Social Media & Digital Marketing

The latest report on Internet Trends called ‘2012 KPCB Internet Trends Year-End Update’. This report provides exciting statistics on internet and mobile usage in India update to the Internet trends report released in June 2012.

Some highlights from the report:

– In Global 2.4 billion Internet users in 2012, in which 137 million users are in India.

– India has added 88 million Internet users during the year 2008 to 2012 with just 11% population penetration are second largest. China is the largest, adding 282 million users with 40% penetration.

– India has 44 million Smartphone subscribers in fourth quarter in 2012, recording a 52% growth year-on-year. Yet, Smartphone accounts for only 4% of the total mobile subscribers. China has the highest number of Smartphone subscribers with 270 million subscribers, recording a 50% year-on-year growth and 24% of the total mobile subscribers.

-There is 65% of mobile phone users use a Smartphone in Japan. There are 1.1 billion Smartphone users in global.

– The mobile phone web is India’s big part of growth. Mobile phone web traffic has overtaken Desktop web traffic in 2012 for the first time.

-The area of Education, Healthcare and Wallet are looks to for growth and this remind.

-In India, there is 59.36% of total Internet usage via mobile Internet accounts as of December 2012, while desktop Internet accounts for 40.64% of the total Internet usage. In Global, mobile Internet accounts for 13.95% of the Internet traffic as of December 2012, while desktop Internet accounts for 86.05% of the total Internet traffic.

The Facebook Timeline has been used very widely but there seems to be some lack of understanding in what can be done and how it should be done. The Facebook page needs to be attractive and also at the same time should make the users to get engaged.

1. Cover photo Strategy for personal profiles

The Cover Photo has the main purpose of relating your personality, position, approach, life, etc. in a picture. The Cover Photo gives a strong image contact about your personality. Many display photos which are indication of their personal life. And as the default settings for the cover photo is “public”, at times such photos are misutilized.
Facebook permit to show personal photos through the profile picture album and creation of many other albums whose security settings can be carefully analyzed and prohibited. Cover Photo was never meant to display personal, respected moments to the public and it was designed to describe oneself to the public.

2. Cover photo Strategy for brands and endorsements

The main advantages which the Facebook has now offers to its users are to promote or encourage anything during Facebook itself, thus making endorsement easy and effective. And for this custom, Facebook provides provision to include the Cover Photo in the Timeline. However still in this feature, many mistakes are devoted and the general and popular advertisement opportunity of any activity is strictly restricted.
The Cover Photo should explain what the activity is all about, not what the enterprise does? We might have seen on many pages, the Cover Photo showing contact information, buy information, list of price, etc thus ignoring the actual cause of using it. The Cover Photo is idea to brand and make sense, not to tell about the enterprise services.

3. Give that important information about person or brand in words

The “About” section given below the Cover Photo was developed to illustrate oneself in detail about what they do in text form when compared to the Cover photo where it shows about what they are in an image form.
The “About” section is used to provide an insight to a visitor what their Facebook page is all about. And this section should show the contact details or anything important related to their products and services in a more detailed way.

4. Not growing the engagement rate and advertising

Facebook has introduced some great features which are very useful in creating ads, offers etc. which should help to increase the traffic and engagement rate. But, these tools are unutilized. There are two basic tools or options which not many people know about and which can really highlight the posts. First one is Highlight and the second one is Pinning.
‘Highlight’ gives you an option to enlarge the size of the post to the full size width. This can give better visibility compared to other posts. This can be used for highlighting images or any important post or link that you wish to share. To highlight a post click the ‘Star’ next to edit button on top right corner of the post.

‘Pinning’ it to the top of the wall with an orange ribbon can be useful more for offers or announcements and will show for next seven days on top of other posts. To pin with an orange ribbon, click edit button on the top right corner of your post and click ‘Pin to Top’ and similar way to ‘Unpin From Top’.

Note that one cannot use ‘Highlight’ and also ‘Pinning’ at the same time. You can only either Highlight or Pin on a post.

Facebook Timeline has provided with such an effective marketing tool that endorsements, ads, social connections have become simple and easy. However, if this tool is not utilized appropriately, it would be a disgrace and failure for both the user and the designer. Timeline must be used the method it is designed to be.

The Popular social networking site Facebook finds India a major growth market, where the number of users have more than doubled in the past one year, as against near-zero diffusion in the neighboring country China.

