Content is indeed king

What makes content so important in the digital world? Simple – Content has the power to invite and influence. The magic of words combined with design and other elements like audio and visual effects decide one’s digital image. In short – content is the core of everything on the digital planet.

Content is a powerful weapon in social media marketing. Each social media platform has a definite context and a different segment of audience. Hence it becomes highly important to present the content in various formats like blogs, pod-casts, slide presentations, videos for effective dissemination.

Many believe that once they have a website with their products listed, people will barge in with enquires. However, the truth is that there are several other online media with almost the same products and services. So, what will be the choice of the majority? Obviously, the channels having the most attractive content! Many companies struggle to implement effective digital marketing because of lack of appropriate content.The significance of relevant and striking content is more than you can imagine, as powerful content has the ability to bring in the best customers.

Content writing is not only limited to writing a piece of informative and interesting article or blog, but it also includes enhancing a company’s services & products. A website becomes powerless if it fails to attract users. What triggers traffic is pertinent content along with specific key words and phrases that online users most likely hit while searching for a product. If you are keen about frequently adding new content to your site, it only invites more visitors.

So, what makes good social media content? Most important – the content should be something one would want to share, recommend or bookmark. It also should be original, credible, superior and comprehensive.

Therefore, you should make your website and other social media channels rich with compelling content.If you are looking for content that is palatable for your target audience, your search ends here at Webenza. We have a creative team of content specialists well-versed in all areas of content development and strategy.

How to use Pinterest to promote retail business online

Social media is a growing platform and millions of people are extensively making use of it to create their brand presence online. One such platform which has seen an increase in traffic by more than 145% since the beginning of 2012 is Pinterest. Pinterest is turning out to be the hottest and lucrative social media website for e-commerce businesses. 

But do you know why Pinterest is popular among e-commerce promoters? XG6FRA2EWY8N

E-commerce business primarily relies on images to market its product and there is no better social media platform than Pinterest which can do that. That is because Pinterest is an online ‘Social bulletin board’ which allows users to create, share and link their product images in the perfect manner to attract visitors to their website. Pinterest is considered as one the best visual marketing platform because of its quick and easy to use functionality. No wonder, it is the highest referral traffic provider than you tube, Google+ and LinkedIn combined.

So if you are a retailer then pay attention because we are going to tell you how to use Pinterest in the most professional way to grow your business online.

Be professional – If you are going to use Pinterest for promoting your online business then make sure your Pinterest profile looks very professional. While creating an account you can add your website name and get it verified which will be an added advantage for you. Also ensure that your pin boards are properly organized and you have given appropriate board covers. The more your profile stands out from others, the better your chances to get traffic via Pinterest.

Product pinning – Pinning a product’s image will definitely help grab attention but for an e-commerce business that is not enough. You need to convert Pinterest users to clients and that can happen if you include the price of the product on your image. By adding a “$” and price “99.99″, your product will have a corner price overlay on each pinned image that includes the price you enter. This is especially necessary when retailers want to include any deals or special offers on their products.

Descriptive image - Although it is said that images are the major form of communication on Pinterest but text is still very important. Adding a liner or 2 would provide vital context to your products images. As an alternate to product pinning, some people also make use of description to announce any promotional deals on specific products.

Effective tagging - If you have a twitter handle, then you must be aware of the tagging feature. Well, Pinterest shares a similar phenomenon with twitter here. As an online retail promoter, you can make use of @ commands and #hash tags to address, appreciate and thank your customers or people who have supported your company. Therefore, tagging allows you to effectively manage your online brand reputation and directly connect with your clients and increase your client base.

Add a Pin it widget to your product pages – Adding a pin it widget to your products pages is essential if you want to increase targeted traffic to your site. When an image from your products page is repined, it will include a link to your site as well as your profile. So when interested users click on your products image, they will be redirected back to the relevant page.
A single image when shared/repined by thousands of Pinterest users can result in significant percentage of traffic increase to your site. Image the traffic to your site when lots of other images as well are repined and shared. See, that’s how beneficial Pinterest is.

