Category: Digital Marketing

People involved in the website business are divided in their opinions regarding infographics. While some say they are essential to the general website audience, there are a whole lot of people who do not promote their use in the many websites that are about to come up. Truly, infographics are essential for web users, but their need is limited and people should be aware of this and abstain from being heavily dependent on them to convey their message to the readers. How are infographics essential? Infographics, if used properly can be highly informative to the readers. This is because the pie charts, histograms, Venn diagrams and other tools used in them aid in the spot-on comparison of different parameters. These tools or precisely, the infographics, if not used can make the readers confused and unable to comprehend the different numerical data and they can be left clueless where the discussion is taking them. Infographics are better than a long list of numbers that make the website too cluttered and the reader has to make an extra effort -all by himself- to compare and weigh the data. This aspect of not relying on infographics negates the whole purpose of writing for the audience as the written content has to be lucid and comprehensible. Too much jargon and incomprehensible content can shoo away visitors. This being said, nonetheless, it is advisable not to heavily dependent on infographics to convey the necessary information. Let’s look into what prompts the web designer to curtail its usage in his work in the next section. Why should the use of infographics be limited? Here’s why the use of a lot of infographics is not taken in right spirits by many and this alone prompts a web designer to limit its usage in his work. 1. It sends a wrong message to users Relying too much on infographics conveys a wrong message to the users that the company in question is desperately trying to push products by giving a lot of information. This information –according to them- lacks credibility. This means that your company is a struggling one and is trying to make ends meet at the prospect of luring customers. This being an unhealthy sign, customers may grow uncomfortable using the services rendered by the website. Thus, this infographic thing is surely tantamount to losing a prospective customer. 2. Webmasters shun it and it is not welcomed by many others The infographics should be designed to fit aesthetically and should fit in the theme of the website. As too many infographics may seem to make the website too cluttered, many webmasters are against the use of it. Moreover, infographics which use gaudy and flashy colors to represent a pie chart, bar graph or other paraphernalia can send the hardwork and creativity of the web designer down the drain- his work may not be taken seriously. 3. They don’t aid in SEO Every business craves to make itself known and promoted, the infographics do not aid in this prospect because they are purely images. The businesses in question should have a wider reach through marketing and promoting. Hence, it is obvious that they can get quite reluctant to spend such an extra amount of money on informative infographics that do not aid in SEO. Surely, this can result in a tug-of-war between the business heads and people vouching for infographics. 4. Waste of space on the webpage The use of infographics amounts to a lot of wasted space on the website because of the size of them. They do not have a regular shape too so that the web designer can expect and plan a specific amount of space for it. All of this comes into consideration when infographics are pitted against text at being a bankable option on websites. It can be at the back of the mind of many persons in the business world that the same space could be utilized for other constructive purposes from their viewpoint. These constructive purposes are obviously texts and other content that can accommodate search keywords or other SEO benefits- these can help in indexing the website on SERPs. Conclusion What’s the verdict? The verdict is to think before publishing too many infographics. A few infographics a month sends a message that your company is facts and data driven. However, relying on infographics completely will make a company look absurd and it may also affect the website’s health in terms of SEO. A right balance between publishing too many and too less will help companies in the long term.

