Category: Marketing

A powerful advertising tool is the one which grabs attention instantly and conveys the message within fraction of a second, and when we are talking about such effective advertising tools we cannot afford to overlook banner ads. Banner ads have been in the advertising industry right from its inception and they have very well played a major role in gathering the target audience. This tool is so effective that even till date its potential is exploited by everybody who wants to be put on the map. Banner ads definitely put your name out there but you need to know the tricks of the trade to get the desired publicity. Banner ads are extremely effective in directing traffic to your enterprise if only you get it right and not try too hard. There are ways to get your Banner noticed and if you master these ways you can even make your own banner and save a bundle of monies. Myriads of advertising agencies generate exorbitant revenues from just advising on how to get it right with Banner ads, but if you are in no mood to burn a hole in your pocket you can follow these basic steps and become a know-all in making banner ads. 1 Research never hurts. Most of us are not blessed with creativity and more often than not we depend on others to get inspiration. It is only wise to look around and get an idea of how certain banners fare in the market, this market intelligence will help you in understanding the dos and don’ts. You can pick up the best examples available with you, draw inspiration from them and make your own Banner ad. You can study the color code that grabs attention, appropriate font size to make your banner look flashy and the basic size of a banner. Make sure that the purpose of doing this research is to seek inspiration and not promote plagiarism, to avoid copyright hassles do not pick designs from other banners. 2 Carefully pick the content of your banner. While making banner ads it must be kept in mind that its purpose is to broadcast the essence hence do not make it look like a catalogue.  Pick a clear message that conveys the purpose of the advertisement, it should be strong and be able to make the desired impact. This part of the banner making process is the trickiest part as it involves a lot of brainstorming and you cannot afford to slip here.  Discuss the caption with your critics and check whether you get the desire response or not. You can come up with a clear message only if you thoroughly understand your product and have a clear idea about benefits you are offering to your customers. 3 Limit the file size to limit the wait. Most of the viewers have a wandering eye and do not spare more than a fraction of a second to check banner ads and it becomes a challenge to make a lasting impression if your banner ad takes long to load. Make sure that the file size is minimum to avoid the frustration while it loads, something to the tune of 12 kilobytes is considered standard. To achieve an optimum size you can even try to limit the number of colors in the banner ad and have it saved as a GIF file.  When it comes to file size the less the better, it helps the banner ad to show up instantly as soon as the page loads. 4 Go easy on animation. As much fun it may be to look at, too much animation can make your banner ad look flimsy and spoil the desired effect. You must use animation only if it is indispensible to the advertisement campaign. Animation depends on creativity and free will so it is possible that you may think of just anything and try to get it animated, while doing so make sure you do not offend the viewers. Using animation is a tricky business because some relate to it easily while others find it difficult to understand and may get offended. Animation speed is another important parameter which should be considered while including animations in banner ads. Let us face it, no one likes a continuous distraction on a page for too long and more often viewers tend to close the page. To avoid the animation on your banner ad look annoying make sure that it is changes at a moderate pace and stops after three cycles of repetition. 5 Be sure about the color scheme that you use. Picking colors for a banner ad can be a tedious task, especially when you do not have a fixed color scheme. You can do a little research to find out how customers react to certain colors and also pick the most popular color schemes. With this activity you will shortlist the best color schemes available, now to pick from this pool of color schemes you can check which color scheme identifies the most with the product that you are selling. Try not to use many colors because it increases the file size. Steer clear of universal mismatches like red and green, black and brown, etc. Picking subtle shades for background dark shades for the font is a safe bet . 6 Choose an appropriate font size. When you put a display message on a banner ad you expect it to get noticed and not mingle with the content of the website it is displayed on. To ensure that it strikes the right note with the viewer you must increase the font size as compared to that of the rest of the text displayed on the website. You can also use variable font size to focus on the power words like “free” , “incredible”, “offer” this works very well in focusing on the major focus points of your campaign. Large fonts on a banner ad are acceptable but don’t go overboard with it and make

