Social Media Archives - Page 7 of 8

Online Marketing Ensures More Openness And Honesty In The Whole Marketing And Sales Process.

Online marketing methods are replacing the traditional marketing methods . Day in and day out, the Corporate world is allocating huge budgets for SEO (Search Engine Otimization), CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization), for re-developing and tweaking their websites for better conversions and also trying to establish an attain a voice on the social media platforms for their business.

Since such an evolution is taking place in the field of business, no business owner can neglect the power of the web. Having an online presence is becoming mandatory for each and every business house.

When we talk of online presence , just having a website is not enough. If you already have a web 2.0 website then it surely ascertains that you have taken the first step to reach out to the ‘Wonderful World Wide Web’ (yes it is usually www 3 Ws but just thought of adding a fourth W by addressing the web as something wonderful )

But just having a website is not enough, the website has to be found by the innumerable searchers on the globe searching for the products and services which you and so many other companies are offering. Hence, a search engine presence is something which is necessary, once you start ranking in the search engines, your company needs to interact with the potential customers which reach your site through search engines and other internet sources, hence, having a presence on social media sites is again something which is gaining popularity.

Now, when so much interaction, exchange of information, commitments between the buyer and the seller is done on a platform like the WWW which has such a universal reach ensuring and enabling links which spread a good WOM. Yes links are the key. Links are being shared across the social media platforms for reaching out to a web world . But, it has to be borne in mind that at the same time if commitments are not kept then this very system can also spread a bad WOM.

Hence, this very system ensures that every business owner is open, honest and deals with the potential and existing customers with integrity. If you want to survive on the web world it is essential to be original, honest and open. In a way the internet marketing methods are a great impetus to innovation and originality and enforce the values of truth and honesty which many times are not given much importance to, by the companies whose main and only criteria is profits.

No, doubt profits have to be given importance but every business has got certain social objectives which have to be focused . The web due to its unique viral nature and reach ensures that these objectives are met in a very balanced way. Online marketing gives a great global reach to business owners or sellers, and due to the openness and social media platforms it even safeguards the interests and rights of the online customers or buyers.

Thanks to the search engines which reward originality, penalize duplicate content and value quality in bound votes to the websites. The openness, freedom of expression and the freedom of choice the ecommerce has given to the customer is actually eradicating the drawbacks of offline traditional marketing and sales methods.

Hence, before your company takes the plunge for online marketing - work out a plan, appoint a team which will be responsible for representing your company on the internet, every post on the social media and every word of assurance to your clients on your website is going to have global implications which should have an element of answerability and accountability on an international base. As, for every word unspoken – you are the master – BUT every spoken word is the master of thine.

Social Media Marketing And The Online Presence Of Your Business

All marketing plans, efforts and strategies revolve around people and understanding the potential customer or catering to the existing customer is the main focus of any marketing campaign.

The social element can never be ruled out from any business activity as a whole because every business caters to some or the other want or requirement of people.

As all people involved in any kind of marketing are aware of the four Ps - Product , Place, Promotion and Price. We can see that we cannot decide about the product without keeping the people in mind, we cannot decide about the place without keeping the people in mind, we cannot decide about any promotion campaign without keeping the people in mind and again the price also is a people centric decision.

Hence, it is this fifth ‘P' people which is the main aspect around which all marketing campaigns revolve around. Hence, every business needs to reach out to people with the best possible approach.

Internet marketing offers the best possible platform for reaching out to the potential customer for introducing the products and services or to the existing customer for customer support in the form of social media.

According to Wikipedia:

Social media are media for social interaction, using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Social media use web-based technologies to transform and broadcast media monologues into social media dialogues. Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein define social media as "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content." Businesses also refer to social media as user-generated content (UGC) or consumer-generated media (CGM). A common thread running through all definitions of social media is a blending of technology and social interaction for the co-creation of value.

Hence social media sites offer a two way conversational platform which offers a fair opportunity to voice opinions and feedbacks to both the parties involved .

There are many social media sites but Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, YouTube and Blogs are widely used by the netizens. These sites are a good tool for effective online marketing and networking.

If your business has an account on these social media sites it becomes very easy and convenient to keep yourself updated about the latest buzz related to your industry, the interaction on this platform helps you to create an online brand and reputation which in the long run will help in generating a WOM for your company as online reputation management is the off shoot of the success of these social media sites.

No doubt this media offers a global reach in the most cost effective way but there are certain things to bear in mind when we have a social media presence.