Make connections – Pinterest is not just for you to pin your images and wait for others to re pin, like and comment on them. If you expect others to re-pin your images and follow you, then you have to make an initiative too. Interaction never happens one way. You have to notice other users pin boards, like their images, re pin them, comment and follow the users. However, do not lose focus that you are using this visual social platform for promoting your business. When you are engaging in social activities make sure that they are in line to your business interest. Nevertheless to keep things interesting on your profile, you can always create separate boards, where you share funny and interesting pins from other users.

Protect your images – Protecting the ownership rights of your images is very important. Pinterest is lately seeing an increase in copyright infringements. Hence in order to make sure that your products’ images do not lose their ownership even if they are re uploaded or used from an unauthorized source is to add a copyright mark on the image. You could also add your website URL or business name to ensure that you retain the credit of the image even when it is shared.

Do not forget about other social networks – Although Pinterest is the hottest platform for online retail marketing but let’s not forget about other social networking sites which are still very popular till date. It is advisable to link Pinterest account with your Facebook and twitter profile in order to retrieve the maximum benefits from other social media. 

Here are few reported facts about Pinterest which may help you as a retail promoter to enhance your brands visibility and reputation on Pinterest:

1. As of February 2012, Pinterest had accumulated 10.4 million users

2. 80% of Pinterest users are female.

3. The top interests on Pinterest in the U.S. include crafts, gifts, hobbies/leisure, interior design, and fashion designers/collections.

4. A call-to-action pin description sees an 80% increase in engagement.

5. Shoppers referred by Pinterest are 10% more likely to make a purchase than visitors who arrive from other social networks, including Facebook and Twitter.

There is no denying that Pinterest is a fantastic and popular platform for both small and medium sized e-commerce businesses who want to make a mark for their brand in the online world. Pinterest not only helps drive targeted traffic to your website but also gives you an opportunity to create, build and manage your brand reputation online. All you have to do now is start using Pinterest or if you don’t have time, you can always ask for the services of reputed social media marketing agencies.

Does email marketing strengthen or damage your reputation?

Email marketing is inexpensive, immediate, measurable and very easy! Are you tempted to take a plunge into email marketing?
Hold on! There are a few things which you should probably know before you decide to invade your customers’ inbox.

Good v/s bad

So, what is good and bad about email marketing?Well, the good is that it is a smart way to drive traffic to your company website and alongside, customers to your business. And, the bad is that it is also one of the most battered marketing practices followed by many small and large business organizations today.

While good email marketing still thrives in the market, bad ones leave companies tainted with many irritated readers and customers. Unless you know the trick of the game, it is tough to apply it successfully to boost your business.

Think about your own inbox. How many times do you keenly open unsought emails that you receive from random brands? Of the trifling fraction of emails opened, how many do you thoroughly go through? And of this, how many links do you click on? And finally, do you fall for their offers, discounts or products? The bitter fact is that a vast majority of such emails never even get past the subject line!

So then, how does it work?

It all depends on what definition you give to email marketing. If yours is a newsletter with relevant, interesting content that your customers are looking forward to, then it definitely should work. It must also help your clients know you, your products and services.

Email promotions are intended to produce instant action – sales, downloads, inquiries, registrations, review and analysis. Informative newsletters direct customers to stores and pave the way for building brand awareness, strengthening relationships, reassuring trust and loyalty.

However, email marketing is just like preserving a garden, which only bears flowers if managed properly. We know it can work, but only if you get the basics right. The basics include collecting a list of people who want to hear from you, crafting the right message and finally ensuring the emails get through to those on that list.

When does it go wrong?

Most of the times, you are badly hit when you buy email lists to publicize your business. That lands you in the spammers bin and you lose your credibility. Also, if you continue to bombard your customers with too much information way too often, it happens that they are not any more interested. So, it becomes important to survey what your customers need and check the frequency of emails sent to them.

What is the bottom line?

Your ideal clients are people like you. If you consider them as you would like to be considered, your marketing attempts would succeed. Respect your customers’ time and make sure that you don’t get too strident with them. Remember, the unsubscribe button is just at their fingertips!

Social Media in your pocket!

