Bharati Ahuja

Is Social Media The New Marketing Mantra Or Just A Fad?

By now everyone a casual net surfer or a serious professional in the web world must have seen this video on YouTube.

The prime takeaways of this video are:

• By 2010 Gen Y will outnumber Baby Boomers

• 1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year have met via social media

• If Facebook were a country, it would be the world’s 4th largest

• YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine in the world

2009 U.S. Department of Education study revealed that on average, online students outperformed those receiving face-to-face instruction

• 1 in 6 higher education students are enrolled in online curriculum

• 80% of companies are using LinkedIn as their primary tool to find employees

• In 2009, Boston College stopped distributing e-mail addresses to incoming freshmen

People adapting to social media sites in such exponential numbers indicates the shift to the way people want to interact and initiate any conversation or deal, make friends, keep in touch with relatives overseas, discuss about some product, service or brand, get after sales attention or make celebrities eliminate the dependency on journalists and print media and directly connect with fans.

The merging of the real world and the virtual world is a constant evolution happening right from the day people started using the internet. Some time back email management was a task which needed training and setups at the offices in the corporate world. Today majority of these corporate people who may not be tech savvy flash a smart phone with ease for receiving and sending emails.

As we all know Mark Zuckerberg started working on Facebook so that all his college mates could remain connected to each other. Other people started using the Facebook for the same reason and today it has become such a phenomenon that every one has a Facebook account and thereby an online identity. It was Facebook that created such a stir in the online social scenario. But, it could have been any site which would have offered the features and the accessability like Facebook and could have been an overnight success.

What I mean to say it was not Facebook but the idea of keeping in touch, interacting and sharing online with so much ease which was a big hit. So it created an online social culture which was accepted at an universal level. Google achieved for search what Facebook achieved for social media.

Social interaction is nothing new, since ancient times humans have been interacting. Every one must have read the sentence which is usually the first sentence uttered in any lecture on Sociology, Psychology, History or Moral Science - ‘Man Is A Social Animal’.

So the urge to communicate, connect, interact, share is very basic, normal and at the core of human psychology only it is the medium which varies from time to time.

Hence online social media is the new way people want to connect personally or professionally.

Facebook may be a fad, Twitter may be a fad as only the future developments will tell us which social media site will have a longer online life . Tomorrow it may be an XYZ site which catches the fancy of the netizens but the fact remains that using online media for personal or professional interaction is here to stay and evolve.

Keeping the online internet marketing aspect in mind which is one of the professional interactions which has an added flavor of reaching out to everyone at a subtle personal level, according to me Social media is here to stay as the new marketing mantra.

How To Price An SEO Campaign

Every company has got its own pricing policies and especially when it comes to SEO many times the SEO companies and the clients who want to avail of these services are not sure of deciding upon the way the whole SEO campaign should be priced.

Any pricing for any service should be fair to the service provider as well to the client.

Normally, many SEO companies charge on per month basis and I have seen the demand for this mode of payment internationally also.

But, according to me, charging the client on a per month basis for an SEO campaign is not correct at all. As, when we consider an SEO project we know that

• The results will take time to be reflected on the search engines.

• It has to be a yearly project .( If proper results and search engine presence is needed).

• The rankings for some long tail keywords or which are location specific may start showing results in 2-3 months but for the specific keywords for which the site is being optimized might take at least 10-12 months.

• The SEO efforts (On-Page and Off-Page) put shall start from the very first day after the initial analysis of the site.

• No SEO can say that the Meta tags shall be put on the first month and then in the second month the sitemap.xml file shall be submitted. What I mean to say every SEO project needs to be given an overall tuning and that starts from day one.

In short it is just not possible to break up the work on a monthly basis and charge on a monthly basis if you are looking at a complete SEO campaign and search engine presence. Such a mode of payment does not do any justice to both the parties.

The best way is to split the payment into two installments of 50% each. i.e you charge 50% when the SEO contract is signed and the balance when the rankings start appearing in the search engines i.e usually after 3-4 months. The installments can be split into 2 or 3 depending on the mutual convenience of both the parties.