There should be a team or a single person responsible to manage the media. i.e there has to be a sense of responsibility and answerability to every post or tweet , one has to distinguish between relating online on a personal basis and a formal basis. When you are dealing with a client the language and approach have to be very thought off as every post and tweet gets recorded and the company has to stand by the spoken word especially when you are dealing with customer complaint online or a grievance.

Just like every drop in the ocean counts everything you write on social media keeps on adding to your brand value and online reputation hence every word counts.

SEO has got its own importance and Social media has got its own importance. Since Social media has been integrated by search and real time search is where people go if they want to know what people are saying about a certain topic as of now, SEO and social media have to be used in conjunction by all the companies for a long term qualitative online presence for their business. Both these sources bring in qualitative, targeted inbound traffic which is the main purpose of online marketing.

The Approach For Online Marketing – Focus On Content And Information

Marketing is all about bringing the people to the product whereas Sales is taking the product to the people.

Basically, the sales force of your company and the marketing team of your company both have to focus on these two important Ps i.e product and people. Of course there are the other Ps like price, promotions, professionalism , place and profit which are also inter-linked to this whole process.

Whether a company is following the off line traditional methods of marketing or is focusing on online internet marketing the main aim is to pull the attention of the buyer to the product. In the traditional methods this task was not easy as the reach that the advertising in newspapers, magazines or on billboards , on TV, etc. gave was limited and at a very high cost.

Online marketing on the other hand has a phenomenonal global as well as local reach. But, pulling the attention of the buyer to the product on your online store is an equally challenging job which needs a slightly different approach and a well planned and a well thought of website .

Netizens are info hungry and are always searching for more and more information on the search engines or within your site for additional information either about the product displayed on your site or about your company.

People are more aware as of today about the options available for what they want to buy because of the plethora of information available on the net on each and every topic. They have become more net savvy and as a result it can be observed that the search patterns of the searcher have also become more specific , which has made the SEO industry to focus more on the long tail keywords.

Hence, first and foremost make sure there is enough content available on your site about each product that you display on the online store front .

Secondly, make sure your company has a web presence on the mostly visited social media sites so that your potential customers can voice their queries or discuss related issues.

And of course, to ensure that your website ranks well on the search engines is something that goes without saying as the search engines are the main source from where the targeted traffic finds your website.

Once the visitor is on the website he is a potential customer . The design, architecture, user-friendliness and of course, the compelling content on the landing page of your site will determine if the potential customer will be converted into a regular customer or not.

So, Once again we see that “Content Is King” when it comes to winning over the search engine bots or the visitors coming to your site.

The search engines do not discriminate between a website of a start up and a website of a company running ancestral business, neither do they discriminate the rankings of a company on the basis of their balance sheets.

So all the websites have an equal chance or potential of getting ranked on the first page of the search engine which opens the doors to a whole new world of business and opportunities for that company. Provided, the site has been ethically optimized and offers genuine , focused and detailed content.

Again, it is this very same content which will make other websites link to your site. As we all know inbound links are another factor which work like a vote to your site or like WOM for your site. If only webmasters focus on making the site qualitative rather than have link building strategies and think of ways and means of buying and selling links half the spam related issues would be taken care of.

Online Reputation Management And Monitoring

Reputation is the opinion or a social evaluation of the group of entities toward a person, a group of people, or an organization . It is an important factor in many fields, such as education, business, online communities or social status.

Reputation can be considered as a component of the identity as defined by others
Reputation is 'the result of what you do, what you say, and what other people say about you'.
Online Reputation is a factor in any online community where trust is important.
An online identity, internet identity, or internet persona is a social identity that an Internet user establishes in online communities and websites.

From all the above definitions and statements, the terms:

Opinion
Identity
Result of your actions and words spoken
Trust factor

are all important and related to each other when we define or discuss about the reputation of any person, company, community, group etc.

Whether it is the real world or the virtual world when it come to business the word of mouth (WOM) is the most reliable and trustworthy source your potential customers will give a ear to.

It takes time for any business to create a goodwill for itself in the market and that has to be earned over a period of continous quality services offered by your company.

People find the online reference to your business on the web through the search engines or some referring sites. Moreover now with the real time search as one of the search options on the search engines, what people are writing about your brand or product on social media sites like twitter , facebook, linkedin, etc. Is also one of the sources from where people form an impression about your company.

Hence, first and foremost it is important to create an identity for your business on the web. That is usually initiated by registering an apt domain name, developing a good informative, content rich website and then by optimizing the site for search engines so the netizens can find your website in the top rankings when they search for something related to the product or service offered by your company.

The buzz about your business can also be spread via the social media sites by conversing and sharing information.