Television viewers seem to really enjoy the opportunity to connect with others by following those who are like minded or share similar inclinations on Twitter. They regale each other by way of tweeting and posting pictures of their favorite entertainers, links to other sites such as Instagram. Tweeting around TV follows a fairly predictable pattern: first, anticipatory tweets appear 15-30 minutes before the show airs; then, the tweets surge during the episode (with sharp spikes in response to surprises and reveals); finally, there is another 15-30 minutes of post-show buzz and reaction. There are a number of small bands that gained predominance because of their association with social media giants like twitter. Twitter can give artistes exposure and astounding success, if he can manage to capitalize on the available resources and the stats recorded. Observing the trends and promoting in an organized manner can help video artistes garner a huge following and thus help to improve the rating of their shows. Nielsen TV ratings and twitter Nielsen entered into the foray of rating television shows in early 1950s and is still rendering class services. It is a global leader in measurement and information spread over a 100 countries around the world, providing its clients the most complete understanding of what consumers watch and buy. It has found that for premiere episodes, an 8.5 percent increase in twitter volume resulted in a 1 percent increase in ratings among 18 to 34 year olds. For mid-season episodes, a 4.2 percent increase in tweets effected in a 1 percent increase in ratings. For 34 to 49 year old age groups, a 14 percent increase in twitter volume translated into a 1 percent increase in ratings. Fake profiles on twitter There are fake profiles on twitter which mar the image of many celebrities of tinsel town. You can only imagine the damage they can cause to your reputation by sharing hateful tweets and inciting quarrel among the people from your fraternity or other twitteratis. While most of these impostors tweet demeaning messages on this social medium, others do it for fun to entertain people seeking humor. For example, there are a lot of fake profiles doing the rounds on Twitter to poke fun at celebrities. A popular one being that of  Kim Jong Un of North Korea. The tweets generated from this profile point to the reaction of Kim to the various issues and happenings or current affairs that find a place in the media. What is the advice? Being the popular medium that Twitter is, any user generated content on Twitter is instant news material. For the profiles of the former type, video artistes are advised to create a profile without much ado and verify their accounts via their email addresses. This is an ingenious way devised by Twitter to keep at bay the sick impostors who indulge in such activities. Here are a few tips that a video artiste can consider: 1. Retweet information related to your TV shows and start trending topics about your shows. 2. Start tweeting about your upcoming events, concerts to keep your followers updated. 3. Engage viewers in real-time conversations regarding your shows. 4. The key is to keep the audience guessing and wanting for more by keeping the viewers updated about interesting plots in the available video through a number of tweets. Arousing curiosity in the audience’s mind has been the tried and tested method and the primordial aspect of wooing TV viewers. Albeit a rapidly growing part of the business mentality, fuelled by the irresistible promise of reduced customer acquisition costs (nominal charges are levied on advertisers on twitter) and yet higher bottom line returns, the science behind managing audiences in the internet enabled age is still young. Social media was a major milestone, opening marketers eyes to the almost unfathomable potential reach of their messaging. Yet, in its current form, social mediums like twitter remain too self-conflicted and limiting to enable marketers to effectively gauge the value of audience built on such a network. I believe that these observations of mine can deliver to the video artistes like you, the bankable option that Twitter is and that it can provide a wholly enriching experience by growing under the refuge of its wings.

A website is a window to the world when coupled with the efforts from a search engine. Visitors can obtain a lot of information by keying in a few words by way of their fingertips. Like every other business, websites are expected to elicit good response and feedback from its visitors, making the use of it worthwhile. Website owners should design a website that is consistent with the user needs. Here are a few tips for first time owners of websites 1. Short and sweet domain names Choose a short and sweet domain name that goes with your business. If it is already taken, improvise with the name i.e., add pronouns, adjectives and the like. Also use targeted keywords in it to aid you in Search Engine Optimization. 2. Hire a dedicated team of web professionals It should be able to handle the required traffic and not sink under the weight of its esteemed visitors. All its activities should be constantly monitored by a dedicated team of professionals, who are always at the beck and call of its owner to fix any inadequacies or in case of emergencies arising out of such scenarios mentioned previously. After all, the website’s reputation is at stake. I understand it is a herculean task to be available round the clock and coax others to, but this is a worthy option to look into and is crucial in building a brand image and a cult status. These qualities are endemic to a business. 3. Make websites user-friendly Don’t leave your customer stuck in a network of mazes and left stranded clueless in the middle of nowhere while navigating on your website. This is not a quest for treasure, make sure the information that your visitors search for is accessible and is at a distance of a least number of clicks as possible. Otherwise, they can get dazed and confused and look for other alternatives on the internet and mind you, they are very likely to find one in the vast expanse of the virtual space that internet rules over. 4. Be reachable Don’t deny them the prospect of finding you, use clear-cut tabs, embedded with links for them to reach you for feedback or other queries. The embedded link should be made available at the home page itself in a noticeable or highlighted font. 5. If you offer something free, scream out loud that you do Don’t discourage users looking for freebies. Mention every service that is free, for the users to make the most out of it. 6. Build a good FAQ page Use relevant FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) to satisfy the curiosity of the inquisitive visitor and guide them. Include a few paragraphs about your company’s history, founders, achievements and a peek into your endeavors for the uninitiated and inquisitive visitors. 