When one talks about WordPress, the general notion is that it is a platform primarily designed for blogs. While this is true to an extent, it should be noted that blogs are websites too and websites based on these designs do not lose their appeal in any way. But the other way round, blogs-inspired designs enhance a website’s appeal by giving it a professional-writing feel. Features of WordPress and Getting On board He mentioned that the secret of his success solely lied on the quality and features on WordPress. He had signed up for a premium package on this blogging site and thus his blog was promoted on a number of platforms far and wide- thousands of them to be exact. His interactive and engaging talks with his followers too played a part. The fact that he was consistent with a theme also helped him to gain prominence. In short, one could surmise that all the favorable features on WordPress helped him to a great extent. Blogs are in no way awkward and have a systematically managed content that is readily available in the form of hash tags and permalinks. Moreover, WordPress comes preloaded with its brainchild Akismet that thwarts off a number of malicious attempts by hackers to mar the image of the website. Such quality spam-deterring software is very hard to find on other platforms. This reduces the yoke on the shoulders of the website owners or more precisely, on the finances by not causing them to shell out extra money for fancy captchas. These captchas do not serve the purpose effectively and have caused many websites to meet an unceremonious end. This downfall is mainly due to the illegible nature of the popular text captchas widely used in a lot of website that have a professional feel. Akismet on WordPress The use of Akismet also negates the need for user input to keep the site free from the attack of bots. These malicious programs are kept at bay automatically. Such classy protection is needed and the websites using this need not worry about manually scavenging the spam comments. This is because all the malicious comments are directed to the spam box. Manual scavenging otherwise can prove daunting given the huge number of people visiting the website. Moderating is only prompted to be done for genuine comments that are not categorized to be bots. This feature of WordPress sets it apart from other peers in the website business. Such effective disposal of spam comments is found very rarely among other website platforms. Method of migration to WordPress from other platforms Websites that involve huge amount of data can be migrated to WordPress, but this needs to be done systematically. Whereas websites involving small amount of content to migrate can be done without the help of any tools. For the former type, haphazard migration can only result in crossed lines and unwelcome bugs. A methodical approach can solve a lot of these issues. Migration to WordPress can be done in a few steps that are enumerated below: 1. Evaluate website Do a careful recce regarding the website and sift through the whole content for certain important ones such as standard pages, photo galleries, resource pages and the like. Ask yourself a few of these questions. a. Does the website use any third party services such as data collection, reservations and the like? b. Is there a need for forms to be migrated such as contact forms, application forms and others? c. Are there any pages that are inaccessible to some and are open to members-only? d. Does the website sell any digital or physical products? e. Do any administrative tools need to be carried over such as CMS functionality? 2. Set up WordPress and get ready to import After carefully sizing out the features and content mentioned above, chalk out a plan and be ready to import. 3. Import content Organize your content and be ready to import via a tool that is very much needed for a website with a large content. Chalk out a plan along these points: a. What amount of content needs to be imported as in number of pages, images and the like? b. Is the volume small enough to be imported manually or is large and requires the help of a tool? c. Does the tool you need already exists? d. Is the content feasible enough to be categorized into standard posts and pages or requires custom-styled pages? e. Does extra content needs to be stored for certain pages like custom fields, taxonomies and the like? f. Will the URL structure change? If yes, will the old URLs need to be directed? 4. Migrate design Make a really well-thought-of effort from the heart to look into the minutiae that goes into the design concerning your existing website. Leave no stone unturned and carefully incorporate these features of the existing website into a customized WordPress theme. This can be as close as it can get to your previous website. 5. Review website and let it go live Review the import in detail and make necessary adjustments wherever needed. Set up any URL redirects and then go live. A struggling writer, Mr. GH tried many blogging platforms in his quest for gaining a larger audience for his blog. All his attempts to garner a considerable following proved futile until he used WordPress The moment he opened an account on WordPress, he realized how quickly posts get shared and how visitors increase with each passing day. He kept his blog posts consistent with a theme in order to target a certain category of people who might be interested in these kind of posts. Soon his posts got a number of likes from a meager 4 or 5 to 70 and 80. He systematically managed them via the use of hash tags and permalinks. Even his archived posts were likeable to a number of followers because of this. Week by week he got a number of

