The popularity of Twitter has become, in a word, UNREAL. People "tweet" about waking up in the morning, what they are doing during the day, and what they just ate for breakfast. Others are "tweeting" valuable information and content, linking to articles, and sharing links to music that they enjoy.
Then you have "blatant" spammers. Like with any social media site, they are "blasting" their links in hopes of getting their next "sale". Some of them know better, some don't, and some could care less.
Either way, the majority of users are wondering how to get followers on Twitter?. It is that magical "mystique" that surrounds the average Twitter user. How is it done? How do these Top Twitterers do it? Is there some type of magical formula on how to get followers on Twitter?
Some of these so-called "Gurus" will tell you YES, there is. Follow "my secret system" and get 18,937 Followers in 30-90 Days. But the truth is, that the Top Twitterers don't do it "magically", they do it "systematically".
"Get followers instantly and on auto-pilot" seems to be the trend online marketers are using these days to "hypnotize" people into buying their systems. After all, who wouldn't want to "easily" learn how to get followers on Twitter ( completely on auto-pilot ) while making an extra $200 to $1,000? And on top of that, doing it ALL from the comfort of their living room chair while watching the latest episode of their favorite television program. Are you kidding? Sign ME up for that program NOW!
But realistically, the pure "hype" of these systems are usually enough to turn the average Twitter user off. When enough people start "over saturating" the market, it begins to become old news. People aren't "tweeting" anymore, they are just posting self-serving links. This is not the proper way to gather a large following of people, and in most cases, will get you unfollowed.
So what's the big deal with Twitter anyway? Well, Twitter can be a very valuable business tool if used properly. Dell knows it, and so does CNN. So why is it so hard for the average person to crack the code on how to get followers on Twitter?
In one word, RELEVANCY. Learn who your "customer" is. Don't just spam random links to anyone and everyone in hopes of getting "bites". Knowing your "customer" and offering them "relevant" information will get you much more Twitter followers than random "spam" techniques.
Friday, July 24, 2009
Mass Mass Media Wars
Call it the ‘Social Media Revolution’. Or ‘The Fans Strike Back’. Better still the ‘Mass Mass Media Wars’!
In new unprecedented twist the people – the minions and the masses – are no longer quietly accepting the overarching power of major corporations and are making their opinions felt, rapidly and virally.
Take the case of Harry Potter. The Potter franchise is the heftiest in history making $4.5 billion in box-office revenue worldwide. Its fans are a big part of that success and although its producers, Warner Bros. have accorded the fans their respect, they vastly underestimated how quickly the tide could turn against them if the fans didn’t appreciate any decision they made.
Within hours of Warner Bros’ August 2008 decision to postpone the release of “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” to July 2009, hate mail and death threats began pouring in. Warner Bros executives’ private email addresses circulated via the Web and Youtube posts of angry homemade videos flooded the Internet. The studio retreated with an apology and the promise that “Half-Blood Prince” would now open closer to the studio’s seventh planned Harry Potter film, due out in November 2010, which still didn’t appease die hard muggle fans who’re still muttering about it.
Then there’s the Twitter Effect, the make or break power of tweets, which last week broke Bruno’s poise. Sacha Baron Cohen’s offbeat comedy about an oddball Austrian stylista made $30.4 million in its opening weekend. However the sharp drop from Friday to Saturday in box office figures implied that the film’s apparently insipid comedy and bland writing didn’t wash over with most moviegoers — fans just didn’t dig it and they twittered heavily about their disappointment leading experts to speculate and conjecture about Brüno being the first movie to be defeated by the Twitter Effect.
Another brand getting browbeaten by the social media multitudes is Jamba Juice. Bliss is only being found in their blackberry shake flavour as the company fights off accusations of ripping an ad concept from cult cartoonist David Rees’ Get Your War On. The news broke on Twitter and the masses have made their angry protests, but the Jamba Juice still haven’t said a pip … nor responded on their on its Web site or Facebook page.
Its obvious that brands, corporations and entertainment juggernauts are now more vulnerable to the masses, the consumers, bloggers and growing twitter community and are either unaware of the growing influence of social media, and if they are, are unsure of how to deal with it or handle its unrestrained power.
Rohit Bhargava (Fast Company) says that launching a blog, or a Facebook page or Twitter account isn’t the hardest thing for a major corporation to do – “The hard part is deciding how to use these tools. Ironically, the thing that most brands have to worry about isn’t negativity (as they often fear), it is indifference. The most common “backlash” against company sponsored social media initiatives are the embarrassing sounds of crickets. No one visits and no one cares.”
Rohit goes further and advices corporations to understand their audiences first. To do what they first did before they launched their product – research! Then “Instead of focusing on your shiny new blog or cool new Facebook app, the place to start is to figure out who will be the people behind it. Find the individuals who will be interacting on behalf of your brand in social media, and then give them the tools and support to do it well. All the companies that get credit today for doing social media well – Zappos, Dell, Comcast – have all become comfortable with letting individuals from their company become the faces for their brand. These are the voices that I often call “accidental spokespeople.” Within them is the real secret to using social media to be a brand that actually matters: offering a real human connection.”
Social Media is here to stay so corporations can either ignore it at their own peril, misunderstand it at their own demise or approach like you would any wild animal; slowly, quietly, reassuringly and consistently and in doing so, master social media whispering for the best results. Peace Out!
In new unprecedented twist the people – the minions and the masses – are no longer quietly accepting the overarching power of major corporations and are making their opinions felt, rapidly and virally.
Take the case of Harry Potter. The Potter franchise is the heftiest in history making $4.5 billion in box-office revenue worldwide. Its fans are a big part of that success and although its producers, Warner Bros. have accorded the fans their respect, they vastly underestimated how quickly the tide could turn against them if the fans didn’t appreciate any decision they made.
Within hours of Warner Bros’ August 2008 decision to postpone the release of “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” to July 2009, hate mail and death threats began pouring in. Warner Bros executives’ private email addresses circulated via the Web and Youtube posts of angry homemade videos flooded the Internet. The studio retreated with an apology and the promise that “Half-Blood Prince” would now open closer to the studio’s seventh planned Harry Potter film, due out in November 2010, which still didn’t appease die hard muggle fans who’re still muttering about it.
Then there’s the Twitter Effect, the make or break power of tweets, which last week broke Bruno’s poise. Sacha Baron Cohen’s offbeat comedy about an oddball Austrian stylista made $30.4 million in its opening weekend. However the sharp drop from Friday to Saturday in box office figures implied that the film’s apparently insipid comedy and bland writing didn’t wash over with most moviegoers — fans just didn’t dig it and they twittered heavily about their disappointment leading experts to speculate and conjecture about Brüno being the first movie to be defeated by the Twitter Effect.
Another brand getting browbeaten by the social media multitudes is Jamba Juice. Bliss is only being found in their blackberry shake flavour as the company fights off accusations of ripping an ad concept from cult cartoonist David Rees’ Get Your War On. The news broke on Twitter and the masses have made their angry protests, but the Jamba Juice still haven’t said a pip … nor responded on their on its Web site or Facebook page.
Its obvious that brands, corporations and entertainment juggernauts are now more vulnerable to the masses, the consumers, bloggers and growing twitter community and are either unaware of the growing influence of social media, and if they are, are unsure of how to deal with it or handle its unrestrained power.
Rohit Bhargava (Fast Company) says that launching a blog, or a Facebook page or Twitter account isn’t the hardest thing for a major corporation to do – “The hard part is deciding how to use these tools. Ironically, the thing that most brands have to worry about isn’t negativity (as they often fear), it is indifference. The most common “backlash” against company sponsored social media initiatives are the embarrassing sounds of crickets. No one visits and no one cares.”
Rohit goes further and advices corporations to understand their audiences first. To do what they first did before they launched their product – research! Then “Instead of focusing on your shiny new blog or cool new Facebook app, the place to start is to figure out who will be the people behind it. Find the individuals who will be interacting on behalf of your brand in social media, and then give them the tools and support to do it well. All the companies that get credit today for doing social media well – Zappos, Dell, Comcast – have all become comfortable with letting individuals from their company become the faces for their brand. These are the voices that I often call “accidental spokespeople.” Within them is the real secret to using social media to be a brand that actually matters: offering a real human connection.”
Social Media is here to stay so corporations can either ignore it at their own peril, misunderstand it at their own demise or approach like you would any wild animal; slowly, quietly, reassuringly and consistently and in doing so, master social media whispering for the best results. Peace Out!
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Social Bookmarking Provides Handy Information
Social bookmarking is the essence of efficiency. It takes a very time consuming task and pares it down into quick easy access. What it is, is the ability to save a bookmark to a website that's public, and then 'tag' it with relevant keywords.
If you're simply 'bookmarking' a site, then you save it for future reference. When you utilize 'social bookmarking', you need to register with a bookmarking site where you can store and edit your bookmarks, and not have to keep them on your computer.
The defining of keywords within your social bookmarking is called by the name - 'folksonomy'. It's the act of using a tag for searching all your resources assigned to that particular tag. Soon your whole community of users develop a 'string' or 'structure' of keywords that define the particular resources.
It opens up the doors to opportunities for like-minded people to share ideas and resources on a certain topic of mutual interest. They soon build a whole community centered around a relevant theme. This can be invaluable in research, as using the search engines could take way more time to find the same information.
The reason the search engines take so much more time, is the way that searches can return something 'similar' to what you're looking for, but not quite there. So you have to glean through your searches in order to find a resource that has exactly what you need. Whereas your social bookmarks put you a couple of clicks away from exactly what you need.
If there's any downside to social bookmarking, it's that not everyone makes proper use of their tags. You may have an interest in, say, 'deer hunting'. And one of your users uses the tag 'hunting', without specifying 'deer', then you may end up on a site for duck hunting, elk hunting, hunting equipment, or any number of things. Specificity in keywords is important.
As you can see, social bookmarking is the essence of efficiency. It saves you lots of time when you need information on subjects that are related to your bookmarked topics. And new information is added daily, as more people tag different sites. It really is a good way to get things done for the busy web surfer. There are many social bookmarking sites out there, like Facebook, del. Icio. Us, Furl it, My Space, Digg, Twitter, and many more. So get started with some bookmarking of your own. You'll soon see the efficiency factor involved.
If you're simply 'bookmarking' a site, then you save it for future reference. When you utilize 'social bookmarking', you need to register with a bookmarking site where you can store and edit your bookmarks, and not have to keep them on your computer.
The defining of keywords within your social bookmarking is called by the name - 'folksonomy'. It's the act of using a tag for searching all your resources assigned to that particular tag. Soon your whole community of users develop a 'string' or 'structure' of keywords that define the particular resources.
It opens up the doors to opportunities for like-minded people to share ideas and resources on a certain topic of mutual interest. They soon build a whole community centered around a relevant theme. This can be invaluable in research, as using the search engines could take way more time to find the same information.
The reason the search engines take so much more time, is the way that searches can return something 'similar' to what you're looking for, but not quite there. So you have to glean through your searches in order to find a resource that has exactly what you need. Whereas your social bookmarks put you a couple of clicks away from exactly what you need.
If there's any downside to social bookmarking, it's that not everyone makes proper use of their tags. You may have an interest in, say, 'deer hunting'. And one of your users uses the tag 'hunting', without specifying 'deer', then you may end up on a site for duck hunting, elk hunting, hunting equipment, or any number of things. Specificity in keywords is important.
As you can see, social bookmarking is the essence of efficiency. It saves you lots of time when you need information on subjects that are related to your bookmarked topics. And new information is added daily, as more people tag different sites. It really is a good way to get things done for the busy web surfer. There are many social bookmarking sites out there, like Facebook, del. Icio. Us, Furl it, My Space, Digg, Twitter, and many more. So get started with some bookmarking of your own. You'll soon see the efficiency factor involved.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
How to get started as an event planner
Event planning involves the organization of special events that may be for business purposes, education purposes, social purposes, or somewhere in between. Product launches, conferences, graduations, fashion shows, tradeshows, fairs, weddings and anniversaries, all are specializations of event planning that need to be handled with expertise and appropriate coordination.
Landing a job in the field of event planning is not as complex as it may seem. Although it requires a high degree of professionalism, many people are, in effect, event planners when they organize social gatherings for their friends and family. Planners are people who start in one particular aspect of events. They may be caterers, owners of audiovisual companies, hotel owners and so on. Often, the small events for friends and relatives are their first, cautious steps before getting professionally involved in event planning. This explains how event planners have the exceptional ability to coordinate their events by providing diverse services.
By its nature, event planning involves a risk; the risk of failing to meet clients’ expectations by holding an unsuccessful event. If this happens, clients have no return on their investment, and event planners may experience a severe decline in their reputation. To avoid all these consequences, an event planner conducts a research beforehand to make sure there is demand for the event. Research may mean collecting information about similar events or learning the etiquette of the particular type of event. It may also mean finding out about suppliers and vendors and looking for the right event venue. But, it definitely means asking clients lots of questions in order to get the full idea of their needs and keeping lots of notes. Anything that can guarantee a well-planned event without compromising its success it's a first step towards event planning business.
All the notes kept during the interview with the clients are included in a creative design. This enables an inexperienced event planner to get the feel of the event. As the notes are written down, the design becomes clearer. At this phase, event planners check the clients’ answers and, before making any suggestions, they decide on the feasibility of the event in relation to the event budget.
