Marketers, get ready for the social networks?

Marketers are continually hopping onto social media marketing as a perfectly productive means of reaching out to more and more people. Even if they are not able to measure the numbers yet, they are keen on using this tool as an effective means of creating the right buzz about themselves

In an innovative big to promote itself, Aquafina created a contest on video networking website MySpace for users to create a winning video. The reward was a trip to none-other-than the Sundance Film Festival. The brand has profiled itself on MySpace since 2006, filling in with podcasts and film festival updates. This was one of their most innovative and effective ways to reach out to the film community. The influence that social media marketing of this kind provides cannot be met with a single line ad.

Closer home, a recent instance is the promotion of Bollywood [s1] film Tashan on Facebook, YouTube and Orkut. Promoters of the film have created a community specific to the film. On Facebook, it runs with the tagline, “Don’t worry about who you are, just carry your Tashan in your heart.” The film got popular even before it was released and the reader profile perfectly complimented the audience the film required.

Social media marketing can be a tricky game. If your existence on the web is simply a platform for your company, you might want to get involved with B2B media marketing that allows you to access the communities you specifically want to target. You can access this on networks like ITtoolbox or LinkedIn.

On the other hand, you can involve more publicly by hosting podcasts, webcasts and blogs for your brand on the numerous social networking websites with their readership of anything like a million. Since people are talking about you anyway, you might as well don the discussion hat and play along. It will only benefit your brand. Cincom Systems, a global software company, has made available a series of online educational & promotional videos, podcasts and screencasts, on the social media sites YouTube, Ning and Facebook. The famous bollywood actor Amitab Bachan, Aamir Khan and other are hooked to blogging. Marketing experts like Dale Wolf runs the perfect customer experience management (www.perfectcem.com) blog, Steve Kayser’s Expert Access newsletter has managed to achieve a phenomenal global subscription base of nearly 141,000 subscribers. These examples truly accentuate the importance of these next generation tools for marketers.

For those who have still not recognized the perfectly simple and productive marketing tool that social media provides, it is time to wake up and smell the coffee. There is no challenging the tremendous traffic that a good posting can attract. These will be people who can add to your business and a lot of them will be ones who will keep coming back to your website.

Thanks to Web 2.0 you can use this master of a marketer to attract more links to your website or the company. The idea is to create a posting or an advertisement that connects to the user on the website you are choosing to harness. Added to this is the low cost advantage that all of us are eventually happy to employ. Search engines also pick up websites that receive natural links from known domain names. These are some first hand advantages of social media marketing that many of us are meaning to ignore so very far into its development.

It’s easy to assume that most of the traffic generated thus will not be productive. But a trend that has been noticed is that while initially you might see a spurt of visitors, the numbers will stabilize soon after. And this will be the number to reckon with. It could be clients, customers, partners, potential partners,. All of whom need to be on your list. It is also not presumptuous to say that a lot of the secondary traffic that visits your website could be people interested in what you provide.

Simply advertising on Web 2.0 is an efficient means of attracting traffic to your website. Because the number of users is so high on this case, it adds to the traffic you will eventually attract. Again, the only trick is to make it available to your target audience because the click, as we all know, is only a flick of a second.

While the profits of such marketing do not add up immediately or even evidently, it will generate a linkage on the web that will support your business through mentions, connects and recommendations. Social media marketing perfectly compliments your other forms of marketing. It can even be a support system for you as this is one means of communication that has no time span or recurring costs involved.

Another term touted with as much ease as social media marketing these days is ‘social media optimization’. With this, brands aim to alter their website such that it makes it easily searchable and receives more mention on blogs and podcasts etc. Adding a blog to your own website is a greater way of going about it. If your website is static, it will get more dynamic with regular updates and with several links connecting to anything that you post.

Social media marketing can therefore be a great means to promote your site through social media networks as well as within 3D worlds like Second Life and There.com.

Instead of randomly rushing through this sea of information, marketers prefer to build on a specific idea for brand awareness and then encourage brand attention and feedback with increased albeit more casual visibility. What cautions them is the user feedback that can also be negative. But one cannot forget that users in this case also become contributors and when the product is good, gladly act as ambassadors. As more threads are attached to your name, viral marketing picks up at an unprecedented pace. And this is where the crux of the game lies.

Marketers are therefore now busy fine tuning themselves to the new needs of this growing media that cannot be ignored. Social media marketing is far removed from traditional concepts of marketing. This makes it a more challenging medium but one that can be most effective in the medium to long run.

Intellectuals are still pondering over measurements that most correctly define the reach of this new media. There are four broad measures identified so far—audience, content tracking, online media analysis and online market research. Whatever the measurements and whatever its reach, opinion is unanimous for social media marketing. There seems to be nothing like it in the near future.