If the budget is a constraint for the client but search engine presence is what the client wants to start off with then the company can have packages suited to give a start by local search, only basic on-page optimization services which can be comparatively low priced but with definite results and later on there can be an option of upgrading these packages to the yearly plan by the client.

This kind of pricing is fair to both the parties i.e the SEO services provider and the client. Moreover, the SEO project gets a complete holistic approach by both the parties. The client also is mentally prepared that the SEO results are not going to be achieved in a jiffy, it will take time and this makes him develop the patience for it.

Just SEO Is Not Enough .You Need A Web Culture In The Organization For Overall Online Success. How Healthy Is The Web Culture Of Your Company?

If You Think That You Have Signed A SEO Contract And Now You Are Going To Win The Web Market Then You Are Wrong.

SEO is the art and science of understanding the technology, the EQ , the IQ and of course thereby the algorithms of the search engines to make the websites rank high on the search engines to tap the targeted market.

The SEO knowledge is open and anyone following the ethical way and having the right SEO knowledge, patience and perseverance can reach the top rankings for the targeted keywords sooner or later. (Thats what my experience says).

But, search and internet marketing is much more than just ranking high on the search engines. Just as in the offline traditional way of marketing just giving an Ad. on TV , magazine or newspapers is not enough to get the footfalls in your store or make your phone ring repeatedly for enquiries, there needs to be a full plan of the whole marketing and sales circle. Similarly, online marketing also needs a complete plan to ensure the success of conversions of the online generated inquiries.

An SEO can help you achieve rankings but along with that that the most important thing to focus on is to find the answers to the following questions.

• Are the clicks generated as a result of SEO getting converted into enquiries ?

• Is the landing page giving the right impression about the products, services and the company?

• Is somebody in the organization responsible for the handling these queries with a responsibility attached to it?

• Does my company have a voice and approachability on the social media?

• Who in the organization is managing the social media?

• Do we have a legal policy if things go wrong or some web online policies, rules and regulations so that things do not go wrong?

• Is my staff who manages the social media cyber savvy or is he just typing in the tweets and posts?

• Does my site appear in all the search options of the search engines?

• Does my company have a blog?

• Is it being updated regularly?

• What is the focus of our blog?

In short there has to be a web culture in the organization so that every person in every team whether marketing , technical or operations understands the benefit of web presence and becomes a part of it.

Previously, when the email culture was introduced in the organizations in mid 2000 each and every person in the company was supposed to know how to send and receive mails else they were trained for that to ensure the smooth flow of communication.

So now when your SEO company tells you that your organization needs training in getting familiar with the internet marketing culture and develop the right web attitude please listen to them and be the first ones to take the initiative to become an organization where each and every member of the organization knows what online presence the company has and is confident about what their web culture is. As every member contributes to the marketing, sales, WOM, profits culture and image of the company.

Every employee in the company should easily relate to the virtual office (the website) of the company the way they relate to systems and procedures in the offline office. After all the virtual office or store is nothing but a reflection of your offline real presence.

How Healthy Is The Web Culture Of Your Company?

Who Should Manage The Social Media In Your Organization?

Every marketing campaign involves social interaction. As social interaction online is possible through the various social media platforms like blogging and micro blogging. In an online or internet marketing campaign social media is surely something which is catching up with the netizens.

Currently, the social media sites which have gained popularity are Facebook and Twitter. Hence, most of the companies have a facebook and a twitter account but not many of them are using these accounts in an effective way.

By just having an account on social media sites and assigning it to any Tom, Dick or Harry from your organization is not going to ensure success from this media. Every marketing campaign succeeds due to its planned, systematic approach. Moreover, every marketing campaign requires constant review at every stage to see and check where the campaign is getting directed to.

Interactions on this media are not a casual chat and neither it is a soft board where you regularly pin the announcements, requirements and achievements of your company . It is neither a market or a mall where you directly sell .

