Tag: Mazlan Abbas

18 Tips – How to Use Twitter to Drive Traffic to Your Blog

Your Blog can be considered a “dead” blog if there’s no traffic and no one is reading or aware of them. A lot of bloggers stopped half-way and abandoned their blog when they didn’t see any traffic or activity.

However, in the era of social media, we have many channels to promote our blogs, which includes Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. However, in order to drive tons of traffic, we need to do this the right way. Below are some of the tips and formulas.

  1. Use short and provocative tweets
  2. Include an intriguing quote from post
  3. Include statistics
  4. Make use of #Hashtags creatively
  5. Use @mentions
  6. Retweet mentioned blog content
  7. Ask for a Retweet (or RT)
  8. Use visually appealing images
  9. As a question related to your topic
  10. Tweet about your blog-hosted contest
  11. Promote your tweets
  12. Include a blog link in your bio
  13. Schedule your tweet properly
  14. Include a strong call to action
  15. Tweet the link more than once
  16. Create “Click to Tweets” within your article
  17. Retweet or thank anyone who mentions your Blog
  18. Pin your latest blog post to the top of Twitter Timeline

Not only your Blog will have more traffic, but your own Twitter account can also attract more followers. Your Twitter will be seen to be more engaging with relevant content sharing.

As of today, my Twitter handle @mazlan_abbas has only 4,162 Followers. Let’s see how the tips above impact Mazlan Abbas Blog and my Twitter.

The 18 Twitter Tips that will help to boost your Blog traffic.

Year 2022 – The Death of Blogging

Yes – there’s a truth in this. That’s what they said a couple of years ago. However, there are many type of blogging such as personal journal, lifestyle, travel, health, technology and many others.

The trend for personal blogging have decline. People might no longer have interest to follow an individual daily activities, their families, trips etc. This type of content can easily followed via their social media channels such as Facebook or Instagram.

Entertainment vs Educational Blogs

However, blogs which covered specific topics that solve the reader’s problems would be the ones that have longer lifetime. The topics are more educational as compared to entertainment.

The contents for educational type of blogs can remained evergreen as people still searched the Internet for solutions.

So yes, people still read blogs. Multiple times a day, even! It just looks a little different because the content of blog posts has shifted from being writer-focused to being reader-focused. Blogs that focused on value to readers will have a higher reading rate.

This is something which I need to decide when I created Mazlan Abbas Blog – should it be personal blogging or a blog which is more educational such as the one I created at IoT World Blog.

Today, is my third day of blogging, and I will always monitor the traffic to see how the contents impact the traffic to the blog.

3-Days Stats
Demographics of Visitors

Why should you read and follow this Blog? If you want to read IoT contents, you may visit IoT World Blog, but here you will get constant updates about my journey in developing projects such as my Startup, FAVORIOT, Podcasts,, YouTube, Online marketplace and E-Books.

Sharing Platform

Along the way, I will share the ups and downs or probably some tips that we should avoid in building such projects. I hoped this will also become a platform to listen yo your ideas and thoughts too. Please leave you comments on the posts.

Are you ready to follow me on this journey?

Welcome to Mazlan Abbas Blog

This is the first post to indicate the opening and launching of Mazlan Abbas website dated November 17, 2021.

Dr. Mazlan Abbas

I was listening to Pat Flynn podcast and was inspired by his work work on Smart Passive Income. It all started two weeks ago and I have just finished his 22nd Podcast. He had over 500 podcast which he published almost every week.

Although, I have my own Blog called IoT World which I have created many years back, I have always wondered whether I should create my personal website using my name. I checked and noticed the domain mazlanabbas.com was not taken and that’s when I decided today to buy the domain and use WordPress as the hosting site for the Blog.

There’s always pros and cons of having our own name as the domain such as we will not be able to sell this domain name later as compared to niche sites. Furthermore, I have many other things which I would like to share but unable to do that on my IoT World Blog.

I have created many other personal or hobby sites such as:

However, all of them did not have it’s own domain name since it’s a free. And I found it’s difficult to manage multiple sites. Thus, I decided to (as of today) to manage only two sites which I have interest and passion. One for Internet of Things (i.e. IoT World) and the other is this Mazlan Abbas blog.

My Gadget You Tube Channel

I will keep on posting the progress of this site as I customised it’s theme and content. As usual, currently this site does not appear in the first page of Google yet when we do a search on “Mazlan Abbas” (which it should). And also no one has yet subscribe to this Blog yet – something which I would like to measure the number of followers too.

IoT in the World of Covid-19

[The article was originally published in IoT World]

Since early last year (2020), most of us have now lived in the new norm. Most of the things that we do physically has now changed drastically either with the usage of technology of the way we interact.

