Top 10 Webinar Best Practices

Webinar is very effective and economical method to market the products or services to the prospect. Here are some useful guidelines which you can consider while conducting or promoting a webinar. There are many more best practices and I feel these are the top 10 best ones which can help to improve the effectiveness of webinars. A bit of extra effort can help in better returns.

1. Use of Guest Speakers: Guest speakers help in increasing the attendance rates of a webinar. This usually generates interest among the attendees and having a guest speaker is the top best practice while conducting a webinar.
2. Rehearsal of Webinar: Rehearsal in stage shows, dance and plays is always a best and important practice. Likewise, rehearsal prior to the live webinar is also very important. This will have you run a trial webinar and you will be aware of the glitches and you will have time to rectify them.
3. Promotion of Webinar: Yes. Do promote the webinar well in advance. This is one of the difficult practices but, very important one. If people are not aware of the webinar, then how can you expect them to attend it? Sending personalized email invitations to prospects will work well. Other methods are banner ads, direct mailing and press release. Social media websites like LinkedIn and Twitter also do help in promoting the webinars.
4. Have Attendees Profile Information: Always get the attendees profile information prior to the webinar. This will help you to customize the content of the webinar accordingly. You can always match the content to the needs of the participants so that the turn-out is better and the webinar is successful.
5. Invitations to be sent 2-weeks in advance: It is better to send the invitations and reminders 1-2 weeks in advance. Provide ample time for attendees to plan their schedule accordingly. Many do not prefer to be reminded on the last minute. Also, do remind them about the software requirements and methods to test the audio and other technical details. Do provide a technical support contact no. or email.
6. Have 60 minute Webinars: It is always a best practice to limit the webinar to 60-90 minutes. This helps in less disruptions and it will be easy to get the attendees attention for this period.
7. Have Q & A Session: It is always better to have a questions and answers session for 15-20 minutes. If this time is not sufficient, then provide a provision for the participants to ask questions through email or a form and the same can be answered at a later stage.
8. Poll Questions: It is also a best practice to have poll questions during the webinars. This will help in engaging the participants and helps in getting more feedback on the content and to improvise it in the next webinar.
9. Product Demos: Why use these webinars only to share knowledge. If you feel this is the right audience of prospect for your products, then have a short demo on the same and solicit feedback.
10. Post Event Survey: This is the last but important best practice which is often ignored. Such post-event surveys help in suggestions in conducting the next webinar. Moreover, the responses can help in making sales calls.

6 Tips to Use LinkedIn to Find a Job

Konstantin Guericke, Co-Founder and Vice President of LinkedIn and GuyKawasaki posted these easy tips. I am just summarizing the best and effective ones which I feel will definitely work for you. To be without a job, during such time of recession takes hell out of you. So, it is better to follow all the options available for a job search.

1. Use LinkedIn status updates to let your network and the world know that you are on look-out of a job.
2. Connect with former bosses and co-workers who can help you out in the search or refer to some organization.
3. Get LinkedIn recommendations from former and present bosses. A strong recommendation from you manger will highlight your strengths and shows you are a valued employee. This will specially help you if you were laid-off. Your manger will be happy to pen down a recommendation as he/she has laid you off.
4. Make sure your profile highlights your strengths and not just your regular responsibilities. Also, check the box under your contact settings stating you are open to career opportunities.
5. Search for jobs on LinkedIn. Also, check the second tab called “The Web”. Apply for the jobs which suit your profile.
6. Search in your geo-location for people who work in the industry you are targeting. Under ‘Interested in’ select Hiring Managers and contact them. Also, connect the people who are in second degree and increase the network.

If these tips help you in getting you a job, then do not forget to call me for a drink. Lastly, use the same profile picture on various social networking sites. This will help people who would like to connect you as they can easily identify by just seeing the picture.

Is The Recession Good For Freelancers?

The news has really turned from bad to worse. Organizations are cutting down costs and are having tight marketing budgets. The challenge is that, they really need to be in touch with their customers at this point of time and build the awareness in the market. They also have to fight the competition and I think this is the best time to do so.

But, with this tight marketing budget, will they be able to do all this? They may cut down on advertising, but not online. Corporate would like to do more marketing and outreach to keep their clients. They will see for channels where they are sure to get a decent ROI. Email marketing, search engine optimization and social media marketing will be the mantra for them.

