Category: Marketing

Web writing is not the same as writing offline. It requires a specific strategy, which includes a set of rules that are unique to the Internet. These principles of web writing are practiced knowingly or unknowingly by good writers but it is important to list them down so that those who are new to web content writing know what is important and what is not. We have made a list of 10 principles that will help you optimize your web writing and help you reach your target audience better. Some of these tips and tricks might already be familiar to you but by making sure that you follow all the 10 principles listed here, you are almost ensuring your success when it comes to online marketing. We say ‘almost’ because in spite of adhering to these tips and tricks, you still need to write professional & research your topics well. That is something that cannot be stressed enough. No matter how well an article is formatted and optimized for the web, if it does not provide useful information or if it does not engage or entertain the reader, then it is not of much use. Thus, make sure you are writing awesome content and also following these 10 tips & tricks. Post consistently Writing great content is awesome. However, if you are not posting it in a consistent manner, then it is awful for your content marketing strategy. It is recommended that you follow a routine and post a certain number of posts at the same time. Whether you are posting half a dozen articles everyday or you are posting one blog post every week, make sure that there is a certain rhythm to it and stick to that rhythm. This helps readers to expect new content and when they do visit the web page, they will not be unpleasantly surprised to see nothing new or several more than what they expected. Do not leave certain pages blank We have noticed that many websites often have empty pages. A link might lead to a page that only has a few sentences whereas another link can have a detailed page of well-written content. A website is not only about consistency in design. It also needs to have consistent quantity and quality of content on all its pages. Make sure that you do not leave any pages blank. Also ensure that pages do not have insufficient content as that is going to turn readers off as well. Use images and videos effectively While writing great articles is always important, it is also equally important to attach an image and sometimes, a video as well. Images and videos add to a website’s SEO & are central to making sure that your website appears in search results. You need to ensure that the images are not arbitrarily chosen and that they are there for a very compelling reason. Also, before publishing, make sure that you resize the image to fit the theme of your website. We have noticed many blogs that carry images, which look either stretched or go beyond the ‘margins’. Small paragraphs Whenever an article or a blog post is written, it should be easy to read. Readability depends not only on the content but also the way it is structured. Make sure that each paragraph does not contain more than a few sentences and that the sentences themselves are short & simple. Long and complex sentences are tiresome & no one wants to read through them, especially, while browsing online. It is important to keep the paragraphs short enough not only to make it easy to read but also to make it easy to see. When a published article looks attractive because of small paragraphs, people will take the time to read or scan through it. Keep it short Do not write very lengthy articles. Anything more than 2,000 words is very tiresome for most people that, usually, browse the web. A good blog post is, usually, around 500-700 words, whereas, a column could range around 1,400-1,500 words. Anything that is unnecessarily lengthy is, usually, ignored by readers. Even if you wrote excellent content, people probably will not want to read through the entire article. It is always better to keep the article as short and simple as possible so that you do not alienate your readers. Use simple and understandable words There is a tendency among writers, either offline or online, to use jargon and complex words that sound fanciful. It not only looks awkward and pretentious but also puts people off, when you use words that are complex, instead of an easily understandable word. You cannot impress your readers by writing in jargon. It comes across as cold at best and ridiculous at worst. Unless you are writing a highly technical document, avoid using jargons of any kind. Keep your language simple, friendly and modest. Web writing is not the place to experiment with vocabulary, with an intention to stroke one’s own vanity. Keep references ready Each time you research online and each time you are picking up data & statistics from some website, keep these references handy. At the bottom of the post, you can list all the references from where you picked up the numbers. Do not create statistics like many writers do. It is very easy to find out that you have been making up numbers. It not only affects your reputation but your entire website will lose credibility. It is important to list all the websites and links from where you picked up your numbers & information from. Scannability Articles and content need to be scanable by visitors. What we mean by this is that it needs to be readable and content should be formatted in an easy to understand manner. There has to be small paragraphs, utilization of bold and italics when necessary, usage of bullets & numbers etc. It is also equally important to use headers and sub-heads so that people find

