Data Science – What’s Hot and What’s NOT

With data collection happening at every possible step of the consumer funnel and now beyond it, we have access to unprecedented data of consumer that we never had. The challenge emerges when the data is there but we don’t have intention or resource(s) or science to decipher what secret(s) it unveiling . CrowdFlower believe 2015 will be a big year in data science. In simple words - Its not about what company’s have, its now about what they can do with it.

The further argue that the role of the data scientist is also going to go through an evolution where we a Chief Data Scientists will supersede Chief Information Officers when it comes to making key IT and big data related purchasing decisions in the coming year. Overall, companies are going to be paying critical attention to data science and the impact this space will have on organizations of all sizes and focus.

CrowdFlower 2015 Hot & Not List includes:

• Rich Data vs. Big Data: In 2015, companies will rely on rich data–the volumes of data that have actual relevance–instead of big data, to drive growth.

• Data of Everything vs. Internet of Things: Our fascination with the Internet of Things isn’t going away but the aggregated data generated from connected devices will add a new layer of value to IoT.

• Chief Data Scientists (CDS) vs. Chief Information Officers (CIO): In the past, CIOs were the keepers of all things IT but in 2015, Chief Data Scientists will hold the purse strings when it comes to key IT buying decisions that leverage company data.

Secrets to Attracting More Prospects on LinkedIn

An interesting article by Kristina Jaramillo on Expert Access. It articulates well simple steps to ensure an effective Linkedin Profile. The power of Social presence or footprint is no more a secret. In the age of Social Media we all individuals need to carefully craft our presence in the Social Media space and ensure that its current and effective.

Linkedin – Currently owns the first position in best “business” social network that allow us to connect with the business community within or outside our area of influence. Of course, not to miss that it now gaining a huge momentum in being the preferred platform for employees and employers searching for possible job opportunities or candidate searches. Hence baring in mind that you need to have a social media presence, certainly should consider the below mentioned simple steps to make your presence more effective.

The #1 Reason Why Your LinkedIn Profile Fails to Attract More Prospects

Right under your name, does your LinkedIn profile headline look like this?

• CEO & Founder at XYZ and Associates
• Business Owner at ABC Consulting
• Speaker at YourName.com

Three Reasons Why Your Profile Should Not Be the Same as Your Position

1. Think of your headline as your first sales pitch to people who want to connect with you. If I am unfamiliar with you or your company, how does mentioning your company name and your position show me what you do and why I need to connect with you? It doesn’t! These headlines are too general, simple and straightforward. They are too vague and too broad.  In order for your headline to be effective, it needs to grab my attention. It needs to make me want to read the rest of your profile. As a potential client or potential referral source, I need to see right away how you can help me or my clients.
2. When I am invited to connect with someone, I view their profile before I choose to accept.  The first thing that I look at is their headline to see if there is any possible synergy between the person who wants to connect with me and my business.  By doing this, I can see if it is worth my time and energy to view the rest of their profile. Make your headline enticing so that I will want to read your profile and connect with you.
3. If someone is going through people search or through the groups to see who they should connect with, they are looking at hundreds to thousands of opportunities.   You need to make your business stand out to entice others to want to click on your name to read your profile and learn more about you.

Now that you know that you need to drastically improve your LinkedIn profile headline in order to attract more clients, the question is, how do you fix it?

Four Questions You Must Ask Yourself when Creating Your LinkedIn Profile Headline

1)  What can you say in your headline that will give you instant credibility?

One of the easiest ways to gain that instant credibility is to use any media attention.  For example, I was recently called a “Social Media Expert” by the New York Times.  Look how I use this media mention in my new LinkedIn profile headline to give me instant credibility:

“Read my profile now and discover LinkedIn secrets from the woman the New York Times called a social media expert.”

2)  Does your LinkedIn profile headline command action?

The best way to get someone to read your profile further is to tell them to do so. Just look at my example above. Notice I’m giving you a call-to-action. By stating read, view or learn more by reading my profile, you are instructing the reader to do so.  And, guess what—chances are they’ll listen. You just have to tell your prospects what to do—and why they need to take the action.

3) Does your LinkedIn profile headline show why you are different?

Go to people search on LinkedIn and type in your career description. Look at how many people match your description. For example, when I type “internet marketing consultant” into people search, it gives me 139,041 results. The phrase “life coach” gives me 83,847 results. The phrase “business coach” returns 224,274 results.  In your headline, if you show how and why you are unique, chances are your prospects will explore your business further than that of your competition.

For example, Article Marketing Expert, Eric Gruber’s, profile headline was: “See How We Can Get You Published on Websites like About.com” instead of just article directories like our competition.

4) Does your LinkedIn profile headline show a benefit to the reader?

By implying that there is an advantage to your reader by viewing your profile, you are telling them that there is a benefit of using your products or services.  The reader needs a reason to accept a connection with you.  By giving them a benefit, you are instilling confidence in your business. For example:

• Help My Website Sell Founder, Adam Hommey’s, headline is:  “Top Internet Marketing Consultant and Expert Webmaster Reveals How to Make Your Website Sell More Products and Services.”
• The Global Institute of Visionary Executives Founder, Carrie Jacobs, has this as her headline:  “Read My Profile and Learn from a Champion Visionary Executive Coach How You Can Profit from Your Own Brand of Success.”

Just by fixing your LinkedIn profile headline, you will begin to attract more prospects and referral sources. However, this is just the tip of the iceberg. In fact, in my free special report, I reveal 14 mistakes that most internet marketers and small business owners make—and the opportunities they are missing. I invite you to get this free report at http://www.GetLinkedInHelp.com.

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Why is Social Media a Full Time Job?