The current economic conditions and layoff of staff will trigger outsourcing. Tight budgets will make them look-out for freelancers or contractors rather than organizations who can do this.

@Freelancers - this recession can be good news for you. Let me know if it has really increased your work and dollars. And beware, the laid-off folks can join the freelancing bandwagon.

Also, the websites which offer freelance work sites may be making good business now :).
In the past few months, the number of new users has almost doubled or increased on the four leading sites: Elance.com, o’Desk.com, Guru.com and Helium.com.

3 Easy Tips To Use Social Networking Sites More Efficiently

One obvious reason, why many people do not participate actively on all the social networking sites is the lack of time and participating and following in all or many of them is too tedious. People usually participate with good enthusiasm on couple of them and ignore the rest. Moreover, when you walk through LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, you really do not have that much of patience or time to visit rest of them.

Here are simple tips to handle and keep a track of most of the social networking sites.

1. RSS Feeds makes it really simple. Most of social networking sites do provide RSS feeds and it is easy to keep track in your usual RSS reader, rather than log in and read the updates on the netwroking sites. You just need to subscribe the feeds of people you want to know the updates for say in Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter. In your RSS reader, you can read the status messages and you can choose on which updates you want to respond for. Yes, to respond to conversations, you do have to go to the social networking site and submit. But, in RSS reader you really can choose to what updates or conservations you need to respond and you can keep yourself updated.
2. Setting the email or SMS notifications makes it short. Social media sites do provide email notifications and options to which you can select to receive email for. Set the options for which you want to receive email. You will be periodically updated through the emails. And I guess you really check your emails regularly. Twitter has a very good option to have an SMS sent to your mobile phone. Select the important ones and have the SMS option enabled to receive your important peoples’ tweets on your mobile.
3. Do many at a time in one snap. Update your status on most of the networking sites at a time. There are a number of applications and services available that allows you to update the status of more than one social networking site at one go. Update only once in this application and it is updated at most of the networking sites at the same time. www.ping.fm and www.hellotxt.com are couple of them. In both these websites, you can send status messages via mobile phone, IMs like MSN, AOL, Yahoo or GTalk and any of the networking sites itself. In turn these sites post the status update message on various networking sites (about 30+ sites) in one snap.

I would not suggest having your accounts everywhere and keeping updating them. I would rather suggest use few ones and good ones where you feel your like-minded network is and participate enthusiastically and strategically. As I feel, what ever time you spent on these networking sites should be productive and useful to you and others as well. So, happy networking with these simple tips.

6 Tips To Find Followers on Twitter Relevant To Your Business

If you think you have many followers and you follow many matters, then you are wrong. It really does matters, if your followers are ones who have interest in reading what you post and show interest in your Tweets. It is no point in twitting to folks who are not at all interested in your tweets.

1. The first and the most important thing - do not to spam using your Twitter account. Do not say to your followers, “Just wanted to say hello” and other stuff like this. Do not try to push your product and say “if you buy this you get this free gift”. Twitter is a nice tool for micro-blogging. One has to use the AIDA principle here – Awareness, Interest, Desire and Action.
2. Use the search option on Twitter to follow like-minded people. Check the profile and their messages and if it interests you or your business, then follow them. Follow those who will feel that they have an advantage from you for following as well.
3. Apart from just following people with an intention that they may follow you back, your own tweets should stay relevant, to have your follower count grow organically. Just do not follow as many people as you like and forgot about tweeting valuable content.
4. Also, keep a track if the ones you are following are following you or not. In case they have not followed you for some time, unfollow them and click the follow button again. This will send another email to the person, and you may get another chance to tell them about you. May be, they change their mind now. You have to do this for whom you consider are very important to you for them to follow you.
5. Share good and quality content pertaining to your industry and business. Not only of your own interest, but you need to consider the interest of the ones who follow you.
6. If your business has different or varied interest, have different Twitter accounts for each interest. Just the way you use text ads and landing pages in PPC. You setup a different adgroup for each set of keywords pertaining to your business. Like-wise set-up different Twitter accounts and mange the accounts by following and have followers which pertains to the same interest.

There are many more tips and ideas to help you out in increasing the followers, but I feel these are the best ones. I would like you to share your best tips and ideas to increase the Tweet followers which can help in one's business.

Also read: 6 Tips To Use Twitter For Business

twitter means business: how microblogging can help or hurt your company 

6 Tips To Use Twitter For Business

Can this "poor man's email service" help in improving your business? Yes, though it is not as big as other media, Twitter can create that impact with the no. of followers you have to your company handle, and no. of people who are on Twitter and want to know about your company ore related products or services.

