3 Most Important Social Media Strategies

To be successful in social media is it important

• To increase your network in social space - have more and more followers in Twitter?
• To have presence in all the forms – blogs, forums, Twitter, Facebook…?
• To keep talking about your own business?

If you feel so, then you are wrong. Social media is about others talking about your business. It is about sharing knowledge. It is not a place to do sales. Your network should talk about it and spread the word.

The most important steps for a social media campaign to be successful are

1. Identifying the evangelists who will talk about your business and get them into your social network.
2. Make the evangelists to talk about you and your business.
3. Allow the evangelists to spread the word among their network

Who can be these evangelists? They can be your customers, prospects, analysts and/or your partners. Try to convert them into evangelists. Discuss a topic among them so that it can ignite a healthy discussion. Share knowledge so that these evangelists can get more dope to discuss. Let them review your product or service. Let them discuss about your customer support. If at all there are few negative conversations or feedback in the social media space, inspire these evangelists to have more positive conversations apart from you immediately responding to the same.

Also read below articles to know more about social media and networking:

The Four Important Steps to Start Social Networking for Business
6 Tips To Be Successful In Social Media Marketing
5 Important Approaches for Social Networking for Companies

6 Basic Tips for a Perfect PPC Campaign

I did come across a couple of online marketers who define their PPC campaign success to no. of clicks on the ad, click-through-rate (CTR) and cost-per-click (CPC). I definitely agree these are required to measure the performance of the PPC campaign but, do not judge the success of a PPC campaign by taking only these two factors. Many advertisers generate a large amount of clicks for their ads, but at the end you also need to note how many of these clicks have been converted to leads or sales.


So, ensure you have the following when you run the PPC campaigns -

1. Look at cost-per-acquisition (CPA). This will let you know average cost of each lead or download or sales that has happen. Accordingly you can compare or plan to invest in other online / offline campaigns.
2. Doing an analysis on the CPA number you get, try to predict the CPA at various spend levels. This helps you to reach optimal CPA.
3. Make the campaigns as keyword rich as possible using long-tail keywords pertaining to your business or products segregated as different groups. You can use the keyword tools provided by Adwords or WordTracker or KeywordSpy.
4. Each group or the set of keywords has the respective and related landing page. This will help to get a better quality score and will reduce the CPC. Not only CPC, but will also help in better conversions.
5. Use the geo-targeting, day-parting methods to reduce the unwanted clicks.
6. Try to use a back-end database or system which can track the CPC of each click and measures the ROI of each keyword.

There are many more tips and strategies that need to understand. PPC campaigns are easy to setup, but much more difficult to manage and optimize. Doing this takes time and effort. But, if you have the dedication to make the campaign a success then cheers.

Related posts:
5 Easy Tips to Improve the CTR for Google Adwords
13 Easy Tips to Make Landing Pages More Effective

Kindle Wireless Reading Device

This is an introductory video that provides a demonstration of the new Amazon Kindle eBook reader. A good one.

It is priced at US$ 259.00 as of now.

You can get more details an Amazon Kindle here. Do not miss the long review by the users.

Good news. Kindle can now be shipped to customers outside the U.S. Check out for the costs and shipping details in the above link.

SEO: Search Engine Optimization Bible

SEO: Search Engine Optimization Bible written by Jerri L. Ledford, is a very good book to know and learn the basics of SEO. This book offers readers about what they need to write a SEO plan and implement a successful SEO program. It also provides useful and easy tips on getting the website to the top on SERPs, The sidebars provide more information and additional resources on the topic which are very helpful to a rookie.

The main topics covered include –

• Creating an SEO plan
• Identifying and managing keywords
• Maximizing pay-per-click strategies
• Understanding the best practices for link building
• Regarding search engine robots, spiders and / or crawlers
• On-going process in SEO
• Tracking and generating useful reports

 If you want to make SEO work for you, this is the book you need to succeed.

About the author, Jerri L. Ledford: She has been a freelance business technology writer for more than 10 years. During that time, over 700 of her articles, profiles, news stories and reports have appeared online and in print. Her publishing credits include: Intelligent Enterprise, Network World, Information Security Magazine, DCM Magazine, CRM Magazine, IT Manager's Journal. Jerri also authors corporate collateral -white papers, case studies, web content, and presentations. Her corporate clients include Switch & Data, The World Health Organization, FujiFilm, Coco-Cola, and NaviSite.