While it’s heartening to see more and more companies and business houses realize the value of social media as an important marketing tool; the fact that they are still not ready to allot enough resources to harness its full potential. This reduces the whole thing to a joke. Most of the companies prefer to shovel the responsibility of handling social media on their existing marketing team in addition to their current responsibilities. Regular marketing guys are not only sorely inexperienced and inept at handling social media they probably don’t even have enough time.

Social media takes an awful amount of time and energy before any success can be achieved. And those who are not too well versed with it tend to underestimate it. Just running a blog takes about 5-7 hours a week and when you throw in twitter and facebook, the meter starts running at top speed. You can well imagine how many hours running promotions and integrated videos into your social media initiatives would demand.

Even if the responsibility of handling social media is given to a PR person good with communicating and writing, or to someone who understands the brand well, it’s the amount of time required to keep facebook and twitter updated that kills the cat. The job of a PR person includes maintaining community relations, event planning, employee relation, advertising, government relation and not to miss something known as media relation. With social media thrown into the cauldron as well, who has the time and energy to make it work?

So any company interested in exploiting social media to its maximum advantage has two options. It can either create a complete team or at least a new position exclusively for social media or hire a social media firm who has already proven its mettle in the field. They just need to remember that putting a few hours a week into social media and expecting success is recipe of disaster. Social media may be free but that does not make it any easier. What you get out of it depends on what you put into it, in terms of both time and effort. I am sorry to say but there simply aren’t any short cuts.

Consider for a moment what results do you expect from posting once a week on your facebook page and then taking another week to reply to comments and queries. How do you expect to cut mustard by posting occasionally to twitter or linking it with your facebook account? The bottom line is you need a new full time position if you expect social media to deliver serious results it is capable of delivering.

The coming few years will see companies hiring people who will be solely responsible for handling social media. But those who like to take the bull by its horns understand its importance today and pay someone to do social media for them.

When a person’s sole focus is on social media he can keep accounts updated sometime several times in a day. Queries, comments and complains are handled immediately and disposed off speedily. Not only does he have time and energy to come up with creative promotional ideas, other duties do not get neglected in the process. This person can put together a plan keeping in view the goals of the company and keep an eye on changing trends in social media to mould the campaigns accordingly.

The payback is certain!

Asia: Opening Doors for Digital Marketers

As per the projections from Forrester Research, up to 43 percent of the world's online population will reside in Asia by 2013. This will result in the numerous online marketing developments in Asia, thus making this area central for digital marketers! Now is the time when digital marketers need to sit up and work out their best strategies about digital marketing trends, including search, mobile, social media, e-mail marketing, and analytics.

The emerging face of Asia's digital markets has made the world sit up and notice the changing scenario that this region presents. Asia boasts of unprecedented rise in the web users who access internet for a wide range of activities. This can include anything from information search to social networking and from ticket booking to writing mails.

The figures published by Forrester Research shows that almost 17 % percent of the global online population will be residing in China by the year 2013. China will also account for 1.3 billion mobile subscribers and 957 million mobile Web users by 2014. These figures shows that by 2010 more people in China will be accessing the Web on their cell phones than the entire population of the U.S. in 2010!

As per Asia Pacific Digital Marketing Yearbook, last year in 2009 internet users in Asia Pacific had spent more than 5.6 trillion minutes online. In doing so, they had bought almost $7 billion in virtual goods. India recorded year-on-year increase of 42 percent in 2009! The internet population in India grew to almost 71 million, which included 51 million active users. Also, maximum searches for products such as mobile phones and laptops are originating from India. A small country like Japan also has around 21.8 million social network users. There are more than 10.6 million Facebook users in Philippines, which is ranked eighth in the world in terms of countries with highest number of using the social networking site.

These and many more such encouraging data have made it apparent that marketers now need to focus their attention to Asia in order to make full use of the increasing online marketing opportunities. Marketers can now use efficient and effective digital marketing medium to reach consumers. This medium allows marketers to enter into a two way dialogue with the customer. Now it has become easy for marketers to get an insight into consumer’s interests and obtain an economical link with the current as well as potential customers.

What makes Asia truly amazing is its diversity. Over 2000 spoken languages, incredible wealth yet unforgiving poverty, political models including monarchies to democracies to authoritarian governments, and numerous religious traditions give Asia a unique identity. Yet, this otherwise stunning diversity is nothing but highly fragmented markets when seen from a communication professionals’ point of view. For any company, communication across such a diverse landscape is a challenge that must be faced. One who is able to manage this will surely be the king of digital marketing world of Asia!

Behavioural Targeting on Social Media

Teachers keep track of their students through social media, marriages are fixed based on the information shared on social media, friends share their pictures through social media and even marketing campaigns are tailor made depending on the likes, dislikes and views shared by social media users. No wonder these social sites have become rich mine of information!

From their favorite eating joints to where they like to shop and from their favorite brands to the most stylish celebrity, social media users believe in giving their opinion freely. They share their beliefs and discuss their point of view with who ever is interested in them.

There are almost 500 million active users on Facebook while Tweeter boasts of over 50 million tweets per day! Popularity of social media can be assessed from the fact that devices that support social media sell like hot cakes. This user-generated content is just click away for behavioral marketers. It was never so easy before to find data that gives such accurate details of the current as well as potential customers. Behavioral marketers are just required to figure out right ways of finding opportunity for behavioral targeting in a way that they don’t seem too invasive.

With unique characteristics each social media site offers various ways of behavioral opportunities. The data available can be used for planning effective marketing campaigns. By studying various applications, marketers can get an insight into user likes and behaviors. Status updates, horoscope readings and top friends are some of the features that are especially useful in studying consumer behavior. The data gathered from these applications can be used while creating company’s profile on the social media sites like Facebook with the aim of converting these users into fans. Its just about giving them what they want in a way they want.