The importance of Business Intelligence (BI) cannot be highlighted enough. It helps companies to convert huge amounts of raw data into meaningful and useful information. That information can help companies to identify new opportunities which can be further developed. If anything could make the huge amounts of data user-friendly, it is probably only business intelligence. Customer insight, on the other hand, analyzes the interests of the consumer with respect to a brand. It helps to understand people’s desires, aspirations, moods, mindsets, culture etc. that can drive them to take action. Connecting Business Intelligence with Customer Insight Merlin David Stone (The Customer Framework, Ascot, UK) and Neil David Woodcock (The Customer Framework, Ascot, UK) published a paper in the Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing, which helps us to understand how customer insight and business intelligence can complement each other & help a company to enhance its interactive marketing. With big data becoming increasingly available to companies and with their own software programs collecting more information about customers than they ever did in the past, it is high time that both business intelligence & customer insight are brought together. In this article, we briefly describe the paper published by M. D. David and N. D. Woodstock (2014). The study, its methodology and its findings Titled “Interactive, direct and digital marketing: A future that depends on better use of business intelligence”, the study aimed to explain the importance of bringing business intelligence and customer insight together, in order to support interactive marketing campaigns. It was based on the researchers’ own experience in assessing customer management capabilities of companies and also, a review of literature that helped them to learn more about business intelligence and customer insight. The most important finding of the study was that companies need to pay more attention to the governance of business intelligence. The authors found that customer insight teams, usually, employ a self-service approach when it comes to business intelligence and that is not always a good thing. By bringing business intelligence and customer insight together, interactive marketing can be enhanced. They also found that the interface between CI and BI is not researched well & if more research and development takes place in that domain, all of us would benefit a lot. The authors believe that the interface between BI and CI is very new & more research needs to be undertaken to reap the benefits. Analysis of their findings IT governance often takes a backseat when companies need to take care of marketing, generating leads and doing the actual work. In our opinion, corporate governance of Information Technology, including business intelligence is extremely important for the success of companies. If departments that engage in customer insights also engage in using business intelligence without being governed under certain policies, it might result in haphazard analysis. Moreover, the above study explores the importance of bringing both business intelligence and customer insight together, in order to enhance interactive marketing. The need of the day is to have certain policies in place and also make changes to existing framework so that both business intelligence & customer insight are complementary to each other, instead of using either in a haphazard manner. Interface between CI and BI needs to be studied together, so that executives involved in either can make better decisions. Further research is required to explore ways in which both of them can be brought together. When marketing has begun to stress on the importance of interactive communication, novel methods to use business intelligence and customer insight together will help companies to reach the target audience better. Final thoughts If you already have both BI and CI in place, try to restructure your IT governance to ensure that data is analyzed in a useful manner. If the interface between CI and BI are brought together & governed appropriately, resulting analysis can be valuable to interactive marketing and to understand our customers better. References Merlin David Stone, Neil David Woodcock, (2014) “Interactive, direct and digital marketing: A future that depends on better use of business intelligence”, Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing, Vol. 8 Iss: 1, pp.4 – 17

Corporate blogs are no longer the bugaboos that most CEOs tried to avoid, when it came to content marketing. Even smaller companies have begun to embrace blogging and regular posting of articles (or was that a blog? an essay? a column even?) on blogs. However, blogging being an almost-informal method of writing, most companies and content managers wonder what really they need to be writing & what they have already written and published anyway. Most content writers, even the ones who claim to have years of experience, use terms like blog posts, articles, analysis, essays and articles interchangeably. Only, these words are not interchangeable. Each of these names is literally different content formats that you and I need to take very seriously. Whether you are a CEO or have been writing for a company’s blog, understanding the nuances and differences between each of the major content formats will help you to achieve what you really want – a good readership that values what you write or probably spend a small fortune on getting written. In this article, let us take a look at the major content formats and try to understand a few basic principles about them before you start writing a piece of content. Blog post Ideally, we need to be calling them blog posts, which are published on a ‘blog’. However, people tend to use the words “blogs” and “blog posts” interchangeably & I will not argue against that. A blog is typically an informal piece of content, for which, academic level of research is not necessary. An opinionated and well-thought piece of content, which tells the reader how you feel about a certain topic or issue, can be called a blog. A blog can be informative too but only it is not an authoritative piece of content. It works well for SEO and also for people who do not want to invest time in