Posts Tagged ‘Social media’

How much is Social media costing your company?

Friday, August 6th, 2010

Social Media has prompted more social debates than any other online segment in the last couple of years. Nobody has been left untouched from the infectious charm of social media networks – CEOs , Marketing bosses to hard core techies, everybody is finding some juice somewhere in their preferred social circles. Kings to clowns, Presidents to party-freaks , all are nurturing their own group of fan following – one tweet, one wall post at a time. Isn’t that engrossing and hyper-social without a dime out of your wallet.

But, whoever is a part of human society knows one fact for sure – “There is nothing called a Free lunch”. May be Karl Marx cannot detect it, but the pennies are slipping through the cracks somewhere. Somebody is paying for the hyper-involvement in the social networks.

(Image Credit: www.cartoonstock.com)

Who is at the receiving end?

It’s time for the big bosses to raise a brow….

The UK social media office engagement figures look like this -

2 millions x 1 hour / day = Social involvement during the office hours [Sample size = 1000 British workers]. = $23 billion dollars

Its is estimated that the US social engagement index during the office hours will be higher the British figure and China might be catching up fast – It’s a different reason china decided to ban Google, when in fact Facebook might be making a dent in its productivity as well as communist ideology on an hourly basis.

Well, let’s for a moment jump to the other side of the fence, where the employees are perched – The intelligence that you get out of the chorus is that the social networking is cost-free, global, knowledge-sharing university where years are saved every day – as employees, trouble-shooters and academia share the latest data, theories and algorithm – thus making every desktop a vibrant R&D hub – well, can you beat that?

Well, I agree with this cross-pollination potential of social and professional networks….

Once again, going back to the original spot. Looking from here, the corporate honchos would be in serious doubt whether millisecond is spent in knowledge dissemination and not personal frivolities…leaving it here for the moment….

As expected, it’s a spiraling debate with too many angles and intangibles….

Adios…

Tags: Facebook, Social media, Twitter
Posted in Trends!, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Does social media rely on traditional media?

Saturday, March 27th, 2010

Every now and then, we hear about another nail being hit in the coffin of traditional media, especially newspapers. Recent findings have suggested that the print editions of some renowned newspapers have been victimized by some combination of blogs, free-online news and Twitter. In Canada, some Television channels have requested the government to implement a TV tax and issue funds to save the local TV.

Not many people would disagree that journalists and news publishers should be paid for their work. However, the advertisement supported model is not generating enough revenue to sustain the conventional news gathering infrastructure.

If you know the basics of Economics, then you would know that if ad-space (supply, in economic terms) is blasting on every social networking site, then without a similar increase in advertisers (demand, in economic terms) the price will drop down drastically. Considering this, we can only hope that a new model will soon come up. Some newspapers have taken initiatives to issue e-books instead of print versions as prospective models for the future.

Wall Street Journal editor, Robert Thompson, has mentioned in an article that some websites can be best described as lice in the intestines of the internet. He also says that readers have been socialized in a wrong way and that search engines like Google have profited from that wrong perception. He strongly feels that much of the content on the internet should be free.

Today, significant parts of the stories we see on social networks, blogs and tweets, have originated from the traditional media. While this does not mean that the bloggers don’t provide original news content and commentary, the question is: If we need to pay more for news content that we used to get for free, then will it negatively impact the quantity or quality of social media discussions around those news items?

Time will definitely provide an answer sooner than we think.

Tags: blogs, Social media, social networking sites, tweets
Posted in Business over Web, CopperBridge Corridor!, Googling, Internet marketing, Product promotion, Search Engines | No Comments »

Mind Reading Technology — The future of social media

Friday, March 26th, 2010

In some ten years from now, social media could significantly change for the better. You wouldn’t need to strain your fingers to type things into structure or type the uniform resource locators in the browsers, or bear with annoying communications about useless products. In the future, social media will be easy and in all places.

The mind reading technology is one such technology that will make our lives (social media lives) very easy. Controlling an interface without using your fine motor skills will have huge implications for human computer communication. Imagine being able to tweet what you are thinking without having to pick up your phone, key in your message and hit send. Also, by just thinking ‘Facebook’ your screen will show a summary of your friend’s action stream.

How the system works?

The new mind-reading system works by displaying letters on the computer screen that flickers one at a time. When a person thinks of a letter, and then that letter flickers on the screen, brain waves propel a signal to the computer that it identifies. While this form of communication is at a very experimental phase and is also quite slow, it does work for sending short messages such as tweets for Twitter. Twitter messages are restricted to only 140 character limits, and you really have to think hard about what you want to say. However, with mind reading technology thinking is all that you would require.

This new form of communication is currently meant to help people who have restricted motor skills, and not lazy social media fanatics! There is also a scope of applying this technology to senses other than vision. In the future, this technology can also help read feelings and complex emotional states. And one day people who cannot otherwise communicate will eventually interact with the outside world.

Whoever said mind reading was impossible are in for a pleasant surprise!

Tags: communication, Facebook, Social media, Twitter
Posted in Business over Web, CopperBridge Corridor!, Googling, Internet marketing, Search Engines, Trends! | No Comments »

Why is engaging in social media an absolute necessity?

Saturday, March 6th, 2010

If you read articles about ting strategies, you will be flooded with advice about why you should have a blog and a Digg account and everything else. Today, even my 85-year-old grandfather who does not own a computer asks “What’s a Facebook?” because he read about it the daily newspaper.

The first successful communication on the internet was implemented on 25 December 1990. In 1992 internet access was made available to the common public and its use exploded. Until recently, websites were a great advertising platform. However, with the introducing of the first social networking site in 1995, and its widespread use today, websites have started to become invisible on the internet.