One of the most popular sites, YouTube has come up as a powerful marketing tool where ads can be created and uploaded depending on what videos users are watching and recommending.

­Sounds incredibly easy, doest it? But before getting started with behavioral targeting on social media, it is essential to do one’s homework. Prior to running any programs, one must observe sentiment and behavior to get a clear picture. With almost everybody active on social media, a robust monitoring and analysis will be called for to clearly define your target audience. This is a time consuming exercise but will ensure targeted campaigns.

Remember, if your image gets tarnished once, it’s difficult to set it right again. So, tread cautiously and stay away from deceptive campaigns and ghost tweeting. They will not last long and will only play spoil sport!

Another thing that marketers must keep in mind is that there are some social media users who believe in moving beyond their closest friends and family. This creates the challenge of effectively analyzing peer influence. Again, this will require more time to accomplish.

Careful and planned behavioral targeting on social media is a cost effective way of reaching targeted audience directly. No other data can be more accurate, more effective and more useful than the data given by the user’s themselves. So, go ahead and hit the bulls eye!

Social Media - Is it really free?

In today’s world, where nothing comes for free, it’s amazing to find so many social media sites offering their services at no cost. There is no fee for signing up with sites like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. But is it really true? Is it true that marketing campaigns through social media cost less and that it has come up as the most economical yet efficient platform for reaching out to audiences? Let’s find out the truth behind this happy scene.

It sounds too good to be true... Market your product for free on social media! This is how the larger picture appears but on closer look it becomes quite apparent that there are certain costs involved in using social media space. Social media is far from free. It’s true that signing up for an account with social media sites cost no money but the amount of time employees spend in maintaining those accounts to gain a foothold in a social media community translates into real cost. Organizations usually fail to account for the significant amounts of time that is given for planning and executing a social media program.

If an employee was to maintain a regular blog as part of social media marketing, then just imagine how much will be the cost of that person's time? This is something no organisation accounts for. Although social media-based marketing and product development programs are helpful in providing an insight into customers psyche, but again, the time spent in tracking applicable KPIs (key performance indicators) and interacting with customers’ adds up to the real cost, proving that social media is not free.

Till now, personal and official use of internet was clearly defined. But with social media, this fine line has become vague as it is both used in personal as well as professional capacity. This is because social media revolves around connected people and not any specific location. For all you know, an employee might be chatting to his friend when he is supposed to be interacting with a customer!

It’s all about the man hours that a team spends to attain success with the social media site that make sup the hidden cost associated with social media. One gets to hear about the free tools offered by social media sites that help companies connect to new people but no one actually consider the time that is spent in the whole process.

Social media-based marketing and product development programs also require research and planning. One has to carefully plan and give time to engage and truly interact with a community. This also requires prior research to decide which communities one needs to be active in. All this time spent is actually taken from employees’ time. Again this time is never accounted for!

Most of the tools offered by facebook, twitter and other social media sites are free but there is a hidden cost in terms of your employees’ time. When using any tool, you are required to both monitor and measure it. This means -unaccountable time. So, the underlying truth is that social media does involve cost in terms of the time spent in being active on it.

Measuring the effects of social media

It is heartening to see companies and executives finally waking up to the potential of social media and rushing to join the bandwagon. However, most of the people are still apprehensive whether social media would work for their businesses and brand needs. Measuring social media ROI (return on investment) may be difficult but it isn’t impossible because it is difficult to track many of the pieces that need to be evaluated. Here are a few pointers to help you track down those pieces and find out the ROI you’re getting on social media.

1. Traffic is one of the most palpable ways of measuring social media. Though quality often beats quantity, sadly enough, it is always true.
2. Participation and interaction is an important pointer for many brands. It tells one about the nature of traffic being drawn. Interaction may range from leaving comments to customer reviews and ratings. You need to keep an eye on this as it can happen on other websites as much as on your own.
3. Internet has changed the nature of public relations forever. What earlier used to be distinct, is now a blend of PR, customer service, and marketing. Every person has a blog these days, along with a place to shout things to their friends and followers with twitter and Google Buzz.
4. In a world full of choices and the ease with which consumers can switch from one brand to another, the most important thing is customer engagement. This engagement is relevant both offline and online, on your website, as well as on social media sites. One way of improving your business, products, and the level of your services is by interacting with customers. Ignoring customers can be hazardous as research has found that engaged customers recommend your brand, convert and purchase more often.
5. The most useful outcome of improved customer engagement is better customer retention. This one factor is extremely crucial for the success of your business in the coming years.
6. Greater and bigger profits are the natural outcome of engage customers. You generate more business from your existing customer base and these customers are more likely to recommend your business to their network of friends, family, and social media contacts. It not only reduces your budget for customer acquisition but also adds to your profits. In the long run this improved profitability translates into more efficient organisation.

Sooner businesses strike balance between acquisition and retention better it is from a resourcing point of view. A number of acquisition strategies are so ill conceived that long term retention is not planned. Old wisdom says that it is cheaper to retain existing customers than look for new ones.

He Just said – “Arrested”……

James Karl Buck helped free himself from an Egyptian jail with a one-word blog post from his cell phone. Buck, a graduate student from the University of California-Berkeley, was in Mahalla, Egypt, covering an anti-government protest when he and his translator, Mohammed Maree, were arrested April 10.

On his way to the police station, Buck took out his cell phone and sent a message to his friends and contacts using the micro-blogging site Twitter.