Social media is all about influence and reach. It is about establishing your online reputation. It is about networking and developing an online rapport with every person who may have the potential to directly or indirectly be associated to your business.

This surely needs to have a planned systematic approach and also the identification of the right person who shall be responsible to handle this task.

In my opinion, as this medium is still at an evolving stage and all the people involved in social media are still experimenting and exploring the potential of this media, the CEOs or the top management personnel are the right people to handle this task. Interactions on this media can either make or mar the reputation of your business. People who are highly concerned about the growth, reputation and WOM of the company are the right people to be allocated this task as there is a lot of human technology involved in this interaction rather than computer technology.

Again it is the person and not the post which should be the deciding factor. As the person identified should have the care and the concern for the online reputation of the business, should have a flair for interacting with people and should have the responsibility to make commitments and claims publicly and at the same time be answerable for every word on this media if the need arises.

It is not necessary that the posts and tweets of this person managing the social media accounts for your company should have the Pied Piper's magical music whereby all the netizens start following him but should surely have the sense and the sensibility to make the followers get interested in the products and services that your company offers.

You Can Verify The Ownership Of Your Site In Google Webmaster Tools Using the Analytics Snippet

No one likes duplication of efforts and especially when they are mundane repetitive tasks like verification of accounts in the webmaster tools. Google seems to understand that and has added another option for verification in webmaster tools.

Google will find all Google Analytics tracking codes that are active on the index page for this site. Ownership of the site is established if you are an administrator for any of the Google Analytics website profiles found. The Google Analytics tracking code is used only to verify site ownership.

This only works with the newer asynchronous Analytics JavaScript, so if you haven't migrated yet, now is a great time.

Once you've verified ownership, you can add other verified owners quickly and easily through the Verification Details page. There's no need for each owner to manually verify ownership. More effort and time saved.

The other ways of verifying are:

• Add a DNS record to your domain's configuration You can use this option if you can sign in to your domain registrar or hosting provider and add a new DNS record.
• Add a meta tag to your site's home page You can choose this option if you can edit your site's HTML.
• Upload an HTML file to your server You can choose this option if you can upload new files to your site.

The verification of the site via the analytics snippet is surely a time saver. A very big thanks to Google indeed .

What Is All This Link Building About, Why are all the Webmasters And SEOs Falling In Link Love?

Before we discuss and understand about why everyone having a website today wants to get as many inbound links to their site, let us understand why , when and how all this importance to inbound links started.

We know that when any technology or algorithm becomes open and more and more people gain knowledge about it there is a tendency in general to use it or misuse it. If it is used in the right perspective then, it achieves the purpose for which it was built. But, when it is misused by the miscreants then it is a major matter of concern and needs to be restricted ASAP.

Way back Google announced a PageRank technology to display quality search results as the webmasters were misusing the keyword tag extensively and there was a lot of black hat which was affecting the quality of results on the search engines.

According to Google the Page Rank is defined as follows:

• PageRank Technology: PageRank reflects our view of the importance of web pages by considering more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Pages that we believe are important pages receive a higher PageRank and are more likely to appear at the top of the search results.

PageRank also considers the importance of each page that casts a vote, as votes from some pages are considered to have greater value, thus giving the linked page greater value. We have always taken a pragmatic approach to help improve search quality and create useful products, and our technology uses the collective intelligence of the web to determine a page's importance.

Find detailed information here: http://www.google.com/corporate/tech.html

As mentioned above in the PageRank definition every link to your page is like a vote, a recommendation you make to the visitor coming to your site and thereby generating an online WOM for the linked site confirming your faith in the services and information offered by that company.

This is a very important and valuable opinion you give to your website visitors and in a way you vouch for it. Hence these links you give to other sites and the links your website gets were given importance by Google to determine the online standing of a company and business and hence the websites having a good inbound linking are considered to have higher popularity and given a higher PageRank .