Here are few tips to use Twitter for your business.

1. Tweet to drive people to your company’s website. You can post an update at your company's end and start tweeting about it. You can tweet about the new sucess story or the case study you have published and people may like to read it. Tweet about the case study with a link to that page on your website.
2. Keep track of you brand on Twitter. Use the search tool, track the people who are tweeting about your brand name or the products. Not only your company, you can search what they are talking about your competitors. You can also set-up a RSS feed for such keywords so that, you receive all this to your RSS reader. This makes your task much easy. If you find anyone who is searching for the products or services which your company offers then let them know about your company.
3. Use the "Favorites" feature as a list of company testinonials. When you track people you are talking about your company, then favorite all the positive tweets. You just need to click the start symbol which is on the right side, beside the tweet. This particular tweet adds as your favorite. Add all positive feedbacks to your favorites. Use this list of all favorites as testimonials when you want to tweet next time or you can also use it on your website. The link to these favorites will be http://twitter.com/yourhandle/favorites.
4. Promote your events on Twitter using #. Just like the @handlename, you can use the hashtag for the events, like #event. So, if people want to tweet about the event they will use the same #event and it is easy for you to follow-up. And on your website, you can give the #event tag on the registeration form for people to know about the tweets of this event. For you, it is also easy to know the feedback after the event. You just need to search for #event in the search tool.
5. Develop relationships with reporters, bloggers and other media people through Twitter. Follow them and keep them updated about the updates at your company's end. Two resources that have a great list of the media people on Twitter are:
   Media Outlets: https://twitteringjournalists.pbwiki.com/Media+Outlets+Using+Twitter
   Media People: https://twitteringjournalists.pbwiki.com/Media+People+Using+Twitter
   http://mediaontwitter.pbwiki.com/
6. Tweet for customer service. Respond to customer services using twitter. Track any negative comments and resolve the issue immediately and tweet back the response to the customer. This may impress your customer.

Let me if I have missed anything. You can follow me on Twitter - @amalve

Also read: 6 Tips To Find Followers on Twitter Relevant To Your Business

 

Twitter Marketing: An Hour a Day

Will US Local Ad Market Shrink?

Will the local online takeover traditional local marketing in US? Just have a look at what Kelsey Group and BIA Advisory Services say in their research report.

There is a bad news and the good news about the local advertising.

First with the bad news - The local traditional advertising will be much less in 2013 as compared to 2008. Both the firms predict a compound annual -1.4% overall growth rate, with the largest drop-off in local ad spending occurring in 2009.

The traditional media spend in 2008 is $141 billion and is forecasted to fall to $112 billion in 2013.

Now the good news - The local online ad market is growing, will continue to grow and make up a larger percentage of the local traditional media sector. This year about 11.5% of ad spending for local will be online that means to say yellow pages, emailing, SEM etc. And this will increase to 22% in 2013.

“The share shift we expect (traditional vs digital) could actually be more pronounced if the major traditional media are not able to integrate new interactive products into their bundle,” said Neal Polachek of Kelsey.

(Source: eMarketer.com)

Link Building Helps to Save Money and Build Network

No. This is not the same tips and stories about effective link building. But these are the latest top 10 tips which I feel has evolved and changed as history passed by. I have come up with this post now as, I feel that building links ourselves is far much better than giving it to an agency to do it. So, here the tips that will explain in more detail:

1. You need to be more interested in links on basis of merit and not their numbers: As you already have your main keyword handy, type the keyword in Google search box and check for the top 3 or 5 sites which are your competitors. For example say www.competitor.com is the website which is ranked #1. Now try to see on which websites this competitor is listed on. Now search for link:www.competitor.com and links:www.competitor.com in Google. You will get a list of sites were this competitor is listed. Analyze the sites and see if they are relevant to your business and check if you can request them to provide you a link. This is tedious but it helps. Be sure that the partner website should not be a link farm else, it will not add any value. Good links are live votes. So be very conscious while selecting link partners.


2. You can only know what to lay focus on as you know your site specific needs: Once you have the list of websites with whom you can request for links, start submitting your sites to those websites and/or send an email to them. Let the anchor text has your main keyword. Have the description different for the websites as far as possible. See if the website content is in synergy with your website. You know your business very well. So, you are the right judge to identify the websites and the description that has to be used.