Optimzation of Google Products Data Feeds

I have been looking at ways at optimizing the data feeds for Google products listings. I am doing research and all trials and this is what I assume the right way to get the listings on to the top of the product search results. If we follow the best practice and guidelines then it may surely be in top in the search results. Here are few guidelines which I feel will help.

(If you want to know how to create a data feed, then visit Google Merchant Center, which provides step-by-step process to create one.)

1. Specify Geographic Country: When you register for or sign in the Google Merchant Center you will be asked to enter the country for your target audience. Make sure you enter the right country. This will help you target the right audience as it increases the relevancy of your product's listing. Thus, it improves the quality of traffic and reduces the bounce rates.
   
2. Identify Right Keywords: Just as you identify keywords for organic search engine optimization, in the same way identify the keywords for the product data feed. Once you identify the keywords check if you can use them in the title and description of the products in the data feed. Try repeating them - but it should not look silly for the readers. Make sure title is about 65 characters and description is less than 160 characters. Also, ensure you are not repeating the same title for different products.


3. Product Type: Google Merchant Center uses the product taxonomy to categorize the products. Do make sure you specify the right category and are as specific as possible. Search for the right category here for your product and specify the same in the data feed.



4. Enter Relevant Attributes: Google provides the merchant to enter three types of attributes viz. mandatory, recommended and optional. Include all the mandatory and recommend attributes and as many of the optional attributes as possible. You can find the list of attributes here.


5. Images: Do submit high quality images. The best and minimum size of the product image that can be submitted is 300 x 300 pixels. If you have larger images, do not re-size them. Just give the path in the feed.


6. Data Feed Quality: Do check the data feed is formatted correctly. You can review this page for formatting guidelines.


7. Check Performance: Use the performance tab in Merchant Center to check average item performance. See how many of your items are currently searchable in Google Product Search, and track clicks by item. Learn more about the 'Performance' tab.


8. Track Your Listings: You can track your listings through Google Analytics. You can measure the traffic that is being referred from Product Search by adding tracking parameters to the URLs you submit. Keep track of products listings which are working well and try to tweak the ones which are not working well. The feedback received from Google Analytics will help to adjust the product feed. Check here for more details.


9. Data Feed Update: Ensure that you regularly update the data feed accordingly when there are any changes in product details like price and specifications. Do update the attributes accordingly and upload the feed on regular basis. You can also automate your data feeds so that they are submitted to Merchant Center regularly. Learn more about the available options to upload your data feed.

Last but not least, do provide as specific and quality information of the products as possible the product data feed. This may help a better ranking in the product search. As in Adwords or organic search the long tail keywords will lead to conversions. So, do not worry if your products are not being on top for generic keywords. We need to really bother about long tail keywords and specific product name rankings as those are the words used by prospects and will lead to sales.

Voice Based Microblogging: Bubbly

By the way Bubbly is going, it seems to be the next big thing after the current internet fad - Twitter. Bubble Motion has recently launched this Bubbly - a voice-blogging social network built for mobile phones.

Bubbly is already moving upwards with the number of subscribers, which have reached 500,000. They claim to they have more than 150,000 users from India only.

With Bubbly, you can record and broadcast messages from any mobile device. When a users records audio messages (lasting up to one minute) and updates, followers can listen in whenever they want. To start voice-blogging, you enter a short code onto your phone, and start recording your messages. To follow another voice-blogger, users dial the phone number for whomever they want to follow. Whenever there’s a new audio update, followers are notified via SMS with instructions on how to listen. Bubblers can also control who can listen to their messages, and have the option of masking their actual phone number to prevent followers from calling them directly.

Bubbly is currently partnering with mobile operators in India and has launched with regional and national Indian celebrities using voice-blogging using Bubbly. India seems like a perfect market for Bubbly. Among the first few is Sonu Niggaam. He said, "This platform offers no space for pretensions and is a genuine way of engaging with fans". Hey, can't one mimic the celebs voice?

