Is the Google Party Over?

Really? If Google was to be over, it would mean a lot of things for many people. It might mean the end of searches, it might mean the end of web crawlers, it might mean a loss of jobs for many, many people!

Except that this question from Fortune magazine has only raised a chuckle. The fact that this simplistic search engine recently celebrated a 30 million users and 3 million business users benchmark, it seems difficult that Google will be over. A company that witnesses growth in revenue from ad revenue at the time of recession is likely to see brighter things once the economy actually picks up.

The article from Fortune assumes that there are no new offerings from Google, while implies that the company is slowing down. It believes this might mean the end of the Google story. While actually, it is no doubting that Google is constantly innovating in an area where they largely dominate the market. Google dominates more than 60% of the market search in online search. So much so that Google is easily used as a synonym for online search. This identifies the company as a strong contender for future growth. Google is constantly launching new products and features such as search engine services, ad searches, online word processing, email, blogging and RSS feeds. This implies that the company and its young Turks know how to keep the company diversified and therefore profitable. 

What then could tone down the progress of this famously progressive company? Search is not going to slow down in the near future and therefore, neither is Google. 

Social networking for social betterment!

What better use of social networking sites than the betterment of society itself!? It might come as a surprise but as per a mega list created by 411 Philanthropy Blog some weeks ago, almost 90 foundations Tweet! and many more are active on Facebook and the like.

What makes us curious is this. What exactly are these NGOs doing on social media? From sharing their history, vision, mission, important research to recruiting candidates, initiating discussions on important issues, these NGOs have used the social media for a number of reasons.

Working with the aim of forwarding the cause for which these NGOs are working for, they have been successfully using this medium to connect to a vast number of people across the world. Imagine what this can do! From finding the right employee who is passionate for the cause to raising funds, these social media sites are opening new avenues for the development sector everyday! Through social networks, NGOs are able to reach out to philanthropists and donators and easily raise funds for a cause. More than anything, these NGOs are able to create awareness among the youth, who are most active on these sites, and make them aware of how they can contribute positively towards the betterment of society.

The accounts managed by NGOs on social accounts mainly fall in three categories. These are:

• Pure foundation brand providing foundation-related content such as news, grants information, research studies and job announcements.
• Foundation with personality: This is same as the previous one except that here an individual manages more interactive conversations with followers of the foundation.
• Employee with Foundation Association: These are usually maintained by an employee of the foundation and the accounts don’t formally represent the foundation.

The kind of account that an NGO maintains depends on the organization's objectives and social media strategy. More proactive ones usually have well-defined guidelines on social media use regarding their philosophy and policy.

Despite the presence of many NGOs on social media sites, it has been pointed out that there is still a want for increased conversation and discussion among the foundations and those following them. This can be done by a few simple steps such as using hashtags on tweets for people to find them more easily, having a more interactive blog, and encouraging comments on their blog. Another creative way is through distribution of viral videos on charity and linking them with their accounts.

An initiative taken by Giveindia, a donation platform working for about 200 NGOs, is an inspiring example of how NGOs are making use of social media to their advantage. Being tech savvy in its approach, Giveindia uses social media as an effective medium to reach out to people and generate funds online with minimal advertising. They are on all social networks including Twitter, Facebook and Blogger.

The future of out of home media

What seems to have started as a presumptuous attempt by some buoyant marketers, Out-of-home (OOH) advertising has become an integral part of communication plans for most brands. Organisations are busy working out the ways to tap the media to attract attention of people who are now increasingly spending their time outdoors. What exactly is this out of home media? And what is the future?

OOH can be defined as an advertising medium that makes use of a network of screens to display audio-visual advertisements for consumers while they are out-of-home. The targeted audience can be involved in various activities such as in offices, malls, multiplexes, restaurants, bookstores, gymnasium and supermarkets when they receive these advertisements. This is an effective medium as it has the advantage of audio-visual communication along with the visibility of outdoor.