In today’s competitive environment, access to real-time information is extremely important. And with the spurt in cloud-based applications accessible via mobile device, you can save time, money, energy and put your business at ease. Information management and sharing it among your partners both onshore and offshore becomes an overwhelming task when your business starts growing. There are a number of applications in the market that help you to have a greater control over your outsourced business activities. We have chosen the ten most popular applications you must employ in your day-to-day business tasks. These may help you consolidate your business and strategic planning and assist you in simplifying tasks in a relatively inexpensive manner. • Quickbooks –  Quickbooks is an essential accounting software for your business. You can have complete access to the information about your customers spread across the globe and send them instant invoices from your mobile device and accept credit cards for payment. Besides this, it also lets you pay your remotely- located employees and partners. Quickbooks facilitates maintenance of payment records including alerts about overdue payments from customers. What’s more interesting about this app is you can track region-wise sales and total global sales and keep a check on your expenses. This cloud-based app is available for iOS, Android and Blackberry devices. • Expensify – Expensify is a great application to track your expenses. It easily generates automatic expense reports for your offshore teams remotely located across the world. You can even supervise expenses of individual employees. Reimbursement of expenses becomes fairly easy with it and is limited to $10,000 within US only. Expensify also gives an insight into decision-making process by generating region-wise expense sheets based on specific parameters you choose. Smartscan feature in Expensify scans your receipts and autofills them in the cloud based application. It also integrates with ERP/CRM software including  Quickbooks, Sage, NetSuite, ADP, Microsoft Dynamics, Financial Force etc. With its GPS tracking feature, it not only lets you track your employees’ vehicle mileage expenses but also gives you mileage expenses for your entire fleet of trucks operating in Latin America or Asia.  Moreover, it has an added advantage of logging and billing the time to your offshore clients with its time tracking feature. • Dropbox- Dropbox is flexible file storage and file sharing platform which lets you collaborate with offshore business partners. It enables you to share specific folders and files with a particular cross-border team and has an ability to restore your deleted files in the event of system crash. It also negates the necessity of emailing attachments to individual employees thus increasing the business productivity. For small to medium size businesses, Dropbox turns out to be an essential file sharing platform. It is available for leading operating systems. You can rely on DropBox to store sensitive information specific to your business with its two-step verification process and encrypted information on its cloud servers. • Documents to Go – Documents to Go is a must for your smartphone to view, create and edit Word, Excel, PDF and Powerpoint files. It can easily synchronise with your laptop and desktops and is supported by Google Document. Documents to go keeps your work active and efficient from any mobile device. If your sale is outsourced to an outside agency, it is wise for your salespersons to have it handy in their phones. It increases productivity of your global business as it is localized in various languages including English, Spanish, French, German and many more. And you don’t have to worry about the critical information about your business as the files are password protected. • WebEx – Webex is one of the most popular video conferencing applications with loads of other features giving a virtual board room experience. Its interactive whiteboard feature and desktop screen sharing gives it an edge over its peers. You can conduct webinars and training sessions for your offshore teams. Webex enables you to supervise and close sales deal by supporting your outsourcing partners. What’s more exciting, Webex can record all your meetings which can be viewed for future reference and for those who could not turn up for the online meeting due to time zone differences. It is easily accessible via smartphones and tablets. They have a variety of specialized products customized to your business needs which even lets you interact with 3000 users collectively. Webex products include WebEx Meeting Center, WebEx Event Center, WebEx Training Center and WebEx Remote Support. • Gigwalk – Gigwalk is an iconic platform for businesses with outsourcing needs. With its huge smartphone-enabled, location-based, qualified and verified mobile workforce called Gigwalkers, businesses can get their work done easily. It is used by the leading companies in the world and finds its application in retail, consulting, market research or any kind of work suiting your business needs. You can hire Gigwalkers and get your work done anywhere. You can even use them for ad hoc projects and recurring programs. The information is reliable and you can act upon it to stay ahead of your competitors. Gigwalk mobile application can easily push presentable data to your offshore partners and vendors. • Square  – Square helps you build relationship with your outsourcing business clients by facilitating easy payments. It is a classic mobile application for managing customer sales account and accepting credit card payments from remotely located customers.  It even empowers your employees to accept payment from your customers and gives you a control over sales transactions and view transaction history. It is like maintain a virtual cash register which puts your business at ease. • Bento – Bento is an excellent platform for designing a customized database for storing your clients’ and partners’ information. With its ability to store virtually any information including their contact details, your product details and videos, it stands out as one of the best application designed specifically for i-Pad, though it also syncs with Mac operating system. Bento gives a smooth control over your project progress/deadlines and inventory management. Creating