The PageRank refelects how popular the webpage is online and thereby no doubt many times it is ranked high in the SERPs but let me tell you I have seen pages with ZERO PageRank also on Page 1 rankings of Google.

Inadequate SEO knowledge makes the SEO run after links. As a result there is a whole industry of Link Building which has come up and there are companies whose main service is to provide you links. Though there can be quality and innovative methods of getting links to your site as a continuous marketing effort but usually it gets limited to the easy way out by many to buy links from link farms or exchange links.

I am of the opinion that the term 'link building' itself is an incorrect term. Links do not have to be built but they should get built naturally in the process as your website starts getting a wider web presence and preference. The inbound links are something that your website earns by virtue of the quality foot prints it creates on the web as you reach out to more and more people by being focused on the valuable services and information offered by your website.

Buying a link is like telling someone that I shall pay you for speaking well about me. Now, how far is that ethical? How long will such a WOM last for your company’s credibility or in this matter keep your rankings high in SERPs? I am sure you have the answer . These short term solutions may give immediate results but will not ensure a long term web presence which should be the goal of any online marketing campaign. SEO has the possibility of achieving this if the SEO approach is ethical and as per the norms of the search engines.

I would like to emphasize here that yes having good quality links from authority and reputed sites and topical sites is essential and important but the way you achieve them is the main focus of this discussion.

To start with try to earn every link to your site as a result of unique, quality content and information on your site.

Yes, CONTENT is still the uncrowned king of the web since the first website went online and shall always remain inspite of millions websites coming on the web regularly.

Apart from a good qualitative site in all respects other genuine methods of gaining natural inbound links as your website goes from one milestone to another are as follows:

• Focus all your efforts on making the site informative, qualitative and content rich to get links automatically.
• Do not neglect the On-Page Optimization Basics and just go after links. (Very important from the SEO perspective)
• Participate in social media networks for discussions and sharing of information and mention links to the relevant pages to your website. (It need not be the Home Page always)• People are sharing links on the social media like never before and whenever you tweet a link you are sharing it with so many people who are connected to your followers which again has the possibility and probability of gaining exponential reach. This in turn again offers a lot of scope for gaining unbiased genuine links.
• Have a social book marking button on your website.
• Make RSS feeds available on your website.
• Issue Press Releases periodically.

Create a whole ambience and atmosphere around your website which shall make websites link to the site you want. In a way ensuring that you don’t have to run after links but they instead walk up to your site and acheive the true purpose of the PageRank Technology by Google.

I think that it is the responsibility of every web developer, SEO and any one even remotely related to uploading and affecting the content on the web to add value to it in its own little way.

Online Marketing Ensures More Openness And Honesty In The Whole Marketing And Sales Process.

Online marketing methods are replacing the traditional marketing methods . Day in and day out, the Corporate world is allocating huge budgets for SEO (Search Engine Otimization), CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization), for re-developing and tweaking their websites for better conversions and also trying to establish an attain a voice on the social media platforms for their business.

Since such an evolution is taking place in the field of business, no business owner can neglect the power of the web. Having an online presence is becoming mandatory for each and every business house.

When we talk of online presence , just having a website is not enough. If you already have a web 2.0 website then it surely ascertains that you have taken the first step to reach out to the ‘Wonderful World Wide Web’ (yes it is usually www 3 Ws but just thought of adding a fourth W by addressing the web as something wonderful )

But just having a website is not enough, the website has to be found by the innumerable searchers on the globe searching for the products and services which you and so many other companies are offering. Hence, a search engine presence is something which is necessary, once you start ranking in the search engines, your company needs to interact with the potential customers which reach your site through search engines and other internet sources, hence, having a presence on social media sites is again something which is gaining popularity.

Now, when so much interaction, exchange of information, commitments between the buyer and the seller is done on a platform like the WWW which has such a universal reach ensuring and enabling links which spread a good WOM. Yes links are the key. Links are being shared across the social media platforms for reaching out to a web world . But, it has to be borne in mind that at the same time if commitments are not kept then this very system can also spread a bad WOM.