---

[s1]The Indian Film Industry like Hollywood

Sphere: Related Content

Hardware 2.0

Quite recently the term Web2.0 is all over the place and it seems that everyone wants to get over this bandwagon. Though I shouldn't be complaining as I am in the queue to get onto the web2.0, web3.0, web4.0 and so on. These are surely new and exciting times\tools for the marketers.

Well I can go on and on over the Web 2.0 however has selected the topic of Hardware 2.0, hence I need to keep the focus onto the same. A good example of Hardware 2.0 could be iPhone, and with the Apple release of an SDK for the iPhone and iPod touch, we can expect more and more application that we can be used on iPhone. Nokia is not far behind. Though not being an analyst, I will not be able to justify the new paradigm shift in the Hardware business. However with visible trends seen in the case of the Web's of the world surely foresee a new dimension to the hardware and its business as well.  Conceptually it will create a dimensional shift from what and how we know our hardware today. 

We all know how the "Soft" has changed over the years; however can we say the same on the "hard" side. Though this encourages me to think that aren't we to much focus on diversifying in the software and not that much about on the hardware side. Is it to "hard".

The software side has gone and is expected to go through the hyperdisruption however I am yet to see this happening in the hardware side.

With the introduction of the Apple iPhone, and my friend being kind enough to let me see the features of it has forced me to think that we have gone through so much of development in the software, telecommunication, mobile technology however are we still living in the same age of enterprise "hard" automation. Can we we expect it to change? 

Things like Google, Salesforce, Appexchange, Mashup, so on has changed the way we compute today even at an enterprise level. The thing I would like to imagine is, can we move in direction on Hardware "hyperdisruption".  I have been hearing now and then the cloud computing, however still do not know that will it enable an enterprise level disruption.

SMB, SME, "target the small", seems to be the flavour of all enterprise targeted sales. But sometime I do wonder that are the companies gear to understand the implication that the SMB sector entails. I may be talking specific to the Indian domestic market, with not even a single person in the name of an IT department in an SME organization that I have visited or known. Please do not take me wrong, I am talking about companies with annual revenue of $30 millions sustaining the IT on single free email. Then we talk about things like online\on-demand application and we conveniently assume that the organizations we are targeting will have T1 lines with redundancy, backup, etc, etc.

Not going much in detail would like to put the question to wonderful people who have been kind enough to read this post -

• Can we imagine that we will be able to have single "hard" server that will allow us to have or "add to cart" application(s) that are only one time downloadable, application that suits our requirements, at the time when we require, and we do not want to worry about an integration, and also not to worry about the having T1 redundant net lines?
• Switch on & off application as per our requirements.
• Ability to create hardware that does not require a power connection and runs on power from the network cables as phone lines does (conceptually).
• Not to worry about backup, maintenance, etc. as that will build in by the hardware provider who providing you the servers.
• Can we imagine Hard 2.0, Hard 3.0, so on?

The answer is a probable "YES" and I guess it will be sooner than I expect.

Technorati Tags: Hardware 2.0,Future of IT

Sphere: Related Content

On a Lighter Note - "Don't let the cups matter... Enjoy the coffee instead"

On a windy and hot summer afternoon, taking my lunch break I was reading through my mails. I noticed a mail with the above subject line. As it was not too long, therefore gave it a glance. However it summarizes most of what we do.

Here's the story.

A group of alumni, highly established in their careers, got together to visit their old university professor.

Conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work and life.

Offering his guests coffee, the professor went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of coffee and an assortment of cups porcelain, plastic, glass, crystal, some plain looking, some expensive, some exquisite - telling them to help themselves to hot coffee.

When all the students had a cup of coffee in hand, the professor said: 'If you noticed, all the nice looking expensive cups were taken up, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is but normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress.

What all of you really wanted was coffee, not the cup, but you consciously went for the best cups and were eyeing each other's cups.

Now if life is coffee, then the jobs, money and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain Life, but the quality of Life doesn't change.

Some times, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the coffee in it.

Pls. don't let the cups matter... Enjoy the coffee  instead.

Sphere: Related Content

Cincom Socrates Software Helps Complex Manufacturers Create Effective Sales Configuration

Cincom Socrates 8.3 provides deeper integration with SAP solutions

Worldwide software provider, Cincom Systems (http://www.cincom.com), announces that its Cincom SocratesÒ version 8.3 (http://www.cincom.com/sap3) has added deeper integration with SAP® solutions for companies that provide complex products and services. Cincom Socrates is a knowledge-based modeling system that supports SAP solutions and extends business value by providing guided-selling, product-configuration, and proposal-management capabilities for configure-to-order and engineer-to-order manufacturers.