reading lengthier & more difficult kinds of content pieces. Usually, we recommend that blog posts need to have somewhere between 400 and 700 words so that people are not bored & that your opinionated piece does not sound like a lengthy monologue. Blogs need to be funny, attention grabbing, honest and opinionated. If you have something to say and if that does not need a lot of references & citations, you need to be blogging about it. Column A column is a slightly longer and a little more structured blog. Columns are often found in newspapers and magazines & they range between 700 to 1,400 words. It is a good idea to pay more attention to grammar, style and punctuation when it comes to writing columns. The very fact that it is lengthier ensures that more people arrive at your page to read it. You need to make sure that a column at least tries to use AP Style guide. Columns, usually, tell a story or discuss something of importance. They might also be lengthier blogs that are just as opinionated. They might argue against or for an idea and ask the reader to take an action. In fact, they can be a lot of other things except they are not very academic or really well-researched. They are subjective in nature though objectivity is always welcomed in any kind of writing. An introduction, a body and conclusion are central to the idea of a column. This is a well-respected format and companies need to employ this more often than they, usually, do. While blogs are easier to read and shorter in length, columns attract the more serious type of readers who might also be the ones who are more interested in your products and services. Articles Loosely used, blogs, columns, features and just about anything that is published for consumption on websites in the form of an ‘article’ is an article. However, it is nice to specify what an article could be. Though there are no hard and fast rules, it is good to think of a article as a well-researched piece of content that cites sources & mentions other specific data that supports an argument or a piece of information. With that in mind, an article is significantly more difficult to write. We speak about articles in the same breath as an article that would be published by an academic journal. Yet, online articles published on company websites can be well-researched pieces of content that are not very opinionated and are instead, informative. They could be anywhere between 1,000 to 4,000 words. The shorter the better, as people simply do not have the patience to read very lengthy articles online. People ask us if a blog can be an article and an article a column. The answer to that question is it depends. If you wrote a blog post that cites a number of references and is more informative than entertaining, yes, a blog post can be an article. Essay An essay, on the other hand, is similar to articles and columns in length but they do not have stipulated rules of citing, though it is preferable to do so. It is uncommon to publish essays on company websites though not necessarily a bad idea. Essays, like articles, require considerable thought and there has to be a profound reason to write one. Whether it is an argumentative essay or a persuasive essay, a writer will need to spend more time in structuring it and adding style. An essay often is a piece of literature and thus, has to consider rules that are related to non-fiction writing. For example, an essay needs to be stylish and informative at the same time. It needs to be a work of literature that is looked up to and not just referred to for the sake of information, like one would refer to a well-referenced article. That way, we believe writing an essay is even more difficult than writing an article. Nevertheless, it will earn you more respect from readers, if you occasionally publish well-written and

Social media activism has long been dismissed as a form of ‘slacktivism’, similar to lazy journalism. It is easy to seem interested in a social cause, click on a few like buttons, share a few sympathy evoking posts and call it a day; and most people are doing just that. However, if you really want to be taken seriously for your social activism on social media, you need to do a little more than what everyone does. Social media is a reflection of real life Social media is a reflection of real life and if it can be said, it is a truer representation of the world around us. Social media filters out a lot of data and presents to us the world that we would like to see. In effect, we can say that what we see on social media is a truer version of the reality we are surrounded by. This is because, unlike in real life, social media helps you to choose the kind of information and news you want to see, making your online world a more real version of life you want to see. Thus, any social activism endeavor you take upon yourself will be a more intensified version of yourself. It is easy to talk about helping rural artisans in front of your boardroom and feel that you have done your bit as a corporate player. However, when you take your social activism to social media, you are more likely to encounter people who share similar interests. Most likely, people who are interested in your cause will end up interacting with you and getting to know your business as well. In this article, let us take a look at how you can optimize your social media activism. Brand yourself as a social activist There is nothing more important than personal branding when it comes to online interactions. You need to brand yourself as a business professional who is also interested in social activism. If you brand yourself as a social activist, you will probably be ignored by the ones who have money – businessmen. You need to ensure that you do not come across as a social activist who wants donations. Instead, you need to come across as someone who is fighting for a cause by using influence and capital that one has already earned; and that will earn you