9 Social Media Marketing Pointers To Change Your Business

If you have a business, you would like to change or improve or even start, today you will learn about a few social media marketing pointers for changing your business.

1.    You should always make sure that your page, blog or website is always up to date. Nobody will want to visit it unless it provides the current information about your business. Whether you have started some new business, a new discount of some kind, promotion or coupon, verify that it is mentioned on the website, blog or page.

2.    Many Facebook apps are available which provide you the opportunity of holding many contests. Nothing excites people for winning something in return for nothing. This way you can have a win-win situation in which both you and the customer is happy. In these contests however, you have to make sure your brand is visible enough for the customer to register it in his mind. If you won’t have a lingering effect on their psyche, everything will be a waste.

3.    Using of social media outlets is very essential. You can be rest assured that it is never enough. Though Facebook is the most popular, it won’t hurt to use Twitter, Myspace or Google + too as all it will do is earn you profits.

4.    Be yourself, show yourself. Follow this rule and you will not be disappointed. Just because of the fact that you are a businessperson, you don’t have to act all corporate. As a matter of fact, people will support you more if they can identify a face and a human touch behind your business.

5.    Listen to your customers. They are just laymen. They are taking time to invest in your page and being on social media. Their opinions can make you improve and make you better and different from the rest. Read their comments, look at their posts and on top of everything else take action on what you learn.

6.    Be patient. Yes it is hard to keep it when you are getting no offers, the social media marketing take time but once people start recognizing you, you won’t complain.

7.    Have a schedule. Make a time table. Keep a note of when you are going to post stuff and do it accordingly. Do not keep any work pending and slowly but effectively you will get the popularity you deserve.

8.    Online media keeps going through a change and is a dynamic entity. In order to survive here, you must change too. Do not cling to old methods just because of their comfort. New companies are entering everyday and it is a fact that you will not be able to compete with all of them. Be humble and do not overdo anything. Just post great content and you won’t go wrong.

9.    Collaborate with your competition and they won’t remain competitors anymore. Come up with ways by which both brands can benefit. You will get noticed more as now you would have become a bigger company.

Live Blogging: Unique Tool for Social Media Promotion.

Live Blogging is solely keeping posted or creating articles about a certain on-going event. This is to keep the readers on track on what is actually taking place on a specific occasion. When done right, this technique could latch numerous bibliophiles and folks who want to be kept informed on an explicit juncture.

One of the man oeuvres that marketers foresee is the use of social media promotion. Technology is undoubtedly on the rise as days, weeks, months and years go by. Social media is not only about Facebook and twitter alone, nonetheless, there are still new other media that are being and will be given birth to. People are consistently trying to seek more than a few conducts on how to stay linked with each other. There is no hesitation as well that humanity these days are always being kept dispatched when it comes to the social media trends.

Many others are also clutching this opportunity to start a living. With a simple “retweet” and “repost”, information can be disseminated into a million of users in a very little time and effort. In addition, it is also one of the low-cost ways and means of publicizing a certain product. It is gripping into an industry with unrestricted marketing campaigns without anything to lose no matter what or how the public react.

Most of the people these days –either from rural or urban areas- are so much into Facebook and twitter, and here is where the marketers actually focus themselves more. Twitter and Facebook Promotions are only few of the leading media which could promote a certain product. Twitter allows a promoter to be very much specific about the campaigns and could be spread widely onto millions to billions of people just over and done with a “retweet” button. Hash tags may as well lead your promotion into a trending topic, and people around the world or the country could easily be familiar with it. On the other hand, Facebook could give you a far-reaching means to endorse your product. It allows you to post videos which would enable you to show your product further, and in a clearer view. It would as well enable you to display or demonstrate ways on how consumers could use the product. Marketers could as well spread the info about the products through sharing and tagging.

With the relentlessly refining technology, it has become so easy to access the internet no matter where you are and what you do. For this reason, bloggers could post photos of daily events wherein they could take photos when they’ve tried to use a certain product, and they’ve loved the result. They’ll put their analysis on blog and be able to inform people how useful the product was in no time. And acknowledge it or not, it’s already an advertisement without even breaking a sweat or spending any cent from a company’s pocket.

How Offline Website Optimization help Online Sales?

Most of the online business analyst and strategist under-estimate the power of offline channels which influence on the online buying behavior of the user.

