Innovative Approach

There are lots of things happening in the internet world but the item which has posted a huge impact are the API’s (Application Programming Interface).

All social media sites including google offers the API via which we can integrate their application on our own device or platform.

So in the world of apps two giant players have come up with their own solutions – Facebook and iPhone.

Both these giants are working hard to make their API’s strong and flexible and highly user friendly so that the programmer could manipulate the same easily and distribute for the end user.

In general API’s are nothing special but a simple application programming interface where you can play with code. It’s a very old topic and can be explored more at Wikipedia at : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_programming_interface

So every company – Sun, Microsoft, Unix have API’s of their own. But with the advent of web and especially social media the definitions and almost changed. The APIs are becoming a marketing tool rather than a programming venue.

Just to note – Google maps, Google earth or Google connect are all powered by their API’s which a programmer can synchronise and syndicate his / her website.

Just name a few web based API’s

•    code.google.com
•    developer.yahoo.com
•    apiwiki.twitter.com
•    developer.myspace.com
•    developers.facebook.com
•    developer.apple.com/iphone/

So all of  them are worthy to explore and use for marketing your business.

For instances :

If you are running health portal and want to locate the clinics with reference to particular city, street name etc. you can work for google maps api and the user could find the same on your site very easiy rather than exploring here and there.

If you are running any syndicate in the form of a portal you could use facebook or twitter API for marketing your product / services for the real time.

If you want to go on mobile, you could have a iphone apps. Developed in the form of event calendar, widget etc. thereby making your product / services to be used like anything.

I would like to discuss the potential of Facebook API’s which is behind the true success of this giant platform.

With 250 million of users Facebook is a renewed platform for interactive  applications. We have millions of applications running across the network which are shared amongst the members virally.

Whether its dating, gaming, health, travel, real estate, IT, Jobs etc. several entrepreneur have invested fair money in getting their application on Facebook. The real beauty of application lies in its naturality where members distribute any application virally. For eg. If there is any interesting game and you played / enjoyed it you will definitely refer the same in your network. (Spammer Beware – It will be futile if you circulate useless or crap application across the network, which is a indeed a wrong way of doing social media marketing)

So its time for you and your business to go viral.

Few ideas which you can work around :
•    Research about your consumers in the Facebook
•    See what your competitors are doing
•    Plan a API strategy
•    Get it developed with experience programmers especially of web 2.0 origin.
•    Get it tested thoroughly.
•    Launch and market the API across your own network by creating groups, pages etc.

The last word :

If your product is damn good you will have several thousands visitors in just a month or two and if its damn great it could be in millions.

So everyone one in the online world is fighting and have a strong lust for traffic. This is the only thing which creates the importance of any website. For instance Google predominates search so it receive millions of hits throughout the globe, Amazon sells products globally and has huge traffic, Microsoft has indeed to much traffic as people log onto website to download the softwares and drives for their computer. If we look at the horizon its traffic which has created the importance of web as there are many millions of websites but only just a fraction of them have the presence in the cyberspace.

Just look at the alexa now : http://www.alexa.com/topsites

So this post is regarding the traffic build measures for any website. By website I mean all sites ranging from small to medium and Giant. Usually the sites owned by SME’s are always fighting for traffic as they donot have any regular traffic on their site and even that traffic is not too much. The giants in the industry spends lots of money in creating new tools, content or any other interactive method to drive new visitors besides retaining the old ones.

But here is something which has indeed change the facet of web world and that is blogging. Blogs in itself have become so dominant that online entrepreneurs now consider it as an essential tool of marketing and even interacting with the direct consumers. First we need to find out the original definition of blog which has been derived from the word “Weblog” and was coined by Jorn Barger in 1997 and its short form “Blog” was given by P. Merholz. None of the people over the net or the entrepreneurs realized at that time that it could be such a potential channel.

Now its go anywhere on web and you will find blogs everywhere and technically we call it a Blogosphere – region where the bloggers and its readers are intermingling amongst themselves.

The blog content is somewhat more engaging then the website content because it is aimed in providing information, directions and other necessary resources to the consumers. For Eg. If you are a cosmetic surgeon and have a website indicating your services, its well and good but your website will be visited and searched by the people who are looking only for surgeries instantly but if you are running some blog on the subject on the site itself then various people who are desired to have some surgery or looking for the information related to plastic surgery might be the regular subscribers to the blogs and start questioning / commenting the blogger, this is where the blog dominates its identity as a social media / Web 2.0 platform.

Blogs are so empowered today that even the google indexed the blogs more fastly than the regular webpages. And with technorati, google blog search, blogger we have several free platforms to create and submit blog. As per technorati there is a blog born every half a second. Kids in school, Professors in Colleges, Businessmen in their office are writing blogs and want to reach the people interested in their subject.

There are ample examples of professional blogging whether its of SEM (searchengineland.com, seomoz.org) Health (ivillage.com), Business (Wall Street Blog) etc. Almost all big corporates are running their official blogs where they publish the information about their latest launches, events and press releases. Even the Small and medium scale business are scaling height for the website via blogs. There are lots of microblogs in the form of wordpress or blogspots which are being used by several SME’s to generate quality traffic for their business. Twitter has really done fair innovation in microblogging community where users can post short paragraphs indicating their service etc. and point them to the URL of their main site or the blog.

