Facebook is notorious for changing its facade every now and then. However, the realization comes sooner that each step taken promises something better. For example, the latest design on Facebook is an attempt to make Facebook an exceptional experience on mobiles. While there is a certain section of users who resist and disapprove of the new look, the majority has been wise to support the platform.

That said, Facebook is not the only social media platform that allows change. Google Plus is another that has come far. Joining the league is Reddit. It’s surprising; however it is a fact that there was a huge jump in the site experienced in its unique visitors last month. The total number that the unique visitor slot held last month touched a whopping 71 million. As Reddit continues to grow, the need for modifying its structure that can cope with user experience is felt even more.

With Multi-reddits, the platform tried to up its performance. The Multi-reddits are Reddits way of introducing customization on the platform. Moreover, they are extremely use-friendly. Also known as subreddits, Multi-reddits are nothing but a way of grouping individual forums that are found on Reddit. Now even multi-reddits have become a passé. The focus is on moving customization to organized customization. The entire process is supposedly about to witness an overhaul. Much like what Facebook did with its ‘appearance’, Reddit too is preparing to face a facelift. There will soon by an altogether different way of showcasing the multi-reddits. Streamlining of the processes is due too. The new changes are focused on making Reddit more ‘Tablet’ and ‘Mobile’ friendly. Like every time, the Reddit community has reacted quite negatively to the change. That, however, isn’t an indicator of failure. Let’s wait and watch what the new Reddit has got!

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Word of Mouth marketing has stuck around since ages. No one knows when and how it originated, but every time you hear your mom spread the word around about how delicious her new recipe has turned out to be, you get reminded of the marketing technique. The only difference between WOM then and WOM now is that the medium of spreading the word has changed.

A few years back your mom would talk about her new recipe during kitty parties. Now, she talks about them via Facebook, Twitter, and Google Hangouts. How very interesting, isn’t it? Does it mean that social media marketing is nothing but WOM with the V for virtual replacing the W for word? As far as the following similarities are concerned, yes; however, not entirely:

• What to Talk About : Every social media marketer, just like a WOM pro, will think of something about the  product/service to talk about. For example, if your mom is talking about her recent recipe, she won’t just talk about how well it turned out. She will also give little details like whether the recipe is a snack, a dessert, or a drink. An added advantage that social media gives her is to pin up the picture of her recipe and feel like a chef!

• Who To Talk With :Believe it or not, but your mom knows all the secrets to becoming the talk of the town. She knows the foodies amongst her friends. Yes, even at the times when WOM was hotter than SMM, she would know whom to target with her food delights. Now that she has the World Wide Web and Social Media platforms to her aid, she targets ‘groups’ and ‘likers’ like a boss!

• Who Will Talk About Us/The Product/The Service : Every marketer knows the originating point of gossips. They also know who nourishes and cherishes talking about ‘the latest’. WOM pros and Social Media Marketers are great with figuring out the target audience and early adopters too. You’ll never find yourself tensed about finding their way to the right audience.

• Why Would Anyone Talk About (Us/Me/Service/Product)

Well, this is something that both WOM and SMM professionals are always caught up thinking about. It’s their work after all. They have to understand the nature of the object that they are marketing. Only then will they be able to make the best out of WOM and social.

Last but not the least, the key to WOM and social is all about putting the communication across in the right manner, leaving no scope for misunderstandings.

Image Courtesy: edudemic.com

Tags: WOM

Here is a fact – and that too, a statistically proven one – “70% of consumers trust recommendations from their friends and family, a whopping 92% trust the opinions posted by other consumers online”, publishes Forbes. I am surprised, aren’t you? But those who have been there done that, would literally be laughing it off. The pros know that out of those 92% that the real users trust, 60% is a trap. Those 60% make the world go round, at least the virtual one. Those 60% comprise the force that work towards creating or belittling a firm’s online reputation.

What’s the Deal? How Online Reputation Management Happens

In its simplest, ORM is just like competition. You pull someone down to get to the top. In a way its economic – just like the free of the economy, on the basis of certain factors, a winner emerges from absolutely nowhere. And if you still haven’t got it, think PR.

ORM is all about pushing the bad stuff about your company down and inflating the good stuff in the virtual world. It’s just like saying that you scored total 7.7 GPA in your annual, pushing down the fact that you scored a D in Economics (guess what no one really knows how much you scored in which subject). You passed with a distinction and that’s what you should leverage on.

With ORM it is all about getting your content and information on the first page of Google. Solely that can earn you a good amount of organic traffic. Plus, no one is going to read what is being written about you on the third page of Google, unless it’s SEOed too well. However, what most people know is how to positively promote. Only a handful of them are able to cut through the negative hype being created.

Why ORM is Important?

