Twitter is a micro blogging tool, and if you have not heard about it yet, you are either living under a rock or never went online (Now’s a good time to subscribe-twit twit.)

Twitter is a micro-blogging site that has millions of people writing what look like encrypted messages that combine #hashtags, @replies, text-speak and shortened URLs to broadcast messages to their followers, and to create searchable mini-websites with every tweet they send.

As a service to our readers, and so they get the most benefit of “Branding Your Business via Twitter”, we have the below handy tips:

OMLogic’s 10 tips for using Twitter;

There is a culture on Twitter just as there is on any social media site. It is important that businesses follow the “unwritten” cultural rules in order to maintain the best image online.

1. Make your profile look active, add link to your website not only in your posts, but also in your profile. Using a nice professional template brings more visibility to your twitter profile; make sure it doesn’t look too funky. It should complement your business.
2. Be genuine with tweets. Don’t try to be something you are not.
3. Don’t send a direct link to your product. Send a link to your blog or a general informational website. Don’t be so blatant about trying to get a sale.
4. Be Active: Not only should you post your own comments, but reply to other people’s comments. Follow people in your industry. Make friends and grow your network
5. Do include plenty of contexts in @replies to give readers an idea of what’s going on even if they are coming in at the end of a conversation. Respond directly to tweets that mention your brand with @replies.
6. Promote Twitter on your site and invite others to follow you: You can’t get followers if no one knows you exist. Display your Twitter URL on your site and ask to be followed.
7. Don’t try to use Twitter to generate leads, or sell anything directly. Instead, count on the company website to do that.
8. Offer live “Twittering” of a special event or breaking news related to your company. But only if you think it adds value to your customers.
9. Do use relevant hash-tags; tweets with # tags appear in twitter trends and search results.
10. Offer advice or tips on using your product or service or directing people to one. Consider it an extension of your customer service department.

Watch Twitter tutorial on YouTube

Wait….!!
“Do not spam. Spam is a big violation on Twitter. You may find your account banned. If that wasn’t bad enough, think about the consequences. Your name, website, and products may be attached to your messages, resulting in a bad reputation”.

Listen…!!
Do use clever forms of advertising. Spamming is prohibited on Twitter, but advertisements are allowed in moderation. If you do not abuse the privilege, you will not find trouble. Even still, use clever forms of advertising. Instead of highlighting your services as a professional web designer, ask readers to review your samples or give you input on your rates. Be sure to include a link.

Best of Luck with Twitter……!!

Discussion Forums have always been a great way of promoting a website and interacting with people. It becomes way easier for you to promote a website, business and or getting traffic to your website especially, when you become a good level participating member in the forums.

So, this post is specially about promoting your business through discussion forums, what should be the right strategy for participation on forums and how to search for the relevant forums.

I have not seen many people discussing the idea of branding through discussion forums. After working extensively on forums, while doing Social Media campaigns, prompted me to write something on Marketing via Discussion Forums.

I must say that discussion forums could be the right solution for your business if you are looking for long term goals rather than craving for quick lead generation. If you have a motto of earning money through quick social media than I must say dude, you are at the wrong place.

Discussion forums are the platforms, where your customers are taking about your product and service may be in favour or against. It is a place where people are looking for the exact and genuine information about a specific product and service from the people who have already used it.

Now, I think many of you have got an idea how useful these forums are from business as well as customer point of view. If we talk about business, this is a platform for tracking all the conversation happening around the world related to your product or your customers.

You can get most out of these forums by participation from your end without directly promoting your business. You should follow all the rules and regulations of the particular forums and should stay away from spamming. Spamming cannot bring any prosperity to your business rather than destroying your online reputation.

The right strategy for participation should be, providing help and suggestions to other members in the forum, ask people to rate your services and products and requesting them for their kind suggestion in enhancing your offerings.

You should maintain Google Alerts or Google Reader to track all the conversation happening around your area of interest, product or service. A list of relevant forums should be maintained, where participation could be done on regular basis. It is not a difficult task to find relevant forums on specific item, as there are large numbers of forums on a specific category. Sometimes you may get confused by big forums involving different categories. These forums certainly have lot of members and participation also happens at higher level. Your job is to create a space for yourself and your brand in these forums under a specific category.