Which do you think is the most engaging activity on mobiles?

a. playing games

b. Social networking

I am sure 80% of us would answer “a. Playing games”, but that’s old news. Today the most engaging mobile activity is Social Networking. Well, if you think of it, it is a match made in heaven! Social networks were built on the notion of sharing. While updating statuses, sharing photos, revealing interests, we socialize and add to it the mobile editing and social apps, what more can one ask for? You can be omnipresently social and personally sophisticated! Let’s delve deeper into the social networking on mobile with a Dunkin’ Donuts example (Trust me, the scoop is as yummy as the donuts)

The other day I walked into a coffee shop to take away a sandwich and as I was waiting for my order it suddenly struck me what if I could surprise my friend (whose birthday I conveniently forgot last month) with a cake from this coffee shop. Then I thought what if I could gift her this coffee shop’s prepaid card and what if there was a mobile app for it (already dreaming of dollars thinking I had stumbled upon a billion dollar idea), only to realize that Dunkin Donuts has been a pro at it. Well, not just it, Dunkin’ Donuts has been a creator of many other successful digital marketing and advertising initiatives. Let’s discuss how my idea (wink wink) was used by Dunkin’ Donuts to launch a new Halloween campaign that drives engagement through Instagram and Twitter, as well as educates consumers about the company’s new mobile payments application.

As part of their Halloween campaign, Dunkin’ Donuts had rolled out new Halloween-themed mobile cards. The main aim of this campaign was to drive awareness for their first mobile payment and gifting app, they offered fans limited edition Mobile Dunkin’ Donuts cards that featured several unique Halloween themed designs. (Random fact: DD has 0.18m Twitter & 13K Instagram followers)

In August 2012, Dunkin’ Donuts entered the mobile payments arena with an iPhone and Android app that lets consumers pay for beverages, food and merchandise at the point-of-sale, but with this Halloween initiative, Dunkin’ Donuts is letting consumers purchase a mobile gift card in several new Halloween seasonal designs with spooky characters asking you to “Stay calm and drink coffee”.

Moreover, the coffee giant encouraged consumers to participate in the Halloween festivities by dressing up their cup for a chance to win a $100 Dunkin’ Donuts Card. Quite cleverly it engaged Instagram and Twitter for this competition, fans were encouraged to tweet @DunkinDonuts on Twitter or Instagram photos of their Dunkin’ Donuts cups cloaked in a creative Halloween costume, using the special hashtag #DresseDD. On Halloween day, the company shared the photos of five winners
 selected for their creativity and Halloween spirit.

This is indeed a very smart initiative by Dunkin’ Donuts. Approximately 50% of Social Media users are people using Social Media from their phone and a research says that people who use Social Media from their phone are twice as active online. This provides Dunkin’ Donuts with an engaged and active user base and what more would they want than their favorite coffee accepting mobile payment and gift exchanges. This whole initiative provides them an interactive and creative experience.

Scott Hudler, vice president of global consumer engagement at Dunkin’ Donuts says “We’re an exciting brand, and we think our guests who expect a little fun from us will really appreciate and enjoy the new Halloween designs as a way to celebrate the season.” We sure do Mr. Hudler. Keep on the exciting work!

Social Media : Then and Now

Do you keep yourself logged onto Facebook?

Do you always keep thinking about what your next cover photo will be?

Do you tweet every single occurrence in your daily life?

Do you look forward to a new connection each day on LinkedIn?

Well…. Join the club! You have been diagnosed with what is called the ‘SMAD – Social Media Anxiety Disorder’.

Stefan Hofmann directs the Social Anxiety Program at Boston University’s Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders. He says pressure to read and respond on Facebook and Twitter is the main source of stress for older people who use the sites. For younger people the stress comes from increased peer pressure as friends share personal information online.

The time you spend:

Every day when I wake up in the morning, I should be thinking of what would be the first lecture. Instead, I think about the number of likes that I would have earned for the photo I posted the night before… I’m sure most of us do the same. An average Facebook user spends only about 20 minutes per visit and we are way ahead of this league.


Acceptance in the society:

Social networking as a concept was not accepted very well in the Indian society; in fact it worsened after a few incidences with Orkut. But then, Facebook turned out to be the savior, to make everybody believe in the whole idea behind social networking, ensuring the security of the user.
There was a time when elders would keep children away from social networking, as they typically believed that it opens the doors to the outside mean world where strangers take undue advantage of the naive ones. But, the wall of their thoughts and beliefs gradually disintegrated.