Facebook India Page

Facebook Offers mobile users in India, opening a new account via particular URL (http://m.facebook.com/tt) using mobile phone, will get talk time worth Rs 50 free. This offer is meant only for people who don’t have Facebook account currently and register themselves only via their mobile phone. Once a user Sign Up for Facebook account, they would be entitled to receive talk time worth Rs 50 in about 3 days.

Facebook has designed the campaign targeting the large student entrance from Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities of India where the access of Facebook is still pretty low. Most of the students prefer to have pre-paid connectivity and Rs 50 talk time offer makes important value addition against a simple sign up with world’s largest social network.

The third largest country in the list of Facebook with more than 60 million users, this promotion is exclusively designed for India. Brazil is recently seen fast growth in Facebook users and is in a number 2 position. Interestingly, Facebook has not rolled out any similar promotions in Brazil or any other country.

The current population of Facebook users in India is just 5.06% against 73.3% online users penetration. But, this low population in India inherits an opportunity and great growth which no other country could ever match. For Facebook, looking to up and increase their revenue, India is a key source for future growth.

The growth of 132 per cent in India has been higher than many other countries, including home market in US. India has got important share in that after China. The most between all continents in world’s 17.84% of mobile web traffic is being originated from Asia. Surprisingly, 48.8% of Indian internet users are available on mobile and this figure is only jump to progress in next 2 -3 years.

The evolution of Smartphone is another big reason, making India as one of the dearest country for many companies. As the second largest mobile market, India has been outclassed by most of the countries in Smartphone approval rate. The mobile will drive Facebook’s growth in India. With just 2.72%, India Smartphone industry is far behind along with China.
With the emergence of local handset makers in India like Micromax and Karbonn and focused approach by Samsung, the situation is expected to change by 2015.

In today’s age of the Internet, there cannot be an easier and more cost-effective marketing strategy than email marketing. Email marketing is assuredly the single most effective way to build rapport with your target audience –converting all the way prospects into customers. Email marketing has an element of personal touch – it is quick, automated, inexpensive, and measurable. Keeping in touch with customers on a regular basis is also the secret to successful CRM.

Through a simple code, it is possible to mention each customer by name because most email marketing software makes possible this merge information from the list database.
Businesses are today functioning in a fast-paced environment and one of the major blessings of email marketing is speed. Please remember that your email campaign can be in potential customers’ inboxes within a couple of minutes.
If speed is one of the keys to e-mail marketing success, then consistency is another. As human beings we seldom consistent but software (that is machine-like) are vastly consistent. Beyond consistency, automation is another major boon of e-mail marketing.

There is no denying that e-mail marketing is inexpensive that means that your profit margins will be handsomer if the e-mail marketing succeeds. With email marketing, you will obviously not be required to pay for printing and postage.
Marketing professionals emphasize on the need to measure a marketing campaign. You can monitor how well your email marketing is faring as most email marketing software provides you with useful statistical information.
Email marketing is one of the rewarding ways to promote your business – regardless whether you have a brick-and-mortar store or an online business. E-mail marketing can help you reach a host of potential customers while also staying in touch with existing customers.

Setting up an email marketing campaign is simple and we can offer you expert advice and purposeful direction. As opposed to a regular mail marketing campaign that might attract only modest traffic to your website, an email marketing strategy can lure massive traffic.
There are advantages galore in running an email campaign to market your products/services and our experienced professional team will be able to guide you to make your e-mail campaign successful. There is a variety of templates to get you started with your e-mail marketing campaign and even if there is nothing suitable, we can customize one for you. We can provide you with an effective email marketing solution and help you successfully run your campaign.

Does your business have a blog, Facebook page and a Twitter account? Are you always answering questions while visiting online communities? If so, you are likely taking advantage of social media to get your brand out to the world. Undoubtedly, terms like social media marketing or social media optimization have come up when researching the most effective strategies to build a brand, but you may be wondering what those terms mean.

The difference between social media marketing (SMM) and social media optimization (SMO) is quite simple. Social media marketing is geared toward interacting with potential readers and customers while social media optimization is all about building your reputation around the content of your site. Because you want people to see you as a valuable, respectable resource, both social media marketing and optimization are extremely important.