respect. Write like an activist While it is important to look like the successful business person that you really are, you also need to write and talk like a social activist. You need to know the depths of your cause and talk about it passionately. You need to write regular blog posts about why it is important to support your cause and how it can help the community your business works in. Promote your altruism Social activism runs parallel with altruism. Altruism is a defense mechanism that is, actually, positive, unlike other defense mechanisms that Sigmund Freud stated. Whenever you feel altruistic, talk about it on social media. Pique the interest of other altruistic business professionals who might be willing to jump into your band wagon. Make sure that you promote your acts of altruism on social media. If you acted on your social cause, write or tweet about it. Do not let even the smallest act of altruism go wasted. Connect with like-minded people The point of using social media activism is to ensure that you meet likeminded people. Those who feel similarly about the causes that you like will also want to work with you and do business with you. With that in mind, you need to make a list of people that you think will be useful for your business and are also interested in your causes. Connect with such people online and exchange information & pleasantries. Track the results of your activism Right from the moment you begin your social media activism, track the progress. Are people liking or talking about your causes? Are they ignoring your posts? Or do they find you boring and repetitive? Make a list of your strengths and weaknesses when it comes to running social media activism campaigns. Work on your weaknesses and hone your strengths. Social media activism is a powerful way of making sure that you attract the right kind of audience; and it is also one of the best ways to attract both clients and customers. If you get lucky, you might even get good press mentions.

Like with any other social networking site, Pinterest has lately seen a number of fake pins, likes and comments. Some of these fake activities have blatantly sought attention and they have managed to get what they want, at the cost of genuine Pinterest users’ marketing success. Businesses that have used Pinterest spuriously have, thus, so far avoided penalties and warnings from any regulatory body. No more spamming and requesting for repins on Pinterest Thanks to a continued effort by Pinterest users and thanks to realization among Pinterest staff, the company announced its updated usage policy, which bans all spurious & spammy activities on Pinterest. The new update to policies ensures that fake pins and likes cannot be sought and money can’t be paid to people who will sit by the system and keeping pinning & liking. This will ensure that Pinterest will remain true to its goal and reliable information is made available to the larger Pinterest community. If you are a business owner who has been trying to figure out Pinterest, one thing is for sure – you need not indulge in any malpractices to build your audience. Instead, be honest and work hard towards building your Pinterest community. Here are some of the most important points that you need to take home: Do not pay people to pin You need not pay people for pinning or re-pinning your business pins. You also cannot compensate them monetarily for liking your pins. Instead, you can pay a person who runs the account; and that is obviously fair. What is not fair is, buying pins or likes. If you would like to pay commission for products and services that were sold through pins, you can pay commission using affiliate networks. How to run contests A person can pin only once in order to participate in a contest. Repeated pins are not allowed and do not suggest anywhere that Pinterest is your sponsor or that it endorses you. You also cannot ask people to pin from a selection of pins that already exist. Do ask participants not to pin the rules of the contest that you run. Don’t spam Make sure that you do not engage in old school spamming by asking people to comment on your pins. Do not ask them to re-pin or like your pins. If your pins are good enough, they will like or pin it anyway. Instead, focus on pinning great and informative stuff that people can actually use. Here is what you need to do: Like other pins and re-pin others’ pictures Instead of asking people to re-pin or like your pins, go ahead and choose the best pins that are related to your business and like them or re-pin them. Choose wisely so that you are not affected by competition. However, there is always a lot of information on Pinterest that can be liked and re-pinned without attracting unnecessary competition. Have Pinterest conversations Talk to people who you think will be great influencers. Find out what they like and go through their boards. Like or re-pin their pins (only if they are really useful to you and your audience). Do not go ahead and like images that have got nothing to do with your intended audience & business. Create useful boards Last but not the least, create Pinterest boards and categorize your boards in a smart fashion. Make sure that your audience does not feel inundated with information, no matter how useful it is. Instead, categorize and classify your pins so that they are easily accessible to people. Pinterest has seemed to understand that a lot of companies have been using the platform in unethical ways. Thankfully, the updated policies ensure fair play and it will no longer be possible to cheat on gaining a good audience. As long as you play fair and ensure that you are doing the right things by not spamming or asking for re-pins, you will be able to make use of Pinterest well. Pinterest is a very powerful visual social bookmarking service that has become wildly popular in recent years. It is also one of the most important social networking tools available for marketers today.