It is believed that just like dreams, if you don’t control your brand online, someone else will. Let us quickly look at how online reputation management helps you with. There are basically four things that ORM helps you with: enhancing search results, enriching snippets, personalizing search, and boosting universal search.

The stakeholders of ORM comprise consumers, business partners, marketers, journalists, coworkers and last but not the least, your personal contacts. If done correctly, ORM can be the key to the success of your business.

No one knows when and how Pinterest became a social media site for the fair and the homely( not literally). Probably it had something to do with the marketing and product positioning, but it’s kind of difficult to understand the kind of stereotype that surrounds Pinterest. Men don’t want to be associated with something that has everything to do with pictures and posters. They don’t want to be a part of the kitty party planners and home decors. But isn’t that exactly why Pinterest was created – so that men don’t have to be a part of the girlie rigmaroles. There is, however, a reason to argue that that Pinterest is a gender neutral social media platform. You just have to be creative enough to find your place, five of which are listed as follows:

1. Memes: For those who don’t know what memes are – ‘y u no Google memes’. Surprising one of the top most searched queries on the Internet pertains to these funny little one lines. From hilarious to sarcastic, memes are Pinterest classics, for guys to flaunt their collection unabashedly.
2. Motivation: You don’t really have to be a sucker for sib stories, but motivational pins sell well on the platform. They will get you a lot of fan following, especially from the opposite sex. Even if it is just about the impression, your motivational pins will not fail to do the trick.
3. Gaming: Let’s face it; games work like a magnet on any guy. Even at 40, you’ll see them happily speeding their car in a video game and beating anyone who tries to temper with them. Pinterest is a great platform to search and organize the games that you wish to get your hands on. Put in some extra effort and you might get a whole bunch of buddies to play with via Pinterest.
4. Food: Needless to say, food cannot be categorized on the basis of gender. For the men who love to treat their taste buds and try classic cuisines every now and then, Pinterest is a delectable platform.

Once you are there, pinning-up interesting ideas and jokes on boards, it will be an experience worth changing your mind, or at least your opinions.

Image Courtesy : wordpress.com

Tags: Pinterest, social media

Internet and Indian youth are two inseparable threads that are weaving the face of our nation at the speed of light. Books and newspapers are fighting a losing battle against what is becoming the future of a more modernized and globalized India. If we have to summarize India’s future with internet in a nutshell, it is nothing less than brilliant.

Here are some of the ways in which we have categorized these points:

1. Greater Internet means cheaper internet: There was a time when having an internet connection at home was meant for the richer upper class, or for people who were supposedly more “advanced”. These days not having an internet connection at home is equivalent to not having any butter in the fridge. With the large number of internet connections getting installed each day, the cost has gone down and has become easily affordable for all.
2. People’s worlds are on the web: From online shopping, to booking flight tickets, everything is done online. With the increasing stress at work, people do not have time to shop or even get groceries. Making these facilities available online, the younger generation is becoming more and more dependent on what can be ordered online and home delivered.
3. Social Networking: People in India, especially the younger generation sleep and eat through popular social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. No one has the time or patience to wait. Instant chat and messaging through such mediums has become popular and this trend is only inclined to grow forward and not backward.
4. Employment: With so many job search portals like naukri.com and timesjobs.com people now have a quick step solution in finding the right job. The process has become simple for employers as well since they can hand pick the best from any industry and the entire process is uncomplicated and free of any error.
5. The 3G craze: Everything can be easily accessed through mobile phones since they now come with a 3G technology, and this further strengthens the bright prospect of internet in India.

The world is shrinking with every passing day because of Internet. What happens somewhere in America can reach the Indian News Desk real time because of the speed at which information is transmitted. In 2010 India was ranked 4th in terms of its Internet users across the globe, and that was just 3 years ago! India is advancing and social media is catching up faster than anything else. The wireless age would be nothing less than extraordinary in times to come.

Image courtesy peakinfosystem.com

Tags: Facebook, Internet, Internet Marketing, social media, Twitter

Being a writer is more than just scribbling words on a piece of paper, or typing at the speed of light on a PC. What usually gets in the way of a prolific writer and the spectrum of thoughts is the most dreaded syndrome for any writer, “the writer’s block”. Every writer has gone through this at numerous points and it is not something you can perpetually get rid of.

However the good news is that there are ways to fight it when it comes around. It is more like a ‘flu’ or fever that is temporary, and the cure does exist.