The next step is to think about the site selection. Even experienced event planners are aware that a trivial omission in the site selection process may cause tremendous problems in event execution. Coordinating event facilities, catering services, meeting rooms, audiovisual equipment, décor, and transportation to/from the event are extremely important in order to decide on the best venue that meets the clients’ requirements at the lowest price.
Experienced event planners admit that, more than the business approach to the profession, what plays a decisive role in becoming a successful event planner is good communication skills and exceptional coordination abilities. Clients need a committed professional, who will be available on weekends, holidays, evenings, and peak seasons. Event planning does not operate 9 to 5, neither strictly downtown. An event planner should be available 24/7 in order to coordinate and supervise the events whenever and wherever is required.
If there is a natural instinct for event planning and a good understanding of the new business arena, then with optimism, dedication and professionalism it is very likely that someone can turn from amateur into a professional event planner.
Landing a job in the field of event planning is not as complex as it may seem. Although it requires a high degree of professionalism, many people are, in effect, event planners when they organize social gatherings for their friends and family. Planners are people who start in one particular aspect of events. They may be caterers, owners of audiovisual companies, hotel owners and so on. Often, the small events for friends and relatives are their first, cautious steps before getting professionally involved in event planning. This explains how event planners have the exceptional ability to coordinate their events by providing diverse services.
By its nature, event planning involves a risk; the risk of failing to meet clients’ expectations by holding an unsuccessful event. If this happens, clients have no return on their investment, and event planners may experience a severe decline in their reputation. To avoid all these consequences, an event planner conducts a research beforehand to make sure there is demand for the event. Research may mean collecting information about similar events or learning the etiquette of the particular type of event. It may also mean finding out about suppliers and vendors and looking for the right event venue. But, it definitely means asking clients lots of questions in order to get the full idea of their needs and keeping lots of notes. Anything that can guarantee a well-planned event without compromising its success it's a first step towards event planning business.
All the notes kept during the interview with the clients are included in a creative design. This enables an inexperienced event planner to get the feel of the event. As the notes are written down, the design becomes clearer. At this phase, event planners check the clients’ answers and, before making any suggestions, they decide on the feasibility of the event in relation to the event budget.
The next step is to think about the site selection. Even experienced event planners are aware that a trivial omission in the site selection process may cause tremendous problems in event execution. Coordinating event facilities, catering services, meeting rooms, audiovisual equipment, décor, and transportation to/from the event are extremely important in order to decide on the best venue that meets the clients’ requirements at the lowest price.
Experienced event planners admit that, more than the business approach to the profession, what plays a decisive role in becoming a successful event planner is good communication skills and exceptional coordination abilities. Clients need a committed professional, who will be available on weekends, holidays, evenings, and peak seasons. Event planning does not operate 9 to 5, neither strictly downtown. An event planner should be available 24/7 in order to coordinate and supervise the events whenever and wherever is required.
If there is a natural instinct for event planning and a good understanding of the new business arena, then with optimism, dedication and professionalism it is very likely that someone can turn from amateur into a professional event planner.
The best way to find sponsors for your event
Great business ideas need to be regarded as great sponsorship opportunities. In the competitive business realities of today, enticing an organization to sponsor an event requires a harmonization of multiple factors.
One of the most common reasons that an organization would be interested in sponsoring an event is if a large audience or a particular target market could be reached. Sponsorship is, in effect, investment of time and money and sponsors trust a company and its reliability to gain exposure and promote a product to a large cluster of professionals.
To ensure that a large audience will attend a particular event, event planners need to keep an updated attendee database by avoiding inviting the same people one year over another and by asking prior attendees to refer them to potential future attendees. It is extremely important to keep expanded guest lists in order to ensure high attendance rates at events.
Besides, event planners need to think ahead and beyond of their business. This implies to involve a broader range or professionals that are indirectly related to their business and may attend the event thus increasing attendance. For instance, if event planners own a travel agency, they may invite hotel owners, employees from airlines and other professionals from the tourism industry.
Another important consideration for an organization to sponsor an event is the enthusiasm the event planners will show when presenting the event to them. Typically, event planners prepare a 20-second pitch that enables them to expose their event as a great sponsorship opportunity, while explaining to the potential sponsor the benefits of sponsorship. A very important detail is that the style of the call should be appropriate to the type and size of the organization. For instance, if the event planners contact a small, local firm, they most likely speak directly to the owner(s) of the company. In this case, the decision will be immediate. If they contact a medium or large organization, they will speak to an officer from the marketing or the human resources department. This means that the decision will take longer because larger companies construct their sponsorship budgets once a year.
Event planners contact also advertising and public relations companies for sponsorship ideas. These companies have a great cluster of clients, which can offer great exposure to the event and an interesting list of sponsors.
Written proposals are sent out to the organizations that have expressed interest in the event. Typically, this should be done well in advance of the event so that organizations have time to review the invitation and take their final decision. In a professional document, event planners include all the necessary details about the event focusing on the exposure gained through the sponsorship. If similar events have been held in the past, event planners include a track record with copies of newspaper clippings and all necessary information. This builds credibility into the event and ensures the benefits of sponsorship. Besides, invitations should include what the sponsors get in return such as advertising, speaking opportunities, distribution of promotional material, naming rights and so on.
Follow up is extremely important in the business world. Two or three weeks after the proposals have been sent out, event planners should follow up the submissions with a phone call to find out which organizations are interested in sponsoring the event.
When the final list of sponsors is prepared, details of the sponsors should be included in the advertising campaign and media releases of the event making sure that all the sponsors receive copies of the promotional materials. Sponsors should also receive any type of updates and should be included in any meeting held in regards to the event.
After the event is held, event planners should send a letter of appreciation, photos of the event, newspaper and magazine clippings and any coverage of the event by the media.
Corporate sponsorship requires encouraging the participation of the sponsors in the event by working closely with them in all stages. Sponsorship is, in effect, a way to build associations with an organization aiming to have a return on investment for all parties involved.
One of the most common reasons that an organization would be interested in sponsoring an event is if a large audience or a particular target market could be reached. Sponsorship is, in effect, investment of time and money and sponsors trust a company and its reliability to gain exposure and promote a product to a large cluster of professionals.
To ensure that a large audience will attend a particular event, event planners need to keep an updated attendee database by avoiding inviting the same people one year over another and by asking prior attendees to refer them to potential future attendees. It is extremely important to keep expanded guest lists in order to ensure high attendance rates at events.
Besides, event planners need to think ahead and beyond of their business. This implies to involve a broader range or professionals that are indirectly related to their business and may attend the event thus increasing attendance. For instance, if event planners own a travel agency, they may invite hotel owners, employees from airlines and other professionals from the tourism industry.
Another important consideration for an organization to sponsor an event is the enthusiasm the event planners will show when presenting the event to them. Typically, event planners prepare a 20-second pitch that enables them to expose their event as a great sponsorship opportunity, while explaining to the potential sponsor the benefits of sponsorship. A very important detail is that the style of the call should be appropriate to the type and size of the organization. For instance, if the event planners contact a small, local firm, they most likely speak directly to the owner(s) of the company. In this case, the decision will be immediate. If they contact a medium or large organization, they will speak to an officer from the marketing or the human resources department. This means that the decision will take longer because larger companies construct their sponsorship budgets once a year.
Event planners contact also advertising and public relations companies for sponsorship ideas. These companies have a great cluster of clients, which can offer great exposure to the event and an interesting list of sponsors.
Written proposals are sent out to the organizations that have expressed interest in the event. Typically, this should be done well in advance of the event so that organizations have time to review the invitation and take their final decision. In a professional document, event planners include all the necessary details about the event focusing on the exposure gained through the sponsorship. If similar events have been held in the past, event planners include a track record with copies of newspaper clippings and all necessary information. This builds credibility into the event and ensures the benefits of sponsorship. Besides, invitations should include what the sponsors get in return such as advertising, speaking opportunities, distribution of promotional material, naming rights and so on.
Follow up is extremely important in the business world. Two or three weeks after the proposals have been sent out, event planners should follow up the submissions with a phone call to find out which organizations are interested in sponsoring the event.
When the final list of sponsors is prepared, details of the sponsors should be included in the advertising campaign and media releases of the event making sure that all the sponsors receive copies of the promotional materials. Sponsors should also receive any type of updates and should be included in any meeting held in regards to the event.
After the event is held, event planners should send a letter of appreciation, photos of the event, newspaper and magazine clippings and any coverage of the event by the media.
Corporate sponsorship requires encouraging the participation of the sponsors in the event by working closely with them in all stages. Sponsorship is, in effect, a way to build associations with an organization aiming to have a return on investment for all parties involved.
Ways to increase attendance at business meetings and events
As a matter of fact, people do enjoy attending events. This is because they want to get informed; to come in contact with the leaders in their field; for networking; for being acknowledged for taking their time to attend; out of curiosity; for entertainment; for gossiping; or just for the free food offered, always in a warm and friendly environment for all participants.
Poor attendance at meetings and events is always your worst nightmare as hosts. You may use an online survey to determine why potential customers do not enroll. You may ask customer service representatives about the most frequent objections. You may even initiate a promotional phone call to find out about the objections with your own ears. However, no matter what you do, the event will be a disaster if you don't come up with ways to overcome these objections.
Designing a successful event aims at increasing your profitability and the potential of your attendees. In your effort to discover the needs and wants of your attendees it is advisable to ask attendee-focused questions that require attendee-centric answers. For instance, questions like 'what would drive greater success in my business?', 'what my customers need?', 'how could I satisfy my customer needs?' may help you design an event that will create interest in your attendees.
Promoting your event requires primarily creativity and persistence. High attendance is important for the success of your event and your business. Emphasizing on your attendees will allow you to generate more awareness for your cause and, ultimately, more success for your event.
Here are some guidelines you may follow to increase attendance when hosting business meetings or events:
> Target the right audience
One common factor that makes people restraining from an event is because they are not really interested. In other words, they do not belong in the right target group. If you host the event for the first time, it will take some time for finding the right target audience so as to achieve high attendance. In contrast, if you are already hosting the event for many years, you may experience a decline in attendance rates as a result of inviting the same people without expanding your guest list. You need to keep an updated attendee database and make sure that you target the right audience. This can happen by asking existing attendees to refer you to potential new attendees so that you increase your attendance rates for next year.
> Invite your audience well ahead the event
Once you start inviting people, you should continue at a constant rate. Inviting people well ahead the event is important because it gives you time to remind them about the event even if they have confirmed attendance. The point is to generate excitement and to make them enthusiastic until the date of the event is hosted. You can mention the event to your guests before sending them invitations and then send an electronic or paper initiation including agenda highlights. After one or two weeks, you may call guests and give them a personal formal invite to the event.
> Build credibility and interest in your event
To participate in your event, people need to be convinced that is worth their time and money. To achieve that, you need to choose major sponsors to advertise your happening, esteemed guest speakers to attract the audience and nicely organized promotional material to communicate the benefits of attending at your event. In doing so, you will able to build credibility into your event, convincing people that is exceptional and worth attending.
> Choose the right location to host your event
Choosing the right location may skyrocket your attendance rates. Don't forget that people enjoy attending events. So, simply offer them an opportunity to detour from their routines and enjoy your happening. When choosing the location for hosting your event, consider a venue that can be conveniently reached because people are busy and do not have too much time. Also, it makes sense to use a venue that has been previously used for other events and people are familiar with. Offer discounts for early enrollment and offer also mail enrollment for people that do not have home computers.
> Provide incentives
Providing incentives raises additional interest. Offer additional discounts for the next year's event that can be prepaid this year. Offer new activities, perhaps workshops, handouts, signed books for a famous guest speaker for the first ten people, who register; anything that can make your event unique, different than the previous years and worth attending.
As there is no magic stick that can increase attendance in your next event, you need to design your events around their needs. In that way, you will host an event that will be a memorable experience for your attendees, who consequently will drive higher attendance to your next meetings.
Poor attendance at meetings and events is always your worst nightmare as hosts. You may use an online survey to determine why potential customers do not enroll. You may ask customer service representatives about the most frequent objections. You may even initiate a promotional phone call to find out about the objections with your own ears. However, no matter what you do, the event will be a disaster if you don't come up with ways to overcome these objections.
Designing a successful event aims at increasing your profitability and the potential of your attendees. In your effort to discover the needs and wants of your attendees it is advisable to ask attendee-focused questions that require attendee-centric answers. For instance, questions like 'what would drive greater success in my business?', 'what my customers need?', 'how could I satisfy my customer needs?' may help you design an event that will create interest in your attendees.
Promoting your event requires primarily creativity and persistence. High attendance is important for the success of your event and your business. Emphasizing on your attendees will allow you to generate more awareness for your cause and, ultimately, more success for your event.
Here are some guidelines you may follow to increase attendance when hosting business meetings or events:
> Target the right audience
One common factor that makes people restraining from an event is because they are not really interested. In other words, they do not belong in the right target group. If you host the event for the first time, it will take some time for finding the right target audience so as to achieve high attendance. In contrast, if you are already hosting the event for many years, you may experience a decline in attendance rates as a result of inviting the same people without expanding your guest list. You need to keep an updated attendee database and make sure that you target the right audience. This can happen by asking existing attendees to refer you to potential new attendees so that you increase your attendance rates for next year.