If you come up with a new website on the internet, then you would probably have to spend a lot of your time and resources to bring your website on the first page of the goggle search engine. However, a simpler way to let people know about your website or your company is through social media.

Social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace.com, Twitter, LinkedIn.com, etc. are very popular and so are great sources of promoting your website and products.

Gone are the days of “have a website and advertise”

Today, it is too costly to be noticed on an internet that is already full. Social media is the only way for new websites to get traction. If Darren Rowse, the guy behind ProBlogger, or Brian Clark, the guy who founded Copyblogger, talks about your website, then it’s visible. If your website comes up on the front page of Digg, then it’s visible. Once your website starts getting incoming links and lots of regular traffic, then you can use traditional SEO practices for staying visible.

Some of the companies that benefited from social media are:

Rubbermaid: A survey conducted by BazaarVoice reported that when the company Rubbermaid added customer reviews to their website, their sales increased and returns of their products decreased.

Fog Creek software: This company has achieved great success with no advertising because its founder has built an amazingly popular blog about writing software.

Nike: This company allowed customers to build and order custom shoes on their website. This move was a great hit with people and generated a lot of profit for Nike.

Will social media survive in the long run? Not sure. But today and for the near future, you can’t do without it. You have to jump in even if you do not fully understand it, or you will go the way of print media.

Tags: Digg, Facebook, google search engine, Internet advertising, Internet marketing, LinkedIn.com, marketing strategy, MySpace.com, Product promotion, SEO, Social marketing, Social media, social networking, Twitter
Posted in Business over Web, Digital Advertising, Internet marketing, Product promotion, Search Engines, Trends! | No Comments »

Twitter + Yahoo = Face the Buzz ?

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010

This is the latest buzz. The board is set, and the game has begun. No sooner did Google launched the Buzz, the other online players started rearranging to face this challenge. Mind you, this is only the beginning. This New Year 2010 started with a bang. Google himself launching and marketing Nexus One was the first surprise. Then rolled out the. i-Pad, ever since when Steve Jobs, couldn’t wipe out that famous smile. Then came the Buzz, which is set to change a lot of online social media equations. This new twist is predictable; we were only wondering, when, what and where this would come from.

You got it right, Yahoo has struck a twitter deal. These two have decided to face the Buzz challenge by coming together. Yahoo and Twitter have come to an agreement to share data between their properties. Hope this is no knee jerk reaction to the Google Buzz. This was hardly called for, as Bing is about to take the data aspect for Yahoo, and, which will very likely include the Twitter data as well. Moreover, Yahoo’s front end elements already include Twitter integration including Flickr. How far will it work? This is a million dollar question?

Even if this is all the rest against Google, it would in no way be an easy proposition. Buzz, although is new, has a very strong backing of Gmail, which just cannot be ignored. With a solid Gmail presence on the internet, it is unlikely that no matter how you set the table, Buzz will only get to be a very strong word.

Tags: Google, Google Buzz, Product promotion, Social marketing, Social media, tweet, Twitter, twitter chatter, Yahoo
Posted in Business over Web, Googling, Internet marketing, Product promotion, Trends! | 1 Comment »

SEO – Ranking for Mobile Search

Tuesday, January 19th, 2010

Yes Web designers are having a hard time trudging through some serious mobile design and standardizing issues. This easy and accessible mobile web seems to have many roadblocks as the operating levels are of an entirely different quality and standards.
The mobile search engines are also very new, evolving and imperfect. For these very reasons mobile SEO and SEM are also confused, and well, very immature. But for us, this is yet another challenge. We, as SEO enthusiasts still want traffic, and we still want users to find us in search results; and so we just won’t give up, we are born to fight.
Mobile SEO best practices – As of now

On-site mobile SEO
• Using 100% valid XHTML 1.0 code is the best practice as mobile search engines may however have more trouble digesting invalid code.
• It is likely that WML will be phased out in the near future, so play wise and safe. If you validate, the mobile search engines will not have any trouble with you.
• Follow accessibility best practices as they will ensure that your content is accessible to anyone regardless of their platform. This would include mobile users as well as the mobile search engines.
• Follow the traditional on-site SEO best practices, and which by now you know by heart. Major keywords for the title tag, H1’s and body text, keyword rich anchor text for internal links, and allow the link wheels to spin around.
Getting Spidery and Indexed by Mobile Search Engines
If you are wanting, your site to be indexed by the mobile search engines, they must come to know about it first. Make sure to submit your sites to major mobile search engines for some swift recognition. It would be a wise idea to see that each of your pages is having at least one incoming link.
List of mobile search engines
The following search engines are the major players in mobile search at this point of time.
• Google XHTML Mobile Search from Google Mobile
• Yahoo! Mobile
• MSN Mobile Search
• AOL Mobile Search
• Nokia Mobile Search
• Technocratic Mobile
• 4INFO Mobile Search

My sincere suggestion is, do not wait for the “year of the mobile” to arrive. Google has left us with a hint as early as the beginning of this New Year, 2010, when they decided to launch Nexus One. Get onto it and start creating some meaningful and genuine mobile related content. Apart from the adult stuff, we are having today, there is more that we can now do to make mobile SEO more relevant and effective in the days to come.

Tags: Google Caffeine, mobile search engines, mobile seo, SEO, Social marketing, Social media, Spiders, year of the mobile
Posted in Business over Web, Googling, Internet marketing, Product promotion, Search Engines, Trends! | No Comments »

Posts Tagged ‘Social media’

Recent Posts