When Blogging Bug Bites You

What’s happening to blog really baffles me. It is just about everywhere you go? High-society parties, conferences, friends, bakery shop…everywhere, and everyone’s doing it. Why? The not so net savvy guyz do it because they need an interface to express their thoughts and believe that they have something substantial to share with the world. Techies do it because they feel they can at some point make money out of it, and many like me do it because of the above reasons and to keep the website dynamic, and of course have people counter-commenting!

There are basically three kinds of blogs:

An Individual’s blog

This is a hobbyists blog, generally belonging to those who feel that they could be writers but entered the wrong profession, or those thoughtful souls who have something intellectual simulating to share with the world.

A Theme-based Blog

This kind of blog is more of a professional website which wants to make money and attracts regular traffic. A theme-based blog can be on technology like mobiles, laptop, software, hardware or any other subject like movies, travel, restaurants, books, etc. Credibility really matters a lot here as that would attract repeat traffic to these blogs.

Corporate Blogging

Ah! How much have we heard of them, and how much we like to speak in favor and against this. When a CEO writes a blog in the company blog, it makes company headlines. Corporate blogging is a new age phenomenon that has caught with the industry pretty well. This also promises more traffic to the website, and of course helps in branding!

There may be a few categories, but broadly these three occur to my mind.

More on the Benefits of Social Media Optimization

Social Media Optimization, popularly known as SMO is a simple and effective way to drive potential customers towards your web site. It directly benefits a business. A large number of people become aware of your company’s web link and motivated to browse through the different products which your business offers. USP of SMO is that it is a fast process than Search engine Optimization (SEO) and its results can be easily measured.

The immediate benefits of using SMO are:

ü Link Generation: SMO generates thousands of inbound links for your web site in a very less time. This rapidly spreads the awareness about your business on the web.

ü Builds Brand Equity: As more and more users get to know about your web site, your brand gains power and popularity, and thus you earn that cutting edge over the competitors.

ü Increased Web Traffic: The amount of web traffic to your website incredibly increases. Your website becomes popular which further motivates more internet users to browse through it.

ü Increased customer base: More traffic means more chances of conversions and increased customer base.

ü Affordable and effective: The beauty of SMO is that this online marketing strategy does not burn a hole in your pocket. It’s affordable yet very effective.

ü Faster and Higher ROI: SMO gives you quick and high returns on the investments. Within a short duration, your business starts booming.

ü Lessen the Risk: With SMOs, the risk regarding ROI reduces as you do not completely rely on Search Engines to drive traffic to your web site.

ü Results can be easily Measured: The benefits or returns generated by the SMO can be easily quantified and measured.

More on Social Networks!

Human beings are social animals. We feel like interacting with each other to exchange our views, ideas and share our knowledge with each other. In order to accomplish this, we need to communicate with each other, and the most effective, fast and affordable way to communicate with a large number of people across the globe is the World Wide Web, popularly known as the Internet. Traditionally, the Internet served as a knowledge base containing a lot of web sites, but there was no specific platform where people could meet with each other.

What are Social Networks?

Social networks are online communities where like-minded people share their views with each other online. Via social networking individuals can take part in online discussions. They exchange a large number of links with each other which increases the visibility, awareness and popularity of web sites. This directly benefits the business. The USP of online social networks is that a large number of people get a common platform for interacting with each other without moving out of their places physically. Social networking sites provide instant results about a variety of topics and resources. People can upload their photos, profiles, contact information, website and blog URLs etc. on social network sites.

Why Social Networks?

Social networks help in pulling out a large amount of traffic towards the websites. Some of the popular social network sites are Orkut, Hi5, Facebook, MySpace etc. Anyone can log on to these sites and create his profile for free. You can advertise your blogs, websites, products or any other services you like. Social Networks have become an essential part of internet users nowadays. If judiciously used, it can lead to high ROI without incurring too much cost.

Social networking has completely revolutionized the way of communication. It not only bridges the communication gap among millions of people, but it also provides an easy to use interface to make friends/groups, and manage them.

Major advantages of using social networks are:

Ø Easy to use

Ø Serves as a common platform to communicate with a large number of people simultaneously

Ø There is no discrimination on the basis of caste, religion, sex and ethical values. Everyone is invited to take part in online social meetings.

Ø Instant search results. One can find his/her friends online and can communicate with them via video conferences, chatting, audio conferences etc. You can also share files, photos, music etc. with each other in no time.

Ø Most of the social networking web sites offer free services. For eg. Orkut, Facebook etc.

Ø Social networks are one of the best ways to advertise a product in front of millions of internet users simultaneously. You can make use of multimedia to make the advertisements more captivating and convincing.