No doubt blog is indeed a viable channel of internet marketing and it could be a good CRM tool where customers can directly interact with the businessmen via commenting. But blogging is not so simple, everybody who writes for web cannot be blogger as the blog is writing up of stuff in a very natural manner it is not meant to publicize or market any product instead it is focused in providing free information to the end users.

Important points for the bloggers.

•    Instead of blogging on 3rd party like blogger etc. try to install the blog on your own domain. Wordpress is the best. (I have the same running)
•    Keep the design of the blog very simple and plain, but it should be aesthetic and user friendly.
•    Install all necessary plugins and widgets as possible – Technorati, Translations, SEO, Feedburner etc. for maximum user and seo friendliness.
•    Keep the blogs posts long (not less than 400 words), short blogs are fair but professional blog postings are quite long.
•    User proper tags in you posts.
•    Link your Facebook, Linkedin or Twitter profile with the blog so that they can be syndicated.
•    Write post by your name and if you have several others create separate account for all of them.
•    Install unique google analytics on the blog irrespective of the main domain, this will keep you tracking the blog more effectively.
•    Donot populate your blog with loads of banner / flash ads or junk advertising. Use proper advertising methods as widespread advertising could lead to huge bounces on you blog.
•    Ping your blog whenever you do postings.
•    Always syndicate posts in your social media profiles – Facebook, twitter, stumbleupon etc.
•    Offer RSS subscription via a button and a link as well.
•    The most important segment of the blog is content make it unique and advanced. But remember always write blogs in a simplified manner as your readers are across the globe who are not too much fluent in English.
•    User Interactive images and statistical information on the blogs whenever you are giving the instances.
•    Syndicating your official videos on the blog is another plus.

So blogging if done in a professional manner even for small sites can do huge jobs and drive tremendous traffic and lead to more conversions.

Remember write always in a natural way and think like a consumer.

What are you doing then………………..go start blogging now

Social media, an real buzzword for the virtual world. This thing is gaining prominence so hastily that the traditional online marketing mechanisms – Search engine marketing, Banner ads are somehow little bit scared and most of them have themselves evolved their social networking platform.

There is no doubt in saying that social media is extremely different with all the online materials as the entire web is stuffed with content written by content writers which are then owned by single entity i.e. the owner of the website but the social media networking popularly called as Web 2.0 has transformed the definition of web from a single webmaster oriented platform to the common masses.

The most popular and indeed the core element of social media marketing is the sharing of information and doing further interaction with our friends, colleagues, business associates and even the competitors (sometimes enemies). So social media is nothing but the sharing of content in the form of text, audio, video, photos etc.

It was predominantly founded by Rohit Bhargav in the year 1998 but neither Rohit or the web entrepreneurs were aware that how this will grow and mushroom on the web. Today the overall social media networking websites are valuated in multi billions.

Here are some growing and giant social media networks

Myspace : When Myspace was launched it was considered as the first and last destination for social media networking. This platform was and is enriched with special social media gadgets which marks its an exclusive social media portal. Till date Myspace has maximum registrants but as matter of  time and due to non user friendliness there is not enough growth in its visitors and even there is a decline in activity of the existing users. So Myspace is still king but its image is fading due to tough competition it is facing from its rivals.

Facebook : This is now considered as the prime venue for social media networking and comprises so many features with user friendly interface including spam control methods that visitors are stick to this and there is exponential growth rate. The company was founded by the youngest of the web entrepreneurs Mr. Mark Zuckerburg and he has transformed a local networking website for school to a global social media entity. One of the major and the strongest part lies in Facebook API’s which involve the application integration on facebook, thereby encouraging both marketers and developers to come and collaborate with facebook.

Youtube : The company founded by former Paypal executives and later acquired by Google in a deal of 1.65 billion dollar is real video networking hub. With its consumer based throughout the globe and advanced features its indeed a place for consumers, business where both uploading and viewing of videos is a common games. Companies are now investing in generating corporate videos and promoting the same on youtube etc. Although Google is unable to monetize Youtube with its proper advertising model, but it will surely solve this problem as this product is associated with Big Daddy “Google”. Hulu another video site has give a big shake to Youtube but still Youtube rules the video networking till date.

Twitter : I would like to discuss this in the last as this new (sometimes stated as “tiny”) social networking platform has changed the face of social media networking to a great extend. Its fast microblogging feature enabled from PCs to mobile has created a jumbling mania to netizines. The vast number of growing users proves that it might defeat all social media giants and will be the next King. Twitter success somewhat lies in its simplicity with user friendliness of its interface, its fast application and advanced features that now tons of people are either following or are being followed.

There are several other social media platforms like Orkut (a Google product), Linkedin, etc. which are also successful to a great extend but currently there are two hot topics “Facebook and Twitter” and the burning question which one will be the most successful.

If we look at the market analysis recently Facebook valuation was put at 15 billion something and now the twitter is also gaining momentum.