Career in social media:

And today, everybody has a Facebook profile; In fact my mother who was against social networking tried sending me a friend request, which I obviously denied. My father is also very active on social media so much that, he suggested I make a career in the same; we are witnessing a paradigm shift…

“Social media is the biggest growth industry whose potential is just being tapped. The industry is still in its infancy. As more and more people come online, the customer base is only going to increase and there needs to be a way for businesses to interact and engage with these customers or prospects. There is no turning back. Right now it’s only focused on the urban pockets but will soon expand as the internet penetrates through the market.

There is an increasing need for a wide range of talent in this dimension of cyber space – creative, technical, strategy, marketing communications, advertising professionals, writers, designers. There is a whole realm of mobility related to social media that is rapidly growing as well”. – said Puneet Pahuja, Founder & CEO, Webenza

You want facts & stats to prove it?

There are over 465 million twitter accounts, 175 million tweets a day and 1 million accounts are added each day. Twitter is the mystery of social media with its usefulness questioned by a lot of people. Its simplicity is what draws attention along with its immediacy in propagating news about the current happenings.

A research reveals that there are 600 million more people that own a mobile phone compared to those who own a toothbrush. Does that mean toothbrushes are overpriced? Or we care more about connecting with people than bad breath? Or maybe, we should start giving a toothbrush free with every cell phone.

With nearly 425 million Mobile Facebook users, and about 850 million overall active users, Facebook undoubtedly leads the social networking charts.

And if anybody out there wants to beat the lead… Remember, ‘you can’t just rock the boat; you have to drive it up onto the rocks, set fire to the galley and dance on the burning deck.’

To conclude:

Despite of the prevailing conditions of the observed disorder, we still see the numbers rising. It simply proves that social media has come a long way from where it started, and still; this is just the beginning!

Author: Matta

Search Engine Optimization: How It Changed The Face Of Web.

When we say internet changed our entire world, we are not entirely wrong. Since its development in 1960 till today, internet has brought transformation in most of our systems such as education, commerce, organizations, home and what not.
 

During the earlier days, if we had any questions or queries we would ask others for solutions, keep a stack of dictionaries and encyclopedia but with development of Internet and web search engines hardly anyone glances at them.  It’s true, internet changed our search methodology. There are millions of informative websites on the internet but it is not easy to find them. The power of finding information lies in the hands of Web search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing and to find particular information, you are just a keyword away.

But this was not so many years ago. Let’s find it out.

The onset of search engine goes back to 1987 when the first search engine developed was Archie. The program created a searchable database of file names but it did not index the content of sites. Jughead and Veronica were the next search engines to be developed and they worked on the keyword search method. Nevertheless till 1993 there wasn’t a proper development of a search engine.  But soon after, Internet experienced a shower of search engines such as Infoseek, Excite, Altavista, Northen light, Yahoo etc. However their only downfall was that their search function worked on the basis of web directory.

By 2000, Google search engine rose to prominence and few years later Yahoo evolved and launched its own search engine based on keyword search results. In 2009, Microsoft launched Bing and today these 3 search engines are the rulers of Internet.

But do you know how search engines work?

For any information to be retrieved, you first have to find it and to find information among the millions of web pages that exist, search engines employ special software robots called spiders. The spiders crawl through a vast number of websites and build a list of words from those sites. That’s why the process is called web crawler. The spiders analyze every link on the sites, its content and determine how and from where the words on the sites should be indexed. For instance, spiders can crawl your sites’ Meta titles, description, content, headings etc to determine the words for indexing. The data gathered is stored in index database which is then used for future search queries.  Now, when a user enters a particular query (keyword), the engine examines the index and provides a listing of the best matched web pages.

Did you know –  Google search engine spiders can crawl 300 pages per second, generating around 600 kilobytes of data each second?

The usefulness of a search engine depends on the relevancy of results it gives back. In today’s time there are millions of websites competing for the same keyword and each day 100 more enter the league. Expansion of online business has resulted in increased competition and the pressure on website owners to be ranked No.1 on a search engine’s top page.

That’s when webmasters realized the importance of  Search Engine Optimization.

