iSMOblog

Social networking sites have transformed the way we communicate and connect. By now most internet savvy companies are already using (and reaping the benefits of) SMO or Social Media Optimization. For those who are still unaware of this rising global phenomenon, here is a heads-up on what SMO entails.
SMO is the process of creating multiple points of access or visibility by utilizing the traffic leverage of already existing social networking sites for brand/service promotion and in-turn improve the bottom line. In simple terms SMO is the utilization of sites like Facebook and Twitter to create a buzz about your company. SMO is a process that not only requires innovation but it also requires continuous dynamism.

7 Tips for SMO

SMO used effectively can have a tremendous impact on the traffic you generate. Here are some handy tips for efficiently using SMO to your advantage –
•    First and foremost set up fan pages or company groups on sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter

•    Inform, engage and provide information that people can actually use through these platforms

•    Set up accounts on image sharing sites like Photobucket for image sharing and optimal tagging

•    Create accounts on social bookmarking sites like Reddit for sharing additional information

•    Maintain blogs on popular blogging sites

•    Innovate and communicate for retention and increase of members on social channels and finally

•    BE ACTIVE! Regular updates on all social sites is imperative

Whether you want to be a part of this social bandwagon or not is not really a choice now! The digitalization of this world has brought with it newer ways of connecting with people and changed the way we market and promote.

-Adapt if you want to move ahead.
-Stay fresh if you want to stay viable.
-Use SMO effectively if you want to succeed in this digital world!

Social media in recent times has become a headline grabbing phenomenon that is rapidly growing. Instead of using social networking as a tool to simply connect with people, entrepreneurs across the world are frequently trying to find ways to utilize the trend of social networking as a business opportunity.
Studies suggest that social networking sites should be viewed as a complementary device to the presence of businesses in order to promote success. Businesses should consider the sites as an asset that is valuable and useful in gaining their companies positive attention. In essence social networking sites, when used properly, should not be employed as a replacement to the business traditional online presence.
But the question arises, what is social media?

Social media is a conversation on the Internet. It is a conversation of the organization with its customers, employees, suppliers, investors, critics and fans. In a nutshell, it is a conversation with anyone having access to Internet. However, the conversation is not controlled and organized. But it is organic and complex, in the form of a human voice. Thus, it is not a strategy, but simply a mode of reaching out to all the stakeholders of the business.

What are the characteristics of Social Media?

Social media is best understood as a group of new kinds of online media, which share most or all of the following characteristics:

1.    Participation: social media encourages contributions and feedback from everyone who is interested. It blurs the line between media and audience.

2.    Openness: most social media services are open to feedback and participation. They encourage voting, comments and the sharing of information.

3.    Conversation: unlike traditional media, which is more of a “broadcast” (content transmitted or distributed to an audience), social media is better seen as a two-way conversation.

4.    Community: social media allows communities to form quickly and communicate effectively. Communities share common interests, such as a love of photography, a political issue or a favourite TV show.

5.    Connectedness: most kinds of social media thrive on their connectedness, making use of links to other sites, resources and people.

Why should companies adopt social media?

- It covers a large audience in a faster, economical and easier manner

- Helps even small businesses to reach to a wider customer base

- These channels allow a connect with the stakeholders which enhances the credibility of the firm

- The best place of connecting with the stakeholders is where they are already talking about things important to them. Thus by joining in the conversation would increase the noticeability of the firm.

- It allows the company’s website to integrate multimedia such as audio and video which increases the attractiveness of the company

- It allows users to generate their own content thereby allowing them to interact with each other

How can companies utilize social media?

There are many mediums available for an organization to effectively harness the complete potential of social media. The various types of mediums available are as follows:

Social networks: These sites allow people to build personal web pages and then connect with friends to share content and communication.

Blogs: Perhaps the best known form of social media, blogs is online journals, with entries appearing with the most recent first.

Wikis: These websites allow people to add content to or edit the information on them, acting as a communal document or database.