The addition to Discussion forums are Q & A sites like Yahoo Answers, LinkedIn Answers, Answerbag, Wiki Answers and many more. These are some of the best Q and A sites where you’ll be able to find anything on a particular topic being answered genuinely. These sites aimed at providing help to guys seeking suggestions and advice for the product or services being used earlier by people over the internet. A business can take the opportunity of lead generation through offering suggestions and advice on the query being asked. Sites like Yahoo Answers also provides you with score and best answers tag to make you popular among the people answering to the queries. Your answers wull then have edge over other’s and would be ranked much higher anything you suggest..

Participating on forums become much easier and fun, when you start sharing links related to different contests, case studies, events and seminars etc. These are the content which brings traffic and leads to your business rather than leaving a link to your website homepage. It may bring traffic to your site but the bounce rate will be the challenge which you have to face with. Keep in mind don’t always link your post to your website or blog, it’s spamming.

However, you can try advertising under the classified or promotion/advertisement category provided in the list. Don’t flood each column with your content unnecessary o’wise your online reputation will get into danger.

I have tried to keep this post as short and simple as possible and would have also raised few more ideas in your mind. So, please come up with your suggestions which I’d love to hear.

So, I want to implement Social Media Marketing for my business. But how do I start?

The social media strategy for your business should be a function of the business objectives as well as the targeted audience. For e.g. If your audience is more business professionals, choose LinkedIn as the platform. If the audience is teenage audience, choose Orkut as the platform. Let us first define some attributes of various businesses and then explore what they mean:

What are you looking to promote or market?
What do you have that will generate interest of people in Social Media (Product, Concept around a Product, a Service or a Brand)

What are the primary objectives of your social media marketing campaign?
What and how do you want the social media users to engage with what you have for them? (View your offering, providing positive feedback…etc)

What is the rate and pace of content creation in your company?
Do you have sufficient content or relevant concept that social media users will value on an ongoing basis?

Lets explore these attributes in more detail
What are you looking to promote or market?

• Is your product or offering catering to a broad audience or are you targeting a specific customer segment?
• Do you have a new concept or offering you are looking to explore? Are you looking to create a new marketplace?
• Is their some unique community aspect to your product or service? Something beyond your business. This is extremely important since most people don’t want to interact with a business unless they have an instant requirement.

What are the primary objectives of your social media marketing campaign?
Most businesses say ‘yes’ to all the objectives mentioned below, and they are all valid for most businesses. However, a deeper evaluation is required to set up the short term and long term objectives into distinct buckets of primary and secondary goals.

• Awareness and visibility of your product, services or company?
• Brand Promotion
• Interactivity / Engagement with the target group
• Community Creation around your products and services
• Lead and Sales Generation
• Customer Relationship Management
• Reputation Management
• Recruitment
• Survey

What is the rate and pace of content creation in your company?
In social media marketing, content is the king. From short Twitter messages to world-class videos, your content needs to replicate your value proposition and offering. My experience in SMM says this is the single biggest stumbling block for most companies.  Never bite more than you can chew. Be very careful in selecting what social media campaigns you want to run based on what you are willing to commit from a content perspective. Key questions to address are:

• Does the senior management team want to commit their time in helping refine social media marketing content? Authentic participation from the senior management team best helps in building trust and credibility with the customer.
• Do you have a dedicated team for writing content? What you can attain in social media is a function of the quality content you can generate.
• Do you have access to resource that can create good graphics? An image speaks more than a 1000 words; this has never been truer than in the social media world. Attention spans are very limited for you to ensure people notice your messages.
• Do you have access to resources that can create good audio-visuals?
• Do you have people who love researching the internet for finding information and resources on your industry?

Once you have successfully answered all of these questions, you need to look for the right online marketing partner for your business.

Choosing the right expert to implement this on your behalf can be half the battle won. I would always recommend getting online marketing experts for implementation. The only catch is to ensure you choose someone who can understand your business, not only online marketing.

If you like this blog post, or have any questions on implementing SMM for your business, please feel free to communicate here and one of our experts will contact you.

Everyone is talking about ‘Social Media’ these days. SMM is the buzzword in the town. Media is riding on the ‘Social Media’ boom to catch the eyeballs. Yet, most of us are grappling to leverage the ‘true’ value of Social Media Marketing. Isn’t that expected? Today, SMM is going through the journey, which SEO (Search Engine Optimization) traveled around 10 years back and PPC (Pay Per Click) sailed through around 6 years ago.

‘Timing’ in my view is the real opportunity behind SMM. Sooner or later, most of the mysteries (including measurability) around Social Media Marketing are going to be solved - many through tools and others through knowledge sharing. Don’t you want to turn this ‘timing’ (unfair - the way many who’ll be left behind will describe it later) advantage on your side? ‘Yes’ is the obvious answer but do you have the wherewithal to create Social Media success for your business? More importantly, do you have the patience and willingness to learn & experiment with this amazing medium?