Through OOH media, advertisers can now also get their message across to those difficult to reach consumers with regularity and across different times of the day. This OOH medium of advertising actually follows the consumer wherever they are. Thus, by being present throughout the day of a consumer at different places, it is able to offer effective consumer connect.

Brands are always on a look out to find new and innovative ways of connecting and engaging with consumers. They are now looking to make use of such places where the audience can give uninterrupted time. These places include modern airports such as at Hyderabad, Bangalore and Delhi and Metro rail, malls-multiplexes and the road medium, which has become prominent due to the introduction of international standard bus queues, billboards and street furniture.

A glowing example of OOH advertising is evident at recent city beautification schemes in Mumbai and Delhi that has been undertaken in light of the Commonwealth Games in October 2010. Many a corporate are eager to associate their brands with the games considering the exposure it will offer. We will soon see unconventional advertising mediums such as public conveniences, information kiosks, street benches, parking bays, sun shades, promenades, water dispensers, garbage bins and other utilities being used to advertise products such as new mobile phones, a tourist destination and even a book!

Platinum India COO Gour Gupta has predicted growth rate of the OOH industry at 8-10 per cent YOY over the next five years. At present, it is worth Rs 1,600 core and is expected to be around Rs 2,650 crore by 2015.

The OOH industry is seeing a positive growth, which is sure to continue in the future as well. A lot is going in its favour as clients are more than willing to use this medium while the audience is equally receptive of it. It has been observed that clients who tried this medium initially are back to using it again.

What makes the scene little less rosy is the fact that there are still very limited numbers of clients using this medium as compared to the potential that the industry offers. Big industries such as telecom, automobiles, financial services and FMCGs are yet to try out this medium on a large scale. Another factor that may impede the smooth growth of this nascent industry is the presence of tough regulations and a large section of unorganised sector within the industry.

How well is the Indian economy picking up?

Till a while back, a lot of uncertainty surrounded the rebound of the Indian economy. The June quarter saw a growth of 8.8% due to increase in private demands and investment demands. This rate of growth in expected to last the coming months. The fact that real estate rates are picking up and the car market is regaining momentum reflect this growth rate.

There are two factors that support this assumption. First, that the employment market picking up. Recruitment firm Manpower conducted an Employment Outlook Survey recently according to which the next three months would see robust hiring in India. The public administration, education and services sectors are likely to see the highest rates of hiring. The second is the huge FII inflows that India has been witnessing recently. The Indian Sensex is likely to reach the 20000 mark thanks to the large chunks of cash expected to come in. Overseas investors are showing tremendous interest in India and they would be interested in picking up local stocks.

The flipside is that a number of analysts still believe that India is not there yet when it comes to economic growth. This is primarily because India gets a huge chunk of its business from the US, UK and Japan, which are still reeling under the economic downturn. Equity analysts in particular believe that stocks are overvalued and we must expect a correction sooner or later.

Where the US, UK and Japan are still struggling to bring down unemployment levels, the next three months are likely to see heavy hiring in India. The International Monetary Fund director Dominique Strauss -Kahn has said that for the economic crisis to end, unemployment has to go down.

The challenge will be to see if India is able to maintain this growth despite the recession that the rest of the world is yet to recover from. Countries such as China and Taiwan have witnessed growth along with India. They have an advantage compared to India because of the outsourcing services that Indian economy is heavily reliant upon. The good part is that the Indian economy is growing out of outsourcing. The number of entrepreneurs is picking up and the manufacturing sector has seen a double digit growth.

Certainly, India is going to witness an upturn. And it is going to last. How far it will take the growth story is what we’ll wait and see.

LinkedIn As The New Social Media Giant

Marketing on facebook and twitter has been a matter of great discussion and speculation. Some believe that potential of marketing on social media is still untapped while others dismiss it as just hype…lot of smoke with only a little fire at heart. Instead, LinkedIn can be a better option to target professionals more accurately. Lately, LinkedIn has opened doors for various companies to take on followers for their profile page and upgrade them (of course for a fee). Now LinkedIn is the new social media that presents unforeseen opportunities for marketers and media buyers to exploit.