A study conducted by iProspect partnered with JupiterResearch ( June 2007) to develop and field a survey to U.S. search engine users to gain a better understanding of how exposure to offline channels influences their search and purchase behaviour.

The study and the approach must be considered as a serious metric in judging how the online buying activities perform and webmasters and Search engine marketers who are now mostly dependent on online marketing should raise their view towards offline promotions. That is how a complete marketing action would take place resulting in sure shot success formula.

Here are some of the statistics :






Source : IProspect

Lively Google !! Are you there?

Calling on Online buzz workers.....
Have you ever have a look at Secondlife(R) ? Secondlife is an online, 3D virtual world imagined and created by its residents.There are many surfing enthusiasts who have create a world there, they are individuals and top brand companies too.You will find shops of your most cherished brands and people advertising them directly or indirectly as you go.

The only problem I faced with Secondlife is the high expectations in terms of hardware support. It requires a lot ; OS, processing, speed, RAM , graphic support etc.

Looking a bit similar to that,
Google has now come with a unique user experience interface Lively.com , this is a start which can be a tough challenge to someone like secondlife in the future, if Google wants to take it forward. This is just a guess work anyway ;)

Good thing about Lively is that, the system requirements are very easily achievable or most of us have it.
Lively.com requires Windows Vista/XP with Internet Explorer or Firefox.




With Lively.com you can :

1. Create your own virtual space
Chat and interact with your friends in rooms you design
2. Express yourself
Customize your avatar and stream personal photos and video
3. Add your room to your site
Invite your friends to chat and help decorate

All you have to do is Download Lively and start enjoying!

Display ads or online marketing ? Whats the best?

A news from NDTV found on alootechie shows display ads are more better in terms of performance, in fact the ratio is about 2.5 times.
My take on the camparison below is, online marketing is comparatively new field when it comes to have a direct competition with the display ads and outlets. There are not much expert people as we can see in age-old print media and TV etc.
One more thing to be considered is the CPA (Cost per Aquisition) , the cost incurred for getting a client converted including ads / campaign marketing, awareness, social media optimization and demographics targetted.

I'm a strong believer, if the online marketing is done better ( for products related to internet literate people) there is higher chances of achieving higher clients at lower cost than display ads. Something is wrong if you are under-estimating the power of quality online marketing.

Here is the news :

Display works 2.5 times better than search marketing: NDTV New Media Congress

The fourth and final session of NDTV New Media Congress discussed Branding, Marketing and Advertising Strategies. The panel discussion was moderated by Anurag Batra, managing director and editor-in-chief, exchange4media. Other members of the panel included Lloyd Mathias, marketing director, India and South West Asia, Motorola; Ravi Kiran, CEO, Starcom, South East and South Asia; Rohit Sharma, COO, Zapak Digital Entertainment; and Manish Vij, co-founder and chief business officer, Smile Interactive Technology Group.

Anurag Batra said, “Digital agencies should work like a consultant but most of them are currently working like brokers.” Batra also said that his company exchange4media doesn’t sell ad space on CPM (cost per thousand impressions). He even asked other website publishers present at the Congress to make a pledge that “We won’t sell on CPM.” Don’t know how many agreed.

Read the full story here

Online Advertising in US down till this season!!

Internet advertising in India is booming up, while US it was getting slower.
Spending whether its online or with the use of traditional media like cable TV for advertising purpose holds key to ROI (return on Investment) for any business.
Despite the strong Celebrating season ( Christmas and forthcoming new year), and the gradual increase in shopping spent for gadgets and stuff, US advertising spend is seen on the downfall, the reason might be less internet usage due to vacations.

A report from Nielsen confirms the same::

The Nielsen Company today reported that advertising spending for the first three quarters of 2007 decreased –0.1% over the same period last year, with Internet continuing to demonstrate the strongest performance (+15.9%) of any category.

According to preliminary figures from Nielsen Monitor-Plus, the leading provider of competitive advertising information, in addition to Internet advertising, other categories that showed an increase during the first three quarters of this year were: National Magazines (7.7%), National Sunday Supplements (6.0%), Outdoor (5.7%) and National Cable TV (1.2%).

