South Indian Film Stars on Twitter

 South Indian film starts are not behind even when it comes to Twitter. Most of the Telugu film stars or people related to Telugu film industries are creating their presence on Twitter. Few of them are below. Hope they are real accounts...

Allu Sirish
Hansika
Junior NTR
Nagrjuna Akineni
Nithin Reddy Nalla
Priya Anand
Ram
Rana Daggubati
Richa Gangopadhyay
Siddharth

Refer this for other Indian (Hindi) film celebraties and more... - Famous Personalities / Celebraties on Twitter

1961 Usha Parinayam - Telugu Film Songs

13 Easy Tips to Make Landing Pages More Effective

Landing page is the crucial first step for any conversion to happen. Be it a download, a registration or a sale, the prospect will spend an average of 8 seconds on landing page. So, you have approximately 8 seconds to make the visitor, what you want him/her to do. In these 8 seconds, the visitor may close the page or will do what you wanted.


Thus, the landing page should be so effective such that those 8 seconds should be more than enough for the visitor to deliver your message and action. So, how do you increase the effectiveness of the landing pages, say for a banner or any PPC campaign?

1. If the visitor is coming to the landing page, through PPC campaign then the keywords which prompted the visitor to click should also be promptly displayed on the landing page or should be used in the body content. So, in the title and header tag try to use the keywords. Have separate landing pages for separate keywords groups in your PPC campaigns specific to the set of keywords they are targeted at.
2. Do not use long paragraphs and sentences. Remember, you have less than 8 seconds. Have short sentences preferably, bullet points. Usually, it is easy to read and understand the bullet points. So, try to deliver the message you want to convey in short and crispy manner.
3. Have your main and important lines on the above fold of the page. Do not expect the visitors to scroll down to read the lines. Just remember, they spend very less time on the page and scrolling down or side-wards will take a couple of seconds away.
4. Have the product image or the screenshot or a nice attractive image to compliment the text you have on the landing page. Images do speak louder than words and can also attract the attention of the visitor.
5. Forms? I hate when I see forms. Moreover, if the forms are too long I hate them more. And, if the form does not trust me as a human and makes me type what I see in the image, I get pissed off again. So, try to make these forms as simple as possible. Ask only the info which you require. Do not try to ask more info. What you may need at the first place is the prospect’s email address, so grab it first. You can use dropdown or radio buttons for other form fields which are much easier to select as the visitor need not type the whole stuff.
6. The call-to-action link or the button should be promptly displayed on the landing page. The visitor should really know what he/she is supposed to do and that also is your objective. So, make these buttons a bit attractive and use a nice call-to-action line like “Get FREE Whitepaper”, “Add to Cart – Use Coupon Code XXXX before Check-out”, “Download it NOW”. Words like Register or Submit will not be that much useful on the landing pages. You need to attract the attention on the prospect for the click.
7. And where can I have this call-to-action button/s? It should be visible in the above fold of the page. Do not expect the visitor to scroll the page up and down or side-wards and click on the button.
8. Test the landing pages for all the popular browsers. Differences in browser rendering can cause pages to display improperly, leaving an unprofessional experience and making the prospect to bounce out. Browsershots.org offers a free service that provides a snapshot of your webpage in most of the popular web browsers.
9. Do not forget to test the landing pages for different resolutions as well. A change in resolution may push the call-to-action button below the fold. Do test the complete process on all resolutions. The best you can do is to know the resolution (size) most of your visitors are using. You can get this info from Google Analytics or any other website stats tool and optimize the page for that and try to adjust the images, buttons etc for other resolution as well.
10. Try to reduce and optimize the download time of the landing pages. If the landing page does not show up in 3-4 seconds, then the prospect may exit from your website or will move away to a different window or page. Avoid using heavy images and flash elements on the landing pages. This post proivdes links to few good tools to optimize download time for the web pages.
11. Try to gain trust from the first time visitors to your website / landing page. If your site is authenticated by VeriSign or you accept payments through PayPal then display the logo somewhere at the bottom or near the “Buy” button.
12. If you have a strong customer testimonial or a perfect feedback, show it on the landing page. You can also display any recognition or award received on the page.
13. The last step is doing numerous tests on the different types of landing pages. You have A/B testing; you have Google Analytics… which can provide the bounce rate and conversions the landing page is providing. Google Website Optimizer allows you to test multiple variables at a time and determines the best combination of them. CrazyEgg will show you where exactly the visitors are clicking. The advantage of this tool is, it will also show the visitors’ clicks even when the element is not hyperlinked. So, depending on that you can have that text / image linked appropriately.