While LinkedIn creates a profile for your company, it is open for anyone working with your company to edit it. As company profiles are user content driven anyone with valid company e-mail address can make changes. Only way to check it is to upgrade it by paying an annual fee. The added benefit is that you will be able to add job listings and enjoy other features in near future.

By adding follow button to your site, you allow people to follow the latest developments that are posted on your company's LinkedIn profile. What’s more…you are part of LinkedIn’s company search whether you have a free profile or a paid profile. Over 70 million members give LinkedIn the ability to reach out to the most targeted audience niche. It enables you to use the "home" page of selected audiences for a certain period of time.

The most popular feature among B2B consumers is LinkedIn Answers. Here professionals post questions on different topics such as careers, products, and services to be answered by other LinkedIn members. LinkedIn Answers can be used for Category sponsorship by bundling together various answer categories. In fact the most interesting thing about this set up is that you can actually reach out to people who are there to ask question about the very products or services you are advertising for. You can really saturate relevant topic areas and communities with your brands and offers.

Another interesting marketing option that LinkedIn provides is the use of InMail messaging for delivering messages to the inbox of members of certain categories on LinkedIn. The message is not only delivered on the top of individual’s inbox but also remains there until he sees it. Irrespective of the number of messages come after it and the number of days after which that individual opens his inbox, the message won’t get pushed down.

LinkedIn Polls let you create a poll and aim the questions towards specific audiences. Now we all know that taking the poll is a very high value brand interaction which enables your target audience to ponder over specific issues which you wanted them to through your questions. As the responses are published on the results page it acts as an incentive for people to participate. The best thing about polls is actually its by-product. You get an extremely targeted study with a significant sample size that can easily be utilized for white papers, reports, and press releases.

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.

Mobile VAS and security concerns

From playing games to reading news headlines, and from surfing the Internet to checking bank balance, value added services offered by service providers today have transformed the mere phone to a sophisticated device. With the advent of 3G, the usage of VAS is only going to increase. Apart from the benefits, this may also expose end users and mobile networks to greater security threats.

Among the fastest growing mobile market in the world, India has become the 5th country to have crossed the 100 million mark in subscriber base. Mobile phones are no more the mere communication tool of yesteryears. With a wide range of value added services offered by service providers today, they have actually become an extension of the persona of the user.

Although, both end users and service providers stand to gain from the increase in the usage of VAS but there are many security concerns that threaten this fastest growing telecom segments. There is still less awareness and commitment on the part of service providers to come up with concrete steps to tackle these concerns. This can be attributed to the fact that it is still an upcoming segment of the telecom industry.

Mobile virus is a security threat that most mobile users, operators, and handset producers are not aware of. This could be because the problem has been limited in scale so far. Mobile viruses can be disastrous for both network operators as well as end users. The first such mobile virus attack was recorded way back in 2005.

The probability of an attack has increased manifolds as users now increasing store sensitive information on their mobile devices. With mobile transactions gaining popularity in India, attacks such as phishing, pharming, and Trojan have also increased. Attack on data networks has also been witnessed over the past few years. 3G services will only make the scenario worst by opening up a wide range of opportunities for all those who will be the part of telecom network. Customers will have access to services such as data search, GPRS based services, including m-newspaper, mobile locater, picture downloads, Java enabled content and games, m-commerce etc. Along with the increased penetration of m-commerce it will also make it possible for unsocial elements to perform malicious activities in numerous ways. They may try and extort money from mobile operators by rendering the network unusable or acquire subscriber information with the aim to lay hands on their billing and credit card information. Today, subscribers are also confronted with the danger of someone taking control of their device using Bluetooth, which will give complete access to all their information.

It is important for all in the telecom system to wake up to these threats that are looming large over the horizon and take appropriate steps well in time. This will call for proper architecture and cooperation from the security ecosystem. It should be the priority for every enterprise to develop a core strategy to tackle this challenge while retaining the customer's trust.