Forums: Areas where online discussion on specific topics and interests are held. Forums came about before the term “social media” and are a powerful and popular element of online communities.

Audio, Video and Photo sharing Sites: Sites where the above mentioned are shared between a large numbers of people.

Microblogging: Social networking combined with bite-sized blogging, where small amounts of content (‘updates’) are distributed online and through the mobile phone network.

Companies are now using a wide array of social networking services ranging from Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to emails, blogs and websites to build up interest in their new product or service launch. There are countless social media sites available in each of the above categories.
The diagram below maps some of them into the social media space.

Is Social Media perfect? Doesn’t it have any downsides to it?

Like everything else, social media does have its share of limitations. However, most of these limitations vary depending upon the user’s perceptions. The various disadvantages of this new age media are as follows:

Time Consuming: To leverage on social media, one needs to be connected to its audience all the time. He needs have updated helpful information on the network and should respond to any queries to satisfy the curiosity of the audience otherwise the audience might loose faith in business.

Limited Reach: Accessibility to the Internet in India is only around 3-5% of the total population. Thus, only a limited segment can be targeted through this medium.

Information Overload: With so much information available, there can be a problem of information overload and social networking overload which may cause problems of authenticity and validity of the information may become an issue.

Lack of Knowledge: Since social media is still in its infancy stage, not much awareness and information is available. Thus, organizations may have to incur high initial costs for setting up its operations.

Intrusion on Privacy: Since social media is an open platform, there may be issues with privacy as a lot of information is available about the user.

Apart from these problems, there is also an issue with customer loyalty. According to Deloitte in 2008, around 40% of user generated content websites have more than 500 members but very few engage with it in terms of their contribution, retrieval and exploration on the site.

After having observed the social networking phenomenon for quite some time now, I decided to find out which one of the most used social networking websites, i.e. Orkut or Facebook, is more popular and why.  I actually thought that by reading various blogs, visiting various different forums, talking to different people who use these sites etc. would be enough to find out who is the winner out of these two…but alas, I was wrong. All I got was a variety of mixed responses and they only added to the confusion. Here is a meagre attempt to discuss the pros and cons of both- Orkut and Facebook.

Orkut is ‘the’ most popular website in India and Brazil whereas Facebook is the favorite social networking website for America and Europe (MySpace is also a competition…but we are not talking about it here!).

Apart from this, both Orkut and Facebook are disliked for some reasons or the other. First and foremost, Orkut offers you only basic social networking facilities. Whereas, Facebook has a number of other cool applications such as quizzes, Flixster, iLike etc. These make Facebook much more interesting. Orkut is said to have a number of drawbacks such as the fact that it does not allow its user to upload a number of photographs at once, the deletion of photographs has to be done one by one, tagging a user is not allowed, organizing the scraps as per your friends is not allowed and so on. SMS alerts, like those on Facebook, are also a missing feature. Some of these features are there on Facebook and thus it automatically gets that extra edge.

However, this inference is not enough to prove that it is better than Orkut in every way. People who are big fans of Orkut have a number of things to say in its favour as well. Or rather I should be saying that these people have a number of things to say against Facebook. Some people are of the opinion that Facebook has too many things and thus is slow whereas Orkut is really very user friendly. Privacy options are not that strong and efficient in Orkut’s case, hence people are easily able to trace conversations through scraps etc. which makes it fun to use (don’t know if it is a good thing or not!). Moreover, the profile page and links on Orkut are much more systematic and organized. The Google tag attached with Orkut is a major advantage in itself. The name ‘Google’ is enough to build trust and attract users. More so, Orkut is said to be constantly improving and is considered to be introducing more and more features on a regular basis, which offers something new to its users every time.

The debate however remains open-ended. Which of these is better is completely an individual’s choice. So, whichever suits your needs and requirements better, just stick onto it. Happy Orkutting and Happy Facebooking! (If at all these two words exist!)
Cheers!