The message only had one word - "Arrested." You can read the entire story by clicking here  to know how he got out of jail within 24 hours of this single word tweet.

In another incident a small post on twitter led a situation of chaos and panic at Robin Hood Airport in Doncaster. Of course the frustrated air passenger arrested under Terrorism Act after Twitter joke about bombing airport <Click the link to read the complete story>

So what does the two examples implies…..No brainer…..The power of social media has grown beyond anyone’s best or worst dream. Does the impact you…..YES…..if you spend anytime in the universe of internet….then it is quiet evident for you to visit the planet of social media.

When the big bang of internet happened, no one realized that social media may one day become the centre of its universe, at least of now. Of course at that time these two words were stranger to each other – Social and Media.

So for the time being I can safely say that social media has formed a centre of the Internet Universe. Be it Linkedin or its 4 LinkedIn Tips to Help You Stand Out <Link> or Facebook along with How To Build Your Facebook Landing Page <Link> or even Corporate Social Media or Twitter with its 50 Ways To Use it.

I am sure Google can yield much better results on great links than I do. So why I am wasting my time to write it. One answer may be that thought of writing a new post and another could be had some free time, etc, etc. No matter what the reason could be the importance of social media is evident and especially for marketer.

But equally it’s great to know about what a hash you can make of it. That is what I will cover in my future post. So with its (social media) evident importance, I would like to highlight on great examples on how effective or innovative you can get with it.

With courtesy of Eric Brantner, a freelance business copywriter from Houston TX, and his published work at Houston Search Engine Marketing and Optimization Services Site, following are 10 great examples on how creatively company’s have utilized a small but a great tool - Twitter:

1. Laundryroom- The laundry room Twitter account helps residents at Olin College’s West Hall check on the availability of washing machines at the campus Laundromat. Anytime a washer or dryer is available, a Tweet is automatically sent out to the local residents following the Laundryroom account. Not only is this pretty neat, but it also improves the overall efficiency of the Laundromat.

2. Coffeegroundz Fundraiser- The Coffee Groundz is a Houston-based café that uses Twitter to interact with the local community. However, they recently had a very creative use for their Twitter account when they asked their followers to donate non-perishable food items to the Houston Food Bank. Their Twitter-based fundraiser helped them collect over 260 pounds of food to donate to the Houston Food Bank.

3. Askastripper- Yes, even strip clubs are getting on the social media bandwagon. This Twitter account is linked from a blog of the same name. Essentially, users have the opportunity to ask a stripper anything. Whether you have a question about the intricacies of their job or you just want their opinion on a random topic, the stripper will answer all of your questions.

4. JetBlue- This is another great example of businesses getting the most out of their Twitter account. This airline has different employees man their Twitter account throughout the day. If a customer has any question—whether about potential flight delays or how big their carry-on can be—the JetBlue account will Tweet a quick answer.

5. Missingchildren- But you don’t always have to use Twitter for personal gain. This profile sends out Tweets any time a child goes missing. The Tweet usually includes the child’s name, city, and a link to a picture with more information. They also send updates whenever a lost child is recovered.

6. TvGuide- When’s the last time you actually flipped through a TV Guide? It’s been years for me. This Twitter profile sends a Tweet out each day of all the new shows that will be on that night. You’ll never forget to watch your favorite shows again!

7. Liver4carole- It really is amazing to see all the great causes that people use Twitter for. This account is trying to accomplish exactly what its name implies—to get a liver for Carole. They regularly Tweet links to stores whose proceeds go directly to Carole, as well as updates about Carole herself.

8. GoodCaptain- I must confess, the writer in me is torn on whether this is really cool or a disgrace to literature. Whatever it is, it’s certainly creative. The Good Captain is a book written one Tweet at a time. Simply click back to the beginning, and you can read the entire book, Tweet by Tweet, online.

9. ProjectVino- For the most part, the Project Vino account is just like any other. It’s filled with chats to various friends, and there doesn’t appear to be anything unique about it. However, this social wine site holds wine tastings over Twitter occasionally. They send wine out to various popular Twitter users, and the testers microblog their thoughts live as they taste the wine. Where can I sign up?

10. Amazon- When you first land on the Amazon Twitter page, you might think the account is inactive. It’s not. The point of this profile is for followers to DM a book title or ISBN number, and then, they’ll receive a Tweet with the average price range on Amazon at the moment.

Have a Happy Reading!!!

@shirazdatta

Top 10 SEO tools available on the internet for free

Importance of search engine optimisation (SEO) for any online content has been given much attention lately. Although everyone is aware of how SEO can guarantee maximum traffic to any website yet how to make a content search engine friendly is a task left to few experienced writers. Though many are not aware, internet offers a wide range of SEO tools for free. Listed here top ten of those tools that can hep you bring your SEO target well within reach.

1. Ranking Checker by SEOmoz.com

Just sign up for a free SEOmoz account to use this cool SEO tool. With ranking checker you can check your rankings for up to 5 keywords per day for free, which means approximately 150 keywords monthly. It also allows you to maintain and download your archived rankings as CSV.

2. Keyword Density Analysis Tool

This SEO tool can be used to find out the keyword density of all the phrases on the page. One is only required to enter in a page URL to get that solid balance of keywords within your content, and to match the right keywords to the right pages.

3. MultiRank Checker by iWebtool.com

This is a cool SEO tool that allows you to check the Google Page Rank and the Alexa Ranking for 10 of your competitors at one go! As it checks in bulk you can save a lot of time with it.

4. SEO Analyzer by Sitening.com

The SEO Analyzer can go a long way in meeting your optimization goals. This tool gives you a detailed report on the list of SEO components that needs to be given more attention for a web site. It also gives a score that can be used to quickly assess the amount of work a site might need. It’s an easy to use tool with very user friendly interface. The reports are all saved and can be downloaded as PDF anytime.