Hence, this very system ensures that every business owner is open, honest and deals with the potential and existing customers with integrity. If you want to survive on the web world it is essential to be original, honest and open. In a way the internet marketing methods are a great impetus to innovation and originality and enforce the values of truth and honesty which many times are not given much importance to, by the companies whose main and only criteria is profits.

No, doubt profits have to be given importance but every business has got certain social objectives which have to be focused . The web due to its unique viral nature and reach ensures that these objectives are met in a very balanced way. Online marketing gives a great global reach to business owners or sellers, and due to the openness and social media platforms it even safeguards the interests and rights of the online customers or buyers.

Thanks to the search engines which reward originality, penalize duplicate content and value quality in bound votes to the websites. The openness, freedom of expression and the freedom of choice the ecommerce has given to the customer is actually eradicating the drawbacks of offline traditional marketing and sales methods.

Hence, before your company takes the plunge for online marketing - work out a plan, appoint a team which will be responsible for representing your company on the internet, every post on the social media and every word of assurance to your clients on your website is going to have global implications which should have an element of answerability and accountability on an international base. As, for every word unspoken – you are the master – BUT every spoken word is the master of thine.

Social Media Marketing And The Online Presence Of Your Business

All marketing plans, efforts and strategies revolve around people and understanding the potential customer or catering to the existing customer is the main focus of any marketing campaign.

The social element can never be ruled out from any business activity as a whole because every business caters to some or the other want or requirement of people.

As all people involved in any kind of marketing are aware of the four Ps - Product , Place, Promotion and Price. We can see that we cannot decide about the product without keeping the people in mind, we cannot decide about the place without keeping the people in mind, we cannot decide about any promotion campaign without keeping the people in mind and again the price also is a people centric decision.

Hence, it is this fifth ‘P' people which is the main aspect around which all marketing campaigns revolve around. Hence, every business needs to reach out to people with the best possible approach.

Internet marketing offers the best possible platform for reaching out to the potential customer for introducing the products and services or to the existing customer for customer support in the form of social media.

According to Wikipedia:

Social media are media for social interaction, using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Social media use web-based technologies to transform and broadcast media monologues into social media dialogues. Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein define social media as "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content." Businesses also refer to social media as user-generated content (UGC) or consumer-generated media (CGM). A common thread running through all definitions of social media is a blending of technology and social interaction for the co-creation of value.

Hence social media sites offer a two way conversational platform which offers a fair opportunity to voice opinions and feedbacks to both the parties involved .

There are many social media sites but Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, YouTube and Blogs are widely used by the netizens. These sites are a good tool for effective online marketing and networking.

If your business has an account on these social media sites it becomes very easy and convenient to keep yourself updated about the latest buzz related to your industry, the interaction on this platform helps you to create an online brand and reputation which in the long run will help in generating a WOM for your company as online reputation management is the off shoot of the success of these social media sites.

No doubt this media offers a global reach in the most cost effective way but there are certain things to bear in mind when we have a social media presence.

There should be a team or a single person responsible to manage the media. i.e there has to be a sense of responsibility and answerability to every post or tweet , one has to distinguish between relating online on a personal basis and a formal basis. When you are dealing with a client the language and approach have to be very thought off as every post and tweet gets recorded and the company has to stand by the spoken word especially when you are dealing with customer complaint online or a grievance.

Just like every drop in the ocean counts everything you write on social media keeps on adding to your brand value and online reputation hence every word counts.

SEO has got its own importance and Social media has got its own importance. Since Social media has been integrated by search and real time search is where people go if they want to know what people are saying about a certain topic as of now, SEO and social media have to be used in conjunction by all the companies for a long term qualitative online presence for their business. Both these sources bring in qualitative, targeted inbound traffic which is the main purpose of online marketing.

SEO – One Of The Online/Internet/Web Marketing Methods

Marketing is defined by various marketing experts as follows:

Marketing is the social process by which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through creating and exchanging products and value with others.