When the ever so popular Google launched its own social networking site ‘Orkut’ in 2004, it got a lukewarm response in the beginning.  Initially it was only popular with IT professionals but thanks to the youth of our nation, it became a youth icon (literally, in reference with the MTV Youth Icon Awards). Now if you don’t know what Orkut is or what it is about, then you need to do some serious homework. Orkut became the new trend, the new fashion and the new need. Yes…you got me right- need! It had actually become impossible to survive without it.

The trend had actually become that if you came across someone you are meeting up for the first time and you wished to stay in touch with that person then instead of exchanging phone numbers or e-mail ids, you straight away asked- “Hey, you there on Orkut?”. Such is its reach. No doubt, that in no time, Orkut became the 2nd most popular website in India and the most popular website in Brazil!
Why it became so popular…

Its users liked it for its simplicity and more than anything else, its novelty! Orkut can be given the credit for acting as the pioneer in India as far as the entire concept of social networking is concerned.

Moreover, since it was owned by the ever so popular Google itself, then the fact that its sister website also became popular does not come to anyone of us as a surprise.

Orkut also had the advantage of people not knowing about its competitors such as MySpace or Facebook. People knew only about Orkut and Google made sure that it did everything to popularise it even more (like by giving a link to Orkut from each of its web search results page etc.)

Is the charm fading out…

The charm of Orkut, as they say, is surely fading out. And there are a number of reasons responsible for it.  First of all, and thankfully people got aware of the other options to choose from. Facebook is undoubtedly catching up and even MySpace has also started to make its presence felt. Even the Indian social networking websites like BiggAdda and ibibo etc. are gaining momentum. They are likely to do much better if at all they pay a bit more attention to their advertising campaign. That’s a different issue however.

Next, the spam! This issue has really led to the defaming of Orkut. Fake profiles, fake ids, fake communities, and receiving bulk spam messages- all this and more such things have led to users gradually shifting from Orkut to other similar sites. The security and safety of the user account and his/her personal information is also a big question that Orkut has not been able to answer time and again.

It can also be noticed that since the time Orkut.com changed to Orkut.co.in, its popularity has actually gone down.

I hope that Orkut’s this popularity check has helped you, at least a bit, in your opinion about the same. If you are still on Orkut, then Happy Orkutting else congratulations on your wise decision!

Social network marketing is undoubtedly becoming ‘the’ hot topic in Web Marketing. Lately, the Internet has proven to be a very powerful medium and because of its numerous advantages such as its speed, accessibility and the fact that it is simple to use…the internet has started to be used more than just a tool of information dissemination and a mode of entertainment. Today, the internet is synonymous with business!

And here steps in one of the most recent forms of Web Marketing- the social network marketing. Though the makers of these social networking websites, to name a few, Orkut MySpace, Hi5 etc. had developed such sites for the sole purpose of connecting with people and staying in touch with them; but I guess, the masterminds of business had already thought of drawing out more use out of them. Marketing.

The ‘Popularity’ Question

However, even marketing requires intelligence. And thus, a businessman has to be very selective as to which social networking website he is opting for in order to gain the maximum benefit. And when such a decision has to be made, the ‘popularity’ of the website is the most important aspect that has to be taken into account. MySpace definitely wins hands down in this regard.

MySpace all the way

In order to do effective marketing, MySpace proves to be one of the most favorite options. And that is because it is considered to have a pool of more than 100 million members! So, marketing through MySpace can reap you brilliant results because at least some part of this 100 million member pool will eventually be discovered as your prospective customers. The bottom line remains that more the number of people on a social network, the better are your chances of hooking up more customers!

Not only popularity, but the features and the services offered by MySpace to its users also act as an advantage for a person who is looking at MySpace as a business opportunity. Let us here take a look at some of those factors that make My Space the best bet in regard to Social marketing.

Magnifying your business exposure is much easier because the number of members on MySpace is huge. Thus, the probability of getting more customers only increases.