7. Make the home page friendly The home page should live up to its name of being a home. It should be provided with a display of the site map to facilitate easy navigation of your website’s visitors. It should point out the position of the user in the website layout and direct him with the help of it as to where he can end up by clicking suitable options at his disposal. 8. Use CAPTCHA to keep spammers away Make use of text recognition CAPTCHAs to keep spammers at bay and be sure to provide users with the options to type another set of characters if the text of the first one is illegible. 9. Don’t waste visitors time Don’t display information the visitors look for in the form of video or other content that take ages to load. An average visitor lingers on a site for 15 to 20 seconds at the most. This may annoy him. 10. Use Search Engine Optimization Avail the services of search engines and use Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to draw users to your site. Keep a tab on your statistics and ranking in the search results. Many search engines such as yahoo and google have come up with algorithms to determine where your website is placed in the search results. Hire a dedicated SEO expert to guide you in these activities. All these should be done with a keen foresight and astute observation on your part. Be ready to adapt to changes as and when they beckon. You will learn a lot as your website grows and as and when the need arises. Necessity is the mother of invention and I end on this note.

The difficulty involved in decision making drives people to rely on information accrued from conventional methods such as recommendations from others, surveys, polls and even on a stroke of luck such as tossing of a coin. However, in this article we are going to introduce you to a new technique that will help you to make effective decisions regarding your marketing needs. What is decision making? Decision making involves the selection of the best option from two or more courses of action that are available. The choices that you narrow down from a host of them need not be the perfect choice, as an element of uncertainty is involved- you could have ignored the better choice, as there would have been a dearth of information that could endorse it. This handicap of decision-making calls in for a well documented log of decisions taken- reasons justifying them, as you can make adjustments later on to the areas that you find are lacking. Instead of brooding over the past, this is a better option to look into. A brief description of the application of elimination strategies Elimination strategies are devised in a bid to rake up a solution to the ever imminent problem of plenty, often experienced in dealing with an avalanche of information. It can be used to systematically sniff out options that look promising enough to be utilized in your deemed business. Armed to the teeth with the perfect choices tailor-made for your business requirements, you can be assured of a hassle-free marketing campaign. Why is there a need for a structured approach to decision making? For a decision involving a large number of options or choices, it is advisable to use a structured model for decision making that can spruce up the imperfections resulting out of decisions employing only intuition or reasoning. A structured approach is all the more important as it can be helpful to: Break down the complicated decisions into simple steps, so that it can be all the more easier to attend them to or keep a tab on them and their progress. See why the decisions are in place. Answer to such questions can be made available: What factors or reasons effected the change in arriving at a different decision? What reasons exacerbated the decision? Are there any lessons to be learnt from previous decisions? How dependable are these decisions? What constitutes the best ingredients to a delectable decision? What type of leads can it garner for you? How are your efforts to bring in a distinct change in your decision making process are rewarded? What deficient areas can you look into, for improvement? Be assured of the success of your plans and that you could train them to suit your needs in meeting the stipulated deadline. It can also answer questions such as these: How these decisions affected the course of your plan? Who is to be held accountable for the futility of the plan? What is the reason for this debacle, in that you failed meeting your expectations? What was lacking? Stages of decision making using elimination strategies You can enumerate seven different stages that culminate with providing you a competitive selection of options, assuring you of a fruitful marketing campaign. This can help you in achieving your desired goals on a social media platform like twitter. They are:  List all the possible options (like keywords) that you can come up with, by gauging the trending topics, most followed people or brands, merchandise and other popular wish list of people.  Set a time scale for a particular decision, so that someone can be held accountable for not meeting it.  Collect various information and statistics regarding the type of users you have narrowed down to target.  Make a note of the risks involved.  Note down your expectations- the quality of them. These requirements need not be toned down to bare minimum, but in a way, should suffice your necessities.  Make a note of the expected course of the decision.  Eliminate the undesirable options according to the expectations you noted down. These strategies and the other topics that we have covered, provide you with a clear idea of decision making and how to use elimination strategies in the process for your marketing campaign. Thus, you can be assured of a successful campaign if you bind to these rules mentioned here. Your campaign can be a fruitful one.

