Email and Mobile Marketing Blog

Social Networking!! You got it the most happening and the most talked about marketing channel. It got to be because it is the least expensive too. Small business owners, marketers, product mangers, software developers to managing directors and CEO’s of big companies are using social networks to expand and revive their connections.

Young teens initiated Social Networking as a way to make friends online and business professionals have added the marketing twist to this concept. From casual teen talk medium to top executive PR platform, social networking has come a long way. It is so effective that it is used as an integral element in online marketing plan.

The benefits are immense and immediate from finding the jobs to vendors relationships are key. To facilitate the use of social networking I have complied a list of most popular social networking websites.

Twitter
Delicious
StumbleUpon
Facebook
linkedIn
Flickr
YouTube
Slideshare

Mobile Advertising, Mobile Marketing and SEO, Text/SMS marketing, mobile and email marketing, permission based marketing, self service marketing, targeted marketing Add new tag

The term SMO was coined by Rohit Bhargava. Lets begin this writing with defining SMO. It’s a comparatively new term and SMO stands for Social Media Optimization yes the entire buzz around social media and networking. SMO is a form of online marketing that focuses on how to use social media websites to drive traffic, create buzz, build brand recognition and add quality links back to a website. This phenomenon is ready to invade the Search Engine Optimization. Soon we’ll find Social media optimization and marketing experts providing consulting services and writing books.

Social media websites have different categories and depending on the type of business one can decide where to promote the business. Social media websites include social news websites, video sharing websites and social networking websites. The changing face of online marketing is making SMO the new SEO as SMO can be as powerful and effective in building large number of links back to a website thus improving the website popularity and ultimately organic search ranking.

One of the myths about social media is it’s demographics. Most of us believe that teenagers are the ones spending time on social networking. The truth is social network with million of members has millions of adults too. Adults do like to stay connected and interact with their old friends and make new friends via social media. Adult members do share pictures, video etc with their loved ones.

Businesses are aggressively integrating social media in their marketing plan. Social media do helps in achieving marketing objectives like building brand recognition, positive brand & corporate image, promote new products, customer feedback, etc.

Some of the interesting website are mybloglog, myspace, youtube, linkedin,  twitter, etc. MyBlogLog is a great way to get way to get people visit your website and learn more about your business. Twitter is a free social networking service, members can send short messages upto 140 characters to twitter friends. LinkedIn is extremely popular amongst business professionals. The website lets business professional network and interact with like minded people. YouTube and Revver are social networking websites focused on sharing videos.

Online is an open world and SMO is all about honesty, if you are not able to establish credibility you cannot go anywhere. We are sharing information both business and personal so good faith is the key to the success in the world of Social media. Share relevant information, post the information at appropriate websites, build quality links, quality is more important than quantity , stay on top, do it religiously to be on the front page of social news sites. 

Please send your feedback and comments

Kriti Jaising

EkoBuzz

Mobile Marketing and SEO, targeted marketing Rohit Bhargava, SMO, Social Media Networks

With over 2.2 billion mobile users across the globe, mobile is the obvious medium choice for marketers and brand mangers to reach the mass audience. We have seen numerous successful mobile marketing campaigns in different parts of the world and most of them are SMS based. SMS (Short Messaging Services) or Text Messaging is the most popular and commonly used form of mobile marketing services. Besides SMS mobile marketing also includes MMS (Multimedia Messaging Services), Mobile Internet, Mobile Video, Voice Messaging, Mobile Advertising, LBS (Location Based Services) and Mobile Social Networking.

Each category of mobile marketing services is meant to address a different marketing challenge. Not very many marketers and agencies are currently concentrating on MMS, LBS and Mobile Social networking. SMS is simply a text-based message sent to targeted mobile consumers. It is easy to use and is acceptable to all types of mobile phones.

Voice Messaging has tremendous potential as it provides a personalized human touch and consumers are already familiar with this functionality on their mobile phones. Voice can be used as a great customer engagement tool and to drive them to more advanced services like video, downloads, internet etc.

Voice messaging can have different applications - Mobile Advertising, Content Downloads, Streaming Content or Alerts, Viral Voice Application, Interactive Voice Response (IVR), Voice Chat Services and Voice Search.

Mobile Marketing Services providers have different voice messaging options that can be well integrated in the current traditional, non-traditional and digital campaigns.

Voice services will help raise awareness and ultimately, educate consumers who aren’t familiar with mobile data services. Voice provides an easy means of access to an application where consumers can then be sent text messages, multi-media messages, or other access for the voice services.
What is the future of Mobile Marketing? Mobile Web is gaining traction: according to Nielsen Co., In the U.S., 16% of mobile phone owners routinely access the Internet from phones, while 57% use some kind of non voice service, such as sending messages.
Mobile Web, the future has arrived and the mobile phone companies are focusing on selling the new phones with the ability to access the Internet.

Please send your feedback and comments

Kriti Jaising
EkoBuzz

Digital marketing, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Marketing and SEO, Text/SMS marketing, digital direct marketing, mobile and email marketing, permission based marketing, self service marketing, targeted marketing mobile marketing, mobile web, voice messaging, WAP sites

July 9, 2008

How to participate in social media marketing?

Social media has taken the entire marketing world by surprise but truly what
is social media? According to me social media is sharing information and interacting online. User groups are classified as communities. Communities of users connect and converse with each other online using tools such as networking sites (facebook, twitter, etc.), file sharing sites (youtube, etc.), blogs,
widgets, wikis, podcast, forums, etc. Users can generate content in any form like text, pictures, music or video. Communities converse about anything that is important to them including your product and services.

Why is social media important to marketers?
Social media marketing build inbound traffic via links, it makes your website popular and popularity improves your search ranking. Marketers can also listen in to community conversations about their products and services.
Conversations about popularity of product or service, changing consumer
behavior, consumer experience, and other aspect relevant to your product and services can be heard in real time. Participating in social media is key not only to factors above but significant mode for lead generation.

How can companies use social media?
1. Participation at all levels is key: There are generally 3 levels of
participation
a. Listen in to the conversation: Start subscribing and receiving daily
online updates of conversations that are key to your product or service.
b. Comment on conversations that are important to you. This will enable
you to get into those conversations.
c. Launch your own Blog, Podcast, etc. as well as engage with
communities on networking sites.

2. Content is King:
a. Good content is essential to building interest in the online
community.
b. Commitment to consistent good content, daily or bi-weekly is
critical.

3. Promote, Promote & Promote:
a. Promote your content online by ending content with a call to action
like asking readers to provide feedback/comments, adding links to various
sites like digg.com, delicious, etc., engaging in active dialogs with
industry thought leaders, etc.
b. Integrate your content with your online (web, email and mobile)
marketing campaigns

4. Measure:
a. Use a combination of website analytics (for e.g. Google Analytics)
with your direct marketing campaign metrics.
b. Use tools like Technorati, etc. to measure how many times you have
been mentioned online.

Looking forward for your comments.

Kriti Jaising
EkoBuzz

Mobile Marketing and SEO, digital direct marketing