The amount of information that you wish to give through MySpace is unlimited. This is because MySpace does not limit the number of photos, videos or information that you wish to upload.

The features of sending out large scale bulletins or individual private messages (suit your need) makes it really easy for you to send information or the updates across to your customers.

The existence of a number of forums, groups or communities, each catering to a specific interest, helps you to locate your target audience much more easily. It is also believed that navigating through MySpace profiles is much easier than its competitors.

All in all, if you plan to do marketing through a social network, then go for MySpace. You might just end up becoming rich!

Social networking is as important to the present generation as reading the morning newspaper. It is a habit for some and addiction for others. You might say that you are not into it, but you can’t deny the fact that it is in you. May be you are not an active member of this vicious circle (or non-vicious for some), but you are its passive observer for sure. Now, since almost everyone is involved in some way in this business of social networking, then the differences of opinions on the same are bound to happen.

Where, on one hand, social networking has a number of positives about it to boast about such as allowing you to meet new people, getting in touch with the old ones…and we all know what I am talking about…so I guess, I don’t need to go there again; but some people also raise questions about social networking eroding social skills and values of the people. How much of this kind of a question is valid is something that we all are seeking an answer to. But who is to decide that? The population in favour of using social networking sites and the number of people voting against it are almost evenly divided. Thus, the dilemma only increases.

However, almost everyone knows the benefits of social networking, so I thought why not use this space just to discuss the ‘social’ factor of social networking. However, by saying this I do not mean that I am talking only negative about this aspect. But, it’s best if we proceed from bad to good.

Because it’s so easy to stay in touch with people using such websites (which is a plus point!), have we started to feel that there is actually no need of face to face meetings now! Has wishing each other on festival times just confined to shooting a scrap or a message to your friends and relatives? Are we forgetting how we should be acting while we are in public because we almost never do that these days and that’s because we don’t get time from sitting on the computer 24×7?

If one section of the people agree to the things said above, then the people wishing to defend it are also ready with their arguments. Because we are spending so much time talking to all kinds of people through these sites, then aren’t we learning social skills? If we are learning to communicate virtually, then aren’t we actually getting ready to communicate with the real world?

Whether social networking is harming the society as a whole or if its harming the social life of an individual…this can’t really be decided despite critically evaluating both sides of the same coin. I guess, it ultimately remains a personal choice and to balance things out remains to be the best viable option. Both, virtual communication and face to face communication have their own charm. It’s not that one can’t survive without the other but it’s just that we can’t survive without the either of them.

Is marketing all about connecting with people? Well…times have changed and so has the technology. Today, marketing is all about connecting with people…faster. Time is of essence but it does not mean that marketing has to be done hastily. It should be effective and well-planned at the same time. And this is where social networks come into the picture.

Take one step at a time
Social networking websites such as MySpace, Orkut, Facebook and the others have huge number of members and we can assume that almost each member is a part of at least one community that caters to his or her interests. Now, if you have a product or an idea to sell, the most effective and easy way to do that is by locating your target audience in any such community on a social networking website. But even prior to that one has to also decide upon the website that you wish to use to sell. This has to be done by evaluating the features and their uses that each of these sites have to offer you. The features or the website that serves your maximum purpose should be chosen.

How to sell
Now once you are through with the selection of the website and have become a member of the community or communities made of your target audience, then start by making your presence felt. This can be done by adding yourself in others’ friends list and adding more and more people to your own. Never make it obvious that you are there to sell! Try and build a relationship with the people and in the process try and assess their needs and desires. If you come across a person who you think might be a potential customer, then start by telling about your product, service or idea in a very general way. Make sure that you give your customers what they want.

Your profile on the social networking website will act as a stepping stone. Make sure it is updated from time to time, has links to the various websites and blogs that shall help in the sale process…basically it should be informative in a very simplified manner.