Digital and telecommunications are two forms of technology which are critical in the new norm. With physical distancing or periods during lockdown, the only way we get in touch is via telecommunications. Pen and paper has been reduced drastically with conversion of content into digital. Usage of Internet especially online conferencing for either webinars or meetings have been a new norm.

But how do technology like Internet of Things (IoT) can play a significant role in the new norm? Check out the video from Dr. Mazlan Abbas, FAVORIOT below.

IR 4.0 — To Survive or Become Obsolete

For the last 50 years only 19% of companies are in existence today. Many did not survive or unable to sustain due to many reasons. However, one of the key reasons are due to the fact that they are unable to compete or remained competitive whereas their competitors have transformed their business by leveraging new technologies and new business models.

Digitalisation and Internet has been very key in these transformation. New products and services have been created. Their operations are becoming more agile and productive. This is the outcome when companies embraced new changes openly. Their lleaders are the risk takers and have excellent vision of the future.

Every 3 to 7 years companies need to transform themselves, reinvent their operations and business. They should look at the current and future trends of technologies and see whether they can leverage these powerful technologies and together surf the great waves of disruption.

Check out Dr. Mazlan Abbas, CEO of FAVORIOT video explaining about the great changes happening in IR 4.0.

[Article orginally published here — IoT World]

Tips for Generation-IoT

Who are the Generation-IoT? Generation-IoT has been defined by Maciej Kranz in the article “Generation IoT: The Key to Business Survival in the 21st Century. Below are the traits of the Generation-IoT:

  1. They are pioneers in IoT.
  2. All are willing to learn and take risks and are good at building virtual teams internally and partnering externally.
  3. You can recognize these new winners not by their age or their titles — but by their ability to build and deploy agile, flexible business solutions.
  4. A new generation of leaders, makers, thinkers, and doers is meeting that change with flexibility and optimism and transforming it into opportunity.
  5. These are the people who see the transformational power of IoT-driven processes, business models, and new revenue streams.
  6. They are eager to champion and drive these opportunities in their organizations.
  7. These people know that IoT is not just one project, one training session, one change.
  8. They know that in order to succeed they and their organisations need to adjust and re-learn, over and over again.

But how do we encourage the growth of this new “generation”? We need them as many as possible to help us spur the whole industry. We need more fresh and innovative ideas to transform their own business or their customers. But how do we train them and get them ready to be absorb directly into organisations?

We can provide them with the necessary tools to start their journey. One of the common layer that glue the “hardware” and the “software” is the IoT middleware or the platform. The Generation-IoT must understand what are the necessary knowledge to build the electronic devices and find the necessary connectivity to the platform. But if they wish to build innovative IoT applications or using the data for the purpose of machine learning, they need to acquire this data from the IoT platform. They have a choice either to build or subscribe to any IoT platform. And currently, there are hundreds of IoT platforms worldwide as shown below.

[Source: Expert Advice for Generation-IoT]

How Do We Harness The Power of IoT

Harnessing the Power of IoT

[This article is originally published in IoT World]

It all started with when Kevin Ashton, working as a brand manager trying to figure out and track the amount of lipstick available on the shelves. In 1999, the term “Internet of Things” was coined by Kevin Ashton utilising RFID to track such assets. Twenty more years down the road, IoT has become a key technology not only to keep track of such asset but also create new products and services which can disrupt many businesses.

It ranges from manufacturing to agriculture and to Smart Cities. In fact, it can offer better tracking and monitoring solutions for end consumers using wearables devices. What we are seeing now is just the tip of the iceberg. There are many more applications can be built. The combinations of customised hardware or sensors, different kinds of connectivity, the power of the cloud and analytics brings forth unimaginable innovative solutions for the end-users.

Check out how we can harness the power of IoT by Dr. Mazlan Abbas, CEO of FAVORIOT in the below video.

Malaysia National 4IR Policy — An Opinion

[This article was originally published in IoT World]

We are aware that earlier in 2018, Malaysia launched National Industry 4WRD Policy Framework, however, the focus is on the manufacturing sector as we know manufacturing is one the biggest contributor to Malaysia’s GDP. However, it sparked interest in other sectors and industries as well because as described in the World Economic Forum (WEF), that the emerging technologies will have a disruptive impact on jobs of the future.

