The Business Of Blogging

Posted by Nikhil on Apr 20th, 2009 | one comment

Blogs have changed the face of business by making it an online meeting point. Tenders and open offers are a blast from the past, since digital age has been hit by the blogging bug.

What was primarily an ‘online diary’ became a ‘virtual space’ for me to network. I’ve found many a client and business online, including my PR agent (who technically, found me online). Though my blog was a space for my personal rants, it has grown over the years, as have I.

Undoubtedly, it provides an insight into business, and this digital age, I trust blogs more than websites. The platform serves as a platform to update, maintain and display creativity, all at one time, and in fact, very simply, in just one click.

Strategies to market are umpteen, and believe me, I’ve tried them all – from telemarketing to paper adverts, from digital marketing through my earlier website to the current website through word press, you can quiz me on it.

Of all the options, I’ve personally found the blog to be the most powerful, and in fact, at times, superseding social networking sites. A networking site can only get you this far, but your blog can seal the deal.

The blog has provided me a base to connect directly with my customers and clients across the globe. It is implicit of course that, to use the blog effectively, one must also network extensively, but the benefits are certainly visible within a month or so.

How exactly has it helped me?

• Mine is a service oriented business, and my blog gives a basic understanding of our services, which works as a preliminary short listing of customers. On any given day, I get 20 inquiries, of which 5 are relevant to my business; since blogging has happened, I get only relevant inquiries, and thus cutting down on my time & energy spent.
• It is a one stop option for me to display creativity, networks, past experience, tariff rates, what not – again, a time and energy saving benefit.
• It is an easy point of reference, if you do become an accomplished blogger. Any marketing novice will tell you how important ‘word-of-mouth’ marketing is. The blog is just that – a huge ‘word-of-mouth’ marketing device.

Benefits are limitless – it will depend on the business and the business person. Like most other things in life, business is a two way process of demand and supply, service provider and service receiver, in layman terms, between you and me.

Aparna Gonibeed
CEO
Integrated Systems

Build Your Brand The Credible Way

Posted by Nikhil on Apr 14th, 2009 | 6 comments

According to Al Reis, author of The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR, PR creates brands.  Advertising defends brands.  The data from leading brands supports this position.

Ask a thousand people on the streets what they think is a bigger name – Google or General Motors. I bet my life almost everyone will say Google. Yet, would you believe it, GM spends close to 3 billion dollars a year on advertising? I choked on my morning coffee when I read this, and I don’t think I see the point. Public Relations has evolved from being a glorified courier service organizing press conferences to a mainstream brand-building tool.

There have been scores of experts talking about how advertising is a must-have for businesses and frankly, that kind of talk is outdated. No one wants to spend a million dollars and put up hoardings all over the city and not get the RoI they want.

Businesses nowadays should take heed, particularly when weighing an ad push versus a targeted PR campaign.  There are three simple reasons why.

1.  Credibility - Advertising, no matter how clever, funny, dramatic, or aesthetically pleasing, is self-serving.  It is a pitch, and, no matter how cleverly disguised, we all recognize advertising as a pitch.  PR, on the other hand, has gone through a filtering process.  That is, an editor or reporter has deemed the information credible and newsworthy.  While we may not love the media, we recognize that they do filter pap from news in most instances.  What PR lacks in control, it gains in credibility.

2.  Clarity – Advertising uses subtleties, claims, and comparisons and borrows from the arts and psychology to try to influence decisions.  PR usually translates into simple messages.  A problem has been solved. New conclusions have been reached.  Someone or something has created a new approach.  The more straightforward and relevant the information, the greater the possibility of it becoming news.  PR is based on information, not seduction.

3.  Cost - There is no company on the planet spending a billion dollars a year on PR.  In advertising, there are more than twenty-five.  There is no comparison in costs.  Or, many would argue, in effectiveness.

PR is better than any marketing tool at your disposal, including advertising – something the stewards of the best brands in the world already know.

At Darkwater Digital, we take the whole concept of PR to a new level and guarantee your brand’s presence online. We build and maintain the brand’s online reputation and try our best to make sure that the most common mistakes that businesses make are not repeated for your brand.

We don’t want you to spend a million dollars. We don’t want your message to be lost in a bottle, out at sea.

Parts of this article have been sourced from the Camino Media website.

SEO Your Website

Posted by Joel on Apr 14th, 2009 | 2 comments

The key required to reach and maintain top rankings in internet searches and also to ensure to have an enhanced and effective positioning of your website is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). In the present days, the online environment is one that is not constant or in other words, it is in a constant change with new techniques and policies emerging out almost every day. And this is why it has become very difficult for a web-business owner to build a successful business of their own. There could be countless number of ways, black and white, to increase your websites potential and traffic but the only best solution an entrepreneur may find is to outsource essential Internet marketing and SEO.

You could probably get in touch with us if you liked our SEO services

The ‘SaaS’y Life!

Posted by Aparna on Apr 10th, 2009 | one comment

Most people hate new technology. So, product development should be totally based on the needs of the customer. Technology has become a necessary evil in most cases. You cannot live without it. Everyone is looking for integrated experiences in whatever they use in life. For example, the iPhone – a phone with music, games, internet – is a device that does everything. Services like Flickr, YouTube, GoogleVideos (Picasa), Twitter are taking over.

There have been numerous articles on how Twitter and the likes have been better at providing news than news channels. No one can deny the convenience of having services like GPS integrated with one’s car.Software developers are one of the few species of people who believe that they can change the world – sometimes they really can!