1. There is no such thing as “enough reading”: That would be like saying “I have eaten enough, and now I do not have to eat for the rest of my life”. The key to be a good and productive writer is to expand your reading. But only reading a certain type of genre is not enough. Venture out and read all kinds of books, because while some would interest and entertain you, others would end up educating you.
2. Document ideas in a journal: even if you are on your way to the grocery store and something you see or hear triggers off a profound thought in your mind, jot it down. Keeping these random thoughts in one place may be a good idea for when you are stuck for ideas.
3. Make an outline before you fill in the colors: It is important to brainstorm ideas before you actually sit down to write an article. Think about the subject, think about your views on it, ask people questions related to it, and then write out some bullet points which you can then elaborate on. This will help your thoughts flow and would also give your literary piece more structure.
4. Write out of habit: Even a healthy person exercises to keep their body fit and lean. In the same way it is important to keep writing consistently. If one does not write regularly, they would get stuck with ideas more often. The more you write, the better you learn to channelize your thoughts.

Practice makes you perfect or at least near perfect. The key is to keep writing even if you don’t think you have reached your potential, because ultimately you would. Giving up and getting annoyed is only going to slow down the thought process. Staying calm and taking time out is the best way to get back into your thoughts because a positive mind is the only way to produce positive thoughts and ideas and to get rid of the writer’s block.

Image courtesy rodneygainousjr.com

Tags: reading, writer, writer's block

While a few corporate executives admit uncertainty over social media optimization or its relevance, an overwhelming majority will admit that they foresee greater assignment of funds to the same. While only few businesses select professional services, some challenges remain.

Following are the obstacles that can be avoided.

1. Lack of Awareness

Social media optimization requires understanding the brand from the audience’s point of view, competitor’s aspect, and important terms, which is the first step. Ignoring this could lead to lost opportunities in all respects, like sales, collaborating, customer services, and others.

2. Cohesive Accountability

After establishing the goals, assigning responsibilities and accepting an overall accountability is necessary. Different departments must combine efforts to benefit the business. This prevents any possible brand misrepresentation.

3. Irregular Involvement

Consistently engaging audiences means regular participation in social media optimization tasks. Executive endorsements enable feedback to contributors, which grow the community. Having a dedicated community member as a curator or brand ambassador encourages community participation and displays the level of involvement.

4. Gaining Trust

To earn belief, a company needs confidence. Developing a sincere and passionate community depends immensely on the depth of participation of the company itself. More than opinions, a sense of conviction and strong will stand apart as respectable elements, which builds a reputable presence for social media optimization.

5. Ill-equipped Team

The emphasis is on understanding more than doing, as it is an approach more than a task.  Having your team undergo the requisite training will reduce the difficulty.

 6. Data Roadblocks

While data is essential to decision making, it should never restrict the capacities of the creative department. Most often, a spectacular creative idea can be the game changer, becoming a historic event in social media campaigns.

 7. Generalised Individualism

In addition to maintain a unique element, the real team members can support social media work. Rather than having a nameless person behind your brand, establish partnerships and acknowledge others for commendable work. Simply being useful with a focus will benefit you as well. With social dissent being expressed as well, a tactful and calm approach is required, even a light-hearted acceptance performs the necessary to maintain audience loyalty.

Conclusion

Ultimately, companies earn social media optimization by thorough strategy development, experimental innovations, and repetition of wholesome efforts and a fundamental framework. With these seven guidelines, your brand can fuel its progress on the path to realizing a robust market share and wider visibility.

Image courtesy mashable.com

Tags: brand, community, optimization, social media

Webinars may seldom be charming. However, they are the most widely recognized application of business to virtual space. The ball got rolling with globalization driving internet and social media towards business virtualization.

Professionals work online, train online, and worry more about online reputation management than about the relations that they share with their colleagues. Within all this, webinars consume a significant and vital space. Let’s face it though; they are boring and unbearable to the extent of torturing. Moreover, they seem like a one way ‘forced’ conversation. Since they are obviously ultimately boring they don’t have a great success rate. How do you turn the tables then, and make them one of the best ways to capture audience interest? Here are a few tips:

Bring Out the Blog: Pre webinar blog posts often give people a fine idea about what the webinar would entail. They work like an energizer and motivator.  Keep the blog crisp and concise. Don’t give out the details here. The blog will serve as a guide or a manual to evoke participation in the webinar.

Focus on Industry Updates: A webinar without current industry updates is like stale bread. You can’t make anything out of it. Facts and figures are important; and so are trends. Even if there is nothing interesting to talk about, the way you present the numbers can make the whole difference. Invite people to comment on the trends and talk about what they think about progress. Ask them if they see progress happening, or otherwise.

Understand Audience Behaviour: People are likely to pay attention to other social media platforms, happily chatting their time away if they encounter even a bit of boredom during a webinar. Analyzing and understanding audience behaviour and reaction is a way of predicting feedback. Mock webinars can help you get more accurate results.

As the adage goes – first impressions are the last impressions – so is the case with webinars too. A welcome slide for the webinar should hook the audience. Your half the job is done there and then, is it? No! You need to proceed in an equally engaging manner to make your webinar a hit.