Over the last couple of months, after working (and still a long way to go) with various customers (thanks to them for trusting us) across different verticals, we’ve gained (and still learning) some meaningful insights, which today gives us the confidence to evaluate, strategize, plan and execute Social Media Marketing success for us and our esteemed customers. I’ve captured our learnings and insights in the form of presentation shared below.

This presentation essentially encapsulates the framework, which is the context inside of which we think, plan and execute Social Media Campaigns today. Two of the examples of successful implementations of the discussed Social Media Marketing framework - Commonwealth Games 2010 community and Cricket World Cup 2011 Community on Facebook. Also, for those of you who are serious about building community on Social Media, you should check out “Demystifying Community Building on Social Media (Facebook)” presentation and join us for continuous learning at Social Media Community Building Page at Facebook.

I am sure that in due course as we learn and adapt to the fast changing Social World on the Internet, we’ll need to come up with another face to this framework. Your contribution in the form of sharing your experiences, asking questions and agreeing/ disagreeing to our thinking will be highly appreciated. That’s the only way you and we can expect to run faster than rest of the Social world.

I just logged into my Facebook account and the first thing I saw was one of my college senior photographs of his vacation trip to Gomba Romoa.

Facebook Profile

I really liked the photographs and I went on to see all the photographs in the album. The point is I haven’t met this guy in last 10 years and even during my college days, we had never really palled around. And here I am spending 10 mins of my daytime watching his vacation trip photographs. Be the way, my interaction did not end there. I clicked “like” on some the photographs I liked and while watching the photographs, I saw a comment from one of our common friend I vaguely remember. I decided to have a look at his profile and I invited him to be my friend. What I did not realize was whatever I was doing I was unconsciously transferring the information further to all my friends’ community. Now all my friends got to know that I liked something on his profile and also the fact that I am now a friend of another guy named “X”.

What really makes Facebook such a convenient place for engagement?

1. Ease of Use: Facebook has done a remarkable job in designing the user interface. In literally no steps I can accomplish my objective. For example:
1. I can communicate that I like something shared by my friend in a single click.
2. I can play the video my friend has shared on the same page and in a single click.
3. I can add friends in a single click.
4. I can submit my comments in a single click.
5. I am automatically subscribed to the comment stream. I never had to click on “subscribe to comments” anywhere.
6. I can create a new Facebook ad or page or group in less than a minute.


I am sure with the recent acquisition of FriendsFeed, Facebook interface will very soon become even more user friendly.

2. Every action adds to ripple effects: When Facebook started the News Feed feature; there was major uproar across all communities that it violates the privacy of the users. Well it does. No matter what you do on Facebook, your friends will get to know about it, which you may not like. At the same time in return you also get to know what your friends are doing and that is something most of us are interested in. Any information shared over the Facebook comes as news about one of your friend, which will definitely keep us engaged. Moreover, any action taken on that peace of information furthers the ripple effects.
3. Its Addictive: This addictive quality keeps Facebook’s typical user on the site for an average of 169 minutes a month, according to ComScore. Compare that with Google News, where the average reader spends 13 minutes a month checking up on the world, or the New York Times website, which holds on to readers for a mere ten minutes a month.

In case you have further thoughts about Facebook as a platform, feel free to communicate here.

Twitter, undoubtedly is one of the easiest and the most under utilized social media tool. With Social Media being touted as the next wave of innovative and a poised tool for marketers to reach out to the relevant section of audience for a business online.

Being an Online Marketing company, we are always asked by clients, as to what are the best ways of leveraging a social network. How to best utilize a network to its best extent, to derive the maximum value out of it? To answer the same, at OMLogic we have taken the initiative to share our knowledge with the community.

What is Twitter?

Twitter is a social media tool which simply asks you to answer in 140 characters “what are you doing?”. It has overtime evolved into what we now know as a Micro Blogging platform. Twitter is one of the most popular micro blogging platforms and is surely one of the powerful tools in social media.

Out of the various common features of twitter, which include retweet’ing (RT), Direct Messaging (DM) etc. one of the most interesting and helpful features is “HashTags” which is conveyed by the symbol: #

What is a Hashtag?

According to the official source: Hashtags are a community-driven convention for adding additional context and meta-data to your tweets. They’re like tags on Flickr, only added inline to your post. You create a hashtag simply by prefixing a word with a hash symbol: #hashtag.