Vine is probably the most prolific social networking site to become popular in 2013. In fact, insiders feel Vine will be more popular than many existing social networks when it comes to marketing and branding. One of the key reasons is that it optimally utilizes the video format without being boring or invasive. Launched by Twitter on the 24th of January, 2013, Vine quickly became very popular among iPhone users. It is currently available only on iOS devices but Twitter noted that it is working on bringing the application to other platforms like Android and Windows Mobile. In this article, let us take a look at Vine is and why it is important for businesses big and small and how it can help create lasting marketing solutions. What Is Vine and How Does It Work? The Vine app, which can be downloaded for free from Apple’s App Store at the moment, is a mobile only platform which will soon be available for Android and other operating systems. It can be thought of as a video alternative to Instagram. However, Vine is so much more than just Instagram and is a real business tool. It helps users to create short video clips that last for 6 seconds. How to Use Vine to Create 6-second Videos One would need to use Vine’s in-app camera in order to shoot what they want. One needs to click on the camera button within Vine and hold the screen with one’s finger until the recording is complete. If one wants to record a video that simulates stop-motion photography, one needs to hold the screen and release and then hold it again when the subject is within the camera’s sight. Totally, it can record only 6 seconds worth of video at one go. In fact, there are several tools that can help people to convert Vine videos into GIF images. While Vine was not taken seriously by marketers initially, it quickly proved to be rabidly popular not only among common users, but also among journalists, media professionals and celebrities. The gloss and glamour associated with Vine has quickly catapulted it into becoming one of the most popular social networking apps to be downloaded from the App Store. Vine has to be the simplest social networking site out there. It comes with no bells and whistles, and has a very clean and clutter free interface. It offers only 4 options in the menu: Home, Explore, Activity and Profile. When you click on ‘Home’, you will see a list of videos in place of tweets or status updates on Facebook news feed. You can type a tag that you want to view the videos as well. A hashtag #cats will bring you a lot of cat videos. The videos play without you having to do anything. If you would like to comment on a video, you can do so. If you want to ‘like’ a video, all that you need to do is click on the smiley. If you do not like the video you are watching, you can either report the person who made it. When you click on ‘Explore’, Vine lets you type in tags or names of people you know. The app also lists editor’s Picks, which is a curated list of most popular videos on Vine. ‘Popular Now’ similarly brings the most popular videos on Vine at any given point of time. Just below these two options, you can see a list of popular tags as well, which can bring back interesting videos of users across the world. Tags and People work similar to Twitter. Tags are similar to hashtags on Twitter and ‘People’ is similar to users on Twitter. Based on what you are looking for, Vine brings a list of videos that have been tagged accordingly. Clicking on Activity lets you know what is happening with people you know and follow. Profile lets you edit your own profile and account settings. It is probably the simplest social networking site that we have ever known. 8 Ways Vine Can Revolutionize Digital Marketing Vine is a great tool for businesses both small and large. The network has huge potentials and now is the time to optimize your marketing strategy with the help of Vine, when your rivals and competitors may not even be aware of Vine’s importance. With that in mind, here are some of the most important ways with which you can use Vine for your business and marketing purposes. 1.      Engage Your Audience Vine is particularly suited for engagement because it is very simple. It is a great way to build your fan base with attractive videos and use that fan base to engage and promote your products. Vine is fun to use and keeps its users engaged as long as you are taking awesome videos with your iPhone (and other phones in the future). You could ask your audience to send their video clips of how they use your products or what they do with your services. When they use hashtags and tweets to reply to your Vine videos, engagement not only builds on Vine, but also on Twitter and elsewhere. 2.      User Generated Content Vine encourages you to ask your audience to interact with you buy generating video clips on their own. If you have steady groups of fans and followers, they will only be too happy to take video clips and share it with you. You can ask them for ideas, tips and tricks, suggestions and opinions with the help of Vine. You could ask them to shoot their own faces and voices and upload them. As these videos are just 6 seconds long, it won’t take a lot of your time to engage either. 3.      Create Marketing Narrative Vine is a great tool to build your marketing narrative. It helps you to create a series of videos that tell stories. Storytelling using Vine can help you to reveal the story of a product that is being incubated for