Ø One can exchange web links on social networks with large number of people in order to optimize his web site.

Effective marketing on social networks

Joining any one of the social networks or becoming a part of any one of them is surely not enough. You obviously want to get noticed by others…don’t you? If that’s the case then you need effective marketing. No, it’s not that complicated. Infact, the strategies for the same which are discussed below are as simple as a child’s play. However, before we get started there is one simple fact that needs to be understood before anything else; when connecting with people you need to realize that you are not getting versed with them as a whole but with their personalities.

Choose the best and then rest

Effective marketing starts with choosing the best social networking site. Try out every such site till the time you find the one which is in accordance with your personality. But once you are done with this work then please stick with it and be loyal to that network. DO NOT waste time trying out other networks even after finding out the best possible option.

Information Bombardment

Once you are a member of any social network, do not bombard others with loads of information about you. Be very selective, else the others might just start to lose interest in your profile. The information supplied should be interesting and entertaining. It should be something that shall engage your audience. DO NOT keep on blabbering about yourself.

This simple formula will help you increase your so called ‘fan following’. However, attracting them to your circle is one thing and keeping them with you is another. Make sure you deliver every time. You fail once, and you get back to square one.

Be True

The most important thing is that you need to be true. Selective sharing is needed but whatever you share with your audience should be true. Things which throw some light on your personality or your persona, or the way you actually are, if given to the audience in a subtle manner will be happily accepted.

It takes two to tango

We saved the best for the last. This strategy of effective marketing on a social network is the most helpful and the most useful. The very basic thing which needs to be understood here is that if you are there to build your network, to get noticed by people… the others are there to do the same thing. If you want people to visit your profile then start by doing the same thing for others. Visit others’ profiles, comment, participate… just make an effort to be in touch with them. You be loyal to them and they shall be loyal to you.

If you have not tried any of such strategies so far, then begin now. It’s never too late. And the guarantee is that you will get results. These strategies are, no doubt, effective…but it’s obvious that you will not believe them until you experience them yourself. Be wise enough. Give it a try and there shall be no turning back for sure.

The Digg Effect

Ever wondered where the culture of social networking sites came from? Did you ever think what the inspiration of these websites was? Well, the answer is Digg. You don’t think I haven’t spelt the word right? Well…no mistakes here… it is actually ‘Digg’. It came into existence in November, 2004 and revolutionized the Internet use. Prior to this, the Internet was used only to extract information and advertising, but later it become the fastest ever medium to be in touch with your friends, share everything with them that you ever wanted to and more than anything else, to freely express your opinion (affirmative or negative) over an issue. The Internet today has become the voice of a true democratic country in the true sense of the term.

How it works?

The idea behind Digg was to dig stories. Digg was launched for the sole purpose of providing people a platform where they could share content from anywhere on the Internet. This could be done by submitting the respective links on this website. Then people were given the option to ‘Digg’ a particular story if they liked it, i.e. they could vote for the story. This was termed as digging. The stories which were digged the maximum then appeared on the front page. Owing to its huge popularity, ‘Digg’ later started with giving its users the option of ‘burying’ a story in case they didn’t like it i.e. they were given the option of voting negatively for a story.

Developments

‘Digg’, since its inception in 2004, has launched two new versions in 2005 and in 2006 respectively. This was done, again, due to its huge popularity. Many new features were added in the upgraded versions like having different categories for different kind of stories e.g. science, business, etc.

Criticisms

However, Digg has its own share of criticisms as well. The critics have put forth a number of points which make you actually think…yes, this site is really not that fair to its users. Critics claim that since its members have mostly all the control over its content, misleading information or wrong information is being posted many a times. Also, it has been found that all the members are not being allowed to post their stories. The accusation is that Digg gets paid for placing stories on the first page. Moreover, the stories which are not in accordance with particular members’ or communities’ views are often ‘buried’ and thus the freedom of being in a democratic country is taken away to an extent. Its users have also been heard commenting that this website also imposes censorship and that whatever negatives you say about their sponsors never gets into the public eye.

In a nutshell

Despite all the criticisms, the credit, that Digg has lead to the present day social networking, cannot be taken away from it. The concept which Digg gave birth to was something so innovative that it did lead to its competitors like Yahoo and Google launching similar things on the similar lines. Go and try out your hand at this. It might just be worth it!

The Unsaid about Social Media

Social media has become a phenomenon. Yes that’s the word- phenomenon. The number of people becoming a part of this social media is increasing everyday. To us, it means social interaction and exchange of photos, audios and videos. Basically, social media means that people share, anything that they want to share.