In this age of the internet time, which is faster than fast – practically instantaneous (considering one is still not on dial-up), companies must adapt quickly. Traditional strategies would fail in these days of internet time no matter what the business is. They must keep up with every whim of the customers they cater to.

So, what does internet enable us to do? Primarily, it helps companies cope with competition by allowing them to manage huge databases of employees, products and customers. Through virtual marketing, the technology helps businesses cut traditional business costs and provides 24×7 communication tools like email and web chat to name a few.

All this said, what would the cost be for getting the best software product out there with all the support required?

The answer to that question is SaaS or Software as a Service model. Herein, the developer licenses an application to customers for use as a service on demand. The application could be hosted on the developer’s own web servers or could be downloaded to the consumer device, disabling it after use or after the on-demand contract expires.

On-demand licensing and use alleviates the customer’s burden of equipping a device with every conceivable application. It enables software to become a variable expense, rather than a fixed cost at the time of purchase. It also enables licensing only the amount of software needed versus traditional licenses per device. SaaS also enables the buyer to share licenses across their organization and between organizations.

Using SaaS can also conceivably reduce the up-front expense of software purchases, through less costly, on-demand pricing from hosting service providers. SaaS lets software vendors control and limit use, prohibits copies and distribution, and facilitates the control of all derivative versions of their software.

The sharing of end-user licenses and on-demand use may also reduce investment in server hardware. SaaS is generally associated by software professionals and business associates with business software and is typically thought of as a low-cost way for businesses to obtain rights to use software as needed versus licensing all devices with all applications.

Having listed the advantages of SaaS, a mention of certain drawbacks – Data transfers happen at Internet speeds (so advisable to subscribe to better speeds) Widespread implementation of SaaS requires well defined services as well. Availability of open source applications, inexpensive hardware, low-cost bandwidth push customers to operate their own software.

In conclusion, one can say that communication is key between the software developers and the business personnel. The motto must be “We are listening!” and we definitely are.

Web 2.0 And Your Business

Posted by Nikhil on Apr 6th, 2009 | no comments

The past history of human belief is a cautionary tale. When the search for truth becomes confused with political advocacy, the pursuit of knowledge is reduced to a quest for power. This should probably be the advocacy that every entrepreneur and potential employer swears by. With the rise in internet technology and web development skills, and with information becoming more and more easily accessible, starting our own enterprise was never too easy!

Web 2.0 – one of the strongest drivers today—is creating new forms of communication, causing drastic market shifts, seeing massive innovation and opening up endless opportunities for entrepreneurs to both develop and take advantage of the technology. There are various arguments about what exactly Web 2.0 encompasses. In general, it refers to a maturing of the internet, the next version of the web. Some of the Web 2.0 trends, such as user participation, are occurring across many media channels. The increase in the number of reality TV shows is one major example of this. Hit shows like American Idol and Dancing with the Stars extend user participation to the audience by allowing them to vote for contestants at the end of the shows.

The entry points of the web have also contributed to these trends. The door to information is mostly managed through major search engines and portals, such as Yahoo!, Google and MSN. These three entry points now rank search results mostly on the popularity of a website, which is affected by the number of links to the website from other websites. When people post content, they also promote it; the links back to their content begin to increase search engine rankings for sites with such user-generated content.

The popularity of YouTube, MySpace and Wikipedia further validates the importance of user-generated content. These sites either didn’t exist five years ago or were much smaller. All of these sites are predominantly tools for users to post content at no cost. These three sites in particular have come online and taken the internet by storm. YouTube, MySpace and Wikipedia currently rank fourth, fifth and 10th, respectively, in terms of traffic.

For entrepreneurs, Web 2.0 means more opportunities and better tools for running your business. No matter what type of business you own, you need to be using technology to your advantage. If you don’t, your competition will most likely crush you. As the web audience continues to increase and the use of other traditional media and advertising vehicles such as TV, newspapers and yellow-page directories continue to decline, the web becomes increasingly important for even non-technology businesses. For those of you with businesses that target younger audiences, this becomes even more important. Advertising via Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter is becoming essential for most businesses.

If you’re in any type of business where processes and procedures are important, you can use Web 2.0 technologies like wikis and service portals for collaboration. Web 2.0-based project and task management services can help make your employees much more efficient. Web 2.0 tools for collaboration also make it easier for smaller businesses to collaborate with customers and partners.

Customer relationship management tools are probably the best known Web 2.0 software that’s used as a service. Salesforce.com was one of the earliest innovators in using CRM software as a service. Meanwhile, Google Docs and Spreadsheets provide word processor and spreadsheet applications at no cost as part of Google Apps. Web 2.0 entrepreneurs continue to build out software services for functionality that only existed as packaged software before.

Web apps are hot. But what does this really mean for entrepreneurs? Three things:

1. Lots of room for start-ups: The barriers to entry are low, but the way to stand out is by solving a real customer problem. If a web app solves the user’s problem, he or she won’t hesitate to use it over traditional software.
2. Existing software companies beware: Because web apps replace the functions of traditional software programs sans occupied disk space, many PC users may decide to switch.
3. New tools for growing businesses: The myriad business tools in web app form, such as video, accounting, CRM and so on, can help businesses be more efficient, saving them money and making information accessible anytime, anywhere.
   As more and more people rely on their mobile phones and the web moves to wireless, the mobile apps industry is growing by epic proportions.

And the exciting part for entrepreneurs wanting to dial into this hot industry would be the millions in investment money flying around. Apple and Google have launched third-party mobile app markets already, and Microsoft is scheduled to release its version next year. The technology is only going to get better.

Parts of this article have been sourced from Michael Crichton’s State of Fear and Gary Reid’s articles on Mashable.