Once your online presence or identity is created on the web it is but obvious that people (usually competitors, ex-employees, customers, etc) start forming and voicing opinions about a certain brand and product .

Hence, it is very important to track and monitor what people are saying about your company or product and then offer a humble thanks if the opinion is positive but if it is negative then it is time for your PR team to stand by for the reputation of your company and defend your brand or make improvements accordingly.

It is also very important for every company to have strong social media presence where you can put forward your word.

You can keep yourself informed about what the web world is talking about your company by creating Google Alerts for the company name.

Usually the micro blogging conversational platform like twitter or facebook serves the purpose. But, if you have a blog then you can write in detail and rectify the harm done or enhance the positive aura around the buzz.

When the continuous online presence of your company is found on the search engines and Social media sites and when it is seen that the company has a voice and image of its own then surely the trust factor is taken care of.

Again, prevention is always better than cure so start tracking the website and social media as soon as your website goes live.

Hence, The three steps involved in Online Reputation Management are:

• Monitor
• Analyze
• Influence

http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2006/03/online-reputation-monitoring-beginners.html

Real Time Search v/s Traditional Index or Library Search - Why You Cannot Ignore Social Media From Your Online Marketing Strategy?

We all are aware of the fact that the search engines index websites and display the list of ranked websites on the search result pages according to the searcher’s query keyed in the search box.

But , since 2009 the social media sites are the most populated websites on the web and nearly all the netizens log in and visit some or the other social media site like twitter, facebook, youtube, myspace, linkden, or some blog according to their preference to get the latest updates related to a person, place or post atleast once a day.

As the search preferences of the people are changing and people are interested in more and more fresh content available on the web to know what the latest buzz is all about. The search engines have more search options on their result pages now and one of the options is the real time search which is being accessed increasingly by the searchers to update themselves about the fresh and the latest buzz about a certain search query.

The organic search results display list of websites or Wiki pages related to the query but Real Time Search results display who is tweeting or posting what , related to the search query as of NOW . In short it depicts the buzziness of the topic searched and what people are saying and sharing about it.

Apart from search engines like Google, Bing, etc displaying real time search results, there are full-fledged search engines dedicated to real time search now.

For example :

http://www.oneriot.com/

http://www.cascaad.com/

As , the traditional or library search has got its own challenge of ranking relevant websites at times due to the loads of spam content available on the net , the real time search world is filled with a lot of din and noise. Hence, the challenge of the real time search results is to filter out the authority tweets, opinions and blogs and display the quality buzz as results and catch the actual pulse to make the real time search engines racing ahead.

Hence, all said and done – How you manage your social media accounts will tell a lot about your company as a whole and develop an online reputation in the long run which will eventually decide if your social media account is worthy of reliability and the real time search engine algorithms will decide if your voice or opinion should be heard by the netizens or not.

Managing the social media accounts professionally and making it reflect the policies and principles of your company is the mantra of social media marketing.

Hence, Pause and Ponder Before You Post and Think Before you Tweet !

About Measuring ROI Of The Various Forms Of Search Engine And Social Media Marketing

A lot has been spoken about the fact that online marketing is getting priority in the marketing strategies and budgets of the SMEs as well as Fortune 500 companies. It is true that the online behavior of the people is evolving and there is an exponential increase in the no. of people buying online, making online reservations for travel, hotel bookings and searching for information and updates on search engines. Social media sites also have become the source for real time search results. When priority and importance is given to any marketing media, calculating the ROI from that media is the focal point of that campaign. Calculating the ROI from the amount spent on SEO needs a base of atleast 6 months to 12 months of data as a basis. The data that is required to calculate the ROI from SEO is as follows: • The no. Of Inquiries received from the search engines • The no. of Sales closed from these inquiries received • The Amount spent on SEO • The Profit accrued from these sales. If the SEO on the website has been according to the norms of the search engines and is ethical with a long term perspective kept in mind by future proofing it in a way that the rankings are maintained over a long period of time then the amount spent on SEO gets written off with every successful sale as a result of inquiries generated from organic search and in due course the amount spent on SEO ceases to remain and expense but is in reality reflected as an investment made. The same can be said for the paid, sponsored listings got by spending on a PPC campaign but, the benefit from a PPC campaign ceases to exist as soon as you stop spending on the campaign as the PPC campaign does not create any footprints on the web for you which in future any return can be accrued. So, PPC truly remains an expense and does not become an investment in the long run like an SEO campaign. A PPC campaign also has the same potential like an SEO campaign to generate business for your company but you cannot future proof your PPC campaign but you surely can future proof your SEO campaign and have a long term web presence in a truly planned way with every web page of your website targeting for different keywords and with the possibility of ranking on page 1 of the search engines for every product and service that your company offers. When it come to social media , calculating the ROI from the amount spent on social media is still a very relative and approximate – A direct calculation is still not possible as this media is still at the experimental stage and it is still not being used as a focused media for marketing or generating inquiries and thereby sales. But this media surely has great potential to serve as a strong platform for after sales customer grievances & after sales support. It also can be used for answering queries for the to be or potential customers and achieve the main objective of putting forward the right image of the company by voicing the objectives of the products, policies and people of the company. It is a very good link to connect to the customers and potential customers. Nevertheless, as the real time search results are being sourced from the social media sites like twitter, facebook, etc. the posts and tweets on social media surely do have a potential of diverting targeted traffic to your website which again in return serves the purpose of any SEO or PPC campaign. Hence, if you truly want a return from the online marketing budget that your company has set aside , decide upon the best online marketing mix suited for your organization.