3. Home is not always sweet: It is not necessary that you have to get links only for the home page. But, you can get links for inner pages as well, if you think the content of the inner page has more synergy with the partner website rather than the home page.


4. Slow and steady wins the race here too: Get only 3 or 4 links per week. Not more. If the link building activities is outsourced then the service provider will only try to get as many links possible in a short span to finish the project. This can be penalized by Google.


5. Articles do matter: Best way is to write good articles with original content created by you. With a link or two linking to the related information on your website. And submit to websites which take article submissions.


6. Commenting on Blogs to get the link. Selfish? Subscribe to good blogs which is related to your business. Read the posts on these blogs regularly. Apart from just learning more about your business, you will find an “opportunity” to comment on the posts on these blogs with a link back to your website. Yes. Opportunity in quotes. Don’t go on submitting comments on blogs using the usual dialogue, “I like your post. Also read more about this on my website”. This will not help and will be deleted by the author. Better use a meaning full and real comment and provide your authentic feedback and share your ideas too along with the relevant link to your website.


7. Participating in Discussions and Forums: Identify good forums and register yourself. Participate in the discussions and make your voice heard. Have a link to your website in the signature.


8. Answering to questions too helps: Answer questions on social networking websites like LinkedIn, Facebook…etc. You are not only increasing your business network here but you will also learn the questions which the people have pertaining to your interest but, you can also provide a link back to your websites in your answers if it is relevant to do so. You will also open more business avenues through networking.


9. Ever wondered a tweet can be heard aloud: Yes. Tweet and many people will hear it. Use Twitter.com and have people following you. Put up a status related to your business with a link back. This may not help for building links for Google but will make people visit your website and may help in long run. May be a follower will like your website and will provide a link back to you. You can try FriendFeed as well.


10. Provide attractive bookmarks to readers to allow them to mark the page if they want to return back later: Returning visitors matter a lot. As in business it goes – To find a new customer takes more effort than getting business from an existing customer. So, provide easy to use and free to use tools to bookmark your websites. Make them easy to use and share sites like Digg, Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, Technorati, Mixx…etc. Also, use RSS to provide the people know about the updates on your websites.

So, if you do the link building activities yourself, you are not only saving thousands of dollars during this recession period, you are learning more about your business and increasing your network. Who knows after visiting those websites and blogs, you may come up with a novel idea to expand your business. Doing this, you are not only building quality links for your website, but you are building business network and planning for new business strategies for the future which is worth the time-spend.

What More I Want In Google Adwords During This Recession?

I do agree Google Adwords is a powerful tool to get target audience to your website and generate business. But, if you see the present economy and recession, most of the advertisers will like to spend as much less as possible and even if they have to spend on advertising they will be very keen to have the best ROI they ever had. So, the better bet they can see is Adwords or other PPC ads. Content targeting does offers to target the age group and gender but, advertisers need more specific audience.

What does Adwords offer them – targeted audience to a specific location, targeting by placement and targeting by language in addition to the specific keywords they bid on. What I want Adwords to offer much more targeted ads to a more niche segment, which many advertisers may be interested in these times of recession. Apart from the geo specific, I would like to target my ads to a particular profile, title, designation, interests…etc. This way, if I want to target my ads to senior management of banking industry, then I can select this group when configuring my ads. In turn Google can show my ads to that particular audience in particular so that the advertisers get more ROI. They will also not lose on clicks and can write and design landing pages to that specific audience they are targeting for. Thus, helping them with a good CTR, quality score, low CPC and better returns.

In turn, Google will be providing quality ads/searches to that specific audience for which they are looking for.

10 Tips To Increase Online Sales During This Recession

No wonder, why I am telling the same story which everyone know – the slow economy and recession. But, the numbers which I got from eMarketer surprised me.

Unlike in previous years, 2008 was sluggish for B2C sites.

The retail category which has hardly hit were computer software, digital entertainment and office supplies. While fitness equipment, books and magazines did well.

Seeing the above graph, one can interpret that the entertainment, luxury items and office supplies were vastly effected. Under luxury and entertainment we can term – music, videos, jewelry, watches, toys, PDAs and events tickets. So, the buyers have become too cautious in 2008 about what they are spending on. And they have spend the money were they really want to. They just did the purchases for their family needs – health, fitness, books, furniture, flowers and apparels.