Kotler.

Marketing is the process whereby society, to supply its consumption needs, evolves distributive systems composed of participants, who, interacting under constraints - technical (economic) and ethical (social) - create the transactions or flows which resolve market separations and result in exchange and consumption.

Marketing is not only much broader than selling, it is not a specialized activity at all It encompasses the entire business. It is the whole business seen from the point of view of the final result, that is, from the customer's point of view. Concern and responsibility for marketing must therefore permeate all areas of the enterprise.

Drucker.

From all the above definitions made by experts in the field of marketing following terms stand out or can be considered as the main edifice for marketing:

• Social Process – Technical (economic) and ethical
• Exchange of products and values
• Distributive Systems composed of participants
• Encompasses the whole business and not just sales
• Care, concern , responsibility and answerability

I am going in details of the definitions of marketing as the field of online marketing is still at the evolving stage and currently the most common way of reaching out to the masses and classes online is through search engines.

Hence, we can see that SEO (SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION) is one of the most sort after services by website owners . The number of SEO companies offering SEO training and services are mushrooming online and offline giving commitments for high rankings and showing rosy pictures to the clients of million dollar online business to them.

No doubt the power of the web and reaching out to people has great potential of making your business and company have a global reach, but the concept of online marketing has to be taken into account as a whole for tapping this actual potential.

In order to understand and wisely work out the online marketing strategy for your company one has to go to the basics of this term.

Yahoo made a fortune with banner Ads. In early 2000 and many companies allocated huge budgets for this and got online presence but such a presence was short lived and had very less recall value.

But that was the need of the hour as netizens were not mature enough or cyber savvy enough at that time to find what they were searching for on the web and the search industry also was still growing .

But, now in 2010 the situation is very different

• The people have become more net savvy
• The search industry has grown and has a lot to offer as regards search options
• The number of websites offering content and information on various topics has grown exponentially
• Accessing the social media has become a part of everyone’s daily activity
• The integration of search and social media (Real Time Search) has given an impetus to public opinion like never before.
• The Online Competition has increased multifold

Just as banner Ads. got the most attention way back in 2000 , in 2010 SEO is the online marketing method which every company wants to allocate a budget to.

Surely, getting your site optimized for search engines is the wisest decision any company can take keeping the current scenario in mind and SEO is something that no company can do away with because if your business is not on the search engines then it is on the invisible web and if you are not visible on the web then you cannot expect any business from the web.

In order to be visible on the web, SEO is one of the options but as a wise marketing strategy to ensure long term online presence all the options for online marketing and keeping the current scenario in mind, we always suggest to clients to have a inhouse online marketing team or if the company under consideration is an SME and has humble marketing budgets then one person at least should take a regular active interest in the online presence development of the business as the social media presence also is of utmost important for every company keeping the future trend in mind.

As your company needs to have voice of your own on the web and the social media sites and blogging gives you the power to speak for your company, gracefully thank your well wishers or defend your company in case of any bad word spread regarding your product or service so that your online reputation is always taken care of.

The SEO company will monitor the rankings for your website on the search engines but in order to monitor the social media one needs to hire a social media company services or the best way is to have a inhouse team or person handling this function.

Online business is global business and it is only through this tool that you can reach out to a potential customer, thank a satisfied customer, attend to complaints of dissatisfied customers and thus develop a rapport ensuring repeated business.

Hence, SEO is just the first step to reach out to the potential online market but there is a lot more which has to be done to establish the online WOM and ensure long term business.

In conclusion, we go back to the important aspects of marketing derived from the definitions by the Gurus of marketing mentioned above i.e:

Hence all these aspects have to be incorporated even in the online marketing plans and strategies of the company and this is possible only if each and every person of the organization starts thinking in these terms and identifies with it.

As budgets allocated today by companies for internet marketing should ensure long term presence on the web and not just fade away like the presence gained by banner ads. in the past, and the online marketing strategies and methods today available have the potential for acheiving this purpose.