Here’s my personal opinions on Malaysia 4IR Policy:

  1. World Agenda — When Henrik Von Scheel (also known as Father and Originator of Industry 4.0) masterminded Germany’s digital agenda in 2009 with a belief that the industry will be transform by the fusion of digital, virtual and physical world, also called the cyber-physical systems, and this triggered the emergence of new era of fourth industrial revolution. This has been emphasized again by World Economic Forum in 2016. The fusion of various technologies have transformed and disrupted many businesses. And Malaysia should not be left behind.
  2. Covid-19 the Master Enabler — It took many years for us to educate the importance of digital transformation, but Covid-19 made us realise how important it us to transform our business, education and almost everything using digital. Internet seems to be mandatary in almost every part of lives. And to move towards IR 4.0, we must have the fundamental of IR 3.0 in place i.e. digital and virtual (content in digital with good access to Internet). That’s the more reason Malaysia also launched Malaysia Digital Economy Blueprint (MyDigital) in early 2021 to encourage the usage of digital technology to transform the economic sector.
  3. Humanizing Technology — Although 4IR can create new jobs, but it also create threats to the existing ones. Many people down the street are not aware how complex technologies of 4IR can help them in their daily lives. Thus, the aspiration of 4IR policy to ensure that it can provide quality of life by benefitting the society such as focus on happiness, healthy living, work-life balance, overcome social issues and sustainable living will help the adoption of 4IR technology to be easier and acceptable. Technology should not be seen as a threat but in fact should be seen to help them.
  4. Budget Justification — We hoped that the 4 policy thrusts, 16 strategies and 32 National initiatives can help the relevant agencies to justify for their 2022 budget. Without sufficient funding, it’s very difficult for us to maintain our momentum. We also want that the bureaucracy of 4IR fund approval need to be reduce to avoid unnecessary delays as what we have seen in the Industry 4WRD initiatives (Some SMEs complained that even a 4IR readiness assessment can take a year to complete. This does not include the 4IR intervention programmes).
  5. Producer-Nation Agenda — How do we increase our graduates salary if we are just being a Consumer-Nation? How do we sustain and grow our Startups if all the products and technologies are bought from overseas? How do we (i.e. the industries) share our technology or product map to Universities if we are not in control of our own product roadmap? One of the policy thrust — “Accelerate the 4IR technology innovation and adoption” is a “battle-cry” for many local Startups. Support them even if they are still small and have no reference sites to show or demonstrate. Support the innovators by being the early market adopters that are willing to take the risk to test out the new and untested local products. One day this small companies can grow and create more jobs for the country.

This can be my opinion and probably a wish list. Let’s see the actions that will be taken in the next 6–12 months. A Project Management Office (PMO) need to be setup to ensure transparency and KPIs are met.

IoT & IR 4 0 — Are You Ready for Jobs That Don’t Exist Yet?

The industry always complained that the talents that graduated from the local universities are not equipped with the latest knowledge. The industry expected the graduates that they hired can immediately start their job without sending them to further workshops or courses. The world is moving fast and thus it’s imperative to start contributing in the early part of the career. The employers are getting impatient as the competition heats up.

That’s why it’s important for the Universities to get feedback from their Industry Advisory Panel (IAP) to advice on the current technology and job trends. The lecturers too need to get involve in industry events to understand what’s the hottest job nowadays.

We know that the change the content of the syllabus or approving new programmes in the University can take months or sometimes 1–2 years. This would require the teaching staff to also equip themselves with the new knowledge. It’s a challenge nowadays to keep with the technological pace but that’s the reality.

Looking at the future technological trends and the business disruptions happening worldwide, the Universities should now anticipate what’s coming and to quickly adapt their current courses or programmes to match with the future jobs.

Check out the video below by Dr. Mazlan Abbas, CEO of FAVORIOT regarding this challenge.

FREE IoT eBooks for Download!

Download FREE IoT eBooks

I have decided to make two of my IoT eBooks available for FREE to anyone interested to download.

The first eBook is entitled “Your IoT Journey“. It is a compilation of my best and selected written articles which was published from my IoT World Blog. It’s not written in a very technical manner because the idea is to share the issues, challenges and the tips for anyone who’s interested to take the IoT journey. After several years, the topic about IR 4.0 become a hot one. But it also bring along confusion regarding the different Era of Industrial Revolutions.

The second eBook or rather eNotes entitled simply as “IoT Notes” was originally written to illustrate the complexity of IoT and IR 4.0 in a simpler way. I used GoodNotes application and my iPad Air to draw and add colours to the descriptions. Hopefully, this will become a companion notes to anyone who is learning IoT and IR 4.0.

Hope you enjoy the two eBooks and kindly share with others. Hopefully we can share the knowledge and create the next Generation-IoT.

  1. Your IoT Journey — Download
  2. IoT Notes (Compilation) — Download