Search engine optimization commonly known as SEO is one of the many online marketing tools essential for small to midsized businesses who want to make their mark in the world of E-business. In today’s era, many businesses are running online and there are thousands of businesses/websites which are struggling to make their presence felt online. However, let us tell you that one of the major means of success for e-businesses is online visibility and that’s where search engine optimization comes in.

Till mid 1990’s SEO was all about submitting websites to search engines. Even today, the echoes of the past are heard when so called SEO companies promise site owners immediate ranking by auto submitting site to hundreds and thousands of search engines and directories.

Did you know – The beginning of SEO era was a heaven for spammers?

Yes, it’s true. Webmasters took advantage of search engines and stuffed keywords in their content, Meta tags, headings, HTML comments etc and hid it from the eyes of human visitors. Lack of search engines’ technological sophistication resulted in such sites ranking higher. Even today, SEO consultancies indulge in such practices for their clients, risking their client’s site rankings. Because with the number of technical and algorithm development, search engines now have the ability to recognize spam and ban the sites which are encouraging such practices from the face of search engines.

At present, Search engine marketing requires an integrated approach to improve site content, quality and popularity. For a Website to reach its top potential, it must incorporate target audience analysis, competitive analysis, copywriting and copyediting. And, because things keep changing, search engine optimizers need to devote a good deal of time staying on top of the SEO industry and its trends.

“My rule of thumb is, build a site for a user and not a spider” – Dave Naylor

Today, very few optimizers would use spam methods to achieve high ranking. In many cases, spamming and the so-called “black-hat” SEO is recognized by automatic spiders as they become more and more intelligent.

Before there was no doubt a webmaster could get his website on the first page, but now every site owner has one question in mind. How do I get my website to rank on the first page of Google? And the only answer is Successful search engine optimization strategy. Many people still live in the misconception that SEO is a piece of cake but to be precise, Search Engine Optimization is much more complicated and difficult to understand as compared to email marketing or paid search. SEO requires continuous tracking, reporting and monitoring which is generally not an easy task because as mentioned earlier the algorithms and factors which affect SEO keep changing on a daily basis.

Nevertheless, there are certain strategies that you can follow to ensure maximum optimization for your website. Let’s have a look at them:

• CONTENT OPTIMIZATION – One thing that is of utmost importance for the accomplishment of SEO strategy is content. You need to have relevant content for your homepage and inner pages as well as for your alt tag, image tag, Meta tags etc. Your website content should be relevant to the site topic, knowledgeable, understandable and interesting besides being high with relevant keyword density. One note of caution here is: DO NOT fill your content with just keywords or irrelevant keywords because Google may consider it as spam and this may hamper your efforts to appear in Google search engine.

• META TAG OPTIMIZATION – Meta tags are an important part of SEO because they are what are indexed in the search engines. There are 2 main parts of Meta tags; Description and keywords. When writing your Meta tags, always ensure that you target the right keywords and the right content because in the end traffic to your site is directed through the description of your website that user reads on the search engine.

• TITLE TAG – Although title tags are generally associated with Meta tags, however they are technically not Meta tags. Title tags play a major role to index your website as compared to the other Meta tags (description and keywords). Title tags or page titles are the first thing that search engines notice when determining what your site page is all about.  Also page titles are the first thing that users see about your website.  A page title should be very specific to what the page is talking about. It is essential that you include 1-2 keywords in your page title but stuffing it with keywords will not do anything but make your site look like spam.

• ALT ATTRIBUTES ON IMAGES – Images make a website attractive. They are eye catching and prompt people to have a look at the website. But what about from the SEO point of view? Do images help you rank on search engines? NO. Images are as good for search engines as they are for users who are visually impaired. That’s why Alt tags are essential. Often people overlook them and hence lose out on better ranking.

• RELEVANT AND WELL SEARCHED KEYWORDS – Success of your search engine optimization strategy depends on how well you target the right and relevant keywords for your website. To make your websites Google index friendly, one thing that you must ensure is to have your content rich with relevant keywords which in turn will help get relevant traffic to your website.  But remember, not to spam your website by stuffing in keywords.