No business today can forego the use of corporate branding. Corporate branding strategy covers not only products that are sold but also the very essence of a business or an organization and how it should be viewed by clients, customers and competitors. While advertising forms a part of corporate branding, the way a brand’s logo, packaging, business vocabulary chosen etc can have a lasting impact on a company’s brand image. Outsourcing as an option for corporate branding Corporate branding is an innovative approach that makes people conscious of your brand and outsourcing graphic designing work to any competent designing firm is ideal for this. Graphic designing is a process that requires a lot of expertise and skill. Once professional help is sought for this work, it is just a matter of time before any good company can create waves in the business world. Outsourcing has a lot of benefits when it comes to engaging a company’s corporate branding. There are a lot companies specialize in corporate branding along with other services. Hiring one of these specialized agencies will help business owners to adopt corporate branding, especially when it comes to graphic designing, an important part of corporate branding. There is a lot of saving to make financially and thanks to reasonable pricing that corporate branding agencies quote, one can easily get that logo or insignia designed for a lesser cost. There are several obvious benefits to outsourcing graphic designing costs: Need for professionally designed logos Outsourcing graphic designing can mean that you get the best logo possible for your business, without having to spend a lot of time or money. This could save a lot of unproductive weeks that one is expected to spend in getting a hang of the things or software that goes into making a logo. A well-designed logo can say a lot about your company as it appears at every place a company leaves its mark on. Logos may seem like a minor thing in the larger picture, but a well-thought logo can immediately help people to identify your products with your business. Financial savings If a company wants to design the graphics itself, it would mean that an expenditure of thousands of dollars, including the purchasing of good software in the likes of Illustrator or Corel Draw. Additionally, one will have to hire graphic designers full-time or train existing professionals with logo-designing to make use of the expensive software you already purchased. In the bigger picture, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to go through this ordeal.. Perils of individual product branding Individual product branding is in stark contrast to the corporate branding strategy. Different products by the same company are marketed in different campaigns. Consumers often have no idea that the same company is marketing different products and services, all of which are marketed under individual campaigns. Corporate branding on the other hand gives a theme and an essence to the entire campaign process of a company, helping people to identify a company more easily when they locate brands, logos, insignia and punch lines. Case study: The brand ‘Unilever’ is associated with many smaller brands that are marketed aggressively but people hardly knew about all the products that the company sold a few years back when Unilever decided to switch to corporate branding. People used its products without asking many questions as they were of the topmost quality. However, Unilever continued to lose out on its corporate image because people were not aware that it had so many brands under its umbrella. All this changed for the better in recent years after the company explored corporate branding. Individual product branding limits the exposure of the mother brand. This surely creates a problem because the mother brand does not get promoted and its stepping into many profitable ventures is taken lightly by consumers. Imagine the plight of the company when it had to promote a new venture right from the scratch! Outsourcing corporate branding strategy can save a lot of money that is spent on these haphazardly scattered promotion campaigns and paves way for a streamlined approach towards branding. A lot of resources spent in the organization of smaller brands can be diverted to outsourcing and the remainder can be spent on focusing on core projects. Certainly, outsourcing graphic designing is not limited to just logos but may also include vectors, 3D branding, animation, videos and a whole lot of other services that a good graphic designing company can help you with.

Every web designer at some point of time has to be prepared to chalk out a digital strategy, regardless of whether he works as an external contractor or is part of an in-house team. To get you acquainted with digital strategy, let us introduce you to a few basics about it. But first, let us introduce you to the terminology as the very name of it intimidates people. What is a digital strategy? A digital strategy is nothing intimidating, but is plainly just a document outlining how the company in question has to handle the different aspects of digital, like in the website, mobile to email, social media and digital marketing. It need not cover every aspect of it in detail, but an understandable account or outline can do. We will look into it in detail, but let us look at a case study that makes digital strategy needed all the more for a business. Why digital strategy? A digital strategy helps you focus on the points that are briefed in it rather than behaving like the wind- with no direction in mind. It is a more streamlined approach towards achieving the goal set in place or can help a business in emergencies or making a hasty, but an informed decision. Simply put, the approach of yours in the digital strategy about to be written should be that which is able to facilitate flexible decision making within a specified framework. For example, if a company opts suddenly for an eBook to be launched or a mobile app, chalking out a well laid-out digital strategy can help a great deal. Though this decision was taken out of the blue by the management, a digital strategy can help a lot because of its focused and streamlined approach. Instead of falling victim to managerial whims, the digital strategy can guide a business and thus carry substance. 