> Invite your audience well ahead the event
Once you start inviting people, you should continue at a constant rate. Inviting people well ahead the event is important because it gives you time to remind them about the event even if they have confirmed attendance. The point is to generate excitement and to make them enthusiastic until the date of the event is hosted. You can mention the event to your guests before sending them invitations and then send an electronic or paper initiation including agenda highlights. After one or two weeks, you may call guests and give them a personal formal invite to the event.
> Build credibility and interest in your event
To participate in your event, people need to be convinced that is worth their time and money. To achieve that, you need to choose major sponsors to advertise your happening, esteemed guest speakers to attract the audience and nicely organized promotional material to communicate the benefits of attending at your event. In doing so, you will able to build credibility into your event, convincing people that is exceptional and worth attending.
> Choose the right location to host your event
Choosing the right location may skyrocket your attendance rates. Don't forget that people enjoy attending events. So, simply offer them an opportunity to detour from their routines and enjoy your happening. When choosing the location for hosting your event, consider a venue that can be conveniently reached because people are busy and do not have too much time. Also, it makes sense to use a venue that has been previously used for other events and people are familiar with. Offer discounts for early enrollment and offer also mail enrollment for people that do not have home computers.
> Provide incentives
Providing incentives raises additional interest. Offer additional discounts for the next year's event that can be prepaid this year. Offer new activities, perhaps workshops, handouts, signed books for a famous guest speaker for the first ten people, who register; anything that can make your event unique, different than the previous years and worth attending.
As there is no magic stick that can increase attendance in your next event, you need to design your events around their needs. In that way, you will host an event that will be a memorable experience for your attendees, who consequently will drive higher attendance to your next meetings.
Friday, July 10, 2009
The Best Way To Get Fresh MLM Leads – Get Them Yourself
There are hundreds and hundreds of different companies out there that say that they provide people with fresh MLM leads. But there is a challenge with these so called leads, you do not own them. Let me say that again for all of the people that have been going out there and paying thousands of dollars to buy these so called fresh MLM leads, you do not own these leads.
This industry is based around people needing new leads to talk to about their business opportunity. So companies started up with to sell leads to the industry at large. But like I said, you do not own them. Normally when you buy a fresh MLM lead, there is a time restriction on it meaning that you can only call that lead for a period of time, them after that, you have to give the lead back.
Now this is a very funny thing because people do not join a company in the network marketing industry, they join a person. Since this is the case and you buy a lead that you can call for a month, how on earth are you going to build a real relationship with this lead? It might take you 2 weeks just too finally talk to the person and how are you suppose to build any type of real relationship with someone that you have just met via telephone. Your odds are not that good.
But if you went out there and learned how to create your own fresh MLM leads, you could slowly build the relationship over time. And since you own the lead yourself, if they don’t decided to join you for 12 months, no big deal. And the bonus part of this is that by the time that they have joined you, you two will have a strong relationship, which is exactly what you need to be successful in MLM.
So take the time and learn how to create an endless amount of fresh leads for your own MLM business. Through this process of learning, you will master one of the most essential skills in network marketing and you will truly turn into a leader.
This industry is based around people needing new leads to talk to about their business opportunity. So companies started up with to sell leads to the industry at large. But like I said, you do not own them. Normally when you buy a fresh MLM lead, there is a time restriction on it meaning that you can only call that lead for a period of time, them after that, you have to give the lead back.
Now this is a very funny thing because people do not join a company in the network marketing industry, they join a person. Since this is the case and you buy a lead that you can call for a month, how on earth are you going to build a real relationship with this lead? It might take you 2 weeks just too finally talk to the person and how are you suppose to build any type of real relationship with someone that you have just met via telephone. Your odds are not that good.
But if you went out there and learned how to create your own fresh MLM leads, you could slowly build the relationship over time. And since you own the lead yourself, if they don’t decided to join you for 12 months, no big deal. And the bonus part of this is that by the time that they have joined you, you two will have a strong relationship, which is exactly what you need to be successful in MLM.
So take the time and learn how to create an endless amount of fresh leads for your own MLM business. Through this process of learning, you will master one of the most essential skills in network marketing and you will truly turn into a leader.
Organic Search vs. PPC?
Should you invest in Pay Per Click (PPC) or organic Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)?
This is a very big question and to a lot organisations the answer will be both but all too often the wrong decision or balance is made between the two.
We will try and discuss this topic by looking at an example.
One of our customers had a large online marketing budget and they purely allocated this to PPC which did bring in good results. When we were asked to evaluate the website we discovered a whole lost market. When google displayed results you only spotted this company in the sponsored results which meant every person arriving at the website came at a click cost dependent on the keywords. They appeared out of the top 5 pages of natural results for all search terms. We also found a considerable cost in the whole process of finding keywords to bid against and allocating budgets.
What we proposed was to move 25% of the PPC budget to organic SEO for a period of 6 months. We deemed 6 months as a realistic measurement time frame to cope with natural peaks/troughs in the business.
Before starting a detailed report was created of existing success rates and website analytics. This was the marker to compare against.
After just 3 months we started to see the website appear on the top 3 pages of the search engines and our analytics started to show a considerable growth in visitors.
After the 6 months were up the findings showed that organic visitors now accounted for the majority of web site visitors. We discovered that given the same company in sponsored and organic results people tended to click on the organic results, this accounted for the reduction in PPC visitors. The actual closure ratio (visitor to sale) was equal to that in the original PPC only campaign. This meant that sales had increased due to more visitors.
Based on these findings the decision was made to reduce the online marketing budget by 40% then allocate this new reduced value 50/50 between PPC and organic SEO.
This is proving very successful in more sales and also at a lower overall cost to the business.
In conclusion we strongly believe a place for both methods of search but would recommend all website owners to first prepare a marketing plan that shows how to achieve good organic sesrch and then allocate a budget to PPC. Organic search is long term website growth whilst PPC is shorter term results driven.
This is a very big question and to a lot organisations the answer will be both but all too often the wrong decision or balance is made between the two.
We will try and discuss this topic by looking at an example.
One of our customers had a large online marketing budget and they purely allocated this to PPC which did bring in good results. When we were asked to evaluate the website we discovered a whole lost market. When google displayed results you only spotted this company in the sponsored results which meant every person arriving at the website came at a click cost dependent on the keywords. They appeared out of the top 5 pages of natural results for all search terms. We also found a considerable cost in the whole process of finding keywords to bid against and allocating budgets.
What we proposed was to move 25% of the PPC budget to organic SEO for a period of 6 months. We deemed 6 months as a realistic measurement time frame to cope with natural peaks/troughs in the business.
Before starting a detailed report was created of existing success rates and website analytics. This was the marker to compare against.
After just 3 months we started to see the website appear on the top 3 pages of the search engines and our analytics started to show a considerable growth in visitors.
After the 6 months were up the findings showed that organic visitors now accounted for the majority of web site visitors. We discovered that given the same company in sponsored and organic results people tended to click on the organic results, this accounted for the reduction in PPC visitors. The actual closure ratio (visitor to sale) was equal to that in the original PPC only campaign. This meant that sales had increased due to more visitors.
Based on these findings the decision was made to reduce the online marketing budget by 40% then allocate this new reduced value 50/50 between PPC and organic SEO.
This is proving very successful in more sales and also at a lower overall cost to the business.
In conclusion we strongly believe a place for both methods of search but would recommend all website owners to first prepare a marketing plan that shows how to achieve good organic sesrch and then allocate a budget to PPC. Organic search is long term website growth whilst PPC is shorter term results driven.
The Easiest Money to Make Online - Google Ad sense
It seems that Google Ad sense have already dominated the internet marketing business and is now considered the easiest way to making money online.
The key to success with Ad sense is the placing of ads on pages that are receiving high traffic for high demand keywords. The higher the cost-per-click to the advertiser, the more you will receive per click from your site. Obviously, it does not pay to target low cost-per-click keywords and place them on pages that do not receive hits.
With all the people getting online and clicking away everyday, it is no wonder why Google Ad sense has become an instant hit.
For some who are just new to this market, it would be a blow to their pride knowing that their homepage is buried somewhere in the little ads promoting other peoples services. But then, when they get the idea that they are actually earning more money that way, all doubts and skepticism is laid to rest.
There are two major, and clever, factors that some successful webmaster and publishers are learning to blend together in order to make money easier using Ad sense.
1. Targeting high traffic pages on your website. If you check on your logs, you will discover that many of your visitors are taking advantage of the free affiliate marketing resources and e-books that you are offering on your site. In simple words, your ads are working effectively and are generating more clicks. It also means more money for you.
2. Placing Ad sense links on pages that are producing little, or better yet, no profit. By placing Ad sense on a free resources page, you will reduce the amount of potential customers being lost to other sites. Tricky, but effective nonetheless.
When learned to work effectively, these two factors are actually a good source of producing a minimal amount of revenue from a high traffic page. Many people are using this strategy to pick up some extra and cash with Ad sense. This is also especially rewarding to informational sites that focus their efforts on delivering powerful affiliate link free content to their visitors. Now they can gain a monetary return on their services.
With the many techniques that people are now learning on how to make the easiest money by their Ad sense, it is not surprising that Google is trying everything to update and polish their Ad sense in order to maintain their good image.
The possibility of adding is 2nd tier in Ad sense is not impossible. With all the people spending more time in their Ad sense now and still more getting into this line of marketing, there is no doubt about the many new improvements yet to be made. Imagine the smiles on the faces of the webmasters and publishers all around the world if ever they sign up for sub-affiliates and double or even triple the amount that they are already earning.
The one particularly handy money-making feature that is available with Ad sense now is the ability to filter out up to 200 urls. These gives webmasters the option to block out low value offers from their pages as well as competitors to their websites. Talk about taking only those that are advantageous and discarding the ones that seem useless.
With Google Ad sense, the possibilities are limitless. Yet there is also the possibility of someone taking advantage of the easy money process that this internet marketing is doing. If you think more about it, these negative factors may force Google to break down and thrash Ad sense in the process. If that happens, people would have to go back to the old ways of internet marketing that does not make money online as easy as Ad sense.
For now, however, Google Ad sense is here to stay. As long as there are people wanting to earn some easy cash online just using their talents, the future ahead is looking good. Besides with all the strict guidelines that Google is enforcing over Ad sense, it will take awhile for the Ad sense privileges to be spammed and even terminated.
The key to success with Ad sense is the placing of ads on pages that are receiving high traffic for high demand keywords. The higher the cost-per-click to the advertiser, the more you will receive per click from your site. Obviously, it does not pay to target low cost-per-click keywords and place them on pages that do not receive hits.
With all the people getting online and clicking away everyday, it is no wonder why Google Ad sense has become an instant hit.
For some who are just new to this market, it would be a blow to their pride knowing that their homepage is buried somewhere in the little ads promoting other peoples services. But then, when they get the idea that they are actually earning more money that way, all doubts and skepticism is laid to rest.
There are two major, and clever, factors that some successful webmaster and publishers are learning to blend together in order to make money easier using Ad sense.
1. Targeting high traffic pages on your website. If you check on your logs, you will discover that many of your visitors are taking advantage of the free affiliate marketing resources and e-books that you are offering on your site. In simple words, your ads are working effectively and are generating more clicks. It also means more money for you.
2. Placing Ad sense links on pages that are producing little, or better yet, no profit. By placing Ad sense on a free resources page, you will reduce the amount of potential customers being lost to other sites. Tricky, but effective nonetheless.
When learned to work effectively, these two factors are actually a good source of producing a minimal amount of revenue from a high traffic page. Many people are using this strategy to pick up some extra and cash with Ad sense. This is also especially rewarding to informational sites that focus their efforts on delivering powerful affiliate link free content to their visitors. Now they can gain a monetary return on their services.
With the many techniques that people are now learning on how to make the easiest money by their Ad sense, it is not surprising that Google is trying everything to update and polish their Ad sense in order to maintain their good image.
The possibility of adding is 2nd tier in Ad sense is not impossible. With all the people spending more time in their Ad sense now and still more getting into this line of marketing, there is no doubt about the many new improvements yet to be made. Imagine the smiles on the faces of the webmasters and publishers all around the world if ever they sign up for sub-affiliates and double or even triple the amount that they are already earning.
The one particularly handy money-making feature that is available with Ad sense now is the ability to filter out up to 200 urls. These gives webmasters the option to block out low value offers from their pages as well as competitors to their websites. Talk about taking only those that are advantageous and discarding the ones that seem useless.
With Google Ad sense, the possibilities are limitless. Yet there is also the possibility of someone taking advantage of the easy money process that this internet marketing is doing. If you think more about it, these negative factors may force Google to break down and thrash Ad sense in the process. If that happens, people would have to go back to the old ways of internet marketing that does not make money online as easy as Ad sense.
For now, however, Google Ad sense is here to stay. As long as there are people wanting to earn some easy cash online just using their talents, the future ahead is looking good. Besides with all the strict guidelines that Google is enforcing over Ad sense, it will take awhile for the Ad sense privileges to be spammed and even terminated.