Where can I find a Hashtag?

• http://hashtags.org is the official resource to know and track the hashtags being used in conversations globally by tweeples
• http://wthashtag.com/Main_Page is one of the most interesting ways of knowing hashtags, and what each of them means, this is one resource I really find useful, when it comes to understanding trends in twitter and establishing inferences to business objectives of branding for your business. Wthashtag, simply put is a user generated wiki of twitter hashtags being used globally

How to use a hashtag?

First, lets understand that hashtags are being followed by people, all across, so only add a hashtag if you think your tweet is adding value to the topic otherwise do not!

Hash tags are widely used while Live Blogging an event

This is something I have been doing for quite sometime now, while blogging some of the most major events in the Indian Industry.

Simply put, if you are adding value to a particular discussion/topic and want to talk about it, creating a trend which people can contribute in and follow, you can use a hashtag. Example if you are an online marketing company and want to talk about or share something on social media, you can use the hashtag: #socialmedia or #SMM

Advantages of using a hashtag?

There are several advantages of using a hashtag, let me list some of them down here:

1. Creation of relevant community of followers on twitter
   • if you are talking about a topic and using a hashtag chances are that there are other people globally on twitter talking about the same, thus they become relevant into your domain of discussion, hence you can connect with them and create meaningful conversations
2. Knowledge Dissemination
   • There is such plethora of knowledge flowing in on twitter, that not everything around is relevant to you/your business. Thus hashtags help you stay connected and updated with the right information which you can leverage to take your business forward
3. Customer/ User feedback
   • Customer/ User feedback is an important aspect of hashtags, I have created rewarding partnerships with some of my followers on twitter and though we may be sitting across the globe, we talk through a common medium, and understand each other in 140 characters. The basis of all of this being our relevancy of the work domain, which we track through hashtags
4. Brand equity tracking
   • As a business, your brand equity is surely one of the most important aspects which determines your credibility and a lot many aspects of your business for you. You can track the conversations happening about your brand on twitter using hashtags and following trends such as #followfriday seeing that how many clients/ users recommend your brand on twitter

These are some of the major ways which are affected by hashtags and can help you better connect with your clients and understand your brand equity, while tracking conversations in real time on twitter.

After the astounding success of OMCAR 2008, OM Careers in Partnership with TiE New Delhi brings OMCAR 2009. While the theme for OMCAR 2008 was to empower Online Marketing professionals in their careers, OMCAR 2009 is going to be an Online Marketing Summit, which promises to empower businesses to grow by leveraging the power of Online Marketing.

The event is a must attend for all online marketing professionals as well as companies who are looking to use online marketing as part of their overall marketing strategy and plans.

OMLogic is a proud sponsor of OMCAR 2009 and I will personally be welcoming you all on Saturday. So, be there. For any questions, please write to me.

What is ADAMO?
Well, you would have seen notebooks, laptops, Mac’s and I am sure just like me, you would be a huge fan who would have gasped on the Mac Book Air, when it was launched.
History repeats itself, just that in technology, we always better historical experiences
DELL’s ADAMO gives the whole proposition a whole new meaning.

Okay, so the product is ready, but how do you take it to the consumer?
Big budget advertising is an option which always exists and to counter the fact, for DELL shelling off a few million dollars at focused advertising in creating the required buzz within the relevant community of people who would buy a notebook as a luxury item, may not be a bad proposition at all.
But there still could be better options right? Did I hear you say better options?
Well, yes and so has DELL explored the one!
Adamobydell.com
Strange, to sell a product and create an outreach in the relevant community DELL has designed a website which displays the various features of the sleek, stylish ADAMO with a highly interactive interface. Clicking on the various points on the product you could really feel the design, the technology and the detailing that has been so intricately built into the product that you don’t bat an eyelid and are in awe of all that is happening on the screen, right in front of your eyes.

It’s a Love story says DELL!

If you think how could something be so detailed and intricately crafted of aluminum, yes I had similar thoughts and the design had me gasping in awe. Advanced Polymer Chemistry allows you to enjoy 4 hours and 53 minutes of battery life if fully charged. And I know how much you want to know the weight of the machine, well all inclusive the ADAMO by DELL weighs a mere 1.81 kgs.