5. Fiddler Web Debugging Tool by Fiddlertool.com

Although this tool is at present only available for Windows and it needs the .NET framework that you can download from their web site as well but it makes it possible for user to analyze all the background communication that goes on between the browser and the servers. The fact that it won't freeze your browser makes it a better option than similar debugging tools like Tamper Data.

6. Spider Viewer

SEO is all about keeping the spider happy by being in their good books. Through this SEO tool you can see your site the way spider sees it. This is helpful in getting an insight into the changes that can be made in the content. The tool can be used to evaluate your internal links, meta information and page content to achieve maximum potential from a website.

7. Strongest Subpages Tool by WeBuildPages.com

With strongest subpages tool, you can get an organized list of the strongest pages on any web site. This list can help you decide what pages are carrying the maximum amount of inbound links. This tool is especially useful for webmasters looking at competitor's strongest pages.

8. Backlink Checker by WeBuildPages.com

WeBuildPages.com offers this smart backlink checker tool for free. With this tool you can get your linking campaigns well in place. You can also analyze competitor backlinks along with your own with it.

9. SEO for Firefox by SEOBook.com

This is one of the most powerful SEO tools available on net for free. It can give you information from the visited page as well as the search engine to get that quick competitive overview. It provides a long list of information including PageRank, cache date, domain age, backlinks in Yahoo, number of .edu links and the number of cached pages with just a right click.

10. Google Analytics / Google Webmaster Console by Google.com

Based on Urchin, Google Analytics is a top analytics tool that can give detailed reports about traffic behavior, content visitation, funnel information and much, much more. The Webmaster Console tool gives information about crawling rate, crawling speed, backlinks, highest PageRank of your site that Google looks for.

What really makes content king?

We have often heard the phrase - 'Content is King'. Yet, if we were to take a look at many websites mushrooming on internet, we will find boring and same repetitive content in many of them. People need to realise that the need of good content is not only to keep the visitors hooked but also to promote your website. This write-up will try and analyse what actually makes content so important for all on internet.

Search engine optimisation (SEO) writing has undergone a change in past few years. Unlike earlier, when search engines use to read the META tags for keywords and descriptions, now various search engines like Google go through the whole web page to generate matches. This makes it imperative to include keywords and key phrases in whole of the content intelligently. This goes on to show that more content one has, more chances are there to rank high on search result. And, ultimately, this is what we all are working towards- to be on the first page of a search.

Good content doesn’t stop here! Original, informative and engrossing content will make other websites link to your content. This will bring in more visitors to your site and also boost your ranking on Google, which counts links to your site. This will surely go a long way in making your website popular with your visitors. Good content will ensure that your website is not only able to survive among the millions of other websites but also create its own niche.

Good content will act like honey. It will attract visitors with its sweet smell and keep them stuck to the website with engrossing content. Simply put, good content will ensure that visitors will stay longer on your site and also return more often.

Providing informative articles will also help in establishing you as an expert, which will increase your credibility and build your rapport too. This will ultimately help in converting the visitors to potential customers. Quality content can also act as PR tool. It will help in creating your expert image in the eye of the media. Your articles will help in projecting you as a resource or the media and will also facilitate in building key relationships.

Remember, all SEO content submitted by you is indexed by the search engines. For this, the content must have proper meta-tags, title, optimization, and submission. This will increasing your keyword coverage and will keep you on top of every search.

Another benefit that good content will offer is that the website may get listed in human-edited directories such as Yahoo!, Open Directory, and About.com. This will give you immense visibility!

Another way of getting free exposure to the exact market demographic you are targeting is through article syndication. This is one by offering your articles to other sites. Now, this is possible only when the articles offer good content!

All these benefits only point to the fact that content is definitely the undisputed king of online world.

Youth & Brand Building…

India will witness youth advantage over others, likes of China, America, Europe, etc,  and being tech savvy youth, it’s important to understand the strength, however equally need to acknowledge the impact or adversary effect will this have on marketing or the brand plans. Younger generation as commonly witnessed by all of us – are though nuclear but are more connected than any of their predecessors.

And here is the challenge …firstly to reach out to the consumer and customer that are fragmented and at the places or property(s) of “their” visit and secondly…to keep the brand message consistent on all means of communication, be it facebook, twitter, TV, newspaper, etc.  Hence it has transpired into greater challenges for brand managers purely with the share volume of communication channels | means in existence now. Of course, with many countries and markets that marketer is dealing with does make things more bad. Though I have to admit that this (digital marketing) has given us the true sense of the word “Segmentation”….provide we do our math or analysis right.

While marketers are taking initial steps to venture into the deep blue sea of digital outreach, from the desktop, to the laptop, and now simply the mobile... digital marketing trends across real-life and virtual boundaries are closing in. Digital marketing trends have moved from the already-erstwhile web browser utility to the efficiency of the mobile browser. What with the mobile phone picking up as a prime source of information exchange especially in countries like India, Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, etc where most of the information exchange in most parts of the country happens over a mobile device. Equally recent years has kicked off to a greater start with marketing taking a leap towards collective wisdom and reliance on positive social networking with Social Media Marketing. Though this also proved to be a challenge for marketers and brand manager - as living in a reactionary society, most of our actions are reaction to the stimuli leading most marketers worry about how people will react (as any person with a page or blog has turned into a critic) to their presence on any social media network or its initiatives. Hence, it has become imperative for brand manager to exercise caution and enough homework before venturing into the deep blue.