One more very important thing is to interact. Building a relationship is one thing, and maintaining it is another. Make sure that you never lose contact with your ‘friends’ group. If they leave a comment about your blog, then reply to it. Invite more comments. Make them feel that they are important to you. Interaction is like a building block of marketing through social networking sites.

The glitch
The only glitch with marketing through these sites is that it is very time consuming. The results might not be instant but they are sure shot. Your constant involvement is constantly needed. And if you are ready to invest a lot of time, then this medium is very cost effective as compared to the other ones.
If you are still hesitant to start marketing through social networking, then all I have to say is that it is truly worth giving a chance. I am sure you will not regret your decision!

It’s addictive. It’s addictive. And it’s addictive. And if one wishes to list down some more qualities or good things about Facebook, then he/she can say that its simple to use and because it has  such an enormous amount of members, it’s really very easy to find out the whereabouts of people you lost touch with long time ago! If these straight facts make you like Facebook so much, then read on. I am sure that the facts listed ahead in this post will make you fall in love with Facebook all over again!!!

Who had ever thought that the 24 year old Mark Zuckerberg had the potential to create something as big as Facebook (came into existence on February 4,2004) while he was still studying at Harvard! As a matter of fact, it’s actually not hard to believe. Zuckerberg had already built a music system ‘Synapse’ while he was still at high school. Synapse was capable of learning of one’s listening habits by using artificial intelligence. No wonder Microsoft and AOL wanted to buy it and recruit Zuckerberg right after his high school, but he surely had some other plans for his future!

No wonder that Forbes Magazine, in 2008, declared him as the “youngest billionaire on earth and possibly the youngest self-made billionaire ever”. And that too with an estimated net worth of $1.5 Billion USD! Some people are just born to become rich!

Very interestingly, Facebook is famous as “the sticky site”. This is simply because Facebook hooks onto its users in an amazing fashion. A study reveals that almost 65% of its users log into Facebook every single day and that an average Facebook user spends about twenty- one minutes per day social networking through this site. In fact, Canada has witnessed that its Facebook users spend almost thirty minutes every day social networking on Facebook. The height of its addictiveness is that its average user signs in about four times every day!

To add more to this saga, its facts reveal that Facebook’s size gets doubled every six months. This is so huge! With three hundred and fifty thousand new users joining Facebook every day, it does not come to us as a surprise that it’s the top photo sharing website with about 4.1 billion photos already uploaded. This is certainly going beyond my imagination!

Facebook only gets bigger and bigger. So, it does not surprise me that by November 2008, Facebook had more than 700 employees on its pay roll. With the company’s estimated worth of $15 Billion dollars, obviously Friendster, Yahoo and even Google bid for it but all their efforts went in vain.

Moreover, with such a huge pool of people at Facebook, it is an amazing medium for advertising. However, Microsoft is Facebook’s exclusive partner for serving banner advertisements.

On a contrary to its popularity, Syria had banned Facebook because it thought it might lead to propagation of terrorism and also feared Israeli penetration. Iran also followed the ban. Moreover, the Ontario Government blocked access to Facebook for its employees reasoning that it was affecting the productivity of its employees and that it was really not related to work!

I hope you enjoyed reading these facts about Facebook as much as I enjoyed writing them! Kudos!

Microsoft and Windows always go hand in hand. And when we take their name together, the words like trust, faith, loyalty etc. always come to our minds. Such is their goodwill than they both have created over these years, individually and collectively. Microsoft Window’s Live have an entire range of services to offer to its users. And one of its major services and most loved services include Windows Favourite Live. It offers services just a social bookmarking website would do.

With Windows Live Favorites you can access your favourite bookmarks from any computer. However, not more than thousand favourites and folders are allowed for one single user account. Did I say account? Yes, you need to register yourself first and then before you get down to your bookmarking business, just make sure that you have logged into it.

Accessing your bookmarks from any computer in the world is one thing. With Windows Live Favorites you can also edit then from wherever you wish to. Further more features that are provided by Windows Live Favorites are also very simple and extremely easy to use.