And well, this is how DELL simply makes you fall in love that all they ask from you is your name and email id so that you become one of those first people to have an all exclusive access to the amazing piece of technology.
What is striking for me
As an online marketer its highly interesting for me to see DELL leveraging the Viral nature of a message which could be supported with Social Media Marketing, to take it to the relevant community, thus generating the essential word of mouth supported by a focused online marketing campaign.
This proves, Innovation coupled with a deep sense of how much you understand your client and his business, well you can create successful viral marketing campaigns which take your message ot the community, which from there is taken up and spread by the community itself.
The outreach is Global
Since it’s the internet, well one of the biggest advantages is reaching out to a market which is global and hence by keeping a strict eye on the marketing budgets, going online seems to be the best way to reduce your sales costs but not the revenue!

Do you know that your Google Adwords campaign’s ROI depends significantly on the Quality Score? The quality score not only influences the amount you pay for every Click in your campaign but also determines the number of Clicks your campaign will receive.

However, the way the Ad Auction (Quality Score, Ad Rank, CPC, Ad Position etc) works is a complex equation. Watching this 9 minutes video by Hal Varian, Chief Economist @ Google will demystify the complexity. If you are really serious about generating high ROI for your Google Adwords campaigns, you can’t afford to not educate yourself on Quality Score.

In short, the Adwords Quality Score system is meant to serve all the stake holders of the Google Adwords ecosystem:

• The User - to see relevant ads
• The Advertiser - to display more and more relevant ads -> ROI
• The Search Engine (Google) - to merry the needs of the User and the Advertiser by rewarding relevancy

I recently blogged the annual global conference of IIT Alumni, PanIIT 2008. It was a 3 days event focused on innovation across various domains including Rural Transformation, Entrepreneurship, Technology, and Infrastructure etc.  With roughly 300 CEOs in the delegates and 6 parallel tracks of sessions, this conference offers unmatched depth and breath of experience across various industries. I really felt proud to be part of this event and to blog it live.

We posted 30 posts for 3 days event. Moreover, we used Videos, Slides, and Photos to make our blog post more interesting for the users.  Overall, I think we did a good job as bloggers, but have we met the desired business objectives. We received roughly 10 relevant comments within one month after the event. Looking at the people participation, I think even though we were able to do a good job in covering the entire event but we probably missed out on inspiring delegates for their participation.

Why does that happen? Let’s examine the holistic view. The overall objectives of creating an online presence for a Conference can be broadly divided into 2 categories:

1. Increase Conference Outreach
   1. Reaching out to potential Delegates
   2. Converting Delegates to Attendees
2. Improve Delegates Participation
   1. Networking (Before, During and After the Conference)
   2. Information access
   3. Managing Feedback
   4. Archival and Retrieval of Knowledge-base created during the conference

The marketing of conference poses certain challenges for the Online Marketing Initiatives. Firstly, the conference offers limited time to Market, which makes it difficult to leverage long-term online marketing initiatives. For example if we talk about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Promotion, it take minimum of 6 to 9 months of efforts to get some reasonable returns from SEO Promotion. Therefore in most case it may not be advisable to run a SEO campaign. In certain cases for example if it is a repetitive event, it is possible to leveraging the work done for all previous events. Therefore for such situation SEO promotion might deliver better ROI in the long-term prospective.

Secondly, conference is also marked with impulsive and high volume of participation. In order to offer to deliver the desired value in the short span of time, the work need to start much before the conference starts. Moreover, each and every activity needs to be carried out in alignment with the overall objectives and Blogging is no exception.

We need to have clear understanding of the concerns of target audience at various stages before and after the conference, starting from when they are thinking about attending the conference to the time when they have gone back attending the event. We need to understand the online behavior of target market:

•    What kinds of websites/Blogs do the potential Customers visit?
•    Are there existing communities of Potential Customers on various Social Media sites like linkedin, Fasebook, Orkut etc?
•    What value do we offer at various stages of various stages of conference preparation and what message can communicate each value individually?

The Blogging needs to start at least 6 months before the conference. It is important that we should understand the customers concerns at various stages. Each and every blog post should be aligned with the identified customer concerns. This will definitely help in retaining the precious relevant visitors on the website.

Moreover, the Blog promotion should start at least 6 months in advance across all the relevant traffic generation sources including SlideShare, Flickr, YouTube etc. The message needs to be created for all medias and for all stages before the conference. These messages will act as the sales agents on the social media sites that customer visits. The more relevant the message, the more relevant will be the traffic. Moreover, there are number of community building tools available from example CollectiveX which definitely help in increasing the engagement level of participants. Using such tools will help in retaining and converting the relevant traffic generated from social media websites.

In case you are interested in knowing further about designing an effective conference campaign. Please feel free to drop in your comments below and I will get back to you.