However, the tons of options available today in social media, come with tons of different opinions about the same. The more you read about them the more you get confused. This write up is an attempt to solve this confusion and also to give you some useful and handy tips which should help you know all about this social media. But the bottom line remains that you yourself will have to become a part of this social media network in order to solve this confusion. Participation is the key.

Selective sharing

The details that we tend to miss out while becoming a member of any social networking site, often leads us to think that probably this was not the best decision of our lives. Facebook, Orkut etc started as a way of being in touch with old friends. We started sharing everything about us with our friends through these sites, be it our childhood photos or some favorite song that sounds silly to the rest of the world. But what we forget is that not only your friends have access to such personal information about you, but even others have the same. In a nutshell, you need to be very selective as to what all you are posting on the net. These sites can act as a good way to build trust and faith and these sites are good at even making you lose it as well.

Tweet less

May be you want that every update about you should reach your friends instantly through either SMSs or e-mails etc, but here again you need to be cautious. The number of times you tweet your friends in a day (because they just might get irritated) and also whether the information or the updates are relevant enough to be shared or not… well, you should be smart enough to decide that.

Have your say buttons

There is nothing wrong is getting the opinions of your friends over something. But if you keep on asking them to do it all the time, they just might start ignoring it. The same thing applies when you ask them to book mark your articles. Not using a lot of such buttons is probably the best thing that can be done at this point of time.

Choose the best one

Which networking site is the best for you shouldn’t depend on what others have to say about them. Make up your own mind and rather experience all of them yourself first and then decide. If you are not really a part of any of such site, then join one today. You can earn yourself money by just being at the right place at the right time. Attract your prospective clients or employers with the help of the information you put on display about yourself.

Understanding Link Building

Link building… another technical term which is difficult to understand? Well, not anymore! Let’s talk about this in a layman’s language. Link building simply means connecting one website with another with the help of hyperlinks. And we do this in order to gain higher rankings in a search engine result page. If you have followed whatever is written so far, then you shall be able to understand whatever follows. Link building works in close relation with SEO or Search Engine Optimization which is done for the same reason- better visibility and higher rankings.

Categories

Link building can be broadly categorized into three.

Back linking, also known as incoming links or inbound links. A back link is any link received by a web page by/from another web page. With regard to SEO, back links are a sign of a web page’s popularity. The more the number of back links in your web pages, the better is your search engine ranking.

Deep linking on the other hand means connecting a webpage of a website to the webpage of another website (webpage being other than the homepage) or to a specific image of another website. This basically helps in advertising your webpage on another’s website and thus helps in increasing the popularity of your webpage in turn helping you to achieve better rankings.

Inline linking, which is commonly called direct linking, means to link an object (mostly images) of one website to another website. This also helps in driving more traffic towards your website and ultimately solves our purpose of higher rankings.

Types of linking

One way linking

It refers to a hyperlink in your website pointing towards some other related website, without anything in return. This is considered to be ‘natural’ and it is believed that search engines notice these before anything else. This can be done by distributing your articles on content websites and article directories.

Multi way linking

It refers to link exchange between three or more related or partner websites. However, each link is connected with only one other link leading to only one other website i.e. a one way link.

More on SEO

SEO stands for search engine optimization. Though it comes across as a technical term to all of us (and pretty difficult to understand for the laymen!) but in reality it is a strategy which works on the simple principle of- out of sight, out of mind! Yes, it’s that simple. SEO is the key through which your website can gain better visibility and higher rankings on the internet and specifically on the search engines. Both these things then lead to attracting more traffic and eventually towards more sales, more exposure and obviously an increase in your brand value.

How it works?

SEO is related with natural search results or organic search results and it has got no relation whatsoever with PPC i.e. pay per click advertisements (commonly known as sponsored links). With the help of SEO, the keywords in the text of your web pages are strategically placed in such a way that it becomes easy for the search engine to locate it when a user searches using the same or similar keywords. These keywords are placed in the title, headings, sub-headings and even in the descriptions. SEO is capable of giving you results in about 3-5 months of time. However, using something what we call as Black Hat SEO will reap results even faster. But the strategies used in this method are illegal and can even get your website banned. Thus, today SEO is synonymous is White Hat SEO. Though it’s a challenge, but its fun at the same time.

SEO Strategies

There are various strategies for a successful SEO. But there are some common steps followed by every strategy. Research is the first and the foremost step needed to be undertaken for a successful SEO. You need to find out that choosing which keywords will help you turn things in your favour. You need to keep on experimenting. Research will help you target the right keywords. You can even find out and work upon the areas in which your competitor is scoring over you. This will eventually give you an upper edge.