3 things required to write a digital strategy There are 3 basic things that a web designer has to bear in mind when writing a digital strategy: 1. People This part is about the people held accountable for the various responsibilities delegated out to them. It ensures that people with specific expertise oversee and supervise those areas under their direct jurisdiction. No overlapping of the areas under them is entertained- for example, the marketing head is not authorized to look into the development section. Moreover, there are different people assigned to look after the various digital elements at hand. Also, a few things should be written about the outsourcing part- what work is outsourced and what is not. The criteria for selecting a supplier can also be mentioned. 2. Policies These policies act as a framework within which different decisions are made. They need to be well-defined. This also enables fast decision making and does not entertain wild and out-of-the-box ideas that do not necessarily end up being a success. During operational decisions, there can be no room for confusion or more precisely, reinventing the wheel. This can also resolve a lot of conflicts arising later on. 3. Priorities There should be clearly defined priorities in the digital strategy as to what task takes precedence over the other. It can work thus: if a person wants to add a new feature to the priority stack, he has to sell it to the web committee and ascertain whether it important enough to be prioritized or not, based on user needs or business objectives. Then, it can secure itself a place in the priority stack. Different aspects of digital Let us help you look at 2 aspects of digital where one can write a strategy around the needs mentioned below: 1. Mobile Ask these questions before writing a digital strategy: Do you want to build a responsive site? Do you consider using third party or native apps for this endeavor? What platforms can offer compatibility for this? 2. Digital Marketing This carries a whole lot of aspects in its ambit from managing SEO and PPC to banner advertising and affiliate schemes. A real-life incident supporting digital strategy Here is an interesting story about the potential of incorporating digital strategy in your business and marketing needs. This can be a real eye-opener as to what benefits a digital strategy entails and once its limitless potential is harnessed, there is nothing that can stop businesses from reaching the zenith. Mr. H belonged to a family that represented a business house popular among people in the suburban landscape. Always looked up by his peers he was a very smart and hardworking guy. He had a good knowledge about designing websites too. People were charmed by his persona and needless to say, he used to take everyone in his stride. It appeared that he would juggle many roles in the coming years. He amazed everyone with his hard work and innate entrepreneurial skills. People saw in him an immense potential to make it big in the business world. After numerous failed attempts, he settled for a low-paying job that did not meet his standards or subliminal skills that he had acquired. However, he quit the job after an eventful couple of years. The reason he opted for a salaried position was to acquire more skills needed to manage his traditional business as it was brought forth in a suburban atmosphere away from the modern and lavish lifestyle in the city. Surely, after acquiring a good amount of skills from the urban surroundings he decided to jazz up his family business and slowly gained foothold in the vast reaches around his town. Though he exercised a lot of caution concerning the welfare of his business, there was a lot of negligence in picking up with the trends prevalent in the business world. All his expertise did not help him to revive his ailing business and many people believed that it was about to founder. The main culprit for this was that he turned a blind eye towards the growing technology needs of his

Not a single day goes by without reading that we must not use negative words, swear words, slangs or that we should not abuse each anyone while writing online. Unfortunately, all of us are complicit in using words that are offensive, vulgar or negative in aspects that we cannot fathom. Secretive negative words While using such negative words may impact our readers, there are also negative words that lurk behind sentences, words and phrases in ways that we initially do not recognize. These negative words creep in sentences without the knowledge of the writer and often have unconscious negative influences on the reader. To make what we are trying to say clearer, here is an example: Janice, a journalist wanted to write to her investment-savvy readers about a company that she investigated about. Her intention was to present that company in a positive light, so that more investors took interest in it. While she did a commendable job writing a great investigative report about the company’s board and its ethical policies, she wrote the article in such a way that readers did not see the positive aspects of the company, but chose to pick out negative words that lurked behind the sentences. Janice wrote “Company X’s board plans to donate Y amount to a charity this summer”. She went on to say how the company is philanthropic and works for greater social causes. While all this sounds positive, the word ‘charity’ comes off as a negative term, especially to a group of investors who specifically look for companies that are profit driven. What could Janice have written instead? While, a charitable company is always honorable, it is not enough to attract prospective investors. Janice could have chosen to mention the word ‘charity’ only once in the article, and