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Social Strategies for Web Success
There is no clear answer what is best way to succeed in today’s social network craze. With Facebook and Twitter in the headlines it has become apparent that no matter who you are or what you do having a strategy for your online success is an important on.
Presence
In speaking to hundreds of entrepreneurs that last few years on Network Skill for Careers Success it became clear that there was so many choices as to what to do have a concise focus on how to do it had been lost in translation.
Find a platform and try it. Everday for about ten minutes log in Facebook and check out and learn in small increments. This is what I did couple of years ago and has worked well in understand the versatility and exposure tools the social networks have. You can add articles, blogs, pictures and videos if you like.
With specific intent you can create an interesting profile and be engaged with a community of entrepreneurs, business owner and authors. It takes some getting used to but what you put you get out out. I have saying “Get Connected Make It Happen”. The connected part require some thought and realization as to who your “friends” are and making it happen how you can build a long-term online and perhaps offline relationship with.
I have very few games and other utilities on my facebook page with the reason , that no what I there to do. It goes without says that you can a few but be careful how often you play it could lead to distraction moving forward.
Utilized social playroom to promote articles and videos that I done to prospective clients and has worked well in having a profile to view and evaluate.
Attraction
It’s no secret that building a community is important in the social media. You want people to follow you whether on Twitter or Facebook. Become an expert in a field and tell and share it constantly with your group. From articles you have written online or offline to events that you attend regularly.
Have a social strategy is important resource for you in many ways from either doing research on particular subject or maintain a online relationship with people you may not see everyday.
Rather sifting through your business cards to find people having online resource where you can locate your best 20-50 contacts is crucial
Your sharing the same social space, perhaps in a different association but that doesn’t mean you can’t use it.
Resources
As you learn more about social networks you will come across various site that you may find of interest for different reasons. Do you homework and research.
Being on twenty different social website may be little overwhelming! Having you best 5 is good start. Get used to using them and before you know you will be teaching other how to do it.
There are plenty of useful online webinars of useful information on insight and how to grow and nurture your web presence. Take your time and take and gradual process in the learning and adapting to new social culture.
Trends
Its beginning to appear the social networking is on the rise and will not be going away. You are beginning to see it being use in the media on a daily basis and by business in advertising. Being part of it is staying connected with social online culture. Not being part of is okay. Face to face to conversation will never go away, and for many that is what they like.
Becoming a published author and public speaker that last two years it has become clear that social networking is powerful tool that can be used to promote and market yourself easily and effortlessly to create value and powerful returns using the resources that are around you either online or offline
Presence
In speaking to hundreds of entrepreneurs that last few years on Network Skill for Careers Success it became clear that there was so many choices as to what to do have a concise focus on how to do it had been lost in translation.
Find a platform and try it. Everday for about ten minutes log in Facebook and check out and learn in small increments. This is what I did couple of years ago and has worked well in understand the versatility and exposure tools the social networks have. You can add articles, blogs, pictures and videos if you like.
With specific intent you can create an interesting profile and be engaged with a community of entrepreneurs, business owner and authors. It takes some getting used to but what you put you get out out. I have saying “Get Connected Make It Happen”. The connected part require some thought and realization as to who your “friends” are and making it happen how you can build a long-term online and perhaps offline relationship with.
I have very few games and other utilities on my facebook page with the reason , that no what I there to do. It goes without says that you can a few but be careful how often you play it could lead to distraction moving forward.
Utilized social playroom to promote articles and videos that I done to prospective clients and has worked well in having a profile to view and evaluate.
Attraction
It’s no secret that building a community is important in the social media. You want people to follow you whether on Twitter or Facebook. Become an expert in a field and tell and share it constantly with your group. From articles you have written online or offline to events that you attend regularly.
Have a social strategy is important resource for you in many ways from either doing research on particular subject or maintain a online relationship with people you may not see everyday.
Rather sifting through your business cards to find people having online resource where you can locate your best 20-50 contacts is crucial
Your sharing the same social space, perhaps in a different association but that doesn’t mean you can’t use it.
Resources
As you learn more about social networks you will come across various site that you may find of interest for different reasons. Do you homework and research.
Being on twenty different social website may be little overwhelming! Having you best 5 is good start. Get used to using them and before you know you will be teaching other how to do it.
There are plenty of useful online webinars of useful information on insight and how to grow and nurture your web presence. Take your time and take and gradual process in the learning and adapting to new social culture.
Trends
Its beginning to appear the social networking is on the rise and will not be going away. You are beginning to see it being use in the media on a daily basis and by business in advertising. Being part of it is staying connected with social online culture. Not being part of is okay. Face to face to conversation will never go away, and for many that is what they like.
Becoming a published author and public speaker that last two years it has become clear that social networking is powerful tool that can be used to promote and market yourself easily and effortlessly to create value and powerful returns using the resources that are around you either online or offline
Tweet Like a Pro - How to Use Twitter Tools
Twitter has tons of Twitter tools, which aim at helping you tweet like a pro. Not all these tools will be useful to you, but you can choose the ones that you might like to use. To find exciting things on Twitter, visit http://twitter.pbwiki.com/
Tweetburner: You can use this tool not only to shrink your links, but also to check your link stats.
Foamee: This is a great place for beer.
Finding a User’s Conversation Threads: Use the url http://search.twitter.com/search?q=twittername. When the page loads, you will be requested to provide the twittername of the user whose conversation threads you would like to track.
FeedBlitz: This tool permits you to cross-post articles into Twitter straight from a blog. Type the feed url into the subscribe box and choose Twitter as your subscription option.
TwitterGram: Use this tool to associate your Twitter account with your Flickr account. All you have to do is assign a tag to all your Flickr pictures that you would like to post on Twitter as well.
Twitter "TrackThis": This option enables you to track your FedEx, UPS, DHL, and USPS shipments.
Twittercal: Want to add events to your Google calendar from Twitter? Go to Twittercal and add gCal as your virtual Twitter friend. To add events, you only have to send the event as a direct message to gCal, and it will be added automatically to your Google calendar.
Report Spam: If you have caught a spammer using your tweets and pictures, you can report him/her by sending a message to Twitter's spam watch team.
Get Gmail Notification: You can also use Twitter to get gmail notification. Create a new account at Twitter and set the update status as "Protected." This ensures that the updated don't get public. All you have to do now is to subscribe to your RSS Feed at Gmail using FeedBlitz.
Twitter Alarm: Twitter can alert you at a particular time. Follow Twitter user "timer" and send this user a direct message stating the time at which you would like to be alerted. You will get a ping at that particular time.
TweetBeep: Want to know whenever you are mentioned on Cyberspace? This could really boost your ego, make you feel good, and motivate you. Visit tweetbeep and create alerts for your set of keywords and web addresses. An alert will be dispatched to your inbox whenever someone tweets about your blog post or brand name.
StrawPoll: You can use Twitter to conduct polls by visiting StrawPoll. Your followers can participate by just responding to you.
TweetStats: Would you like to have the complete statistics for your account? Use TweetStats to get the number of tweets your account gets per hour or per month, in addition to the number of responses you get and information about the commonly used interface.
TwitterFriends: To know more about TwitterFriends, check out Darren's review of the same: "TwitterFriends - A Useful Twitter Metrics Tool." Input your twittername and get impressive statistics regarding your followers. In fact, TwitterFriends is the most comprehensive of all Twitter tools.
TwitterGrader: Want to find out how Twitter will rank your account? Use TwitterGrader to find out where you figure in a rank of 0 – 100. This gives you an idea of your influence on Twitter space. Twitter ranks its users on the basis of the number of followers, the following, and the number of tweets. This Twitter tool will also help you find out if you are a Twitter elite member in your country.
ReTweetRank: Get a rank for your account as per the number of tweeters who retweet you.
NearbyTweets: Want to find the people who are tweeting close to you? This tool will help uncover some great potential followers.
Twitoria: Old Twitter users usally face the problem of long following lists, as a result of which they get plenty of spam messages. Twitoria will identify outdated, unwanted, and unused accounts for you. This tool will help you unfollow Twitter users who haven’t tweeted for ages.
Qwitter: Want an alert whenever someone unfollows you? Input your twittername and email address on Qwitter and get an alert whenever such as thing happens. Qwitter, however, has a bad reputation. Users have complained that Qwitter doesn’t alert you immediately. It remains quiet for weeks and months and then suddenly sends 30 alerts for followers who unfollowed you long back.
FriendOrFollow: This tool helps Twitter users find out who is following them and who isn't.
Tweetwasters: Want to know how much time you spend tweeting? This tool will let you know this in exchange for your twittername.
TweetWheel: Use TweetWheel to find out which of your followers are on good terms with each other and are planning a date or a party. This will help you avoid awkward moments.
TwitThis: Do you remember spotting social bookmarking buttons such as Digg and del.i.ciou.s beneath people blog posts? The idea is to encourage people to bookmark the articles if they like them. TwitThis is something similar. Request your readers to tweet the link of your blog post along with a brief summary of it to their followers.
Fail Whale: This sign can annoy you initially, but you have to learn to take it in your stride. It simply means that Twitter is occupied elsewhere and cannot deal with your requirements right now. You can just try again later.
Tweetburner: You can use this tool not only to shrink your links, but also to check your link stats.
Foamee: This is a great place for beer.
Finding a User’s Conversation Threads: Use the url http://search.twitter.com/search?q=twittername. When the page loads, you will be requested to provide the twittername of the user whose conversation threads you would like to track.
FeedBlitz: This tool permits you to cross-post articles into Twitter straight from a blog. Type the feed url into the subscribe box and choose Twitter as your subscription option.
TwitterGram: Use this tool to associate your Twitter account with your Flickr account. All you have to do is assign a tag to all your Flickr pictures that you would like to post on Twitter as well.
Twitter "TrackThis": This option enables you to track your FedEx, UPS, DHL, and USPS shipments.
Twittercal: Want to add events to your Google calendar from Twitter? Go to Twittercal and add gCal as your virtual Twitter friend. To add events, you only have to send the event as a direct message to gCal, and it will be added automatically to your Google calendar.
Report Spam: If you have caught a spammer using your tweets and pictures, you can report him/her by sending a message to Twitter's spam watch team.
Get Gmail Notification: You can also use Twitter to get gmail notification. Create a new account at Twitter and set the update status as "Protected." This ensures that the updated don't get public. All you have to do now is to subscribe to your RSS Feed at Gmail using FeedBlitz.
Twitter Alarm: Twitter can alert you at a particular time. Follow Twitter user "timer" and send this user a direct message stating the time at which you would like to be alerted. You will get a ping at that particular time.
TweetBeep: Want to know whenever you are mentioned on Cyberspace? This could really boost your ego, make you feel good, and motivate you. Visit tweetbeep and create alerts for your set of keywords and web addresses. An alert will be dispatched to your inbox whenever someone tweets about your blog post or brand name.
StrawPoll: You can use Twitter to conduct polls by visiting StrawPoll. Your followers can participate by just responding to you.
TweetStats: Would you like to have the complete statistics for your account? Use TweetStats to get the number of tweets your account gets per hour or per month, in addition to the number of responses you get and information about the commonly used interface.
TwitterFriends: To know more about TwitterFriends, check out Darren's review of the same: "TwitterFriends - A Useful Twitter Metrics Tool." Input your twittername and get impressive statistics regarding your followers. In fact, TwitterFriends is the most comprehensive of all Twitter tools.
TwitterGrader: Want to find out how Twitter will rank your account? Use TwitterGrader to find out where you figure in a rank of 0 – 100. This gives you an idea of your influence on Twitter space. Twitter ranks its users on the basis of the number of followers, the following, and the number of tweets. This Twitter tool will also help you find out if you are a Twitter elite member in your country.
ReTweetRank: Get a rank for your account as per the number of tweeters who retweet you.
NearbyTweets: Want to find the people who are tweeting close to you? This tool will help uncover some great potential followers.
Twitoria: Old Twitter users usally face the problem of long following lists, as a result of which they get plenty of spam messages. Twitoria will identify outdated, unwanted, and unused accounts for you. This tool will help you unfollow Twitter users who haven’t tweeted for ages.
Qwitter: Want an alert whenever someone unfollows you? Input your twittername and email address on Qwitter and get an alert whenever such as thing happens. Qwitter, however, has a bad reputation. Users have complained that Qwitter doesn’t alert you immediately. It remains quiet for weeks and months and then suddenly sends 30 alerts for followers who unfollowed you long back.
FriendOrFollow: This tool helps Twitter users find out who is following them and who isn't.
Tweetwasters: Want to know how much time you spend tweeting? This tool will let you know this in exchange for your twittername.
TweetWheel: Use TweetWheel to find out which of your followers are on good terms with each other and are planning a date or a party. This will help you avoid awkward moments.
TwitThis: Do you remember spotting social bookmarking buttons such as Digg and del.i.ciou.s beneath people blog posts? The idea is to encourage people to bookmark the articles if they like them. TwitThis is something similar. Request your readers to tweet the link of your blog post along with a brief summary of it to their followers.
Fail Whale: This sign can annoy you initially, but you have to learn to take it in your stride. It simply means that Twitter is occupied elsewhere and cannot deal with your requirements right now. You can just try again later.
Earning Money On Twitter – 4 Great Places To Find Advertisements
You can use the following to earn money on Twitter.