Image courtesy www.101fundraising.org

Tags: Blog, Internet, Online Reputation, social media, webinar

Content marketing implies gaining a substantially higher following on online platforms, with an aim to benefit business.

These five techniques will help to uplift the performance of your web content and social approach.

1. Allies
Symbiotic functioning for mutual achievement of goals is effective. Website partners exponentially increase visibility and improve ad impression, as well as provide better page rankings.

In content marketing, a potential business partner can be from another industry, but should merge with a common ideology. For instance, a website of footwear reviews would team up with a foot care specialist or footwear store.

A few criteria for choosing a partner are:

• They have considerable traffic and cater to needs of a similar demographic in a different manner.
• Feature articles, guest posts, and alternative methods to enrich content visibility. Trade guest posts, run product features, and seek creative new ways to expose your content to a broader audience.
• Utilizing online means to implement relevant advertising that boosts audience segmentation and target acquisitions.

2. Platforms
Establishing a presence on every social media site, is a waste. Building and developing the same on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or LinkedIn, should be done in addition to using referral sites and fresher networks where exposure is higher. Inbound traffic and search engine rankings improve when sharing buttons are available.

Produce content ideally suited for newer platforms of huge referral potential. For instance, Pinterest is image specific. Creating top-quality visuals with artful or creatively witty copy would work well.

• Refresh your existing content by transforming each form into another periodically. For example, turn a past blog post into a video or a past video into a single visual graphic of data.

3. Audience Empowerment
Giving the audience this ability means getting them to work for your cause. Content marketing means allowing the audience to keep the campaign alive as it permeates different levels of the market. Nike, with the #makeitcount campaign, for instance, superbly carried out this requirement.

• Allow audience to communicate through the brand. Sharing any information is encouraged and appreciated. It helps build brand reputation and goodwill among consumers.

4. Earning Share-worthy Status
Simple language, a casual and assertive approach, and insights on trending topics, all attract fundamental human actions towards content marketing.

• Streamlined content, which requires a glance to gain a gist.

• Using confirmations of online shares or hosting a sweepstakes for most shares from a first level.

5. Extract Useful Data
Uncovering facts about the habits of the target audience, their rate of engagement, participation, and preferences, depends on analytics and scrutiny of data. With the help of online tools, this can be done easily.

Content marketing requires comprehensive effort and purposeful performance. Including these five strategies along with social modes enables faster goal realisation and revenue generation.

Image courtesy patyswizzle.com

Tags: content, content marketing, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, web content

When launching a new site or revamping an existing one, social media optimization remains the crux, in order to attract an interested demographic and to grow brand awareness and visibility. With these five tips, you can understand and avoid the most common mistakes in this sphere. 

Specifying Domains: This simply means that you should have the favourable option of either http://www.xyz.com or http://xyz.com. Redi­recting the preferable one solves this quickly.

JavaScript and CSS Control: For aspirations of search engine optimization, framework sites that are plug-in heavy have this problem. If cutting down on the script used and the CSS displayed is not feasible, running them through external files will enable faster load times.

Exam­ple: <script type=‘text/relevant-type’ src=‘http:/xyz.com/location-of-relevant-file.js’></script>

Advantages of Sitemap: Using an XML sitemap is hugely beneficial. The tools for this are available online in abundance.

Search engine optimization is achieved by making your pages and website more discoverable as search engines pick them up. It also assigns degrees of importance to different content.

Title Tag Format: While title tags are elements to the page header, they could also be visible at the top, depending on the browser.

It is also the text, which can be clicked as the results appear in an organic search. Not only are they a ranking criterion, but they also influence click-through rates.

Points:

• Title tags should not cross 70 cha­rac­ters, with spaces
• Avoid excessively filling with keywords
• Essential keywords should comprise the start of each title tag

Lac­king or Dupli­cate Desc­rip­tion Tags: Desc­rip­tion tags are visible in search results. They appear below clickable text and are created by search engines, which assign importance, when the tags are not compiled. It is far better to decide for yourself on the information that will be visible to your audience rather than automated decisions, in this case at least.

The possibly worst and most common mistake in search engine optimization functioning is the repeated usage of a description tag across multiple pages. This makes the process redundant and it is better to have blank descriptions for other pages.

Rules of Thumb:

• With spaces, description tags should not exceed 150 characters
• Every page should have a distinct description tag
• These tags should complement title tag keywords.

Gaining an insight into these unpopular mistakes that most websites and businesses make empowers you to succeed, without the impediment of wary operations. Follow these tips and make good on your promise to operate a website with full search engine optimization.

Image courtesy mashable.com

Tags: search engine optimization, sitemap, social media optimization, title tag, website