discuss more about the company’s constructive abilities. Though charity evokes noble and positive feelings in all of us, a potential group of investors may not find it ‘interesting’. Something that is not interesting to the reader is ‘negative’ from a writer’s point of view. What makes words negative or positive? While writing web copy or business to business marketing communication that will be published online, one must be very careful not to use negative words, even if they appear positive in the first glance. Negative words are not negative because of their meaning, but because of unsaid cognitions that happen within a reader’s mind. The reader may not even find these words negative but the impression is made. As a writer, one must choose words that are positive. The secrets to using positive language The secret to using positive language does not consist of using appealing words that have pleasant and positive connotations. Instead, the secret to using positive language is to ensure that the reader takes some kind of action. With that in mind, actionable phrases, words that encourage the reader to take action, do something, act on something that you writing about, etc constitute positive language. With that in mind, here are a few tips that ensure that you keep your web communication positive in the real sense: Do not shy away from using controversial words Feel free to use negative words in a traditional sense Do not use words that may imply passivity Use actionable phrases and words Re-read what is written to check if words bore the reader Boredom is negative, but shock is not Ensure web communication makes the reader do something Plain information is ‘negative’. Make it positive by encouraging readers to do something If content does not entertain, it is negative Edit, re-edit, proofread, re-read, re-write and repeat These tips and tricks are traditional best practices of writing but most bloggers, web content writers and even businesses do not understand the power of implicit meanings. Though something may appear positive, it may be inherently useless for the company, rendering those words negative. Similarly, words that seem negative may actually encourage the reader to do something you wish, rendering those words positive. Finally, the importance of editing and proofreading for negative connotations and non-actionable themes must be prioritized. There is nothing worse than assuming that one wrote a really actionable piece of content, only to realize later that people find the content so boring, they are not doing anything about it anyway.

The title of a blog post is very crucial in deciding the fate of your blog in terms of popularity. The popularity of your blog is all that matters in gaining ROI from all that hard work that you have put into. So, you should be very much concerned about coming up with a suitable title for your blog by sifting through a number of catchy titles that you can lay your hands upon. This should be done methodically by ticking all the checkboxes that are enlisted in the notepad in your kitty. Here are some tips that you have to be sure that you have had a look at before writing a title for your blog post: • Take your own time  Take your time before you stick with a title that is worthy of your blog post. This is important as you have to do justice to the hard work you have put into writing the content of your blog. An instant title that you have come up with is surely not consistent with the factors that decide the popularity of your blog. Do not rely purely on your gut feeling. You can trust your hunches, but not on such a decision that requires a lot of foresight. This forethought can keep a lot of problems that crop up in the promotion of your blog post later, at bay. At the end of it all, you won’t spend your productive time in regretting the mistake that you committed in not arriving at an informed decision regarding the consistency of your title with various parameters that decide your blog’s likeability among the audience. • Keep the title short The title should sum up in a few words the whole of the content of your blog. The search engines have the habit of reducing the size of the title if it does not meet their standards of restricting word length. The worst part of this tendency of search engines is that they may even alter the meaning or the message your title wants to convey to the reader. The old rule of thumb for blog title tags is under 70 characters. There is an indication that these rules are changing. Speculation is rife among the industry people on whether there are any limitations that can be incorporated concerning the number of words, number of characters or pixel width. To be on the safer side, a title tag of 60 characters or less is advised. These restrictions on part of the search engines can clip your wings and rule out the possibility of coming up with a hard hitting or a verbose title. Do remember to stick to the restrictions on the title length as your cries of help later can fall on deaf ears upholding the fact that there is no damsel in distress in this situation here. If it were, there would be a high possibility of a rescuer dropping in from nowhere to take control of the situation. • Do not mislead Do not mislead the visitors by deciding to use irrelevant titles for your blog posts that hide something else in its entrails. This can make the visitors to linger on for some time and later go on their way at the prospects of finding other interesting content elsewhere on the web as they were directed to your blog on the premise of finding something else. These high bounce rates mean that you begin to lose a reputation in the eyes of your visitors. The aftermath of this results in you making both ends meet in building your reputation. You should be aware of the fact that it takes a lot of effort and time to build something like a reputation, but a second to destroy it. Be in the readers’ good books and leave no stone unturned to keep it so. • Research Do some research on the target audience