The sales process in configure-to-order and engineer-to-order businesses requires information collaboration over and above standard sales cycles. In order to win deals and drive revenue, today’s information worker must have real-time access to structured and unstructured data at all points of the guided-selling and proposal-management process. Cincom Socrates also works the other way. Text and custom fields from Socrates can easily be inserted into a quote generated within an SAP solution.

“Cincom’s additional business connectors (APIs) have been designed to address some very specific needs for complex manufacturers,” said Ken Noll, SAP Practice Manager for Cincom. “Complex sales proposals often evolve as knowledge is gained in the sales process. By maintaining a connection to the company’s investment in SAP solutions, Cincom helps companies guarantee they are building customer solutions based on proven company capabilities.”

Manufacturers with engineer-to-order or configure-to-order products have successfully streamlined sales, design, and proposal processes by using Cincom to deliver critical product and sales knowledge to the point of sale and reduce “quote-to-cash” time significantly. Cincom has helped manufacturers reduce proposal generation time from five days to 15 minutes, decrease time to close a sale by 80 percent, and cut lead times from 14 weeks to six weeks.

Today’s announcement was made at the SAPPHIRE® 2008 Orlando conference. For more information about Cincom’s products and solutions for complex manufacturers, visit www.cincom.com/manufacturing.

Sphere: Related Content

Simplifying Web 2.0: It’s not really that technical!

If you are not comfortable with technology and its concocted numerical nomenclature. If you haven’t figured out Web 2.0 yet, we give you a load up on what it really means to get connected!

How many of us are comfortable with technology and advancements in it? Not too many, I’m sure. The recent generation is a little more ‘Tech-savvy’ they say, but even then it’s just a very superficial understanding of the terms and their purposes. Under this condition, when someone mentions Web 2.0, it seems a little over your head! Have they actually reinvented the web? Isn’t that what 1.0, 2.0 etc are supposed to mean? Different versions of the same thing. So does this affect the way we use the web? It will probably become more complicated with more tools, more buttons, more of everything to make the user think even more while using it! So many questions that tend to make Web 2.0 seem like some enigma which is understood by just a few and blindly used by the rest. But the fact of the matter is that, Web 2.0 would not exist if it was not for the common user. It is us that make the new version of the Web, and not the geeks in their cubicles writing innumerable lines of code.

Web 2.0 was a term introduced to the world during the first O’Reilly MediaWeb 2.0 conference in 2004, but has never really been accepted widely as the right nomenclature. We could possibly define Web 2.0 as a knowledge-oriented environment where human interactions generate content that is published, managed and used through network applications in a service-oriented architecture.This by itself is obviously confusing and is not how you would want to describe it to someone who you are trying to explain the simplicity of Web 2.0 to! However, I have mentioned it here for those who are interested in knowing the technical description of the term. For the rest, it is basically trying to say that Web 2.0 is a place where you, your friends, your family and anyone else can come share information in various forms and get connected to each other in the process. Basically, let’s come hang out and exchange information!

Simple isn’t it?
Let’s take some examples to get into the spirit of Web 2.0 a little more. How many of us have an Orkut, Facebook or MySpace account? Pretty much everybody. And this is exactly what Web 2.0 is all about. People no longer use the Web just to check their mail and send out information at fixed points of time.It’s now all about making everything real time and sharing and exchanging information then and there. The sites mentioned above allow you to put up photos, write down your thoughts, make a profile that people can browse, share videos and lots more. Suddenly no one on the net is a stranger. People can look through your profile and learn more about yourself even before they have met you. You can connect to people you would never have directly met, but who may be able to help you in a number of ways from hobbies, to accommodation, to education and a lot more. These sites function on user-generated content and that’s what Web 2.0 is all about.

Putting the power in the hands of the user!You will no longer be told what to do online, but will be asked what you want to do. The Web is no longer a place for the ‘Tech –savvy’ or the professionals who want to showcase their skills. It’s all about the common user who wants to share his thoughts, his work, his skills and allows others to view and rate his work.Everybody can now have their own web page, and even a custom URL to give them their own online identity.

Blogs have already been advanced enough to allow you to not only write about your experiences, but to also include pictures, videos and lots of other features that make them a rich source of information and an outlet for the creatively inclined to showcase themselves to the whole world.Gone is the time when you had to have big bucks behind you to do anything online and even then have technical expertise to execute it.

Now, all you need is some basic computer knowledge and you are on your way to destinations unknown! You no longer need a space ship to “Boldly go where no man has gone before!”But for all its plus points and advantages, the Web 2.0 advancement also has some serious privacy invasion and identity theft drawbacks. With the amount of personal and potential sensitive information online, you need to make sure you take care of who is looking at your web pages and blogs. Identity theft for creating bogus accounts, image theft, misuse of personal information are all very serious and real threats that abound in this brave new world of the Web.

