinema is considered an enjoyable social activity.
And 2) Lack of opportunities to attend. Many cinemas are reluctant to accommodate niche audiences of ANY kind at peak times, because attendance will be down. Therefore many captioned shows are provided at inconvenient times, when people are at work or in education, with only a handful on Friday or Saturday evenings.
Providing as little choice as possible - less than 1% of total shows - has not helped to attract and build an audience. A recent Independent Cinema Office survey found that 91% of respondents believed captioned provision in their area to be inadequate and 83% said they'd attend regularly if captioned shows were available to them at convenient times.
We believe that with very little effort and cost, the cinema industry can turn this around - provide a much-improved, welcoming service to people with hearing loss.
THE SOLUTION:
The 'AccessToFilm' solution we are proposing will - with industry support - enable ALL shows of all popular films, all day, every day, in almost every cinema, to be accessible to people with hearing loss. A vast increase in opportunities to attend - thousands of peak-time slots weekly, including hundreds of Friday and Saturday night shows, nationwide. We believe that by providing thousands more opportunities to attend, via a customer-friendly, fully-automatic service, attendance by people with hearing loss will more than double - to more than two million annually.
And it's not just people with hearing loss that can benefit from captions/subtitles. It's estimated that in the UK, around 2% of people cannot read or speak English well. In some areas it's as high as 10%. English-language subtitles can help people to improve their English. And children can benefit from subtitles. It's well-known that subtitles improve reading and literacy skills.
Our 'AccessToFilm' solution could also, with industry support, enable cinemas in the UK and beyond to provide a multi-language subtitle service to customers. Only 20% of the world's population speaks English. In the UK, English is NOT the first language of hundreds of thousands of people. Multi-language subtitles can enable millions of people worldwide to experience US & UK films in their OWN language.
Our solution can also provide a much better cinema experience to those with sight loss. It can provide audio description, enabling a customer to use their own smartphone and familiar earphones to hear a film's narration track, rather than the current solution - an unfamiliar receiver and clunky 'cans', which can muffle the regular soundtrack that is delivered via the auditorium speakers.
We believe that our innovative 'AccessToFilm' solution will provide the best customer experience of all closed caption and audio description solutions. We believe it is the quickest, easiest and least-expensive route for UK cinemas to provide a near-equal level of service to customers with hearing or sight loss. In theory, with industry support, our sustainable caption/description solution could enable 100% of UK cinemas and shows to be accessible.
As detailed in the Challenge Fund application form, we've helped the industry to improve access in the past. We would like to help further. We'd like to offer our service, to collaborate with the cinema industry, to help bring cinemas in line with US cinema, US & UK theatre and home entertainment access levels.
David Pope and Chris Higgs.
AccessToFilm Ltd
[900 words]