The answer lies amongst the consumers who will themselves decided which platform is much better as per their needs.

There are predictions from internet oracle society that Facebook and Twitter will lead the social media game in near future and might defeat (really damn difficult) linear search (Google).

Let us see………… -:)

The question will really keep you in doubt but in real this is the most fascinating part of web and is gaining prominence day by day.

As the conventional search engine provides us the information on a particular object but the social media engines provides us to interact the people who have used that objects.

Let me explain this with a very simple example

If you want to purchase a car, suppose Mercedes you will probably go to the official website of Mercedes or any of its online showroom to check its functionality, features etc. (I cannot say if you can purchase it online also, may be).

But neither the Mercedes official website nor its partner’s showroom will give you the negative feedback of the concerned model which you are seeking to buy. In general the official websites gives you only the positive information and will always hide the bad comments.

Since long we have forums,bulletin boards as well as review websites but its fact that several comments posted on these websites are fake or brand owned i.e. owner of the brand do the positive postings.

But a different phenomenon has occurred in the era of web which is called social media, here the people (common mass) write tons of stuff on a particular subject / object. In our example we can find a lot of useful information with the people who already have Mercedez rather than fake persons (Proxy visitors are also on social media platform but still this never never outcasts with the real visitors).

So if I want to purchase anything small or big I will do necessary research in the form of views, comments, ratings etc. in leading social media platforms and then take the decision. It is so exciting to interact with the people who really owns a lot of information which you are looking for and further you can take an intelligent decision rather than going in a hasty manner.

Infact social media marketing is distinctive level of market but till date only 5% of Internet Marketers do it in right manner. Most of the companies boasting themselves as social media giants do useless commenting in groups, community etc. and try to circulate URL without proper theming which is nothing but spam.

Today’s stats shows that after search engines, its social media tide which is driving web. Facebook crossed more than 200 million visitors and twitter is another one pumping high. News all around that Google will be acquiring twitter as early as possible. All this atleast create some sort of concern for all marketers who are already investing in online media campaigns including SEO, PPC, Banner Ads etc.

Check the sponsored stats below :

Still companies are hesitant to use social media marketing for their business as no one in the market is available to give the right consultancy (Its painful but true).

This post though is not meant to explain the hacks and tricks for social media marketing but I would like to explain something in concise.

Social media optimization involves the sharing of profiles in the form of :

• Textual Content (For Eg. Facebook Wall)
• Videos (Youtube video)
• Audios (Podcasts)
• Photos (Flick sharing)
• URLs (Social bookmarking – digg, delicious etc.)

This constitutes the ORGANIC part of social media marketing

Another part is running the paid advertising on social media giants which is INORGANIC promotions which includes

• Running contextual & Banner ads in Facebook
• Promoting a product video in Youtube
• Running banners or contextual or sometimes Kontora ads in several social media websites including blogging.

So a company can use either or both for their social media campaigns and my suggestion is to intiate the former one (Organic) on their own. You might need key consultants at a later stage to enhance your community but still you can begin some sort of buzz for your product at your own.

So go ahead make a social profile any web 2.0 enterprise whether Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, Bebo, Friendster, Orkut etc. and try to do some interactive and start learning something from other people, even your competitors.

Call me in case of doubts.

(In the form of comments, I will not charge anything)

Social media with its invention by Rohit Bhargav was really so hidden for quite some time, but the current scenario really pushes us to spend fair money if are serious with our online business.

I will not discuss the old taverns of social media which means Bulletin boards, forums, group chat where people come and share things but the modern face of social media.

In general social media means “Anything related directly to common masses” or the things which can be made social or public are the nuts and bolts of social media.

Social media is such a buzz word that the several internet marketing have incorporated it as a service besides SEO, PPC etc. though in disguise they are unaware of this new marketing tool. Even withouth proper staffing companies are undertaking social media projects.

Some saying

• 100 diggs daily
• 1000 comments postings in Facebook
• 10 video postings weekly,

and the list continues………?

But infact doing these things randomly will never get you on track though on the other part you might get defamed.

Social networking is a very natural phenomenon, not exactly but something similar to SEO which though involves some technical hacks, Social networking has to be done in a very natural manner.

So if you are a businessmen and want to go ahead with some social media activity, first start doing the same at your own before hiring any company as you are the best person who knows your business than any other.

For eg. a lawyer in London running community in Bebo or a psychiatrist running a blog for its patients, this was these professional can interact directly with their customers and vice-versa,

With the advent of big social giants – Facebook (15 billion dollar valuation), Linked(1 Billon dollar valuation), Bebo (1 Billon dollar valuation) etc. has proved the strong and everlasting mark of social media tool.

Today CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg said that he will be launching his IPO soon can raise billions in overnight, which was happened since long with google making it a multi-billion dollar industry.

Although several online marketers believe that social is media is yet to start as people donot know what is web 2.0 but today or tomorrow it will have huge impacts on our business if we skip this great element.

The picture depicts and clearly explains the exponential curve for online social media networks :

So donot wait make a profile now on any of the social networking platform.