The next step is to make your webpage visible on the net. You need to promote it in order to make it reach where you want it to- the first page of the search results. SEO copywriting is the most popularly used method for this. Apart from this options like blogging, link building, social media marketing etc. may also be helpful.

But your job doesn’t end here. You need to also constantly monitor its progress. Keeping the track of your progress will show you how much success you have achieved so far and how much more work needs to be done.

Conclusion

Though SEO might just be a bit heavy on your pockets but it is needed to stand out in the crowd of many who offer the same content or services as yours. No doubt it gives you the desired results, but patience, determination and dedication are all required till then and that too in huge amounts. But as they say, everything comes for a price!

How to avoid low rankings in Google!

If you are blaming Google for deliberately not ranking you well, then you are wrong and if you are wondering why your website does not rank well in Google, then think again. The answer is very simple. Google, like any other search engine, wants to earn profits. Today, Google provides more than 75% of all searches and has become one of the most successful search engine, it’s only because it gives its users what they are looking for. It directs its users straight to what they want and this makes them use Google again and again, in turn increasing its profits.

The Key Is Keywords

The key to attain higher rankings in Google is by strategically placing the keywords on your webpage. It’s obvious that no user types a single word to retrieve a certain kind of information. He will definitely be more specific in order to get the desired results and thus shall type in more related words. Thus, you need to build in-bound links to your websites. And these links shall contain the keywords of your webpage. The longer the key words phrase the better it is for you.

The Process

The entire process of being finally able to see your webpage on the first page of the search engine result pages might be a cumbersome task. Like the way you will want your website or webpages to do well, in the similar manner, your competitors will be trying to achieve the same thing. Competition diminishes your chances of going up in the rankings in Google because it’s difficult for Google as well to locate your webpage if the path leading to it not clearly defined. Thus the experts prefer longer key word phrases (may be four or five words) rather than short key word phrases (may be three or four words).

Basically, in order to gain rankings, you will have to try out different keyword phrases and see where Google ranks your webpage. Sometimes Google shall place it at a surprisingly high position and sometimes at a disheartening low rank. This hit and trial method will give you the combination of best keywords that you can use to create the links.

Creating the right links

This task is a challenge in itself. One of the many methods that can be used to create links is article marketing. Though Google does give you that initial push, by placing you on the first result page till one news cycle is completed and during that time new materials are added. But after that you are on your own. Thus, what you need in order to attain higher rankings in Google is sheer investment of dedication, commitment and patience.

Instant Results

Search engines like Google and Yahoo! do offer Pay-per-click advertising models (e.g. Google Adwords and Yahoo search marketing). So if you are really in a hurry to reach right at the top in search results rankings, then choosing one such advertising model might just turn out to be a very good idea!

Social Media Optimization – The As, Bs and Cs of it

Social Media Optimization, a relatively new term for the laymen of the internet, is now making waves and the ripples can be felt. The reverberations are not far away. When I launched iSMO, my endeavor was to launch a company that offers social media optimization services to companies who are looking to drive more traffic to their website. I could see a place for iSMO, especially in the lucrative Indian market. With considerable knowledge of SEO, I guessed SMO would be the next big thing. However, I have now realized that SMO has its own challenges and few takers.

Who should choose SMO?

It has been hardly a year that companies have started to understand Search Engine Optimization, and now we have SMO, another concept that has to be explained to the customers. It is strictly for those who have significant web presence, and need traffic for their web properties. The company can be an IT company, FMCG, Insurance, Healthcare, Real Estate, Consumer Goods, Hospitality, Retail – just about anyone who cares for his online reputation management and website traffic.

Mediums for SMO

Some of the basic mediums for SMO are:

Social Networking Sites: Social networking sites such as Xing.com, Ryze.com, -Facebook, MySpace and many other popular and not-so-popular ones are there to help you drive traffic from. Many big companies and SMEs lure traffic from participation in the communities and forums on such sites. I read an interesting phrase somewhere which said, “You have pants, Facebook has people.” That says it all!

Social Bookmarking: Getting traffic from social bookmarking sites such as Digg, StumbleUpon is better said than done. For every category and post there are thousands of competitors at any given time and they keep increasing. Social Bookmarking is a good idea for those websites that are highly-ranked and have already established them as credible source of information, like BBC, CNN. But why the hell do they need social bookmarking? It is a classical case of the rich getting richer. Anyhow, Social Bookmarking will always remain a safe bet, or should remain a safe bet.

Forum Participation: Very effective tool and if you participate in high-ranked forums and build links from there, nothing like it. The WWW is full of theme-based forums and they are not hard to locate. You can participate in an existing thread or create a new thread according to your own convenience.

More mediums will be disclosed in the posts to come!