1. Be-A-Magpie.com
Advertisers conglomerate at this site and decide whether they would like to pay per view, per click, or per sale. Sign up at this site, supply your twitter details, and choose the ads you would like to tweet. The company will post these ads under your twittername.
Stay away from ads that look as if the advertiser is desperate to boost his/her sales. Remember that Twitter is not the place for aggressive campaigning and hard selling. You could pick a line that strongly resembles one of your tweets. For example, I would pick an ad that says, “I played around with this new insert picture feature on Gmail and found it to be awesome. You can check it out here.” This hardly sounds like an ad; it looks like me tweeting. None of my followers will suspect that I am posting an ad
Be-A-Magpie permits you to choose the time and frequency of ad posting. The site offers many other cool features too, which you can check out once you are there.
2. Twittad.com
Twittad, a social media affinity network
, connects Tweeps and advertisers. While Tweeps can use it to make money out of their Twitter profile pages, advertisers can use it to reach every nook and corner of Twitter, third-party apps, and mobile phones.
How does Twittad work? Tweeps and advertisers meet on Twittad so that the Tweeps can permit advertisers post ads on their profile pages. The payment depends on how long the ad stays on the profile background.
Tweeps can use Twittad to monetize their profile pages in 2 ways:
* They can offer their profile pages for sale on Twittad. This method gives Tweeps the freedom to set their own rate. As soon as the Tweep approves of the advertisement, it appears on the background of the profile page.
* Advertisers announce their requirement for a Twitter profile page and agree to pay a certain amount. Tweeps can apply for the same. If the advertiser approves of the Tweep’s profile page, the ad appears on it and the Tweep earns money.
You start earning as soon as you register your Twitter profile page on Twittad and register for one of the above-mentioned methods or both. Twittad logs into your profile page and places the ad on your profile background. Twittad’s sophisticated technology keeps track of how well the ad is doing on your profile page background. If the ad captures your followers’ attention, you will get paid. The payout is $30.
You might find it a bit difficult to find ads that suit your unique style of tweeting. Still, if you search hard, you will find an ad or two that will fit the background of your profile perfectly. As far as possible, stay away from long-duration ads and stick to short-duration ads.
You must, however, retain the ad for a particular period of time. If you remove it before the expiry date, the advertiser will get alerted and give you a black mark. You don’t want this to happen as it might affect your chances of getting ads in the future.
3. HootSuite.com
HootSuite is a Twitter user’s one-stop shop and serves 2 important functions. First, it shrinks the links you post in your tweets. Second, it helps you earn some extra Google Adsense cash.
When HootSuite shrinks links, it also creates a new webpage that contains a HootSuite banner in addition to the original page whose link it has shrunk. This banner contains your Twitter details, a HootSuite ad, and a small space for a Google ad of your choice. Now, any page you recommend to your followers has your Google ad on it. If your followers click on it, you will earn money.
4. RevTwt.com
RevTwt.com allows you to monetize your tweets. Twitter users who want to make use of it must first register at RevTwt.com with all their Twitter details and PayPal id. Once they have done this, they are free to choose the ads to post as tweets. These tweets will contain the advertiser’s link. Whenever your followers or anybody else clicks on it, you will get paid.
Once again, choose your ads with care. They should look as if you are tweeting. The Twitter community will block you or report you for spamming if they suspect that you are forcing ads on them.
Here are some step-by-step instructions to use your RevTwt.com account.
1. Get a genuine Twitter account; many people sign up for RevTwt without a Twitter account.
2. Sign up at Twtad by providing your Twitter details and PayPal address.
3. Log into RevTwt.com and click on the "Post Ads" tab to start posting ads. Choose ads that look as if you are tweeting. Once you select an appropriate ad, post it as a tweet. Whenever someone clicks on it, you will get paid. Payout is $20.
A Word of Warning
You may post as many ads as you like on Twitter in order to make money; but take care that you don’t spam. Twitter users hate spammers. Posting ads all day and earning money from clicks sounds like a great idea; but in the long run, you might lose your valuable followers. So, tweet a lot about your life, your careers, your vacation, your coffee breaks, and so on. Insert an ad or two in the midst of these tweets. Then, nobody will accuse you of spamming.
1. Be-A-Magpie.com
Advertisers conglomerate at this site and decide whether they would like to pay per view, per click, or per sale. Sign up at this site, supply your twitter details, and choose the ads you would like to tweet. The company will post these ads under your twittername.
Stay away from ads that look as if the advertiser is desperate to boost his/her sales. Remember that Twitter is not the place for aggressive campaigning and hard selling. You could pick a line that strongly resembles one of your tweets. For example, I would pick an ad that says, “I played around with this new insert picture feature on Gmail and found it to be awesome. You can check it out here.” This hardly sounds like an ad; it looks like me tweeting. None of my followers will suspect that I am posting an ad
Be-A-Magpie permits you to choose the time and frequency of ad posting. The site offers many other cool features too, which you can check out once you are there.
2. Twittad.com
Twittad, a social media affinity network
, connects Tweeps and advertisers. While Tweeps can use it to make money out of their Twitter profile pages, advertisers can use it to reach every nook and corner of Twitter, third-party apps, and mobile phones.
How does Twittad work? Tweeps and advertisers meet on Twittad so that the Tweeps can permit advertisers post ads on their profile pages. The payment depends on how long the ad stays on the profile background.
Tweeps can use Twittad to monetize their profile pages in 2 ways:
* They can offer their profile pages for sale on Twittad. This method gives Tweeps the freedom to set their own rate. As soon as the Tweep approves of the advertisement, it appears on the background of the profile page.
* Advertisers announce their requirement for a Twitter profile page and agree to pay a certain amount. Tweeps can apply for the same. If the advertiser approves of the Tweep’s profile page, the ad appears on it and the Tweep earns money.
You start earning as soon as you register your Twitter profile page on Twittad and register for one of the above-mentioned methods or both. Twittad logs into your profile page and places the ad on your profile background. Twittad’s sophisticated technology keeps track of how well the ad is doing on your profile page background. If the ad captures your followers’ attention, you will get paid. The payout is $30.
You might find it a bit difficult to find ads that suit your unique style of tweeting. Still, if you search hard, you will find an ad or two that will fit the background of your profile perfectly. As far as possible, stay away from long-duration ads and stick to short-duration ads.
You must, however, retain the ad for a particular period of time. If you remove it before the expiry date, the advertiser will get alerted and give you a black mark. You don’t want this to happen as it might affect your chances of getting ads in the future.
3. HootSuite.com
HootSuite is a Twitter user’s one-stop shop and serves 2 important functions. First, it shrinks the links you post in your tweets. Second, it helps you earn some extra Google Adsense cash.
When HootSuite shrinks links, it also creates a new webpage that contains a HootSuite banner in addition to the original page whose link it has shrunk. This banner contains your Twitter details, a HootSuite ad, and a small space for a Google ad of your choice. Now, any page you recommend to your followers has your Google ad on it. If your followers click on it, you will earn money.
4. RevTwt.com
RevTwt.com allows you to monetize your tweets. Twitter users who want to make use of it must first register at RevTwt.com with all their Twitter details and PayPal id. Once they have done this, they are free to choose the ads to post as tweets. These tweets will contain the advertiser’s link. Whenever your followers or anybody else clicks on it, you will get paid.
Once again, choose your ads with care. They should look as if you are tweeting. The Twitter community will block you or report you for spamming if they suspect that you are forcing ads on them.
Here are some step-by-step instructions to use your RevTwt.com account.
1. Get a genuine Twitter account; many people sign up for RevTwt without a Twitter account.
2. Sign up at Twtad by providing your Twitter details and PayPal address.
3. Log into RevTwt.com and click on the "Post Ads" tab to start posting ads. Choose ads that look as if you are tweeting. Once you select an appropriate ad, post it as a tweet. Whenever someone clicks on it, you will get paid. Payout is $20.
A Word of Warning
You may post as many ads as you like on Twitter in order to make money; but take care that you don’t spam. Twitter users hate spammers. Posting ads all day and earning money from clicks sounds like a great idea; but in the long run, you might lose your valuable followers. So, tweet a lot about your life, your careers, your vacation, your coffee breaks, and so on. Insert an ad or two in the midst of these tweets. Then, nobody will accuse you of spamming.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
How To Find Friends On Twitter – 2 Secrets Revealed
Twitter allows you to make find friends in any number of ways. First, you can inform your friends, family members, and colleagues that you are on Twitter and request them to join you there. You can also add your Twitter page link to your email signature, enabling the recipients of your emails to find and join you on Twitter.
Alternatively, you can search through the endless list of Twitter users to find people who share your interests and become friends with them. Twitter also presents tools that will help you find and follow other Twitter users.
1. Twellow and JustTweetIt
Twellow and JustTweetIt are sites that can introduce you to other Twitter users who share your interests and goals. Look up their profiles and study the ways in which they use Twitter. Before you decide to follow them, study their blogs and read their bios. Follow them only if they share similar interests with you. You will be wasting your time if you follow people who are interested in a niche that has nothing to do with you.
2. Twitter Search
Twitter Search is another great way to find like-minded people. Twitter Search is Twitter’s special search engine that is not only easy to use, but also gives great results. Use it to find profiles that might interest you.
Once you decide to follow another Twitter user, you will gain access to the network of Twitter users they are following. You will find that it is humanly impossible to read every tweet that is posted on Twitter. But you can glance through them and browse various profiles to find something that interests you. Check the tweets every now and then for a message that might be related to your niche or interests.
Don’t be in a hurry to build your network. Following other Twitter users means opening yourself up to the rest of the Twitter community. When you follow other Twitter users, you make it easy for them to find you. Therefore, follow only those who might be of some use to you.
Monday, July 6, 2009
Learning Tweet Terms – How to Make Yourself Understood on Twitter
When you first step into Twitter space, you will wonder what everybody is tweeting about. New users can be totally confused with Twitter terms; but you will soon get the hang of it. Most Twitter terms begin with the letters 'tw.' For example, "tweet" means a twitter message. tweetup means a Twitter meetup. Before you tweet to other Twitter users, you ought to know the following basic Twitter terms in order to make yourself understood.
* Direct Message: A direct message is a personal message sent to a particular Twitter user. It does not appear on the public timeline.
* @twittername: ‘@’ followed by username of a particular Twitter user means that it is a response to that Twitter user’s tweet. It appears on the public timeline—one the home page of that Twitter user.
* Leave twittername: This indicates a desire on the part of a Twitter user to stop following someone.
* On: This command turns on phone, IM, and mobile phone notifications.
* Off: This command is to turn off notification.
* RT or Retweet: You are retweeting if you are reposting something interesting posted by a Twitter user.
* PRT: This means “please retweet” or “partial retweet.”
* OH: Overheard
* FTL: For the loss
* BTW: By the way
* FTW: For the win
* YMMV: Your mileage may vary
* IMHO: In my honest opinion
* LMK: Let me know
* b/c: Because
* JV: Joint Venture
* Hashtags: Many Tweeters use hashtags (a hash preceding a tag) in order to make it easier for readers to follow that particular tag or tract it. Use the tag on Twitter Search, and you will find other Twitter users tweeting on the same subject—posting events, tips, conference, and so on about the same subject. If you want to track many hashtags, visit Twemes.
WeFollow, Twellow, and Justtweetit are some Twitter directories that can also give you plenty of information on hashtags and tag tracking. While tracking other hashtags, it pays to add your own to the directory, especially if you specialize in a particular niche.
To learn more exciting Twitter terms, visit: http://twitter.com/help/lingo
You might be wondering why Twitter has a different language. The reason for this is simple. Like all Web 2.0 sites, the prosperity of Twitter depends entirely on the quality of the material posted by its users. Twitter is of value today because of the valuable tweets of its users. Twitter will flourish only if the Twitter community flourishes. And, for any community to flourish there must be a basic set of rules and regulations pertaining to language. The guidelines are not to curb the freedom of the users, but only to enable the smooth functioning of Twitter. As you continue using Twitter, you will observe that using Twitter language will actually enrich your Twitter experience.
* Direct Message: A direct message is a personal message sent to a particular Twitter user. It does not appear on the public timeline.
* @twittername: ‘@’ followed by username of a particular Twitter user means that it is a response to that Twitter user’s tweet. It appears on the public timeline—one the home page of that Twitter user.
* Leave twittername: This indicates a desire on the part of a Twitter user to stop following someone.
* On: This command turns on phone, IM, and mobile phone notifications.
* Off: This command is to turn off notification.
* RT or Retweet: You are retweeting if you are reposting something interesting posted by a Twitter user.
* PRT: This means “please retweet” or “partial retweet.”
* OH: Overheard
* FTL: For the loss
* BTW: By the way
* FTW: For the win
* YMMV: Your mileage may vary
* IMHO: In my honest opinion
* LMK: Let me know
* b/c: Because
* JV: Joint Venture
* Hashtags: Many Tweeters use hashtags (a hash preceding a tag) in order to make it easier for readers to follow that particular tag or tract it. Use the tag on Twitter Search, and you will find other Twitter users tweeting on the same subject—posting events, tips, conference, and so on about the same subject. If you want to track many hashtags, visit Twemes.
WeFollow, Twellow, and Justtweetit are some Twitter directories that can also give you plenty of information on hashtags and tag tracking. While tracking other hashtags, it pays to add your own to the directory, especially if you specialize in a particular niche.