Over the recent years digital marketing trends have picked up like no other. It has been a humble but efficient beginning. Though each year has seen a whole new twist to the digital marketing tale, and coming years will bring more chaos than ever for marketers or brand manager all across. But I actually feel (with whatever marketing experience that I have) that we are still in the initial discovery or educatory phase of new age marketing.

Before I get carried on….would like to summarize that while we emphasize on brand building, it’s would be evident to acknowledge and analyze the new age communication radar to achieve an intuitive and collective | universal brand building exercise.

Basics to using your website as a marketing tool

It’s no more a secret that a website has emerged as the single most effective marketing tool in the hands of a businessperson today. Through a website, one can effectively tell customers about themselves along with their products and services. The wise thing is to focus one’s efforts on a website to ensure increased internet traffic, which will ultimately lead to increased sales. Here are some of the basic things that will help you use your website as an effective marketing tool.

Old news is no news. This is true for a website also. It is important to update the content on a website on a regular basis. By adding a few new things at least once a week, you can be sure to attract people, who will keep coming back on a regular basis to see what's new. Attracting people is one thing but what is more important is to retain them. To keep visitor’s interest alive, provide them with interesting reading material instead of boring business details.

Care should be taken to make the website search engine optimised (SEO). The content, the images used and even the name of the website (read company) should be search engine optimised! SEO has become an indispensable tool, which ensures thousands or even millions of hits a day. It can be safely concluded that no other kind of Internet marketing can be as effective or is capable of driving as much traffic as search engine optimization is.

When using website as a marketing tool, it is important to go beyond branding. It is important to create a unique logo or image for a website that is memorable and is also able to say much more than words can.

In today’s border-less economy where customer interactions are not hindered by geography and time zones, websites should be made more personal and interactive. Using blogs and being active on various online communities will help you get in touch with customers from anywhere in the world and at any time of day. Your posts will keep you in people’s memory and will help sell your products and services even while you are not around.

For more personal touch, mentioning yourself by name and using pictures is a great way to go about it. It only makes things easy as people like to know there are human beings on the other side of the screen. It’s also a good idea to run your own ads on your site. One can use different ads that link to services and products available on your business website.

One should consciously work towards making their website an authority site on a niche topic. This will help the site getting noticed much easily than when one tries to appeal to a broad audience. By catering to a limited audience, it is easy to attract that niche market. Though its sounds small but remember on a global scene, a niche also translate into millions of people all over the world!

Digital Media Predictions for 2010

Sharing the Digital Media Predications for 2010 made by Tessa Wegert.

At about this time every year, media strategists start to contemplate what the fast approaching New Year might bring. There's always endless speculation about which trends will continue, and which mediums will finally gain the traction they've long been promising. This year is no exception. Talk to 10 of your peers and you're likely to get 10 different opinions on what will be big in 2010, but you can be certain they'll all incorporate at least a few of the following digital media predictions.

Prepare to Make a Date with Data

Data ownership and retention, and the value of audience data to both advertisers and publishers, was a hot topic in 2009. So, it will continue to be in the next. As companies like BlueKai and eXelate actively partner with publishers to collect user data from their sites and sell it through their data marketplaces, marketers can gain greater insight into the Internet users they're trying to reach.

When working with an individual site, you typically get limited user information: the kind that relates specifically to how the sites' visitors interact with them and their products and services. Data exchanges, however, pull demographic and behavioral data on those same consumers from many more sites to fill in the blanks and create a more complete user profile. Particularly given the increased importance of making every ad dollar deliver, such improved targeting capabilities are sure to become an even more desirable commodity among planners and buyers in 2010.

Opportunities With Mobile Apps

As advertisers find success in creating mobile applications for iPhones, BlackBerry models, and other makes of smartphones, more marketers will be trying their hand at this direct line of consumer communication. It's a useful way to distribute branded content that can be easily integrated into an overall digital advertising strategy.

The more prominent trend, however, may be advertising on these apps. Publishers are reporting an increased interest in this form of mobile advertising, and are increasingly partnering with companies like Rich Media and mobile advertising and analytics platform, Medialets to facilitate app ads. Medialets places adaptable ad tags on existing publisher apps that don't require an up-front commitment to a specific type of advertising. Once a publisher's iPhone app is approved for distribution, the placement of the ads can be controlled remotely, allowing the publisher and advertiser to not only swap out ads for different campaigns, but also vary the ad formats themselves.

Tags can even be placed on behalf of ad networks, such that buyers can supplement their mobile advertising campaign with a network buy. The result is a flexible approach to mobile advertising that provides access to a popular branded app, along with the on-demand delivery of proven ad units.

New Ad Sizes and Formats

This year saw the introduction of the Online Publishers Association's (OPA) larger display ad formats, designed to promote creativity among advertisers and encourage Internet users to actively share ads, as they would site content. Major brands like Mercedes-Benz, Frito-Lay, and Bank of America have already experimented with the ads, and we can expect others to follow suit.

In addition to more prominent ad sizes, watch for ad formats to deliver more in-depth product information. Product preview and inventory data-based banners, for example, are allowing consumers to view entire product lines within the confines of a display ad, and check inventory levels to determine whether their desired vehicle, pair of jeans, or swimsuit is available for purchase or sold out. Such banners are well positioned to lead to impromptu purchases, as users unexpectedly find themselves shopping online before even making their way to the advertiser's online store.

Standardization in Media Buying

The request for proposal (RFP) process is frequently a thorn in the media buyers' side; many times, digital marketers have wished for a more standardized process that would simplify and speed up the exchange of information between agency and site publisher. Digital advertising management platforms from such companies as Traffiq, can deliver this by eliminating many of the inefficiencies of conducting the RFP process offline. The idea is to instead take the RFP process to the Web, with agencies creating and posting their RFPs directly to targeted publishers, and managing the response process more effectively. Look for more of this in large and boutique agencies in the months to come.