It is often common among small business owners and enterprises to discuss where they should be publishing their videos online. While YouTube and Vimeo are both popular for this purpose, it is important to understand what the pros and cons of either platforms are. YouTube as a Video Marketing Platform The YouTube community boasts of an astounding 450 million people looking for entertainment and information. A video uploaded on YouTube has much at its disposal to go absolutely viral when compared with other video networks. The main goal of a video uploaded on YouTube is to elicit as many clicks and views as possible. Before uploading a video on YouTube, you should bear in mind the type of audience you want to target with your film. YouTube caters mainly to commoners who are not professional film making. Also the discussions and comments on YouTube can often get frivolous and too trivial. This puts Vimeo at a better level when being compared for professionalism among audience. Vimeo As a Video Marketing Platform Vimeo consists of a meager 14 million users, who mostly are college students and people who are well-versed and knowledgeable in the art of film making. Most of the users of Vimeo are artists and designers too. Vimeo exudes a professional ambiance. The discussion and comments (or feedback) on Vimeo are a boon to the aspiring film maker and can be enriching if taken constructively – with a pinch of salt, of course. Pros and Cons of YouTube as a Tool for Content and Video Marketing: . YouTube caters to 800 million visitors per month, giving you a huge platform to excel at video marketing. As 75 hours of video is uploaded per minute, it takes a little more than just uploading your video to go viral – it should be promoted in an organized manner. This is a definite downside, but the audience it garners is a definite pro. . Services rendered by YouTube are absolutely free and as it is managed by Google itself, the search results can be absolutely spot on. There is no limit to the number of videos that can be uploaded, but the length of the videos is limited to 15 minutes. . Instead of content marketing, businesses can profit from advertising on YouTube as a proxy to television advertising, provided you have the wherewithal. . YouTube doesn’t part with its brand value and the logo it endorses. The videos you upload always display the YouTube logo, which could prove detrimental to your brand. This surely can be categorized as a downside.  Pros and Cons of Vimeo as a Tool for Content and Video Marketing: . Vimeo is still developing and establishing itself with only 60 million visitors per month, dwarfing it in comparison with YouTube. This means that there is a less possibility of the video going viral- enlisting this to be a downside. . The quality of the search results do not match up to the standards set by Google’s YouTube, but the interface is good and there is no restriction to the length of the video that can be uploaded. . Vimeo caters to creative people like film makers, film enthusiasts, designers, artists and the like. This is a pro for businesses focusing on B2B outreach. . Vimeo’s player is not designed to go with the brand. If offers a complete customization of its player – you can embed your logo and brand on the player itself, unlike YouTube. This can definitely be considered as an upside. What Must a Business Choose? Online video viewing is synonymous with YouTube. The strategy employed in the promotion of videos can play a vital role in their success. Considering the tags or the right keywords a video is associated with also plays a major role in helping it appear in a whole lot of search results. Being a featured video too accounts for the placing in search results. On Vimeo, one has a fat chance of being directed to the exact search results which means, your prospective viewer will have to be directed to your video through an external link. This can prove to be a handicap or an impediment to the success of your video. Google on the other hand can favor YouTube links to be displayed in a variety of search results, thus, meting out step motherly treatment to Vimeo. Succinctly put, the ultimate choice for content and video marketing depends solely on the objective you want to attain- the critical acclaim on Vimeo or the likeability of random viewers on YouTube. If you are looking for popularity among your customers, YouTube is certainly the better alternative. However, if you are looking for a professional and business feedback or taking up a B2B endeavor, Vimeo can be a better option.