What notes you need to take during this time of recession -

1. Concentrate more on organic search rankings. As it is a free tool to get the target audience and it is the best way when you have tight budgets.
2. Appropriately allocate the ad and marketing budget.
3. Have a proper messaging to your campaigns - you are here to fulfill your consumer’s basic needs and not to thrust your product on to them.
4. Target the niche audience as far as possible. This will help in more conversions and a better ROI.
5. Do measure your ROI for all your different campaigns separately and regularly. Invest more in the campaigns which is giving you better ROI. Have only ROI-driven strategies and use only quantifiable tactics. If you can’t prove it is working, then slash it.
6. It requires more effort and time to get a new customer. Better get more business from the existing customer. Concentrate more on customer marketing.
7. Try cross-selling other products/services to existing customers. This will save time and your customers may want to buy from you rather than other sellers.
8. If you do not have products/services to cross-sell, then partner with other sellers and scratch each other’s backs.
9. Increase your affiliate network. Motivate your top affiliates and help them with promotional materials and educate them to get more business during this situation. Better show them these 10-tips :)
10. Have coupon based or other promotional strategy. Re-look and constantly check, if it working and is it yielding more profits in a shorter span.

This is only the tip of the iceberg. You can get the prospects to your site, but the big question is can you make them buy? I also want to add that this is the best time to increase the market share for your business and beat the competitors before they beat you.

I would appreciate more suggestions from the various thought leaders in this e-Commerce market.

(Source for the above two graphs: eMarketer.com)

Web 2.0 In The Corporate World

Web 2.0 has spread widely among the internet community over the past five years and the social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace boast about more than 100 million users per month. Imagine how easy it is to have a mere 1% of that traffic referred to your site and the sales reaching the peak. These networking tools are more for consumer engagements and interactions. These should not be perceived as sales tools. Corporate companies have already noted the intense strength of these technologies that they are now becoming keen to adopt.

Why corporate are not ready to adopt this latest technology as they have adopted ERP and CRM?

• Corporate companies are too conservative and the fear of transparency which Web 2.0 offers makes them take the back seat
• Organizational structure and the lack of knowledge of managers to understand the new trend. Executives feel suspicious and uncomfortable and perceive such changes as taking unwanted risk
• Unless a quantitative measure is shown these corporate companies will not like to deploy
• They will not like to discuss about their clients or vice-versa openly and honestly as they feel they have bad competitors
• Implementation of Web 2.0 does not require much time, but to implement it and to participate in it requires the interaction of the larger workforce

These Web 2.0 tools are easy to implement but inherently disruptive and can challenge an organization and its culture. These interactive tools can be used strategically across the organization internally or externally to tap the unused potential. Corporate leaders should understand that this technology helps their business, employees and of course their customers as this provides a channel for broader collaboration, broader communication, instant and fair solutions to their problems and issues, to get feedback and opinions and helps community building. This in turn will help corporate leaders in generating new ideas and strategies and to take important decisions quickly and wisely.

The New "Brand" Algorithm of Google

There are all sorts of speculation about the signals Google using to define a site as being a brand will deserve a boost in SERPs. It seems overnight many big brands came up to the first page on Google without any SEO tweaks done to their website. Last month Aaron Wall from SEOBook posted his opinion about the change in the algorithm. The few examples which he has referred are about American Airlines, Delta and North West Airlines have come to the first page of Google for the search keyword ‘airlines tickets’ which was not the case earlier. Even Hallmark.com recently started ranking on first page for the keyword ‘gifts’.

If Aaron is correct then - Is Google giving more credit to the brands? Is it considering that only big brands have original and quality content? Do people look only for brands when they want to search? If I wanted to search for a website of certain brand, I would rather type the brand name as the keyword in Google and directly go to the website. Instead of ‘airlines tickets’, I would rather type ‘Delta airlines’ or American airlines’ and go to their website. I will not rather search for just 'airlines tickets' and check for Delta.

In India SearchMasters 2009 which happened recently in Bangalore, India, Adam Lasnik did mentioned in his Q&A session that, in the title tag, it is always good to use the Company’s name and location where it offers the products and services to be mentioned. I am wondering if he was pointing it to this algorithm change. If we add the company or brand name to the title tag are we not wasting the main real estate here? Adam Lasnik says no. Google considers stuffing of keywords in title tags as spamming. I believe if the brand is well known then it makes a lot of sense to put your brand in the page title or meta description tag. It might help to get clicks and even when it does not at least it helps aid awareness. On top of that, if it builds good CTR then it will help in personalized search.