Download as pdf

Media Penetration : Audio Video Print Online

Mass media in India is that part of the Indian media which aims to reach a wide audience. Besides the news media, which includes print, radio and television, the internet is playing an increasing role, along with the growth of the Indian blogging community.

Media penetration as of 2003
	All India	Urban
Print	25%	46%
Terrestrial television	53%	80%
Cable and satellite television	20%	46%
Radio	22%	25%
Cinema	7%	11%
Internet	1%	3%

Source Wikipedia

According to the news at Alootechie.com,
ETV Network has launched ETVNetmart.com where advertisers can bid and buy commercial airtime on its channels. In order to take part in the bidding process, media planners, advertisers or agencies will have to first register themselves on the site.

ETV Network operates 12 channels — ETV Telugu, ETV 2, ETV Bangla, ETV Marathi, ETV Kannada, ETV Oriya, ETV Gujarati, ETV Urdu, ETV MP / Chhattisgarh, ETV UP / Uttarakhand, ETV Bihar / Jharkhand, and ETV Rajasthan.

Nokia's Mobile News Portal in 10 Indian Languages

Nokia got Mobile with News Portal :

Nokia has just launched its new "Mobile News Portal' which is a sort of epaper on the move. Malayam Manorama is the partner for the Mobile News Paper. Nokia also said to have tie-ups with regional level language news papers for providing news. Presently 10 Indian languages including Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali, Oriya, Assamese, Marathi, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu and Kannada are supported.

You Need to have a GPRS enabled Nokia Hand set for that.
The Mobile Handsets which will support the Nokia's Mobile Newspaper include 2626, 6233, 6300, 6131, N72, N80, and N95.

Here is how to get it :

- Just send 'MM' as message to 5555.
- You will get a URL
- Clicking on the URL will download the news icon on the handset.

Are you ready to Optimize Mobile Websites now?
Mobile Site Optimization is the new funda of SEO...

Traditional Vs Online Marketing : India Stats

Forget Traditional Media, the new age is Online Marketing.
Atleast the report on IBNLive.com confirms the dynamic growth of online advertising and marketing with exponentially growing internet users in India.

" India is set to emerge as the fastest growing market in the global entertainment and media space in the next five years, says a latest market report. Also, developing on a mammoth scale is the Internet portals’ business and online advertising, the report adds.

With the advent of new web portals and rising Internet users, a major chunk of TV advertising and viewership has now passed on to Internet. However, there are little worries among traditional segments like radio, TV and films.

With a size of over Rs 1,00,000 crore market cap by 2011 the global E&M industry will grow at a compound annual rate of 6.4 per cent to $2 trillion over the next five-years, global consultancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers has said in its study.

"India will be the fastest growing (country) over the next five years at 18.5 per cent CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) while China will continue to record double-digit annual gains that will average 16.8 per cent CAGR," it said.

Internet advertising is expected to emerge as the fastest growing segment over the next five years, driven by the growing number of internet users, Kandhari said. "

Rest is Here

Media Entertainment and Online Spending

Ever wondered how India spends as compared to overall world ?

According to Business Standard,

The country is set to emerge as the fastest growing market in the global entertainment and media space in the next five years with a size of over Rs 1,00,000 crore by 2011, a study says.Driven by a sharp growth in the digital media space, as well as the traditional segments like TV, radio and films, the global E&M industry will grow at a compound annual rate of 6.4% to $2 trillion in the same period, global consultancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers said in its study.While identifying Asia-Pacific as the fastest-growing region, PwC said the rapid growth in this region would be led by India and China."India will be the fastest growing (country) over the next five years at 18.5% CAGR while China will continue to record double-digit annual gains that will average 16.8% CAGR," it said.The global outlook projects Indian E&M industry revenue at Rs 1,20,871 crore in 2011, against Rs 51,715 crore in 2006, Timmy S Kandhari, executive director, PwC told PTI.Internet advertising is expected to emerge as the fastest growing segment over the next five years, driven by the growing number of internet users, Kandhari said.The average spending in Asia Pacific would be at 9.6%, the fastest for any region, moving up to $470 billion in 2011 from $297 billion in 2006.Interestingly, the report noted that the US, the largest market in the world, would grow at the slowest pace."The US remains the largest but slowest growing market at 5.3% CAGR to $754 billion by 2011."

Hopefully good days for Search Engine Optimization and Marketing.