Your Website, You, Your Marketing Team, The Internet/Web Marketing Mix & A Right Holistic Approach

Web marketing is replacing the traditional methods of marketing at a very alarming rate. We see more and more people wanting to market on the web and are willing to divert a larger part of the marketing budget for online presence of their business.

The options of creating an online presence are many and what will be the optimum fit for your business type shall solely depend on the nature of your business, the online advertising budget, the willingness and the knowledge of your marketing team.

There are various platforms available on the internet , for advertising on the web. Some of them are as follows:

• Search Engines

• Email Campaigns

• Advertising Networks And Affiliates

• Web Directories And Portals

• Press Releases

• Social Media Sites

Search Engines

For building a web presence on the search engines the website has to be made SEO friendly and optimized so as to rank high for the targeted keywords. This can also be achieved by enrolling for a PPC program and pay the bid amount in order to get a ranking under the sponsored listings list on the search engines.

The footprints can be created on the search engines even if you do not have a website . You can add the details about your business on the Google maps or Bing maps and get a local listing for your business.

Now a days search engines have many options on which your business can have a presence on. For eg. Videos, blogs, discussions, news, books, shopping, images, maps, updates.

Email Campaigns

Email campaigns are conducted by sending details and information about your company products and policies via a newsletter or well designed emails. In order to gain success via this method one needs to collect a long list of email ids or develop a subscriber base through your existing website. There are many professional marketing companies offering this service and there are many bulk emailing softwares also available in the market.

But there are certain factors to be borne in mind when you have email campaigns:

You should have a web server which follows the standard norms for sending bulk emails (i.e the no. of emails sent per hour should not increase the limit else it will result your domain being enlisted in the spam list.)
The email should have an unsubscribe link in it so that people who are no longer interested in receiving the newsletters can opt out of it.
The email should have a complete email signature with all your contact details and links to your social media accounts and website.
The email should not be sent very frequently.
You should not expect everyone to reply to you or contact you as the conversion ratio for email campaigns is very very low.

Advertising Networks And Affiliates

An online advertising network or ad network is a company that connects advertisers to web sites that want to host advertisements. Increasingly, ad networks are companies that pay software developers as well as web sites money for allowing their ads to be shown when people use their software or visit their sites. The best example is Google Adsense where the website which displays the Ad. gets a certain percentage of the Adwords amount bid as per the bid for those keywords and Ad.

Affiliate marketing means using one website to drive traffic to another it is a form of online marketing, which is frequently overlooked by advertisers.

In both these types of advertising it is obvious one needs a very strong targeted network to drive traffic and achieve conversions.

Web Directories And Portals

A web directory also indexes the web and lists websites but unlike the search engines the directories are classified into categories and the websites are listed under the relevant categories and are human edited.

The listing in the web directories can be free or at a price depending on the policies of the web directories.

A web portal, also known as a links page, presents information from diverse sources in a unified way. Apart from the standard search engine feature, web portals offer other services such as e-mail, news, stock prices, information, databases and entertainment.

Portals provide a way for enterprises to provide a consistent look and feel with access control and procedures for multiple applications and databases, which otherwise would have been different entities altogether.

Getting the website on directories and portals may or may not result in traffic to the site but surely adds to the web presence and if the portal or directory is of some repute and standing on the web then it is a valuable inbound link which in return helps in affecting the rankings of the site in the search engines.

Press Releases

A press release, news release, media release, or press statement is a written or recorded communication directed at members of the news media for the purpose of announcing something claimed as having news value. Commercial press release distribution services, such as PR Newswire, PR NewsChannel and Business Wire, distribute them on the web and this in turn results in a multifold web presence for the website.