Another sad news and set-back I see for small players is that they have to build their brand image to beat these brand company’s websites in Google’s result pages. The fact is that it’s just plain hard to define the strength of a local brand using an algorithm or a robot visit.

Few tips to minimize the effect of this change in the algorithm (these are just my guesses now and I have never experimented them). Follow them at your own risks.

1. Frame your title tag with your company’s name and in short provide the product or service you are offering. If possible mention the local area as well. Example: Company Name: Your product/service description and location. Something like - Northwest Airlines - Airline Tickets, Plane Tickets & Airfare.
2. Have a short and meaning full description which clearly summarizes the page content/product/service which you have on that page. If description tag is missing and/or is not relevant to the content that is available on that page, Google will take the description for your website which is on DMOZ.org (if at all your website is listed there).
3. Never use the same title and description tag for all the pages of your website - as usual.
4. Focus on long-tail keywords as this is more advantageous now. eMarketers.com research showed that more and more people are using long-tail and this will increase in coming months.
5. Concentrate on local search optimization.

These are just the two cents. And it is too early to suggest any solutions about this change. I am just trying to guess the relationship between what Adam Lasnik talked during the session and this algorithm change.

Latest Important Update: Matt Cutts of Google made a video talking specifically about this change. Matt said, they made a "change" but he wouldn't call it an "update", but rather a "minor change." In fact, in Google they call it the Vince's change. In short, he said this impacts a relatively small number of queries, not the long tail ones and it is more about "trust," the "quality" of the page, the page's "PageRank" and "value" then about brands.

One example he gives at 2m12s) is that if you type in eclipse into Google, the first result is not from Mitsubishi. So he says it is not "brand" focused but more about trust.

Google's CEO Terms Twitter As 'poor man's email'

Google CEO Eric Schmidt expects 2009 to be a "tough, tough" year and he warned that the search giant is "not immune" from the worsening economy. "It obviously will affect the online advertising market because our systems are so tightly tuned. If customers are buying less, it will eventually be reflected in CPCs and CPMs," he said.

He talked on a wide variety of topics during an on-stage chat with tech analyst Mary Meeker during the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference held recently in San Francisco. He focused mostly on the economy, calling the current situation "pretty dire" and adding that he doesn't expect it to improve until next year.

Schmidt also said that Google "was pretty inactive right now" on the M&As front, blaming unfavorable prices.

"The good news is we have lots of capital," Schmidt said. "The bad news is we're still trying to get everybody into the model that we really want in terms of M&A. And I think it'll start soon, but it's pretty inactive right now."

When asked about Twitter in a question-and-answer session, Schmidt said Google "was in favor of all these new communications mechanisms. Speaking as a computer scientist, I view all of these as sort of poor man's e-mail systems. They have aspects of an e-mail system, but they do not have a full offering."

It would have been really great and interesting to hear from this search giant’s chief not about the year 2009 but about the year 2015 rather. Everyone now knows that 2009 will be tough.

Moreover, Twitter is much talked about in the internet media and is being used by masses, but the irony is Twitter is yet to find a way to make money. Not only Twitter is poor man’s email system, but still Twitter is poor. More so if Twitter is poor man’s email system, then why has Google signed up for it?

If Twitter has to take Schmidt comments positively and try to develop on those lines, then I guess it will become more powerful. Does it want to be just an instant status informer or a storage based mechanism with more additional or premium features which an e-mail system has? Really do not know what Twitter has in its plan for the future.

L K Advani a la Obama?

I do not have much interest in writing on politics or giving my opinion on the elections outcome. But, when I came across a banner of Shri LK Advani / BJP on one of the websites when I was browsing, I was intended to click on it and see what is in it. Next, it made me anxious to know his presence in online and social media.

Looking at the past there was no role of marketing or online strategies for the campaigns. And now, the advantages of leveraging social media and internet technology to connect directly with people has not gone unnoticed and the bug has bitten our political parties. The political leaders are trying to ride on the internet technology wave especially to connect with the 100 million first-time voters who would start voting from this general election. But, the way Obama leveraged the social media and networking for online campaign, I guess Advani is trying to follow the same foot-steps (I mean only in online and social networking strategies). I was suprised that the first adopter to this social media is not the young leader Rahul Gandhi or Sachin Pilot, but the 81 years old — Shri. LK Advani.

