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We had a pleasant surprise couple of days back when Google Gods bestowed our home page with a PR3!

Its not that we lost on sleep when we missed a PR change during the first page rank update this year (we were 1 month old then), but were certainly looking forward to a promotion. Most of our back links done by us were genuine and organic comments on blogs talking on the related subjects (apart from the initial basic directory submission).

But we still maintain the stand that one should, for some time to come do honor the Page Rank but never toil hard keeping it as a target, instead focus on useful content for readers , ideas and knowledge and PR will be a pleasant by-product then.

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Many of us would be part of different web 2.0 tools like YouTube, facebook etc. Many of us would have our own blogs. A lot of us would be a part of microblogging tools like Twitter.

So how does someone know about updation on so many different tools by his friend?

How would someone know that his friend has recently posted a blog entry and made a tweet?

Well that is where Friendfeed comes into the picture. It is a content aggregation tool which aggregates content from close to 40 different web 2.0 tools ranging from facebook to YouTube to Twitter. Moreover, it lets you know that your friend has updated something on some utility. And that’s the beauty of the service. It provides you a one stop juncture to know all the things rather than subscribing to ten different things.

So go on and make an account on Friendfeed and let your content be aggregated. And yes, don’t forget to add me.

My Friendfeed account is AnkitG.

Why not share!

As the title shows, this post is about intersection of social media and viral marketing. Man is a social animal and hence socializing comes natural to him. He seeks out places where he could meet, converse and share his thoughts and feelings with others. Therefore it shouldn’t be surprising at all that social media is the next big thing ( or rather has already become The Big Thing. )

Well, the other day I was twittering on my account (Click here for my twitter profile) when I saw a tweet from Guy Kawasaki. Guy is that sort of person who talk sense and doesn’t spam at all unlike many others who have made Twitter as a direct spamming ( just coined the term )medium.

The tweet was enticing. It read something like this: ” What do you think? Should I change my career?“. That is not in verbatim but meaning was more or less same. And then there was one link. Now anyone who knows anything about Guy would have obviously clicked that link since anything he touches turns to gold.

I clicked on the link and found out that a prank has been played on me where Guy was shown in a video contesting for US Presidential elections and how he is gaining the ground.Naturally, I also tried my hand at it. To view results click here.

Now this was a prank but guess what!

What if companies do create effective viral campaigns using social media and micro blogging platforms like twitter for say Brand Buzz?

The applications could be limitless and is left only to the imagination of the marketer. If you have come across any of such campaigns or situations, do share it with us.

Why not share!

Well! that’s the question which is been troubling me for some time now. There have been times when I ask myself why has online advertising not reached to its full potential even in those countries where internet penetration is high? Why does internet still stand at relatively week 6th position after television, direct mail, newspaper, radio and magazine in US in terms of advertising expenditure?

I tried to figure out the answer on the basis of the product involvement aspect. On a very broad level, products could be divided into 2 categories- high involvement products and low involvement products.

Low involvement product are those where not much rational thought process goes into the purchase. Such products are generally cheap and customers show repetitive purchase behavior. Typical example of such products are FMCG products.

On the other hand high involvement products are those which require rational decision making and is much more time consuming. Information seeking is done first and then the judicious decision is made to purchase. Typical example would be electronics goods.

Now to answer the question, let’s look at what is the role of advertising in each case.

As is shown in the table, the role of the advertising in low involving product is to influence and nudge the customers to buy that particular brand. That’s why such advertisements have to be creative in nature so as to stick with customers long enough to influence his purchase.

On the other hand, advertisements meant for high involvement products are meant to generate leads by providing relevant information and enticing customers to make inquiries.

Now when we are clear with the role of advertising for different products, it is easy to understand why online advertising does not work all the time. As everyone would have guessed by now it is the high involvement products which would see much more benefits of online advertising rather than low involvement products. And guess what! The statistics also show the same trend where in expenditure by high involvement products on online advertising is 10% of the total budget whereas it is minuscule 2% for low involving products.

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When looking out for potential Search Marketing service providers, what are the parameters on which a company should be judged?

Each and everyone would have his or her own list of parameters. But the most common ones would be:-

1) Testimonials or the kind of projects the company has undertaken in the past.

2) The experience and qualification of workforce.

3) Whether the company is reliable in terms of quality and timely delivery of the projects.

This is of course true for any industry and not limited to the SEO industry.

But I was wondering why not judge or rank a company by searching for terms like ‘SEO’ or ‘internet marketing’ in Google and look for that company in the search results. And depending upon their rank in listing one can have a fair idea about their capabilities to get higher search ranks (Assuming that the company has SEOd its website for the key terms ‘SEO’ and ‘internet marketing’)

Isn’t it fair? A company which promises you good Search ranking and can get itself in the top page for highly competitive words like ‘SEO’ and ‘internet marketing’ has already proved a point! (Again, assuming no black hat SEO techniques are used). Care should be taken as the focus is only on search engine optimization and not the whole Search engine marketing.

Why not share!