By now, it should not come to us as a surprise that micro blogging and social networking are marketing tools employed by companies to reach their target audience. This concept has caught pace in the past few years and has benefitted businesses in more ways than one can imagine. It is very crucial for every startup, be it small or big, to launch a blog as it opens a channel for the company to communicate with its customers and also collect valuable feedback. Most companies believe that they have seen a positive impact on their business processes and measurable improvements in their operations after launching a blog. Why Is Tumblr Important for Marketing? Tumblr is one such micro blogging service which has created quite a stir in the market because of its unique features and distinct style, which have aided in providing effective marketing and advertising strategies to many companies. Tumblr allows its users to blog with multimedia content and offers a global platform to companies trying to promote their upcoming products and services without any hassles. Promotion of a brand is very important to make it big and small businesses usually suffer losses because they do not invest much in promotion and advertising. This is where Tumblr shows up like a knight in shining armor to save them from dying an untimely death. Small business owners who are planning to cut costs in advertising must consider Tumblr as it is an effective social networking tool that can propel your company to new heights. Here are few tips that can help you in formulating successful marketing strategies using Tumblr. 1.Showcase Products with High Quality Pictures Tumblr focuses on audience who is visual and prefer brevity over verboseness. This feature can be very well exploited by online merchants to sell their products. Multiple high quality pictures can be posted on Tumblr to give a comprehensive view of the product and lure visitors into buying it without having to go to a store. 2.Tumblr Can Fetch Visitors to Your Official Website An official website is essential for a company to outsource information. It is crucial to have your target audience go through your company’s website where they can get detailed information on what they are interested in.  Companies can direct traffic to their websites using Tumblr by creating a blog with a lasting visual impact on its audience.  There is also an option of providing a direct link to your official website which can boost traffic to your website. 3.Directs Traffic to Other Social Networking Sites Tumblr directs target audience to your account on other social networking sites and increases your chances of making a lasting impact. With Tumblr you can make the most of social networking and micro blogging services by linking your company’s accounts on other social networking sites with your blog. This optimizes the scope of advertisement and marketing with minimum investment. This strategy is very useful for small businesses which do not want to invest a lot in advertising and marketing and. It facilitates in focusing on different features of a product depending on the target audience available on different social networking sites. 4.Pictures Speak Louder than Words The most appealing feature of Tumblr is its ability to host pictures which almost fill the entire screen space. These pictures can also be used to communicate thoughts and ideas and not just products. Text oriented businesses can also reap the profits of hosting a blog on Tumblr as they can use pictures to accentuate the features of their business and reach out to visual thinkers. Most news portals have used this idea to cater to their audience and the results have been strikingly impressive. 5.It Helps You to Add Character to Your Brand One of the prime factors of brand communication is to create a certain character for your brand so that people can relate to it and Tumblr helps you achieve this with utmost ease. By hosting a blog on Tumblr companies get a chance to interact with their target audience and create awareness about the product or feature that they are talking about. This social networking site provides an interactive medium for companies to answer the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) and resolving doubts once and for all. Customers have a propensity to trust the comments of other customers and if the comments suggest a positive feedback then you have struck oil. All you have to do is go public with it, which Tumblr can very well help you with! 6.Promotion of Your Skills and Past Work Consumer market relies heavily on the credibility of a brand. It goes a long way in creating a niche for the company. Promoting your company’s distinct skill set and past work history on Tumblr can work wonders in building the credibility of your company. Letting your work speak for itself is another smart advertising strategy that you could employ. Companies could use testimonials from their clients to certify the quality or focus on the skill sets which make them distinguishable from others. By using pictures the effect of this strategy can be amplified. 7.Have Your Company Featured in Search Engine Results Companies can do a lot to show up in the results returned by a search engine and why shouldn’t they? It is one of the best shortcut methods to propagate a company’s existence. Tumblr offers a feature which allows it to be easily accessed directly through the web and it can project your company’s information directly on the search engine and increase traffic to your blog which in turn can increase traffic to your website if you have linked it on Tumblr. New business start-ups can benefit a lot by this as it requires minimum financial investment and the impact is far reaching. 8.Let the World know What Goes on Behind the Scenes Companies have come to love and appreciate the platform Tumblr provides for them to associate with their customers. One more unspoken trick to make your brand

It is often common to hear from our colleagues and competitors that crowd-sourcing with the help of social networking sites will help build a good brand. However, in order to understand the context, we need to understand the interesting history behind it as well. The Story of Crowd-sourcing through Social Media Decades earlier the market was led by the supply and demand rule. Consumers bought what was sold by the marketers and the manufacturers produced what was beneficial for them. Times changed and slowly demand took over supply. Consumers, backed with the power of money, realized that they could demand what they desired. The trend of catering to the consumers slowly set in, eventually recognizing the fact that ‘Consumer is King’. Years have passed by and brands have now come to consider consumers as their extension. Brands have left no stone unturned to ensure that they please, impress and hang on to their loyal consumers and at the same time lure consumers from other brands by creating excitement. Brands always realized the value of engaging consumers, but it was difficult to measure the results. Every consumer wants to feel invested and recognized by the brand they adore, while brands look for every opportunity to keep the relation with the consumer strong. In that perspective, social media came along as a boon to brands and consumers to connect with one another. Social media came with many opportunities for brands to market