The year ahead promises to be an exciting one: there will be bigger and bolder efforts from digital marketers, and an evolving relationship between advertisers and consumers. What trends do you predict for 2010? Don't forget to share your point of view below.

Luxury Portals Take on Indian buyers

For millions of web users in India fashion portal www.fashionandyou.com in nothing new. This online web portal has a huge catalogue of apparels from all major international brands. What sets this portal apart from any other site offering hi fashion clothes is that you can find fabulous discounts on high-end labels which are sometime as high as 70 per cent. The list of brands includes Boggi Milano, Baume and Mercier, DKNY, Tag Heuer, Escada and Forever New. So if you have been eyeing that stunning DKNY bag or that posh watch from Tag Heuer, it is a good idea to snap it up here. What difference does it makes that it’s a season old?

Brain child of Uppal and Harish Bahl, www.fashionandyou.com is a private shopping club where top-end brands can be bought at throwaway prices. After they tasted success in Russia, Switzerland, Turkey and Brazil working on the similar lines they turned towards India. Their first sale in India was a greater hit than they had expected. Uppal, CEO of fashionandyou.com says “There is a greater awareness of fashion and international brands in India. It’s the perfect time to introduce this aspect of e-commerce here.”

As if to validate his statement, five online luxury portals have been launched in India in last as many months, and most of them are doing extremely well. The reason can be attributed to the unflagging purchasing power of Indian middle class. The only thing that has changed with the exposure to international brands is that now they are more conscious of what they buy. This characteristic, which is unique to India, works in the favour of these luxury portals who offer these high end brands at great discount.

For those who think most buyers of these luxury brands belong to the metros, Meghna Pradipak Reddy of www.desicouture.net offers an insight. She tied up with designers like Shantanu and Nikhil, Neeta Lulla and Swapnil Shinde, besides a number of up-and-coming designers from India’s various fashion weeks and launched her portal last August. But the overwhelming response came from places like Coimbatore, Vizag and Ludhiana. Her regular clientele now also include people from US, UK, Dubai, Singapore and New Zealand

Discounts up to 70 percent are possible as these portals are mostly selling off the excess stuff or leftovers from the previous season which these portals pick at discounted rate. The mantra of success is to give kitschy items that might not be in vogue after a particular season a miss and stick to what is classic. They choose apparels that can be used across seasons.

For Indian clients looking for top brands at an affordable price it’s a win-win situation. With minimal shipping charges and attractive incentives for getting more members, these interactive sites offer alteration services and close-ups of the outfit from every possible angle. It works well for the brands too. They get larger geographical penetration without compromising on their brand image. It also takes care of their excess stock.

Interactive {Marketing} Bandwagon

The evolutionary cycle of marketing has lead marketers wondering on how to leap into the interactive bandwagon. This no more seems to be pertaining to any specific industry, company(s), or sector. It’s now a global phenomenon or rather a cross industry phenomenon. The definition of interactive marketing comes from John Deighton at Harvard, who says interactive marketing is the ability to address the customer, remember what the customer says and address the customer again in a way that illustrates that we remember what the customer has told us (Deighton 1996)

Well, this could explain by President Barack Obama, Shashi Tharoor, Anand Mahindra, Gul Panag and so on is all on Twitter. Of course the another example that I love talking about is Amazon.com that mainly started to use interactive marketing so effectively, as customers record their preferences and are shown book selections that match not only their preferences but recent purchases.

I have to admit that though interactive marketing has been dominant in the digital domain, however the same has started to make inroads into other means of non-digital marketing. Though whatever terms we may use however the simplest way to understand interactive marketing is to understand the behavior of your customer and predict…well what ever predictions you can make about your customer, but not merely based on your intuitions, feeling and so on; rather based on substantial data.

While we, marketers, are attempting towards interactive marketing and trying to make a mark through getting into a conversing mode with its customer. Yes, I am talking about conversation mode in business to consumer environment. But with an event of such interactive marketing, marketers need to focus on two fundamentally important ingredients of Interactive Marketing - Analysis and Profiling.

Analysis and Profiling are fundamentals to Interactive Marketing. While I used the definition by John in starting of this articulation, I equally like to emphasis to the fact that it’s important to know your customer. Knowledge of your customer is the only way or element that could enable you to move towards interactive marketing to your customer.

For developing an effective interactive or conversational marketing, we need to understand and acknowledge about what our customer or prospective customer want to converse about. What are they like and what are their dislikes, and of course, what medium they prefer to converse with or at.

With an explosion of tools and technology we can start targeting consumer or prospective consumers about what they want. But….Hey….those are just tools. We cannot let a tool decide about our strategy(s) to converse with our customers. With the plethora of tools available it has become even more important to evaluate what tool to deploy and how the same would enable us to meet our strategic goals. It becomes little concerning and/or alarming when I enter into meeting or calls where we all are discussing about social media, Google keywords, etc without any clear strategic goal that is based on what profile of customer that we plan to target. It sounds something weird to me that we are going the interactive way without any substantial effort or homework towards understanding the customer. We just love to quickly get onto the bandwagons……… without even realizing that it may not be going where you would like it to go.

Now again how to gain that profile of your customer. Of course I can give a simple answer…Analytics or analysis of your current customer base. The analysis would yield “some” insight to your customer base, that could enable you to draw conclusion or at least draw a behavioral trend(s) of your customer. The same could be act as an important ingredient or the right spice for your strategic development activity for interactive marketing.