The bottom line which you have to definitely remember when designing the landing pages is - you need to be in the visitor’s shoes and do what he / she will do in first 8 seconds. You landing page only has 8 seconds to lose or make a customer.

Related posts:
5 Easy Tips to Improve the CTR for Google Adwords
6 Basic Tips for a Perfect PPC Campaign

Landing Page Optimization For Dummies

9 Tips to Guide Your Conversations on Facebook

If you are an online marketer, then you will surely not miss in promoting your brand on Facebook. Facebook has become one of the top referrer to websites like Google. BUT, you need to have a proper strategy for Facebook. Facebook requires a different approach from other forms of marketing messaging and engagement. Here are few recommendations to guide your interactions and conversations on Facebook.

1. You need to act as if you are a real person from your organization and you are also taking to a real person. People like speaking to a real person as they feel confident that they will be attended to.
2. Read carefully through all the comments before joining the conversation. And chip in when you feel it is the perfect situation or required situation.
3. Have patience when you want to comment. Do not go on commenting on each and every discussion. Give others a chance to talk about your products and services. It is always good if other customers respond to questions about your products and services.
4. Do not talk about yourself always. I really do not like a firm which always comments on their business.
5. Focus on conversations with your fans which are of interest to them. Give fans a topic which can ignite a healthy conversation. Discuss about the topics and do not try to sell the product here.
6. Have contents, quizzes, coupons… so keep the audience engage. This can also initiate a viral and can attract more fans. But, ensure you are not doing too much of selling here.
7. Do not forget to promote your Facebook fan page on other promotional materials and collaterals. Example: your website, email signatures, business cards, other ads, events…
8. Make sure the content on your website can be easily shared on Facebook using the ‘like’ icon. This helps in expanding the reach and prospect base through your friends and their friends as well.
9. Try to measure the impact of being on Facebook – no. of fans, no. of comments, no. of engagements, no. of new prospects, traffic referred to your website…

You need to know that Social Media has turned into a powerful marketing medium – it needs a perfect planning and strategy to make the campaign successful.

Facebook For Dummies

Some Great Books on Google Adwords and Analytics - All 5 / 5 Start Ratings from me.

Ultimate Guide to Google Ad Words, 2nd Edition: How To Access 100 Million People in 10 Minutes

Ultimate Guide to Pay Per Click Advertising: Advanced Strategies to Help You Beat 97% of the Competition 

Advanced Google AdWords

Web Analytics 2.0: The Art of Online Accountability and Science of Customer Centricity

SPEED: Google Says It Matters

Google has sent strong signals and indications that the download speed of webpages does matter for SERPs. So, a faster download of the webpage, not only helps the visitor to stick to the page for longer time with better user experience and to improve conversions. Now, it will be one of the important factors in the ranking in the search results page in Google.

While site speed is a “new” signal, it may not carry as much weight as the relevance of a page, title tag of the page or the content on the page. Google Webmaster Central says that, currently, less than 1% of search queries are affected by the site speed signal and the signal for site speed only applies for visitors searching in English on Google.com at this point (April 2010).

With Page Speed, Google will be able to comfy with the website performance in no time and will be able to provide us the suggestions to make it better. Page Speed is open-source Firefox / Firebug add-on. Page Speed performs several tests on a site's web server configuration and front-end code. These tests are based on a set of best practices known to enhance web page performance. Webmasters who run Page Speed on their pages get a set of scores for each page and helpful suggestions to improve its performance.

Page Speed evaluates performance from the user’s point of view, typically measured as the page load time. This is the lapsed time between the moment a user requests a new page and the moment the page is fully rendered by the browser. The best practices cover many of the steps involved in page load time, including resolving DNS names, setting up TCP connections, transmitting HTTP requests, downloading resources, fetching resources from cache, parsing and executing scripts, and rendering objects on the page. Essentially Page Speed evaluates how well your pages either eliminate these steps altogether, parallelize them, and shorten the time they take to complete. The best practices are grouped into five categories that cover different aspects of page load optimization:

• Optimizing caching - keeping your application's data and logic off the network altogether
• Minimizing round-trip times - reducing the number of serial request-response cycles
• Minimizing request overhead - reducing upload size
• Minimizing payload size - reducing the size of responses, downloads, and cached pages
• Optimizing browser rendering - improving the browser's layout of a page

Webmasters can as well use these free tools to evaluate the download speed test for the web pages / website.

• YSlow, a free tool from Yahoo! that suggests ways to improve website speed.
• WebPagetest shows a waterfall view of your pages' load performance plus an optimization checklist.
• In Webmaster Tools, Labs > Site Performance shows the speed of your website as experienced by users around the world.