regarding their reading habits and other preferences. Visit a few forums that are replete with information regarding how to be consistent with the SEO needs. You may find exhaustive and voluminous information in these forum threads helping you in your research. Be sure that the information provided in these forums is reliable. After your thorough SEO research, use the keywords generated by this process in your title tags. This will help search engines to recognize that your content is relevant. The search engines are accustomed to prioritize the keywords that end up being in the front end of your title. Hence, it is better to you if you place the keywords that you have generated from your research at the beginning. This makes your target audience all the more likely to have a look at them during scanning the search results. A rampant problem that the bloggers face is to come up with relevant titles that are in context with the keywords. You should be able to use the keywords creatively and craftily in your title so that it won’t look to your visitors that you have stuffed them into the title. This makes your blog lose its sheen and its reputation that you have built from so long. Reputation is everything. The aircraft Concorde, jointly developed and produced by Aerospatiale and British Aircraft Corporation (BAC) under an Anglo-French treaty was at a few of its last flights before being decommissioned, after being plagued by the number of casualties in the infamous 2000 crash. Still people chose to fly in it irrespective of technical difficulties that the flying machine experienced. Such was the euphoria and the fanfare that it made brisk business even amidst the crash. Any other airliner would have shut shop but Concorde’s reputation kept it going. • Value proposition If a potential reader visits your site, let him encounter with a proposition in your blog’s title. Make it a tempting one that he can’t ignore. Speak to his heart. For example, the blog title ’10 tips that ensure you have a successful

People do not understand when it is time to, well, shut up. Most of us have encountered people who talk incessantly, never tiring of words and always annoying everyone around them. Just when you think it is all over, they are back with their army of words to haunt you and scare you until you try and leave the place somehow. Shut Up is an ancient proverb https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-dDBiue1i-uc/T46MQasFT2I/AAAAAAAAAZ4/Ma8LuCjy_TQ/s1600/just_shut_up_by_selenetiedman.jpg King Solomon had once stated that “Too much talk leads to sin. Be sensible and keep your mouth shut”. Even in ancient times, human beings were not free from the curse of having to listen to chatterboxes, it seems. Back in 2013, when everyone uses Twitter, Facebook and multitudes of social networks, it is easy to understand just how true King Solomon’s Proverb 10:19 really is. Every other day we hear about a company being chastised for saying something wrong, or an employee being fired of badmouthing a company he or she works at. http://www.coolfreeimages.net/images/shutup/shutup_03.jpg Certainly, not knowing when to shut up is not a sin that is unique to 2013 but has existed for millenniums. However, the fact that words can travel so far and so fast, and the fact that they remain accessible forever unless they are deleted, make words very dangerous. When small companies and brands begin to use social media, they should not think about how much to use a particular social network, but instead must think on the lines of how less they must talk, and when they must shut up. There are a number of situations which may help a company of small brand to learn when to shut up. Here are a few situations: • People begin to unfollow you when you update • No one ever retweets or comments on your links or updates • You feel you are talking to yourself • You use too many social media automation software programs • You do not engage in conversations While all these scenarios are way too common, companies need to know that there are tools which will help them to shut up: Sayonara and SocialBro These two tools are exc3ellent to know who unfollowed and when. They let you know each time someone unfollows you and you can sit back and analyze if that happened because you were tweeting too much. No social engagement If your followers and fans do not engage with your updates, there really is a strong possibility that you are alienating your audience by tweeting or sharing way too much. Images and videos While you may think it is cool to share all those images from the office cake party you had last Friday, your followers and fans may not think so. They may just get annoyed and move to the next brand because you are bothering them with intrusive social media behavior. Your competitors engage better If you see more retweets and likes from your competitors, closely follow what they are up to. They will most certainly be engaging better and posting less. No one likes to read a barrage of social media updates even if you think your brand or company is the best. You are full of yourself No one likes to listen to a person who speaks about themselves. A person who is full of himself or herself will always alienate his or her friends. Engage with your audience and share useful information that is not only about your brand or company. Prove to your audience that behind those social media accounts, there are people working who genuinely care about the audience. While it is easy to hire a social media manager who knows what to update and when, it is equally important that as a small company you cut costs. Small brands and companies may not be able to hire a full time social media manager. In such circumstances, knowing how much to tweet and how less to update will help you to save your brand and image. Social media & marketing depend on your online behavior and knowing how less to tweet or update is an important facet of that. Sometimes, when it comes to social media or anywhere else in life, less is more.