Customer interaction is key. Of course, there are many things to consider when talking about interaction, especially when factoring in the likes of Facebook, Twitter and even the new kid on the block, Pinterest. Anyone who has ever been on these three sites may have noticed how they are different. Facebook walls change rapidly with a wall of pictures, links and status updates waiting to be liked. Tweets are a succinct 140 characters long, which can be marked as a favorite or retweeted for your own followers to see. Pinterest seems to take the old age “a picture is worth a thousand words” to a whole new level. If you find one that you liked, you may even be inclined to keep browsing the particular blog to find more, which converts you into a subscribed reader. It is social media marketing using a website for well-planned optimization. Social media can be a great tool. If it is used properly can grow your business effectively.

Social media trends seem to change as quickly as the weather these days. As quickly as people migrate to one site, they can move on to the next, so it is imperative that your content is easily shareable across multiple networking sites and easily digested by potential readers and customers. That is essentially the goal—people are the reason that social media exists; their business is your business. The more people who try your product, read your posts or visit your store, the bigger the number of advocates you have. And because social media is the new word-word-of-mouth advertising, you can bet people are going to tell others about the experience—sometimes, at the very moment they are experiencing it. If you want recognition, social media can work for you.

What is marketing?
Marketing is an integrated process that helps to enhance customer relationships by creating awareness about the products and services through effective sales technique, business communication and business development and add value to the customer needs. Such a significant process has various trends. The latest and most effective trend is Internet and Digital Marketing.

The process of marketing is made easy by means of Internet Marketing. While comparing to traditional marketing, Internet Marketing and Digital Marketing can reach the targeted audience most effectively.

Internet and Digital Marketing:
Internet Marketing is a process of marketing products and services online through internet by various techniques such as Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing, Brand Promotion and Online Advertising intended for active customer engagement.

Search Engine Optimization: The process involved in optimizing a website at the top of the organic search results to increase the number of visitors for a website and also ensure the improved possibility of indexing and favorable ranking by search engines.

Social Media Marketing: The social media marketing is a successful technique that involves a process of integrated marketing communications between audience of relevant interest and marketing people. This is a deliberate step that involves in improving customer relationship by connecting the customers with business owners directly through online channels such as social media to understand the client expectations and add value to them.

Brand Promotion: Any feature that spot out a unique vendor’s product or service in respect to its quality or awareness among the customers is said to be a brand. The feature defining the unique vendor’s may be name, logo, tagline, design, etc. An effective marketing strategy used to build and increase customer loyalty, awareness and sales is said to be Brand Promotion.

Online Advertising: The effective Marketing process that lead to advertise online through internet by different ways such as banner ads, contextual ads, image ads, affiliate networks, ad networks, email advertising etc to drive targeted customers with enquiry/needs to a website/online marketplace with such product or service that fulfils the client expectations.

The combined process above delivers cost effective and secure marketing opportunities and enhances business and customer relationship all together. Hence Internet and Digital Marketing is necessary to be considered in your marketing strategies to develop your business by connecting with more customers and clients.

LeadVisit is an Internet marketing Brand in India that offers premium solutions for all businesses as mentioned above in increasing the leads and visitors for a website by proven digital marketing techniques.

There has been a buzz already in the social network environment about Google+ and it is only on testing phase at the moment. Google being the world’s best search engine has also succeeded in other areas like Video Sharing with Youtube, Gmail, Google Apps etc and other services that are important, be it an individual or a corporate. But Google has not been so successful in the social network arena where it has already tried with Orkut and Google Buzz. So let us see if it can attract Facebook users with its all new Google+.

Google Plus(+):
The world’s largest Search engine Google has attempted to step on to the social network with a new methodology of sharing resources between friends, family, and personally to those who are most important to you and an effort to express the genuine relationship more accurately to the world with the Google+, the Google’s new born social network.
Facebook:
Facebook is the largest social networking services provider where the users can create profiles personally, add friends, and share messages, and can include automatic notifications on profile updates and they can also form groups for schools and colleges, work environment, mutual interest user groups etc.

The Search Giant vs The Social Giant:
The Google+ was announced recently by Google and from the time it released, there is a huge talk that the “Google+ steps up to dethrone Face book”. Is that possible? Lets have a look at five features in Google+ that are not made available in Facebook at this moment:

Circles:
Google’s different approach have created circles where users can assemble the friends, family and various contacts into different set to optimize and sharing the flow of information to each and everyone by separating the professional and personal life unlike Facebook. The user can limit their sharing in Google+ to a particular friend unlike in Facebook where any sharing done is visible to all the friends.