themselves in the most desirable way. It became a catalyst for the brand and the consumer to get to know each other better. Brands now had a tool to measure and map their activities to act upon them accordingly. They could directly reach out to the consumer who was extremely pleased with them and even do damage control by talking to a disappointed customer, setting things right instantly. Brands also realized they could get more from their consumers: that a consumer apart from spilling out his wallet for the brand, could also give fresh ideas, create free and wide spread publicity and indirectly make the brand the talk of the town. Need for Crowd-sourcing to Build Brands This is where Crowd-Sourcing put its best foot in. Brands have begun to associate themselves with those consumers, who can talk on the brand’s behalf, ideate and lure others into believing the brand. A consumer’s testimonials are the best words a brand can count on at any point of time. Brands by creating a relationship with a consumer, will up his status among his friends giving him more reasons to stick to the brand , endorsing it at all times. A few ways to create successful crowd sourcing: 1.Consistent Participation: Brands need to make sure they have a set of identified consumers who regularly participate on the brand’s social media page to ensure that every post/content of theirs has some interaction going on. Regular interaction will also help the post stay on top of the page reaching out to more eye balls and eventually participation. 2.Varied set of Target Audience: Brands need to identify more than one set of target group who belong to different age/demographic and behavioral aspects. This will assure the brand of varied feedback enabling the brand to understand the tastes and expectations of their consumers of a wide range. 3.Recognition: Consumers are not dumb. After a period of intense engagement activity on the brand’s page, the consumer will expect to be identified and rewarded in some way. Direct acknowledgement from the brand will boost the consumer’s ego and will desire to do more. Acknowledgement with monetary rewards along with VIP content, exclusive brand content also act as a great motivator for the consumer. 4.Reliable Measuring Scale: Social media can act as an almost accurate measuring scale to gauge the consumer engagement success. Analysis of the trends and behavioral patterns of the consumers should be studied in depth to understand the consumers better and improvise on upcoming engagement activities. Crowd sourcing is proving to be a strong channel creating an almost symbiotic relationship with its consumers. For brands, market research agencies almost become redundant due to the access of direct communication with their loyal and potential consumers. Even before a brand sets up a pilot project, the idea can be run through the most active consumers on their social media page helping the brand get deeper and genuine consumer insights. Brands smart enough, will find a way to make their consumers do the sales for them. Be it creating publicity for an advertisement before it goes on air or even testing out new products in the market to get an initial feedback or even invite friends and extended friends for a brand event.

In today’s world the need to discuss the importance of a website is redundant. However, what remains forgotten is the importance of good copywriting on websites, as it is one of the factors of successful advertising and marketing. Need for Impeccable Copywriting A website is one of the primary things a company focuses on during the start-up process and it reflects the purpose of the business and acts as a virtual salesperson. Since it is an online window of your company you must be very careful about what is being published and projected. Even trivial errors in this domain can spell doom for your company. A website’s design may appeal to the visitors and also communicate to an extent but will not deliver the same results as the content will. It is like virtual glue that holds visitors to a website. Gone are the days when companies used to get away with their mere existence on the Internet and now it is all about exhibiting powerful and impeccable content without giving any room for copywriting errors. Copywriting Errors and Avoiding Pitfalls As we know, websites thrive on visual communication and thus, it is very important to be clear about what you want to project. For years, visual impact has been used as a marketing paradigm: what you see is what you perceive, and you do not want to bungle up web content with copywriting errors, as it is the only medium through which you communicate. Copywriting errors can do more damage than you can think of and they can not only destroy the marketing strategy but also taint a company’s reputation. Here is a list of common copywriting errors which should be avoided to maintain and uphold the quality of a website: 1.Know Your Content More often than not, while developing web content companies tend to furnish more information than needed. Visitors pay little attention to the information that they deem unnecessary and if unnecessary information is available in abundance then they tend to skip the webpage, which is not something that you would want. Make a list of prime features that you want to showcase in your website and use catchy phrases and punch lines to highlight these features. 2.Focus on Grammar and Proofreading When you are talking serious business on your website, you wouldn’t want the visitors to pass you for a ten year old because if they do, your company’s reputation may land in serious trouble. Make sure that you have proofread your web content time and again to avoid any spelling errors and maintain correct usage of grammar. Impeccable web content goes a long way in establishing your point and your company’s reputation. You may keep it simple, but it has to be impeccable. 3.Simplicity is the Best Policy You may be well aware with jargon associated with your product or a feature that you are trying to showcase on your website. However, the visitors to your website may not be experts at what you are dealing with. Try to keep the text simple and understandable so that it does not appear elusive to a layman. The added advantage of keeping it simple is, you can easily put forward your focus points without leaving much room for any errors. 4.Highlight the Lead Remember, visitors spend very little time to conclude whether your webpage is of relevance to them or not. It is in this short period of time that you either make or break an impression. Hence try to keep it short, lead with the main point and do not beat around the bush. Stick to the basics and provide whatever you think a visitor would want from your webpage in the first few lines of the text. Many visitors scan and skim the first few lines and decide whether to hop on to another website or stay on yours. 5.Maintain Brevity Websites that talk a lot are avoided just like talkative people are avoided at parties. A visitor should not find reading web content a cumbersome task, which could very well happen if it is too verbose. A garrulous text not only kills the interest but also leaves nothing to imagination. Most internet users are usually digression intolerant, which makes it all the more important for a company to focus on what needs to be communicated and maintain brevity in the text.