Like most other social bookmarks, you can export or import your favourite bookmarks from different browsers such as Internet Explorer and MSN Explorer. The ways in which you can add more favorites to your list are also extremely user friendly. You can choose from the options such as dragging and a dropping your bookmark to your list of the favorites, or you can simply do this job by a single click on the ‘Add Favorite’ button. Furthermore, you can also simply use the right-click button and choose from its menu the option of ‘Add to Windows Live Favorites ’. And last but not the least, you can also click the Add option from the Add menu at the top of the page.

The most used features, apart from that of adding bookmarks to your list of favorites, include features such as previewing the favorite web pages from within Windows Live Favorites using the In-Line preview option; a simple right-click in order to edit the properties of your favorites; quickly finding favorites using names, address, folders or tags or better known as the Real-time search etc.

And it’s not all…Windows Live Favorites can be easily integrated with a number of other services offered by Microsoft Window’s Live. Some of these are:

Windows Live Toolbar- to synchronise their favorites between Internet Explorer and Windows Live Favorites.

Windows Live Spaces- to share your favorite bookmarks with public and search other’s bookmarks using built-in search box.

Windows Live Messenger- to manage your favorites directly from the program itself. Real-time search is possible using this.

Live.com- to view the top favorites, to search favorites, to add new links to favorites, to view top favorites organized by tags or folders.

With Microsoft Windows you can expect new things and new features. They are constantly working in order to give you something more each time. So do more with it. And trust me, things shall only get better. Try it once. You might fall in love with it.

For the Internet savvy people like you and me, search engines form a very important part of web surfing. We are always on a look out for new stuff and that too which is of our interest. How we, sometimes, wish that our most loved search engines understood our requirements and need and gave us what we have been looking for, without making us scroll through millions of webpages or thousands of websites. And then God sent us an angel to help us out- StumbleUpon.

StumbleUpon is an online internet community consisting of people who share similar interests. It is like a personalized recommendation engine that works closely with principles of collaborative filtering. This technique helps you find out only those websites which StumbleUpon thinks might interest you.

The Stumbling Procedure

When you become a member of the StumbleUpon, you are allowed to rate a particular webpage or a website using either a ‘thumbs up’ or ‘thumbs down’. As you use StumbleUpon more and more often, your personalized search engine also understands your interests, liking and disliking better. Now when you click on the ‘stumble’ button located on your browser window’s toolbar, the results that are displayed to you are based on your previous ratings of different webpages, ratings by your friends and ratings by the other StumbleUpon users who have interests similar to yours.

StumbleUpon has more than 500 different topics to choose from. It is using these topics that you can actually indicate your interests and preferences. This helps StumbleUpon to present to you more and more relevant data every single time you decide to ‘Stumble’.

This is how StumbleUpon combines human opinions with machine learning to give you the best kind of virtual community that you would love to be a part of. Also, it is compatible with all the major browsers such as the Internet Explorer, Firefox, Mozilla etc.

Moreover, StumbleUpon uses the help from the ratings by its users to maintain its database. This means that it updates its database from time to time to give its users only high quality website results. These are decided by the users’ preferences for a particular kind of websites. The sites with low ratings and low rankings are automatically deleted from StumbleUpon database.

It does not come as a surprise to any of us that StumbleUpon has more than five million users and it has already collected its five-billionth ‘stumble’. Owing to such huge popularity, e-bay purchasing the rights for StumbleUpon for a whopping $75,000,000, does not seem to be a bad deal after all!

The ‘Stumble’ services

StumbleUpon launched its StumbleVideo site in December 2006. Here, users can submit their videos that they would like to share with others and the other users can rate them. It also aggregates videos from YouTube, Google, Metacafe and MySpace. In 2007, it launched the StumbleThru service. It allows the users to navigate through pages of various sites such as Wikipedia, The Onion etc.

With so much to choose from, getting down to Stumbling seems like a very good idea to me. This one is surely worth a try!