To learn more exciting Twitter terms, visit: http://twitter.com/help/lingo
You might be wondering why Twitter has a different language. The reason for this is simple. Like all Web 2.0 sites, the prosperity of Twitter depends entirely on the quality of the material posted by its users. Twitter is of value today because of the valuable tweets of its users. Twitter will flourish only if the Twitter community flourishes. And, for any community to flourish there must be a basic set of rules and regulations pertaining to language. The guidelines are not to curb the freedom of the users, but only to enable the smooth functioning of Twitter. As you continue using Twitter, you will observe that using Twitter language will actually enrich your Twitter experience.
Build Your Network
One of the biggest questions when someone new comes online trying to earn money online is where do I find people to build my network. Usually after the quick and sometimes crushing realization that their marketing campaign relies on the help of other people they want to begin participating within the world of Web 2.0. Now Web 2.0 is no specific type of website marketing, but the conglomeration of any web platform which provides user side feedback. This means any website out there that accepts visitors to interact in a way that gives them the ability to speak is considered Web 2.0. Good examples of websites within the Web 2.0 world are blogs, Twitter, Myspace, Digg, Forums, and other ways that people may transmit info while increasing their network of friends or business partners. Personally I thrive in the social web and use it constantly to not only build friendships that will potentially lead to cross promotion such as three way linking and guest posting, but also learn what is new throughout the online marketing world.
When you begin building your network it will seem like a very daunting task. There will be millions of potential contacts and you are to decide which will be the most productive and useful to your goals. The biggest tip that I can give anyone trying to build a network is start slow and remember etiquette is everything. Never think that anyone owes you or should have your link on their website or blog. It sounds quite simple, but after spending some of your valuable time helping someone out on a social medium to find that they did nothing for you in return may seem irritating to say the least, but in fact is quite common in the webmaster world. Example I personally gave a shout out to a few of the “top dogs” in my niche giving them free backlinks and while reading of course I saw nothing. Should I have taken the links down or placed the rel=”nofollow” tag on them stopping the flow of link juice from my blog to theirs? The simple answer is no, but there are many reasons for this. The biggest one is when you give a link to someone deserving and Google notices who you are linking to they will not consider your site linking to crap and place you in the category of online crap.
Building a network consists of not only personal relationships, but also technical ones. The example above when sharing links is a relationship of technicality rather than personal. These are the relationships that drive the web and should be a consideration when you decide to build a network in the Web 2.0 world. If you run into someone that runs crap (link farm, ffa page, or other “bad neighborhood”) even though they may be the nicest person online do not place them in your network it will only lead to poor placement within the SERPs and this can damage the income of a website dramatically. It is ok to stray from your niche somewhat, but usually when building a network the best relationships will be within your niche. Remember start slow and build your network brick by brick don’t give up.
When you begin building your network it will seem like a very daunting task. There will be millions of potential contacts and you are to decide which will be the most productive and useful to your goals. The biggest tip that I can give anyone trying to build a network is start slow and remember etiquette is everything. Never think that anyone owes you or should have your link on their website or blog. It sounds quite simple, but after spending some of your valuable time helping someone out on a social medium to find that they did nothing for you in return may seem irritating to say the least, but in fact is quite common in the webmaster world. Example I personally gave a shout out to a few of the “top dogs” in my niche giving them free backlinks and while reading of course I saw nothing. Should I have taken the links down or placed the rel=”nofollow” tag on them stopping the flow of link juice from my blog to theirs? The simple answer is no, but there are many reasons for this. The biggest one is when you give a link to someone deserving and Google notices who you are linking to they will not consider your site linking to crap and place you in the category of online crap.
Building a network consists of not only personal relationships, but also technical ones. The example above when sharing links is a relationship of technicality rather than personal. These are the relationships that drive the web and should be a consideration when you decide to build a network in the Web 2.0 world. If you run into someone that runs crap (link farm, ffa page, or other “bad neighborhood”) even though they may be the nicest person online do not place them in your network it will only lead to poor placement within the SERPs and this can damage the income of a website dramatically. It is ok to stray from your niche somewhat, but usually when building a network the best relationships will be within your niche. Remember start slow and build your network brick by brick don’t give up.
6 Ways to Integrate Twitter and Facebook
Twitter and Facebook are not the only social media sites out there-not by a long shot. But they are of course two of the most well known and widely used. They are also very similar in that they both essentially function as "status updates." Because of this similarity, some really great tools and applications have come out which allow users to integrate the two. Here are six of the tools I have used and like:
Twitter clients like Seesmic or Tweetdeck: These are two Twitter desktop clients that allow you to browse your friends' Facebook status updates and update your own status right from their interface-no need to have a web browser open or be logged into the Twitter or Facebook sites.
Twitter or Selective Twitter Status applications: These two Facebook applications allow your tweets to automatically be posted to your profile. Selective Twitter Status is great because you decide which specific tweets go to update your Facebook status by adding #fb after them. This way your friends who aren't familiar with Twitter lingo aren't confused by your frequent status updates.
Vlingo application: Vlingo is a free application for the Blackberry, Nokia and iPhone. It allows you to update your Facebook or Twitter status using your voice right from your phone!
FriendFeed application: If you use FriendFeed, which consolidates all of your social media activities across different networks in one place, you can add the Facebook FriendFeed application. If you are importing your Twitter feed, every time you tweet it will post to your Facebook wall. This may be preferable to updating your status with every tweet such as with the Twitter for Facebook application.
Tweetpo.st: Tweetpo.st is a very cool site which allows you to post tweets as Facebook status updates, post links you tweet on your Facebook wall (so your friends can watch videos and see pictures right in their News Feed), ignore @replies, change @mentions to real names and more. It does all of this by using Facebook Connect.
Custom Profile Box or Extended Info applications: Finally, if you are just looking for a way to let your Facebook friends know that you tweet and encourage them to follow you, you can add one of these Facebook applications. They both allow you to insert a graphic or text, which you can then easily link to your Twitter profile. For example, I added a clickable Twitter bird logo that reads "follow me on Twitter."
Now you can save time and expend less effort on the two most popular social sites by using these helpful (and free!) social networking tools.
Twitter clients like Seesmic or Tweetdeck: These are two Twitter desktop clients that allow you to browse your friends' Facebook status updates and update your own status right from their interface-no need to have a web browser open or be logged into the Twitter or Facebook sites.
Twitter or Selective Twitter Status applications: These two Facebook applications allow your tweets to automatically be posted to your profile. Selective Twitter Status is great because you decide which specific tweets go to update your Facebook status by adding #fb after them. This way your friends who aren't familiar with Twitter lingo aren't confused by your frequent status updates.
Vlingo application: Vlingo is a free application for the Blackberry, Nokia and iPhone. It allows you to update your Facebook or Twitter status using your voice right from your phone!
FriendFeed application: If you use FriendFeed, which consolidates all of your social media activities across different networks in one place, you can add the Facebook FriendFeed application. If you are importing your Twitter feed, every time you tweet it will post to your Facebook wall. This may be preferable to updating your status with every tweet such as with the Twitter for Facebook application.
Tweetpo.st: Tweetpo.st is a very cool site which allows you to post tweets as Facebook status updates, post links you tweet on your Facebook wall (so your friends can watch videos and see pictures right in their News Feed), ignore @replies, change @mentions to real names and more. It does all of this by using Facebook Connect.
Custom Profile Box or Extended Info applications: Finally, if you are just looking for a way to let your Facebook friends know that you tweet and encourage them to follow you, you can add one of these Facebook applications. They both allow you to insert a graphic or text, which you can then easily link to your Twitter profile. For example, I added a clickable Twitter bird logo that reads "follow me on Twitter."
Now you can save time and expend less effort on the two most popular social sites by using these helpful (and free!) social networking tools.
Understanding Brand Loyalty and Its Relation to Customer Satisfaction
Brand is a product or service, which relates a firm’s products or services and reputation with consumer needs and shareholders expectations. Typically being distinctive and authentic, a brand name reflects an organization’s positioning relative to its competitors as well as the organization’s personality in the context of the target market. In the minds of consumers, Lexus is known for pursuit of perfection, Apple for innovation and design and PepsiCo for its appeal to younger generations. Therefore, a strong brand is more than just a name; it is a promise that can be trusted.
Consumers enter into a purchase with certain expectations about a product or a service and satisfaction is the hoped-for-outcome. Those expectations are based on (1) past buying experience, (2) brand connotations, (3) word-of-mouth, (4) the firm’s promotional material and communication, (5) the competitors’ promises, (6) individual persuasibility and perceptual distortion, and (7) price. In this context, brand loyalty occurs as a result of customer satisfaction because consumers commit to a certain brand based on favorable attitudes and behavioral responses.
Brand loyalty can be classified into two broad categories.
Behavioral brand loyalty is measured by the ratio of the times that a repeated purchase occurs over total purchases. This measurement of proportion of purchases includes cognitive, affective and conative features, which imply an indirect relationship between brand loyalty and customer satisfaction. In other words, considerations of customers' perceptions about a brand can make or break a firm’s branding strategy in the context of repetitive purchases when measuring brand loyalty levels.
Attitudinal brand loyalty holds that brand loyalty involves a favorable attitude which reflects a preference or commitment expressed over time. This argument implies that consumers like the particular firm more than its competitors and therefore they express a favorable preference over the firm’s products or services.
Both behavioral and attitudinal brand loyalty consider that consumer have developed a feeling of favorable attitudes towards the organization and therefore they engage in repeat purchases. However, marketing studies hold that, often, repeat purchases occur as a result of convenience or lack of alternatives bearing no intentional component.
The benefits of customer loyalty for a firm are numerous. First of all, loyal customers are less price- sensitive, which means that they are ready to pay a higher price, if required, in order to acquire the product or service. As a result, apart from higher profitability for the firm, the cost incurred for pursuing new customers is reduced. Loyal customers are also strong advocates of the firm playing a powerful role in the decision making process of other people. The word-of-mouth advertisement is a strong marketing tool that improves the firm’s reputation and brings certainty to the firm by enlarging its customer base. In addition, loyal customer expose higher tolerance for mistakes, are willing to provide feedback for any unfulfilled needs, to try additional products and to offer a higher share of wallet.
In conclusion, brand loyalty is highly affected by customer satisfaction and commitment. Loyal customers trust the company and function as reference groups increasing the firm’s reputation and profitability.
Consumers enter into a purchase with certain expectations about a product or a service and satisfaction is the hoped-for-outcome. Those expectations are based on (1) past buying experience, (2) brand connotations, (3) word-of-mouth, (4) the firm’s promotional material and communication, (5) the competitors’ promises, (6) individual persuasibility and perceptual distortion, and (7) price. In this context, brand loyalty occurs as a result of customer satisfaction because consumers commit to a certain brand based on favorable attitudes and behavioral responses.
Brand loyalty can be classified into two broad categories.
Behavioral brand loyalty is measured by the ratio of the times that a repeated purchase occurs over total purchases. This measurement of proportion of purchases includes cognitive, affective and conative features, which imply an indirect relationship between brand loyalty and customer satisfaction. In other words, considerations of customers' perceptions about a brand can make or break a firm’s branding strategy in the context of repetitive purchases when measuring brand loyalty levels.
Attitudinal brand loyalty holds that brand loyalty involves a favorable attitude which reflects a preference or commitment expressed over time. This argument implies that consumers like the particular firm more than its competitors and therefore they express a favorable preference over the firm’s products or services.
Both behavioral and attitudinal brand loyalty consider that consumer have developed a feeling of favorable attitudes towards the organization and therefore they engage in repeat purchases. However, marketing studies hold that, often, repeat purchases occur as a result of convenience or lack of alternatives bearing no intentional component.
The benefits of customer loyalty for a firm are numerous. First of all, loyal customers are less price- sensitive, which means that they are ready to pay a higher price, if required, in order to acquire the product or service. As a result, apart from higher profitability for the firm, the cost incurred for pursuing new customers is reduced. Loyal customers are also strong advocates of the firm playing a powerful role in the decision making process of other people. The word-of-mouth advertisement is a strong marketing tool that improves the firm’s reputation and brings certainty to the firm by enlarging its customer base. In addition, loyal customer expose higher tolerance for mistakes, are willing to provide feedback for any unfulfilled needs, to try additional products and to offer a higher share of wallet.
In conclusion, brand loyalty is highly affected by customer satisfaction and commitment. Loyal customers trust the company and function as reference groups increasing the firm’s reputation and profitability.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Reasons To Retweet - 3 Great Benefits of Retweeting
1. Retweeting Gives Something Valuable to Followers
Twitter users have different reasons for following you. One of those reasons could be that your tweets are of great value to them. When you retweet informative and interesting posts, you are automatically providing something valuable to your followers, who obviously share your tastes and preferences. When you give something valuable to your followers, they are going to remain loyal to you. You might also attract more followers.
On Twitter, there are 2 great ways to provide something of value to followers.
- Create a blog post and tweet a link to it.
- Retweet links to valuable content posted by other Twitter users.
2. Retweeting Benefits Personal Brands
Retweeting is a very effective method of promoting personal brands and winning followers’ loyalty. If you retweet valuable posts, your followers will trust you more than ever. They will then click the links to your products simply because they trust you to provide something of value to them.