The word troll would take you back to fairyland where trolls would be hiding under the bridge waiting to catch you unaware or sneaking behind your plant waiting to pluck and spoil your just weeded garden. Here, we are not talking about the fairyland trolls. These trolls are online trolls, who do just about the same thing: they try to spoil things and hurt people. Online trolls are anonymous trolls who wait to disrupt someone’s reputation, start fight between friends or even strangers, harass the ones who are already insecure about themselves, poke fun at someone’s loss and even post offensive messages on people’s page who are no more. These trolls make merry by spreading unhappiness and discomfort amongst others. Sadists by nature, they are forever looking for opportunities to target the weak spot of a person. A majority of times, celebrities are their target. Who or What Are Trolls? Trolls are regular people who indulge in the world of anonymity. The opportunity of being anonymous lures then to taunt people online letting the sad side of them flow in full form. They are primarily cyberbullies. If you are one to spend time online, you possibly would have met a troll and been appalled at the obnoxious behavior. Cajoling them, being polite while trying to make them understand or even being stern wouldn’t have worked to stop them from being highly abusive. What trolls are looking for mostly is a victim who will get easily infuriated. They are on the search for possible weak audience and a focus that is most sensitive to the person. This place could be anywhere on a blog site, games website, music forum, social network sites, news sites, forums containing teenage members and such kinds. Unless there is a strong moderator on these forums who can control their behavior, trolls make the best use of the opportunity. How do you handle such revolting behavior? Unfortunately you are not in a position to control not being a troll’s target, but you definitely are capable of choosing to not become a victim. Since all that a troll is looking for is to hurt, embarrass and provoke a person, ensuring that you do not feel any of these, or at least by never showing it plays a huge role in not becoming a victim. Follow selective Ignorance: A lot of people suggest ignoring the troll, but that would mean giving the troll the power to silence you. Rather than ignoring the troll, chose which troll’s response is worth ignoring. If the comment is something trivial and does not harm you and your reputation in anyway, then you can ignore it. But if the comment is something that will lead to an entire group’s outrage or something that is going to harm you or your company’s reputation then you could address the troll, but not directly. Acknowledge that you are aware of a troll’s intrusion among the conversation and further pay no heed to the troll’s comments. By doing this, you are hinting at the other members to not bother thereby killing the troll’s purpose. Freedom of Speech: In order to curb the troll menace, victims and supports suggested anonymous posting to be banned. But the First Amendment of the US constitution protects free speech. Since being anonymous fits into the free speech definition, this could not be banned. Trolling is used in a very broad perspective. It can be an offensive, nasty comment or even a post made by disgruntled customer. So ignoring and treating trolls the right way should be done carefully. Disinhibition and Boredom: Experts still haven’t found out the exact reasons for trolling. “Online people feel anonymous and disinhibited,” says Prof Mark Griffiths, director of the International Gaming Research Unit at Nottingham Trent University. “They lower their emotional guard and in the heat of the moment may troll either reactively or proactively.” He also says that trolling is usually carried out by young adult males for amusement, boredom and revenge. We all have the capacity of being trolls ourselves. A comment or a post against our beliefs can trigger us to say abusive things impulsively. When our emotion is triggered, we tend to get caught with the moment. Hence, we all have to be careful of what we say when and to whom, especially online.