The movies “The Net” and “The Net 2.0” dealt with a fictional situation of the ill effects of the World Wide Web, but these seem very plausible with the simplification of the Web of late. But with the ease it introduces and the scope for enrichment of our lives, Web 2.0 cannot be viewed as a bad advancement at all.It’s just up to the user to ensure that he/she uses it responsibly. “With great power comes great responsibility”, said Spiderman and that applies to the Web as well. With the new power and control that it offers to the common user, it is up to him to ensure he uses it carefully and makes sure he watches his own back and other’s as well. At this time of sharing information and thoughts, sharing concerns and watching out for your online colleagues is a must. After all, isn’t that what Web 2.0 is all about. Sharing, exchanging and experiencing what others have.

Sphere: Related Content

IBM to build apps marketplace for SMB

IBM is trying to rally support for an online applications marketplace for small and midsize businesses that it plans to launch later this year.

On Thursday, it outlined plans to create the Global Applications Marketplace, where small businesses will be able to browse and purchase applications from potentially thousands of ISVs around the world, which local IBM channel partners will then install and manage for them.

IBM optimistically compared the marketplace to Amazon.com, because customers will be able to read reviews of products written by other customers. It will also be?like iTunes, in the sense that it will be tied to the vendor's hardware: customers who use the marketplace will have to have an IBM server, just as iTunes customers need an iPod.
The goal is to make it easier for companies with small or nonexistent IT departments to adopt new software and services to help run their businesses. For IBM and its partners, it's a way to generate more business from companies with up to 500 employees, a market largely untapped by IBM thus far.

The initiative, also called the Blue Business Platform, was announced Thursday at IBM's Business Partner Leadership Conference in Los Angeles, where IBM pitched the idea to resellers and ISVs. Competitors will include Microsoft's Small Business Center, Salesforce.com, and eventually, SAP's Business ByDesign.

It will also compete with the Intel Business Exchange, which the chipmaker announced separately on Thursday. Intel's site offers bundles of software and hardware for small businesses, including applications from Salesforce.com, Symantec, Microsoft, Doculex, and Tripwire.

Small businesses will be able to search for applications at IBM's marketplace and enter parameters like the number of employees they have. The system will spit back recommendations, including any IBM infrastructure software that might be appropriate. When the customer decides on an order, IBM sends it to a local reseller who will deploy and manage the software, said Matthew Friedman, vice president of marketing for IBM's Business Systems Division

Success will depend on getting buy-in from ISVs and resellers. To take part, ISVs will have to adopt a set of APIs that allow them to list their software on the marketplace. Other APIs will support remote management capabilities, like the ability to add and remove users or deliver patches, and also allow for integration with other applications and services.
A reseller could connect an application to Amazon's S3 hosted storage service, for example, but only if Amazon chooses to adopt the APIs, Friedman said. Longer term, IBM plans to release other APIs that allow for integration at the data level, allowing resellers to set up business processes, he said.

Only about 10 ISVs have implemented the APIs today, Friedman said, but IBM expects to get many more. Vendors that signalled support Thursday include CFXWorks, which provides credit card processing for retailers; Cincom, which offers a business intelligence product; and InterNetworX, which sells enterprise resource planning software.

IBM expects most of the applications to be installed on premise, the model used by 90 percent of SMBs today, Friedman said, although some software will be offered as a service. The resellers will also be able to incorporate online backup services, he said. The remote management will usually be provided by the reseller.

IBM is setting up hundreds of "innovation centers" around the world where ISVs can go to add the APIs to their software. It is emphasizing the big role that partners will play, although in some cases customers will be able to download and install software themselves, Friedman said. Most customers will want the specialized help that local resellers can provide, he said.

Alienating resellers is the main risk for IBM, said Dan Olds, principal analyst at Gabriel Consulting Group, in Beaverton, Ore. Smaller resellers with little software expertise will benefit the most, he said, but bigger resellers may feel threatened that customers can now figure out what software they need online.

As a small business owner himself, Olds said the service sounds useful. "There are places you can search for applications, like Google, but you don't really get all those choices in one place," he said.

For companies with less than 50 employees, IBM will offer Lotus Foundations Start. It's a package of IBM's Lotus and Domino software that comes pre-installed on a server and is supposed to provide for all a small company's collaboration needs, including e-mail, security, directory services, backup, and recovery.

The product was unveiled at IBM's Lotusphere conference in January. It will be generally available by the end of June, priced starting from about $1,500, Friedman said. It will be the first of other "appliance servers" that IBM plans to release. IBM said it can be set up in 30 minutes and has "self managing" features to make it easy for small companies to use.

Big vendors have been trying for years to tap the SMB market, but have often struggled to meet the individual needs of small companies or come up with a viable business model. IBM said the global market is worth $500 billion, and called it its "largest opportunity for growth."

Courtesy - TMCnet

Sphere: Related Content