Although search engine optimization is not inordinately difficult, but it’s not something you can achieve in a day or a week. SEO is time consuming and rarely simple. It requires hours and hours of labor, dedication and commitment. As a website owner, you may have an outstanding website but is it really an optimized site? Will you be able to attract the targeted traffic and audience to your site? And most importantly, will Google or Yahoo want to place your site on their top pages? Think again.

Author: Divya

Media Business Has Grown In Both Complexity And Importance Due To Its Diversity

From yesterday till today, we have come a long way…

A long way of innovation and evolution which would be credited to various eminent people belonging to our society. These people belong to the unsatisfied category, who have an unremitting will to change and to transform for the improvement of civilization and to make this world a better place to live in.


Media is not merely the outcome of technical development, but also ‘social institutionalization’. The technical invention simply played a role in improving on the old media. For example, Gutenberg improved writing, Wireless improved telegraphy, Graham Bell bridged communication distances and many more.

Social institutionalizing on the other hand basically changes the invented media by discovering new possibilities of communication. It essentially means to adopt and format the new media.

In the early days of folk media, we used various forms of communication like puppetry, theater and dance to propagate the message to the masses. But as a society we have advanced from folk media to print media to broadcast and now finally…. Internet, that has caused the world to shrink.

“In cyberspace everyone can hear you scream.” – Christopher Buckley

Depending upon the people we want to communicate to, we chose our media. As the society evolved, every individual had a specific media preference and there were people who had similar inclination towards a particular medium. These people formed homogenous groups as they had similar media taste and they could be reached through the same medium. This is what we call today as the Target Audience.

*Target Audience is the specific group of customers that a company aims to capture. They have been identified as people with needs or wants that can be met with the products or services from this company.

Today, as a marketer we have a variety of media available to reach our potential target audience; like press, television, radio, cinema, internet, mobile, Direct Contact Program, events etc.

The increasing complexity and importance

Due to these increasing options of media in the market and this rapid fragmentation, it is increasingly difficult to reach the potential target audience. The wide variety of media options available have indeed given a wide scope for us to improvise on our creativity and given us various options to reach our potential consumers. It indeed shows the dynamism in our society and our process of evolution.

On one side it indeed is a boon, but it also acted as a nuisance because this highly fragmented media made it difficult to make contact with our TG.

For example, if ‘I’, as a brand, plan to reach my target audience through one of the highly penetrated media – newspaper, and my potential target audience is a family.

In that case, when a newspaper comes to the house, the father in the family picks up the main newspaper, the mother picks up the health issue and the young ones on the family are interested in sub sections of Bangalore Times.

Therefore, in order to reach each one of them, I should now put my advertisement in each section of the newspaper. The fragmentation that has been created in the newspaper is definitely for the ease of the reader, but it makes things more complex for us as a marketer.

Similarly, if I want to reach a family through television and I need to decide the channel, the confusion is equally huge out there too. If it was the early era of Doordarshan, then the effectiveness of my media plan would have been incredible because the only two options that viewers had were DD1 and DD Metro. But now, due to the dawn of cable television in the industry, the viewers have a wide variety of options to entertain themselves. This indeed is a windfall for the viewers but a predicament for the marketers because it is getting gradually trickier to be able to reach the consumers and direct the message towards them.

Therefore, now, depending upon the potential TG we need to decide the most adequate media in order to achieve the desired reach and to increase the efficiency of the campaign.

Well, apart from the complexity of the issue of over-fragmentation of the media, media planning as a process has also gained drastic importance over a period of time. Afterall, this is where the big bucks go. Media has become overtly expensive as the time passed and hence, careful investment in the right media vehicle is required in order to ensure the effectiveness of the campaign and to optimally utilize the capital invested for the propagation of the message.

Marketers have now realized that it is not only important to devise a creative message and a creative advertisement to attract consumer attention, but also devise a creative media plan to be able to optimize the reach and to be able to communicate our message to the defined target audience. And social media is the new key in hand to conveniently and directly reach the prospective consumer and also generate feedback. We need to catch up with what’s happening in the ‘new media’ to analyze market trends and understand consumer preference. Marketers need to learn to reach consumers in those channels and measure results. It’s a big challenge, and it’s not getting any easier!

Author: Matta