3. Retweeting Creates a Bond with Original Posters
If you retweet others’ posts, they will respond by retweeting your posts. Retweeting is actually an act of kindness, and bloggers love repaying such acts of kindness. However, refrain from retweeting simply because you want the favor to be returned. The primary purpose of retweeting is to share valuable content with your followers. Besides, Twitter users don’t just retweet posts. Someone will retweet your link only if you provide top-quality content that is of great use to them.
Does retweeting drive your followers away? Many people are worried that it would. Actually, no such thing will happen. Nobody will unfollow you simply because you retweet someone else’s posts. You might get blocked if you show yourself to be a spammer. However, nobody will stop following your tweets or visiting your blog just because you point out some good content to them. You must remember that readers are kind-hearted and intelligent people.
Retweeting enhances your Twitter experience. At the same time, ineffective retweeting can wreck your traffic and brand reputation. If you retweet in the proper manner, you will succeed in driving more traffic to your websites/blogs and getting connected with other content creators and bloggers in your niche.
Social Media Marketing through Facebook
If you want to make the most of social media marketing today, you better sign up with Facebook. According to a recent report from the Orlando Business Journal, Facebook has far outpaced its competitors in the first quarter of 2009, garnering 78 percent of US social network participants against MySpace’s 42 percent, LinkedIn’s 17 percent and Twitter’s 10 percent.
Worldwide, Facebook was reported to have 307.1 million unique visitors in May 2009 while MySpace had less than half with a mere 123.2 million unique visitors. According to Facebook, its members are sending each other one billion chat messages each day.
As early as 2008, a study done by Internet Retailer and Vovici showed that most online retailers in the US chose to use Facebook as a social media network to help boost sales. A separate study done by Rosetta among the top 100 US online retailers showed that 59% had set up a Facebook fan page. Among these retailers were Best Buy, Kohl’s, Wal-Mart and Toys “R” Us.
In order to make the most of your company’s Facebook fan page, though, you should familiarize yourself thoroughly with social media marketing as a whole, and with the way Facebook itself works in particular. It would be wholly counterproductive to make an online faux pas and earn ill will. Each social media network has its own temperament, after all, and its own set of rules and online etiquette. Members and users also have certain expectations from other members and users.
Perhaps it would be best for a company not to risk experimentation by assigning this task to a newbie. Learn from the mistake of the New York Times whose new social media editor had no extensive knowledge of Twitter before diving in. As a result, her repost meant to point other Tweeter users to an online article ended up taking them to Ebay instead. Do not make the same mistake in Facebook or you will get a lot of negative comments instead of the favorable ones you need. It would be best to leave the task of handling your company’s social media marketing efforts to the experts.
Social media marketing is one of the services offered by Web Dot Com Website Development Philippines, Inc. as a full service web site developer and a web hosting provider with domain name registration services. Web Dot Com recognizes that social media marketing, along with search engine optimization and search engine marketing, is now a necessity in the online marketplace. Having a good website with good landing pages are no longer enough.
twitter to help build your social network
Twitter is quickly becoming a staple for internet marketing and news agencies around the world, with the ability for people to share stories at lightening speed, often faster than most government agencies know about them.
The first step in building your social network empire is of-course to add as many friends as possible. Obviously if your social network is a niched product it is wise to use the “find people” function and to target individuals of whom you think would best suit your social network. For example my social network is called The Cleavage Club and its aim to is to help women express themselves in a non traditional manner. From this I would type into search “lingerie” or even dare I say it “sex toys” this way I am able to attract the type of girl whom is already interested in the field that I am marketing.
Do remember that there are limits on the number of people you are able to add, so once you reach your limit it is advised to go through the people you are following and delete those whom are not following you back. This frees up room to add new followers.
The second step to find relevant followers is to find a person whom is in your niche and has already amassed a number of followers in that field, then simply go to their friend list and add them all. Yes all of this is time consuming, but if you have a cool/ weird enough pitch people will start tweeting about you, exposing you to a larger number of people and the domino effect starts.
Don’t Advertise Your Business - Market It!
Too many clients have come to us only after they have wasted large sums of money by copying their competitors with “me too” advertising. And the media and advertising agencies love it. When you approach an advertising agency, their mission will be to convince you to spend your entire marketing budget with them, not to help you devise a marketing strategy for your business which will look at all available marketing options, not just advertising.
When developing a marketing strategy for your business, you must consider a number of aspects of your marketplace, before even thinking of your business. You need to answer the following questions:
=> Who are your competitors?
=> Who are your customers?
=> Can you segment your marketplace?
=> How do your customers make a buying decision?
=> Who else has customers who could be your customers?
Once you understand your marketplace you should then consider your business. At this point of the marketing process you would ask the following questions:
=> What is the ultimate benefit of my products and services for my customers?
=> Why should people buy from me?
=> What is my offer? (Product / Service / Price / Support / Guarantee etc.)
=> How do I define My Marketplace? (Who / What / Where / When and How)
And only once you have answered these questions, ask the one that most businesses ask first rather than last:
=> How will I promote my business?
When answering this question, consider all the promotional options, not just advertising. Some of the marketing options available to you are:
Networking, newsletters, cold calls, special offers, public relations, referrals, joint ventures, trade shows, seminars, workshops, website, sponsorship, media advertising, yellow pages, direct mail and brochures.
All of these methods are, in one form or another, lead generation strategies. You are buying customers, and the bottom line for everyone of them is the cost per qualified lead. And that’s how you decide how to spend your promotional dollar. When you approach an advertising agency, you must already know how much want to spend on that marketing channel. While they may give you good advice on how to spend your money in their channel, they will not consider alternatives which may be better for your business. It is also essential to consider whether the selected channel is capable of generating qualified leads at a reasonable price. For example, if your product is upmarket, generating leads from the budget market is of no value to you. And there is also false economy in choosing low rating media which often generate no leads at all!
Whichever marketing channel you choose, it is absolutely essential you measure the results from each promotion. Over a period of time, you will learn which ones work best for you. However, this can be a lengthy experience. Using a marketing consultant can greatly reduce the painful and often costly learning curve, and can save you many thousands of dollars in your marketing costs, and even more importantly, in the opportunity cost of lost time.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
I'm officially dropping out of the Twitter gab fest
Back from vacation and it's grand to see that the blabosphere's obsession du jour with all things Twitter remains as rabid as ever. For a while, at least, I suppose it elbows aside the other obsession du jour--the truly distressing state of newspaperdom--at least until word of the inevitable next bankruptcy hits the wire.
But with all due respect to the armchair commentariat, I'm sure there's something more interesting to write about in the wider world of technology. You wouldn't get that impression after randomly scanning headlines on the tech news aggregation sites. That's where the usual suspects are again cluttering up the transom with their latest random brain farts about what Twitter co-founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone ought to do with their amazing little toy.
And I'm not letting us off the hook, either. At one point on Friday, CNET had five--count 'em, five--posts on Twitter (and unfortunately, I'm No. 6).
I can understand why certain folks might be drawn to Twitter--even to the point of pondering the existential import of Oprah's tweets, but come on already. Twitter's a terrific conversational and research tool. Still, can we get a grip?
I'm so thoroughly bored by the mandatory wide-eyed wonder that now accompanies any news event where the story is that people actually post updates on Twitter. "Wow, they're tweeting about the earthquake;" "they're tweeting about the airplane in the East River;" "they're tweeting about the bunion on the president's left toe." Blah, blah, blah.
Despite the outpouring of attention, not everyone is so enamored. I was recently at a dinner hosted by venture capitalist Bill Gurley, whose company, Benchmark Capital, is an investor in Twitter. The person sitting next to me that evening was only a few weeks into her Twitterhood. She didn't get what all the fuss was about. I did my best to convince her that Twitter was a game-changer but she wasn't buying.
Maybe in time her opinion will change, but her lukewarm response offered a reminder. A lot of serious, smart people take a more sober view of Twitter, viewing it as one (possibly useful) technology tool among others in their daily routine. They're not close to drinking the Kool-Aid, and that's something the media forgets.
Well, if Ev & Biz ever do figure out how to harness Twitter's financial potential, wonderful, that would rate as news, and at that point, I'll give a damn. Until then, I'm leaving the daily hand-wringing to others.
What's up, bot? Google tries new Captcha method
Google has released research results about a new test to foil computers pretending to be humans by requiring them to orient an image so it's upright.
A persistent problem on the Internet is screening out automated computer systems that can be used, for example, to sign up for spam-sending e-mail accounts or post comments designed to improve a site's search results. Google, which already devotes a lot of resources to block e-mail and Web spam, has tried a new test to keep the bots at bay.
The test is the latest variation on a screening technique called a Captcha (completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart). The idea is that people can often tell which way is up in a photo, but computers have a harder time.
Captchas are in widespread use today, usually in the form of obscured or distorted text that people can still read. But there's a lot of work in the area, including identifying 3D images and distinguishing between cats and dogs.
Here's how Google authors Rich Gossweiler, Maryam Kamvar, and Shumeet Baluja described the image-orientation technique in their paper (click for PDF):
This task requires analysis of the often complex contents of an image, a task which humans usually perform well and machines generally do not.
Given a large repository of images, such as those from a web search result, we use a suite of automated orientation detectors to prune those images that can be automatically set upright easily. We then apply a social feedback mechanism to verify that the remaining images have a human-recognizable upright orientation.
The main advantages of our Captcha technique over the traditional text recognition techniques are that it is language-independent, does not require text-entry (e.g. for a mobile device), and employs another domain for Captcha generation beyond character obfuscation. This Captcha lends itself to rapid implementation and has an almost limitless supply of images.
We conducted extensive experiments to measure the viability of this technique...Our Captcha technique achieves high success rates for humans and low success rates for bots, does not require text entry, and is more enjoyable for the user than text-based Captcha.
Images can be hard for people to orient upright, too. One 500-person test showed wide disparities in the opinion of which way was up for the left image but not the right image.
(Credit: Google)
The tricky part is finding the right balance between too easy and too confusing. Some images are hard for people to orient correctly, and some have cues--faces, text, blue skies, and green grass--that computers can use to figure out which way is up.
To get around this issue, while being able to draw from the large number of images on the Web, the technique presents people with new images as well as those known to perform well. If people have trouble consistently telling which way is up, that image isn't included in the library.
The researchers like their system in part because the image doesn't have to be obscured or distorted, as in text-based Captchas such as those Google currently employs. But image-based Captchas aren't immune from the bot vs. Web site arms race.
"As advances are made in orientation detection systems, these advances will be incorporated in our filters so that those images that can be automatically oriented are not presented to the user," the researchers said. "The use of distortions may eventually be required."
The city where every arrest gets Twittered
For a short time, it seemed as if the Denton Police Department outside Dallas had been inspired by great communicators such as Ashton Kutcher and CNN.
A Twitter page, headlined "Denton Police," fed details of every arrest the department had performed, coupled with TwitPic mugshots.
This remarkable, real-time communication between the police and outside world surely was a futuristic forerunner to Texas' progression towards secession.
A Twitter page, headlined "Denton Police," fed details of every arrest the department had performed, coupled with TwitPic mugshots.
This remarkable, real-time communication between the police and outside world surely was a futuristic forerunner to Texas' progression towards secession.
Until it was revealed to be the work of University of North Texas senior, Brian Baugh.
Mr. Baugh studies photography and is clearly fascinated by the plethora of things that can be seen online. One of them is the Denton City Jail Custody Report, which Mr. Baugh happily transposed to the unofficial Denton Police Twitter page.
"I just thought it would be a thing between me and my friends," he told the Dallas Observer.
Perhaps you might be thinking that he is to be awarded a commendation from the Denton Police for his ingenuity. And perhaps you might be thinking that all humans should have three feet, two noses, and hair made of recyclable plastic.
Yes, the Denton city attorneys are trying to get the feed shut down, which seems a little peculiar as it isn't as if Mr. Baugh is tweeting anything other than perfectly public information.
"The only way they might shut it down is if they wanted to use the account for themselves," he sagely declared.
But would they use it well?
You see, the Denton police has a MySpace page. It could, perhaps, be this one. However, according to Denton police spokesperson, Ryan Grelle: "It hasn't been updated for months."
Facebook vs. Twitter: How will you stream your world?
The future will be streamed. And streamed some more.
Earlier this week, Facebook unveiled a few notable product revamps: "fan pages" for brands that look and act more like regular member profiles, and a redesigned home page that emphasizes a real-time version of the site's iconic news feed. The keyword here is "streaming," encouraging an even more extensive flow of information with a status update prompt that asks, "What's on your mind?"
Needless to say, "What's on your mind"--which also allows the posting of links, videos, and other content to news feeds--bears quite a bit of resemblance to Twitter's "What are you doing?" prompt. So, especially in light of more rumors and reports about Facebook's spurned attempt to acquire Twitter, expect comparisons between the two services as means of ultra-customized media consumption to escalate.
When Facebook unveiled its redesign I predicted that we'd hear a lot more about the news feed as the new personal portal. That's sort of what many prolific Twitter users have turned the microblogging service into, too. Our Twitter feeds, after all, deliver a whole lot more than updates about what kind of beers our friends just ordered at happy hour: Depending on what you subscribe to, you can get ski reports, links to news headlines and blog feeds, mini-recipes, and celebrity-stalking intel.
