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Mini-Course: How To Speak Pashto - Lesson 3 "This is"

In this lesson of our Pashto mini-course, we focus on one of the most important and beginner-friendly grammar rules in Pashto: using “Da … de” to say “This is …”. Mastering this structure is a key milestone in How to speak Pashto , because it allows you to describe objects, places, and people from day one. In English, we say, “This is a house.” In Urdu, the equivalent is “Yeh ghar hai.” In Pashto, the same idea is expressed as “Da kor de.” Here, “Da” means this, “kor” means house, and “de” (pronounced like day but with a soft 'D' as in fa th er) works like is. This sentence structure is extremely common in everyday Pashto conversations and forms the foundation of Pashto language basics. Pashto also has masculine and feminine nouns , just like Urdu. For masculine nouns, we commonly use “de”, while feminine nouns often use “da” depending on context and dialect. At the beginner level, focusing on commonly used masculine examples helps learners build confidence ...
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How 5 M's of Advertising can up your Social Media Game?

It is very heartening to see that many people are producing content on social media. Whether it is Facebook , Instagram , Linked In, Twitter, or their new cousin TikTok , we see loads of content published daily. Social Media has become a powerful way of communication - mass communication. But these content producers are not aware of the concept and terminologies used in the field. Similarly, they struggle with advertising or promotion too. Both are part and parcel of the communication process. to help them, I have written a small guide below on how they can use the advertising properly. Almost all social media platforms have some promotion or advertising mechanism. This simple process will work with all of them. This plan is called 5 M's of Advertising .  These M's are Mission, Money, Message, Medium, and Measurement.   Mission:  It is where you decide your objectives. What do you want to achieve through advertising? The 3 basic reasons are to inform, persuade, and r...
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10 Good Truth or Dare Questions

Disclaimer: I wrote this blog 10 years ago. But it is still relevant. Hoping you will like it. It's a bit clunky to read, as I used keywords here.  One of the famous party games, ‘ Truths or Dare’, has become part of global pop culture. Invented in the US , people on other continents like playing this game too. If you play it once in a while, then it retains its freshness. On the other hand, if you often play this game then asking good truth or dare questions becomes difficult. You and your friends get bored with trite truth-or-dare questions . Some questions are not appropriate for all settings. Some can be termed as girls' questions or others as boys-only .  To solve your problem, here is a list of 10 questions that are exciting and embarrassing at the same time. You can easily ask them in a gathering of male and female friends. Which Guy/Girl in The Room You Would Like to Date? In our list of good questions for truth or dare , here is a potboiler. Love is a universal emot...
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Social Media: Analytics and how you can use it (for beginners)

Note:  This post is for beginners, so you can skip this and read other posts if you are proficient in social media data analysis.    What is Analytics or Data Analysis ? Useful information is called data. It can be in multiple forms, such as descriptive or numerical. For example, the number of people who have visited your site or liked your post. In Pakistan, Analytics is underrated and not fully utilized compared to other digital marketing branches. The emphasis is on promotion and interaction. Digital marketers and page owners neglect the data and numbers and what story these facts and figures depict. The situation is not very different in other countries where SME businesses don't concentrate on data analysis. So let me educate you based on the matrices you should be looking at and how you can deduce inferences from them and improve your content strategy . The number of visitors: This is the most basic metric you would encounter on FB, IG, Twitter , or other platform...
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Social Media: Employ 7 Cs of Effective Communication For Writing Social Media Content

The 7 Cs of effective communication are as applicable to social media as they are to any other medium. The 7 Cs are Clear, Concise, Concrete, Correct, Coherent, Complete, and Courteous. The idea is that your content should tick all these benchmarks. Although social media is less formal, following them will differentiate you from the competition.  You may be writing a caption on Instagram or writing a Facebook post ; these points will guide your writing.  Websites initially were text-based, but now with Web 2.0 (e.g, social media websites), they have become more visual. People create lots of content on social media, both visual and textual, but they are not aware of mass communication concepts . Therefore, most of the content is plagued with errors. Besides content errors, the content does not fit in the first place, logically, textually, or visually. Learn these basics of effective communication so that your next post is stellar from a communication perspective. Let's lear...
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Digital Marketing: How you can use 4 Ps of marketing in digital marketing?

