Whether you are looking to build your own brand equity as a domain expert, your business identity as whole, or promote a specific product/ service in the social realm, your basic approach will remain the same. This holds true for each company or individual irrespective of their current standing. Social media is democratic in a sense that it offers equal opportunity to all to develop a strong and niche presence. It’s a powerful and cost effective avenue for increasing conversions, and further boosting sales as well as profits. Read the rest of this entry »

Opinion makers and influencers in the social Web realm play a significant role in marketing as well as branding, just like the countless Facebook ‘Likes’ do. You cannot operate in isolation and expect to be successful on the social Web. Remember, social media marketing is not solely about you, your business and your needs. So you cannot and should not ignore what the people expect from you as a brand owner, even while taking into account your own business priorities. Let us fathom why a company must listen with intent to its customers. Read the rest of this entry »

Much brouhaha has been generated Pinterest, its popularity, its fast-growing community and the site’s ability to fetch traffic. But it’s like most other social networks- Digg, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit etc. Yes it’s possible throwing up a picture of Ryan Gosling ‘Hey Girl-ing’ a cute kitten or Ryan Reynolds shirtless will get you endless number of repins. However, it will seldom result in any meaningful traffic through to your site.  Before you start thinking BIG, you need to understand the basics of Pinterest usage. Read the rest of this entry »

For its part, world’s top social site Facebook has made repeated efforts to quell concerns of marketers about its ads’ effectiveness. The company started working with research firms Nielsen and comScore last year to offer tools, which let big businesses track their campaigns on the site. Nielsen, for instance, measures consumers who viewed an ad on Facebook and then compares them with a similar control group of site users who didn’t check the ad. It then would match that up against shopper data to grasp how ad exposure actually affected the sales. Read the rest of this entry »

Online behavior tracking technique has been employed for quite some time by Web marketers, but its tools and setups do not uniquely identify individual users, only designed to group them into specific audience segments; in terms of geographical, gender and usage patterns. Read the rest of this entry »

Social media is considered an undisputed powerful tool when it comes to influencing major purchasing decisions across the Web. Many businesses still are apprehensive to employ social media channels largely owing to some myths that they tend carry about these avenues. I already have tried to clear some of these myths. Here are a few more of them that must be removed once and for all. Read the rest of this entry »

Most marketers now realize the fact that they need to employ and leverage social media sites. But this realization on their part does not necessarily mean they get their strategy right and implement their plan in the best possible ways. Certain apprehensions, concerns and misconceptions stop them from effective social media usage, thus preventing maximization of its potential. Read the rest of this entry »

In the current competitive environment, even a minor cribbing from an anonymous customer about you can go viral fast. No company wants to emulate the United Airlines that took a beating after choosing to ignore a frustrated passenger. This angered musician posted a sarcastic song on YouTube about the ‘careless’ airline damaging his guitar. The video has already received over 8 million views. Read the rest of this entry »

It has become imperative for emerging as well as established businesses cutting across domains to ensure an optimum usage of social media. Marketers need the relevant data regarding a business to understand the mindset of their prospects. However, they often wonder how to accomplish the complex task, especially considering its enormity. Read the rest of this entry »

In their quest to generate a large target audience base, full-fledged and competent platforms question and answer format based online platforms are coming up in niche segments. What they essentially try to do is acting as a cache for the research that people conduct on the Web. The platforms try to incorporate all the information on one single link. Over time, the knowledge database grows to cover almost everything one would want to know by asking and replying to others. Read the rest of this entry »