Hangouts:
This is an entirely different strategy used by Google to provide the users video chat facility where up to 10 members can chat face to face all together. It is a unique feature available in Google which differentiates Google from other social networks.

Instant upload:
This is coolest feature available in Google+ to access the photos and videos to upload instantly while you are snapping or recording from your mobile or any other devices.

Sparks:
It is a feature in Google+ where you can add your interests and share with your friends, family or groups. Any interests selected can be added on to the section below your profile picture and topics related to your interests that you might like can be viewed in the search by clicking on it.

Huddle:
It is a group chat text tool used for private conversations within a circle available only at Google+ and it can be used directly from your phone such as Android 2.0.

Conclusion:
There may be chances for Google+ to dethrone Facebook, or it may take some time. At the same time Facebook may fulfill the user expectations by adding video chat features. The decision is in the hands of social networking users by the user experience.

Social Media Optimization (SMO):

Social Media Optimization is technique of optimizing a website on social media websites. Social media allows the content of the website to travel across the web and drive huge traffic than search engines, which attracts the unique visitors and also brings higher search engine rankings.

The term social media optimization was first introduced by Rohit Bhargava . His old rules for conducting social media optimization were:

5 Basic rules of social media optimization:
1. Increase your linkability
2. Make tagging and bookmarking easy
3. Reward inbound links
4. Help your content travel
5. Encourage the mashup

Later sixteen rules were created in addition to the original five rules, by some anonymous authors for conducting social media optimization which has been translated into various languages. Four years later, Rohit Bhargava released an updated set of rules for conducting social media optimization and they are.

5 New rules of social media optimization:
1. Create shareable content
2. Make sharing easy
3. Reward engagement
4. Proactively share content
5. Encourage the mashup

Role of Social media optimization on online reputation management:
Social media optimization plays a major role in online reputation management. It is a process of monitoring the feedback of users on the internet, then using the online and offline techniques to promote the positive and neutral content and pulling down the SERP those who are with the goals of negative mentions to reduce the visibility.

Conclusion:
SMO is considered as a wide set of marketing strategy for all the websites published across the worldwide web these days.

Today on the internet you can find many ways to market your products and services online. The internet attracts many business people to promote their businesses and products online. Social Media marketing plays a big role in attracting your customers. Today’s most commonly used Social networking services are Facebook, Twitter, YouTube.

Social media websites have provided a unique method of connecting with your customers, ensuring repeated business and building long-term relationships. Using social media marketing to create and manage your presence and optimizing your social media are important steps to help you get the most of this great opportunity for connecting with your target audience.

Social network marketing or social media marketing is all about reaching target audience through social networks or online communities. The goal is to directly reach your targeted audience as well as to gain new audience, and to spread the business worldwide eventually. Once you targeted the audience, it is the right time to promote your business through social networking.

Facebook place an important role in social media and social network marketing. Facebook presents a unique marketing opportunity for businesses through the creation of Facebook Business Pages. Facebook pages provides a forum for dialogue between customers and the brand, giving companies the opportunity to build better relationships with target audiences and current customers. Post your new offers, about your products and put the link which has the full information of the post. Each time a Facebook user becomes a fan of a Facebook page, a notice is posted as news item for all of that user’s friends to see. This creates an opportunity for a Facebook page to go viral and reach new viewers. As a Facebook page grows its fan base, traffic to the company website will increase. Facebook pages also appear in Universal Search Results. These are all the offers you are getting without spending a single dollar.

Twitter had a powerful search function which is named “Tweet search”. The Useful of “Tweet search” is that it offers the possibility to search and find bio-data according to certain keywords. A search keyword may be for example, the products a company is selling. We can tweet our new offers and products time to time.

Youtube is the next huge site to add your online profile. You can ask how a website like Youtube is useful for my business, because it is using for seeing silly, funny videos but actually it has more potential than people think. You simply have to be creative; once you have your ideas make your idea to a video. Now there are the obvious uses, like marketing and advertising. Let’s just say you are a company with a product and you need to spread the word or simply get feedback, you could show your product in a visual way and show its benefits in a more appealing way.
Certainly, social media has the power to push a business into achieving better sales. The future of social media marketing is going to be interesting one.