I have read in a news article that Advani’s team has started with a Web 2.0 and blog, and now his team is leveraging YouTube, Facebook, Orkut and Google Adwords to reach out to the young voter.

However, what remains to be seen is whether he can pull it off the way Obama managed. I just want to have your check on the stats which I got for one of the news article. (Source: RWW)

Facebook: Obama has more than 5.4 million supporters and 570,000 plus wall posts.
YouTube: Obama’s YouTube address garnered nearly a million views.
Twitter: Obama sent out more than 260 Tweets to 144,000 "followers”, updating supporters on his whereabouts.
Other Online tools: The “My Barack Obama” community beautifully used online tools to organize offline activities and generate donations.

In shortl, Obama’s managed to raise $600 million from 3 million people, mainly through small contributions made online.

If we look at the stats of Advani’s team (Source: My own findings. The above numbers can be inaccurate):

Google Adwords: Search on Google for the keywords – Rahul Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi, BJP, TDP, blog, elections, Narendra Modi, Manmohan Singh, Mayawati…may be more. You will see Advani’s ads linking it to his website or his blog. Suprisingly, they are not bidding on ‘Laloo Prasad Yadav’ as the keyword.
Website: His website is buzzing with activity. It has blog, discussion forum having more than 5000 posts, speeches and more. As soon as I went to the page there is welcome note from Advani (You need to have QuickTime plug-in to listen to it. The website does not has mp3 or mp4 audio). It has achieved an impressive Alexa ranking of 13,914 as on yesterday. A Google page rank of 4/10 for the home page. But no page rank yet for inner pages. The visitors traffic to the website is about 400,000 visitors in the last 30 days. Impressive numbers for a website to start with.
Blog: Has well written posts, but infrequent. The last post is dated February 1, 2009. And I see as on date, 122 comments posted here. I did not want to click and read the comments though.
Facebook:Has only 140+ supporters and not much activity happening.
Orkut: He has 531+ as supporters.
YouTube: His channel has 191+ videos and 82+ subscribers as of now.
Twitter: I read on one of the blog that Advani himself does not update the status but his support group does it. The profile used to say so. Ironically, this account was suspended on February 15, 2009 so I can’t provide the number of followers.

Nevertheless, a good beginning and I just imagine that many more Indian politicians engaging online with their voters in the near future. Also, I would love to chat with Laloo Prasad Yadav some time.

My question here is can Advani (or any political leader or party) gain similar support from Indian people who browse the web? Obama won the elections because he is Obama. By walking on the marketing tactics of Obama will not make Advani or anyone else the PM. Of course few net savvy guys may change their mind and vote for Advani, but the question will be how many? Next, Obama used the social networking for Americans. Advani is doing it for Indian audience.

Update on Mar 4, 2009: Oh God! After posting this on LK Advani, my whole blog is carrying his ads and banners. So, do click them and see what BJP has in store for us...

Google Signs Up on Twitter

YES! This is no spam account and Google has very much officially signed up to Twitter – http://twitter.com/Google. I guess Google will use account to post the announcements similar to the Google Official Blog and may be relatively more frequent and quicker than their blog. Matt Cutts of Google himself confirmed that this Google Twitter is real Googler.

The first post was bit confusing and in fact was a binary message.

Later I was able to know that it is – I’m Feeling Lucky.

It more or less signifies that Google agrees Twitter as a form of mass communication in the same way that Google was interested in Blogger. Prior to the launch of Google Official Blog, Google relied on Google Groups and various webmaster forums to communicate with its users, webmasters, publishers and other target audiences for regular updates and issues. And now, Google has a blog for everything. The Official Google Webmaster Central Blog, Official GMail Blog, Google LatLong, Google Analytics Blog, Official Google Enterprise Blog, Offcial Google Mobile Blog and may be more. May be later, they will have Twitter accounts for everything for instant communication and updates.

Here are few Googlers who are already on Twitter - Matt Cutts, John Mueller, Adam Lasnik, Brian White, YouTube, Sarah, Adwords Helper.

Other pertinent Twitters you will love to follow are – Rand Fishkin, Barry Schwartz, Danny Sullivan, Greg Sterling, Matt Mcgee, Vanessa Fox, Elisabeth Osmeloski.

Let me know the missed ones...

Update: Danny from SearchEngineLand provides a exausthistive list of SE/Google/Yahoo/MSN folks on Twitter.