But for all the talk about brands building presences on Twitter, Facebook may have gained a slight lead here. I spoke on Thursday to Dan Hart, senior vice president and general manager of MTV Digital, about how the Viacom-owned entertainment brand is using the new Pages to push out more content to members' news feeds. For the first time, brands using Fan Pages can set "status" messages, too, which MTV plans to use for news and updates.
"The status update function is effectively becoming a publish function, and that publish function is text, photos, video, a variety of media," Hart said, "and that media is experienced more as a real-time stream by a Facebook user, and the Facebook user has more control over what occurs in that stream."
That's basically what media companies do with Twitter accounts. And Hart said that MTV has no plans to abandon its presence on Twitter. "I don't think it's a zero-sum choice at all," he said. "We've done really interesting things on Twitter."
But Facebook's advantage is that the revamped news feed can handle different types of content, too: it'll have actual photos and event listings instead of TwitPic and TinyURL links. Filtering controls won't require a third-party app like TweetDeck. On the other hand, Twitter is obviously more open-ended. The messages on it are public and accessible, rather than hidden behind a log-in wall. As useful and innovative as the Facebook news feed may be, it's not searchable--and Twitter clearly hopes that its search feature, which it built in with the acquisition of Summize last year, will be a sort of secret sauce. (Maybe it'll even make money with it.)
Honestly, though, with the amount of buzz about both Facebook and Twitter as the future of real-time information, I give the advantage to whichever one can make all this content less of a mess.
On a related note, this gives aggregation services like FriendFeed a run for their money--why join an external "all-in-one-place" service when the same content is available on Facebook? FriendFeed is better optimized for longer discussion threads, true, but you don't hear a whole lot about marketers jumping on the feed-aggregator bandwagon. If anything, I see FriendFeed moving more toward a message-board role rather than another player in "the stream." But that's a tale for a different day.
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Amazon’s Affiliate Program Ends PPC Arbitrage
Maybe I’m not the best qualified to make assumptions about why Amazon Associates–the online retailers affiliate program–just pulled the plug on allowing affiliates to send referrals via paid search, but that doesn’t stop me from making an educated guess.
PPC Arbitrage.
I suspect that Amazon finally realized that it could do its own keyword bidding and cut out the middle-man–those bidding pennies on long-tail keywords and making dollars in affiliate commissions. Here’s the email that Amazon just sent out to its affiliates:
Dear Amazon Associate:
We’re writing to let you know about a change to the Amazon Associates Program. After careful review of how we are investing our advertising resources, we have made the decision to no longer pay referral fees to Associates who send users to www.amazon.com, www.amazon.ca, or www.endless.com through keyword bidding and other paid search on Google, Yahoo, MSN, and other search engines, and their extended search networks. If you’re not sure if this change affects you, please visit this page for FAQs.
As of May 1, 2009, Associates will not be paid referral fees for paid search traffic. Also, in connection with this change, as of May 1, 2009, Amazon will no longer make data feeds available to Associates for the purpose of sending users to the Amazon websites in the US or Canada via paid search.
This change applies only to the Associates programs in North America. If you are conducting paid search activities in connection with one of Amazon’s Associates Programs outside of the US and Canada, please refer to the applicable country’s Associates Program Operating Agreement for relevant terms and conditions.
We appreciate your continued support and participation in this advertising Program. If you have questions or concerns, please write to us by using the Contact Us form available on Associates Central.
Sincerely,
The Amazon Associates Program
Is this the end of search marketing for Amazon affiliates? Yes, and no. While you can no longer send traffic directly to Amazon via paid search, I’m assuming you can still send searchers to a landing page and THEN send them to Amazon.com. Also, there doesn’t appear to be any restrictions on using search engine optimization (SEO) to send referarals, but good luck trying to get your own affiliate link to rank in Google.
OK, time to hand this over to the Pilgrims that live for affiliate marketing. What’s your take on this move by Amazon?
Google’s Voice Recognition Improves; Please Keep Some Searches to Yourself!
I’ve not had a lot of luck with voice recognition technology. My Acura MDX tempts me to use the built-in voice commands, but my request for "Nearest Mexican restaurant" ends up with the mind-boggling confirmation that my "Air conditioning is set to 74F."
So, you can imagine just how easy it had been for me to resist using the voice command feature of the Google search application on my iPhone. I simply didn’t have the time to make a fool of myself repeating the same search query over and over again. However, just last week I ended my Google voice virginity and finally used a voice command, instead of typing. The result? A surprising–and satisfying–success!
Apparently I’m not the only one switching from typed searches to voice ones. According to Vic Gundotra, VP of engineering for Google:
"We launched it on the iPhone and have seen a 15% jump in accuracy because, as more people use it, we collect more data and our accuracy gets better."
He also went on to tell San Francisco’s Web 2.0 Expo audience that Google sees a bright future for voice search:
"We believe voice search is a new form of search and that it is core to our business," said Vic Gundotra.
Some people are not so optimistic though. Take the BBC’s technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones. He tried the service last year and claimed the results were "pure gibberish."
For example, his query about the next train, West Ealing to Paddington "delivered some useful information about ‘neck strain’ - but no train times".
The misunderstanding came due to Google struggling to understand non-American accents–in this case the Queen’s English–but those issues have since mostly gone away. (Heck, if it can understand my American/British mongrel accent, it can understand anyone’s!)
The big question is, just how many of us will switch to voice recognition for our search queries? And, do we really want to stand next to some guy at a train station while he asks Google: "How do I treat my hemorrhoids?"
Google Hate Is in the Air
We live a world that talks about winners and losers all the time. Trouble is it’s OK to lose big because “Hey, we’re only human and we love to give second chances. Here, have a boatload of taxpayer money to pay your executives who don’t deserve it and have a nice day!” Meanwhile, when a company actually does well there are those to who simply can’t stand a winner that has earned its power. We citizens of the Internet world know that the biggest winner, and as a result the biggest target of haters, is Google.
I read a bit of a rant from a journalist over in the UK and I encourage you to do the same. It is likely to polarize readers pretty quickly. The author uses the following terms to describe the search giant:
WWM – World Wide Monopoly
A threat to the livelihood of individuals and the future of commercial institutions important to the community
A classic monopoly that destroys industries and individual enterprise in its bid for ever greater profits
Delinquent and sociopathic, perhaps the character of a nightmarish 11-year-old
Having a brattish, clever amorality
Well, you get the picture. He is apparently upset about how Google uses its weight to get things done. I can see how that is annoying in many cases but the name calling bit is kind of over the top don’t you think? In North Carolina where I live, if you said those kind of things about anyone you might hear a good ol’ fashioned “Them thar is fightin’ words!” I’m sure Google considers these kind of evaluations like that of a gnat and ignores them or swats them away. What’s interesting to me is that in this world, you can be successful but don’t you dare go past whatever standard of “enough is enough” that some group somewhere has established to fit their own agenda. We want success but if someone else gets it in a way that we don’t like we whine. You can only be as successful as I think you should be. Huh?
I see Google differently. Sure they’re the 900 pound gorilla. Sure there is a bit of bully in them. This bully however is created in many cases just from sheer size. Oh and by the way, they have competition. I look at search like the Big 3 for automobiles in the US. There are huge barriers to entry and the competition is not large in number due to the very nature of the business. Google, however, unlike the automakers who apparently have adopted the Three Stooges as their mascots, has simply done a better job at search than Yahoo, Microsoft, Wikia Search, Lycos, Alta Vista etc etc. by creating a product that helps people get more done at the time that it was needed. They have simply done a better job. Because of that they have won big.
Honestly, I wouldn’t have a business if Google hadn’t done what it has done. So as for the destruction of industries that is called progress. It’s called change. If there was nothing created as a result of the destruction then there is a problem. That’s not the case with the Internet though. The world economy is shifting and Google is helping it happen.
In this world of business, if you create a better mousetrap then you catch more mice. Google catches a lot of mice but they do a lot of good too. Last year, Google’s gift to me for the business I did with them was the chance to help out a local school through DonorsChoose.org. I have an incredible book of letters from kids who benefited from them “forcing me” to help. I would not have done this on my own. They could have sent me a box of t-shirts but no. They helped me to help someone. I am grateful and the kids were ecstatic. No mention of these kinds of things from Google haters is there?
I am not a Google apologist. They are far from perfect. We all are. I just don’t see the point in sitting around and wringing our hands about fairness. Nothing is completely fair. Why do we want it or expect it? Google does a pretty good job in making sense of the Internet for a lot of people. That is actually a good thing. Are they not supposed to make money along the way?
So where are you? Google hater, supporter or do you just tolerate them? Is Google a bully, an enabler or amoral? I bet you have an opinion so please join the discussion.
Twitter Wouldn’t Sell for $1B—Better Make Sure It’s Worth It!
It looks like the biggest April Fool’s Joke was on all of us. Despite persistent rumors that Google was in talks to acquire Twitter (the coolest thing since the last coolest thing since sliced bread), no deal is forthcoming. On its blog, Twitter explains that sometimes they tease talk.
While all this may be protesting too much from both parties, sources are now saying that Twitter CEO Evan Williams wouldn’t sell for a billion dollars, four times what Google is rumored to have placed the microblogging service’s value at.
When it comes to Internet businesses, though, Twitter needs to remember that timing is everything. If their endgame is acquisition, there are a few points they might want to keep in mind:
the economy is down
the mainstream (and less mainstream) media hasn’t yet turned on Twitter (as it has with previous darlings, including MySpace and Facebook)
Twitter doesn’t have a (publicly-discussed) business model
Google has, of course, paid top-dollar for big-ticket properties before. But although its biggest purchase, the $1.65B YouTube, continues to dominate its niche, Google is still struggling to monetize the most popular video site in the world. Are they prepared to take a chance on another service that doesn’t have a concrete way to turn a profit?
BoomTown’s Kara Swisher points out that Twitter could well be worth the price tag—with one caveat:
It is clear that it is onto something significant and perhaps even something quite profitable someday.
That is, providing its execs focus on what’s important—building Twitter’s business and audience—and trying as hard as they can to ignore all the noisy and pointless tweeting from and about its many suitors.
If they can’t, though—and it would be a crying shame—they should just start responding to all those pretty swains and sell out to the highest and most attractive bidder.
Personally, I am hoping they pick the former, as Twitter is turning out to be yet another of Silicon Valley’s great stories of possibility and promise.
Personally, I think it’s a bit soon to say that about Twitter (I Tweet, but I haven’t drunk the Kool aid yet—I could take it or leave it). I think the company’s hype is influencing this (ahem, timing). Back in February, she made a bit more evenhanded assessment:
Twitter—while it says it is poised on the verge of announcing its grand plan to make money—is operating in an arena I have seen many other shooting stars in, traversing a very dangerous crevasse of hype and expectation.
Due to that, it has a very big red target on its back, one that a competitor in the status space—such as the spurned Facebook, whose update business is much bigger—will not ignore.
Right now, Twitter could ask for a lot, as one of the only Web 2.0 companies that everyone is uniformly excited about.
That’s one I can agreement. Right now, Twitter could ask for a lot. But I hope they’ve seen examples of other media-sweetheart social companies holding out for top dollar—only to end up losing their valuation momentum.
What do you think? Should Twitter hold out for either a higher price tag or a viable business model (which would probably garner a higher price tag anyway), or should they take what they can get now?
Pay Your Fake Friends with Fake Money on Facebook
Facebook is really stretching the boundaries of a lot of things lately. The newest ‘deal’ they are offering their users is, how do I say this, pretty stupid. TechCrunch goes into some detail regarding this new opportunity for someone to part with their money for no real good reason.
Facebook is offering a virtual gift product that revolves around credits that you toss to your ‘friends’ in lieu of simply liking something they do. Kind of a pay for performance model of friendship. Talk about taking relationships to a new low. For just $1 you can purchase 100 credits that you can give to your ‘friends’ when they do something you like. I don’t know about you but I think that throwing money at my ‘friends’ when they do something I like is not something I consider regularly. I guess my ‘friends’ would like it but it seems pretty ridiculous to me. It’s like treating your ‘friends’ like performing seals. When they honk the horn on the stage by the pool you can throw them a fish and a sincere “Nice job. Atta boy!”
Well, it’s no more ridiculous when done on Facebook. In a not so transparent play to generate some revenue it looks as if the folks at “the ‘book” are thinking that if just a small percentage of their 200 million users are empty headed enough to spend a buck a month to throw credits at their buddies then they can generate some dollars. As TechCrunch put it
And it’s far better than having to return to the capital markets to raise money at what’s likely to be an embarrassing large discount from that ridiculous $15 billion valuation that Microsoft gave them in 2007. Maybe if enough users buy credits that can never be redeemed back for cash they can stretch their runway a little farther.
From a business perspective these are the kind of ideas that makes one wonder if Facebook’s management hasn’t jumped the shark. There has to be another way to pry a dollar out of the pockets of their users. I don’t have one personally but you have to figure that if a few smart people sat in a room over lunch they can come up with something that doesn’t require giving your ‘friends’ the equivalent of an online tip for their efforts.
Hey, if you comment here I’ll give you some credit. Doesn’t that feel good?
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