If I can come back on the example of Amazon, they did a wonderful study of their customer base to develop new understanding of their customer, based on which they developer programs for marketing and product offerings. Equally, if I may use an example of Facebook, a glorified discussion board that led to utilized a niche requirements of the customers. Again, this idea could have not been ideated before doing a great work at analysis of what a customer would or could have wanted.

Though this post alone will not justify the subject hence lookout for more discussion on this topic. Would appreciate your thoughts or comments at shiraz@shirazdatta.com

Google, Social Networks, And The Future Of Search

DJ Francis articulated a nice article on at Social Media Today. Following is his article :

Would advertisers pay more to reach you rather than your mother? How much are your clicks worth?

These are the questions posed by Heather Green in a recent BusinessWeek article: Making Social Networks Profitable. Green lays out intriguing possible scenarios in which Google could redefine advertising through social networks like Facebook and MySpace.

It represents either trivial speculation or one of the more profound changes in modern advertising and PR.

I’ve developed one theory about Google’s possible plans. It seems to make sense given Google’s track record and recent trends. But really, I’d love to hear from you - whether you think this theory is guaranteed to come to fruition, completely bunk, or just so-so.

But first, let’s examine influence ranking and then go through how Google could use this to revolutionize search and social networks.

The Problem of Influence

Google has a patent pending on technology for ranking the most influential people on social networking sites. Take a moment for the implication of this to sink in.

While intriguing, this prospect and Green’s article start with some questionable assumptions. For instance, what is influence?

Two ideas are particularly tenuous. “Well-connected chums make you particularly influential. The tracking system also would follow how frequently people post things on each other’s sites.” However, we all know from personal experience that just because a person is vocal and has a lot of friends on MySpace does not mean they are influential. Quantity of friends and frequency of interactions are not specifically markers of influence.

Her third and final idea of influence - that of getting your friends to click on articles or videos you send - may be worthwhile. Unlike quantity or frequency of social networking activity, your friends’ clicks do indicate their trust. However, as an advertiser, I would be less interested in clicks and more in the resulting purchases. It’s an incomplete metric at least.

(Just before I was about to hit “publish” on this piece, I saw Joe Marchese’s excellent piece critiquing Green’s take on influence and the use of measuring it at all: Google To Decode Social Networks. It’s a must-read if you’re interested in influence ranking - especially the last paragraph.)

What’s The Use?

Green hypothesizes that Google could identify the most influential members of groups and both sharpen and expand advertiser’s targeting. She believes they will better target with the same old display ads they’ve been using.

I respectfully disagree.

The hypothesis of sharpened and expanded targeting is hardly a departure from Google’s current practice. Sure, social networkers tolerate banner ads now, but this makes the ads more invasive and especially abuses the most influential (”[Nike] could work with Google to plop an interactive free-throw game on the profile pages of the community influencers”).

This course of action would set off twin firestorms from privacy advocates and those concerned about social networking monetization (they aren’t getting paid by Nike, after all). Plus, it’s not really an advancement. Google tends to make bold leaps, not timid advances into an area they already dominate.

Maybe there are other ways Google can use social network information.

Google Today

So how could Google use a patent that ranks influential people (assuming they can) on social networking sites?

I started sketching out at a very basic level what Google does. This is what I came up with. Primarily, Google organizes and prioritizes information on websites and display ads.

• Google parses information about websites:

User provides search terms + Google provides search algorithm = SERP

• Google parses information about search terms:

User provides search terms + Google provides ad serving mechanism = AdWords

Google Tomorrow

This is how the system currently works. But if the next step moves forward as Green describes, the user will tacitly provide social networking profile information rather than a search term. So the equation becomes:

User provides social networking profile info + ? = ?

What would Google provide and what do they hope to achieve?

Well, it seems likely that they will provide some tool to sort data - in this case to determine an influence ranking. If Green is correct about their patent filing, the equation becomes:

User provides social networking profile info + Google provides influence ranking/search algorithm = ?

And what could they serve up? I think it’s going to be experiences.

User provides social networking profile info + Google provides influence ranking/search algorithm = Real-life experiences

Experiences?

Right now, Google dominates the web. They have the most robust search and ad serving capabilities. Since 99% of their revenue is derived from advertising, where can they go but into the real world? How else can they provide something worthwhile for their advertising partners?

Imagine this:

I’m walking in my neighborhood, chatting on my new Gphone. At the same time, Mastercard is sponsoring a concert featuring my favorite band just a few blocks over. All of a sudden, I get an ad on my phone with information about the concert and a digital coupon if I can bring along two more friends. I use Google to locate a couple of my friends in the area and we head to the show.

In this scenario:

• I win: I get to see my favorite band and get a cheaper ticket to the show.
• Mastercard wins: By delivering uber-targeted messages, they get more brand exposure (along with the residual effect of pleasing the influentials). Plus, they don’t get charged for ad impressions that don’t result in a ticket purchase.
• Google wins: They rake in the money for all of the ads served.

This advertising scenario takes the best of what Google does (parse and deliver information) with what advertisers want (targeted messages and accountability) resulting in a very pleased customer.

Influentials could be rewarded by the discounted tickets I described or a number of other ways. Perhaps initial messages go out to them a week ahead of time to build buzz. Maybe their ad reception radius is larger.

Think of all the information contained in a social networking profile. You’ve got location (ad: the store you just passed is having a sale!), alma mater (ad: another Stanford alum is sitting at the bar!), favorite books (ad: Borders is having a Nabokov sale!), and much, much more.

Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems possible, if not likely, that Google would take a giant leap to extend their reach. What do you think? Am I totally off-base? Feel free to leave your comments below.

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