Digital Marketing is an offshoot of traditional marketing . The principles that are applicable in marketing are equally applicable in digital settings. We have the famous 4 Ps of marketing , which are the basics of any marketing strategy. They stand for Product , Price , Place , and Promotion . Marketers blend these 4 Ps in a specific way to devise a perfect marketing strategy.  Let's assume you are an Instagram Influencer and want to use these variables to make your marketing strategy.  1. Product: In our case (social media celebrity), the product is actually you. You have a personal brand to market. Companies keep on experimenting with the packaging, size, features, etc., of a product just to renew interest. Ever wondered why Lux keeps adding almonds, honey, milk, etc., to beauty soaps? They are experimenting with the product. You can do the same. You can add frills similar to physical products. You can make yourself more compelling by learning new skills, trying new exp...
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How to create Master To-Do List?

If you are an ambitious person, you must have multiple things going on in your life. They may be related to your work, home, online world, or any other realm. Similarly, you may have personal goals to achieve in your life. To keep you organized and make sure you don't forget these tasks, you need to jot them down. This document is a powerful productivity tool. It is called a to-do list .   What is a Master To-Do List ?   It is a combined list of all your to-do tasks and goals in your life. The main purpose of this list is to dump all your goals and tasks from your mind on a piece of paper, a word processor, or maybe in a mobile app. The basic difference between a daily or weekly to-do list and the master list is that the daily/weekly to-do list is short-term, whereas the master to-do list is a combined list of tasks that you want to accomplish in the long run or during your entire lifetime. This is not limited to only personal life; you can create one about your professional g...
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Why Digital Marketing is not for everyone?

Recently, COVID-19 changed everything: the way we work, communicate, enjoy, and interact. Companies and organizations had to adopt the work-from-home model. E-commerce saw a boom as people faced lockdowns and restrictions. businesses realized the importance of digital channels for marketing and selling products and services.  While it created huge job opportunities for digital marketers, it certainly showed that it is not for everyone. Let me elaborate.  The first thing that motivates people to go digital is the success stories of brands and companies that are minting money online. The other is the stats of internet and social media users. When they hear that there are 2 billion Facebook users, Instagram has 800 million users, etc., they start to drool.  What they don't realize is that not all 2 billion people will be interested in their business. This figure is cumulative. These people are divided into different regions, countries, niches, likes, and other categories. It...
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Do you know these facts about memes?

Millions of apps exist in the world. The number is increasing exponentially. The real challenge for the developers is to reach the audience. One may have the most fantastic app in the world, but if the users don’t know about it then it is like a white elephant! It costs so much but it is of no use.  Not everyone can afford millions of dollars to market their apps. Marketers are now integrating internet memes for app promotion in particular and promotion in general. Let me tell you a bit about internet memes.   In 1976, a British evolutionary biologist and author, Richard Dawkins, in his book “The Selfish Gene,” presented the idea of Memes . Analogous to a gene, a meme is an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person across cultures. He likened the spread of ideas from culture to culture to the genes found in living beings. As genes can move among offspring, Memes can also mutate, change, and eventually die.  Internet Memes are a subset of memes. Any ...
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5 Tips to Make Your Code Awesome

Coding is one of the professions with a profound impact. Programming enabled humans to land on the moon; it revolutionized businesses, created millions of jobs, and digitized every aspect of our daily lives.  However, programming has its fair share of pitfalls that result in huge losses of money and resources. These pitfalls emanate from simple, but bad programming habits. In this article, we’ll discuss five tips that would make your program error-free. So let’s dive in right away: 1. Avoid copy-pasting/plagiarizing code from websites: However, it is entirely normal to search for any problem on Stack Overflow , if you get stuck somewhere. Similarly, it is also reasonable to copy code when you are learning. But blindly copying and pasting snippet of codes from a website is a bad practice.  It hinders you from realizing your full potential. It is very enticing to take a shortcut, but it would hurt you in the long run. You would become so reliant on online help that you won’t be ...
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