Looking at all this, Bubbly can have success in markets where mobile usage is more than the internet usage.

Google PageRank Updated - April 2010

Google have taken the time over the Easter holidays and the weekend to update the PageRank system. The last time it was updated was during the Christmas holiday period of 2009. I see few of the new websites (lanced in Februay 20101) getting a PR of 1 which seems to be good for webmasters. I am yet to hear if it has caused any harm to any of the websites.

I do not think the PageRank is the only way Google judges the value of a website. A site without PageRank can still rank well in the Google search results. A website with a PageRank 2 or 3 can outrank a PageRank 6. I think PageRank is one of the metrics Google uses to rank the websites. But, still it is important to most of the webmasters. What are your thoughts?

The Four Important Steps to Start Social Networking for Business

We have seen over the past few years the “buzz” was and is all about social networking say it on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn or…. the list goes on. Many other brands, retailers and corporate have also boarded the bandwagon to listen and respond to their consumers with the intent to increase the interaction and communication with them.

But, what are the main things the social networking depends on?

I have just tried to summarize the vast thing in under these four steps. This is just to provide the reader a hang of the buzz word.

1. Listening: The first and the foremost thing is to know where your prospects or customers come together to share knowledge and interact. It hardly makes sense if you try to build your social networking setup at a place where you do not have your prospects. So, one needs to do extensive research and study to identify such platform as to where they are getting together. If this is not possible, then identify where is the communication relevant to your business is going on. In fact you want to be among with your peer group. You need to know the answers to these basic questions
   - Where do they live?
   - What do they do?
   - How are they currently using social media?
2. Interaction: This is the ability of users to engage with each other and the business owner. The most important thing is a social network mainly depends most upon the quality of the interaction features and interaction between the peer groups. Without them, a social network’s growth becomes difficult, its membership becomes disengaged and its purpose is missed. Moreover, the quality of content that is being shared should be of interest and related to your business. Try to identify thought leaders in your business or organization that can submit good content regularly and can interact with the community. Do not try to talk more of sales here or more of me. You can build successful network if you share knowledge and this platform is not to advertise your business. Create distinctive content that fits with the organization’s identity and mission. The owner should make this as a part of the routine – create content, respond to members and engaging them.
3. Relationship: The third important step is to build relationships with your prospects and customers. With proper interaction (step #2) one reaches to build on this step. This relationship should be such that it should trigger offline relationship and get-togethers. Here the member is more matured in the networking space and would like to increase his/her network may or may not be in the peer.
4. Measurement: So your question now is “What is the ROI?” Lot of sharing content, exchange of opinions, reviews…etc is going on. So, would you like to see the no. of page views, referrals or sales conversions? I would suggest you to develop a set of objective-oriented measurement standards, tied to existing business objectives, to assess the effectiveness of the social networking initiatives. For any social media community, there is an unlimited scope of activity to measure: interactions, contributions and connections across time location and topic. You need to focus on relationships and not selling.

Building a good social networking for business is not that easy as mentioned here in four steps. It needs lots of thinking, detailed plan, strategies, identifying the peer group, getting hold of the contributors that can ignite interaction and engagements and the list goes on. But, these four steps will really help you in understanding what ground word is required. So, good luck.

Also read:
6 Tips To Be Successful In Social Media Marketing
5 Important Approaches for Social Networking for Companies

The Future Could See Searches for 3D Content

It is talked that the “most used” button in search engines is the “back” button. That means, the searcher often cannot find what he/she is looking for in the top listings and are compelled to go back to find other links or to modify the search string. It is here that Bing is trying to look at this as its big opportunity as per Qi Lu, President – Online Services Division, Microsoft.

The search started with finding documents and then moved to images, videos, real-time information, events… The future could see searches for 3D images, 3D videos… And it seems Bing is trying to build the capability of capturing all the information and use it.

The bottom line is Google has such a better headstart over Bing that the former has more wealth of information and understands the user intent better that any other search engine.

The search giants’ alliances with the social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter will get information about people and real-time events. This will be not just limited to celebrities. Bing thinks their alliance with Yahoo will bring together lot more information for the searcher. But, will it beat Google?

Source: Times Of India