Social Media Sites

According to Wikipedia Social media are media for social interaction, using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Social media use web-based technologies to transform and broadcast media monologues into social media dialogues.

The most frequented social media sites by the netizens are Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Linkedin, wikis, myspace, etc. these social media sites are conversational platforms hence these sites help you to develop business relations and also can be used to interact with customers and to be customers using strong Public Relations.

Being a socially responsible netizen and keep in mind the theories of inter-personal relations, etiquette, ethics and develop a social reputation which will by itself give a boost to the business objectives you have.

One cannot create an identity on the social media by just tweeting quotes or retweeting famous top tweets or by following the herd mentality. Carve a niche for yourself by being unique and by sharing knowledge and information.

Sales and conversions no doubt are the business objectives but social media is not a market or a mall for displaying goods and services but a platform for interacting with each other and developing the goodwill and a genuine online reputation for your company which surely will result in recommendations and a good WOM and needless to say that in return the realization of the business objective cannot be far behind.

Just like in the real world there are many options for advertising – Newspapers, Magazines, TV, Radio, etc. similarly, you have options for online advertising also . As all these forms of advertising are in one or the other way connected to each other.

The best option is to have a healthy balance of the marketing mix online so that your website gets the maximum value for money spent and the maximum web presence for all the effort put in.

Next time you think for an online marketing strategy , please discuss with your online marketing team regarding what would be the best option and the right mix and prepare a priority list because online strategies take time in churning out results and sending you targeted traffic.

As this targeted traffic has the potential for getting converted to the online business that you are aiming for.

Once the web presence has been achieved and your website starts getting targeted traffic , analyzing the data and taking corrective and decisive actions is the only way to future proof your online presence.

Hence, It is the complete holistic approach to online marketing which will spell SUCCESS for your business online.

You must have surely read in many offices and shops – We cannot spell Success without ‘u’

On the web ‘U’ stands for the ‘USER’ & ‘USER EXPERIENCE’

It goes without saying that right from the time the website is designed or the domain name is decided till it acheives the world wide web presence it is the user who has to be the focus around which all decisions have to be taken.

The Quest To Differentiate Between Knowledge And Information

Knowledge is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as

(i) expertise, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject;

(ii) what is known in a particular field or in total; facts and information; or

(iii) awareness or familiarity gained by experience of a fact or situation.

The term knowledge is also used to mean the confident understanding of a subject with the ability to use it for a specific purpose if appropriate.

The shortest possible definition of knowledge is When information is packaged or used for understanding or doing something, it is known as knowledge.

The shortest possible definition of information is a message received and understood.

In order to equip ourselves with knowledge or educate ourselves about a certain topic we either go to an educational institution for gaining knowledge formally or constantly read about it or discusswith experts and peers about it.

Before this age of the internet people visited libraries, went to social gatherings, attended workshops and lectures to serve the above purpose. But, currently the trend is to sit in front of your computer and google or bing for the information.

Recently I read a blog post titled Doctors Warn Against Relying Too Much On Google which came to the following conclusion.

The study warns consumers and health professionals about relying on commercial health sites, except for the “most reputable sites” like WebMD and eMedicine.

But, I think this applies to all the information available on the web. Considering the millions of blogs, social media accounts and websites mushrooming on the web. The main concern is the teens and tweens who are gathering life and world perceptions by reading what is written on the web.

People in their teens and twenties are most of the time gathering information about everything under the sun on the web. How many of them after they google or bing a search can differentiate the grain from the chaff and decide which are the authority sites about that topic.

I think though search engines are trying to put in their best to rank the most relevant sites for the searches made. The main drawback is that any website can be made SEO-friendly but how will the search engines decide which website is having the correct content for the related topic.

Yes. The no. of inbound links determine the popularity of a site which is assumed to be the certificate for correct content also. But is this right?

I am not saying that all content on the web is crap but when it comes to certain important topics like health, career, relationships all the read content should be analysed and cross-checked with over a wide range of websites available for that topic and also discussed real time with actual experts on the topic.

As many time blogs and social media posts are the personal opinions expressed by people rather than the facts. Recently one the film directors from India had tweeted that everybody is a critic today everybody seems to have an opinion … where is the audience?

I personally believe that the partial onus is on us as web developers, content writers and web marketers to always try our best to put forward and market websites with true factual information.

Related Links:

Consulting 'Dr. Google': Study finds much Internet-based sports medicine information is incorrect or incomplete

Evaluating Information Found on the Internet

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