Instagram is not as popular as Facebook or Twitter among marketers and that is because most marketing professionals do not “get it”. However, Instagram is a platform that simply cannot be avoided because of its sheer popularity among users. Why you need to care about Instagram? In just over 2 months of its release, there were more than 1 million users. Currently, the platform has more than 150 million users and they share & consume images every fraction of a second. Instagram is free to use and can be a very powerful medium to share corporate images & the story of your brand. Instagram is a powerful platform to connect with your target audience and increase brand visibility. All that one needs to do is create a free Instagram account and begin to post pictures that tell the story. There are several ways one can begin to use Instagram without feeling overwhelmed or “stuck”. In this article, let us take a look at some of the most important steps to connect with your target audience using Instagram. It is not difficult but it needs a little bit of planning and some amount of discipline. Create a profile Creating a profile on Instagram is free and does not take a lot of effort. Instagram will require you to use a smartphone in order to post pictures. Ensure that your smartphone has a good camera. Use a good Android smartphone with a decent camera or any of the iPhones. Use a profile image that clearly helps people in identifying your company. Keywords, mission and other information can be added to your profile to help people identify & recognize your brand. Learn to use the tools Instagram’s USP is its filters. The filters allow people to post pictures that are slightly altered to create a different mood. The trick is to identify which filter looks the best for a certain picture that you have taken. Sometimes, a black and white picture speaks a lot more than garishly colorful pictures. Other times, you might want to use retro filters to pique nostalgia among your followers. Instagram allows you to insert hashtags, just like Twitter and now, recently, like Facebook. These hashtags help people to identify your business quickly when they are looking for certain hashtags. Make sure that you have a collection of hashtags for which you would want to be uniquely identified. Good descriptions for each photograph helps people to find humor and wit, which naturally encourages them to follow you. The human touch There isn’t a better way to tell the story of your bran than to show that behind the veneer of business, you are all made of flesh and bones. Post pictures of your employees and of pets, if you have any. Cat pictures, naturally, guarantee follows, likes and comments. If you cannot have cats in your office premises, ensure that you click pictures of some ferals and prove your love for animals. A restaurant that is interested in saving feral cats by promoting trap-neuter-return (TNR) has more chances of finding followers on Instagram than a restaurant that posts pictures of various delectable dishes cooked by the master chef. Use Instagram to your advantage and do not be afraid to post pictures of causes that you support as a business. Importance of history and heritage Another great way to narrate the history of your brand is to rekindle some enthusiasm for history. If you have been around for a long time, post pictures of your earlier days. Do not have a history to boast? Then create some history by posting historical images from the community you operate in. All that a company needs to do is to get creative. Pictures of happy customers Ask your customers if you can take their pictures and post their pictures on Instagram, when they look happy and cheerful. Smiles always get attention and if they happen to be your customers. That will earn you more goodwill and positive attention. Community events Ensure that you always take part in community events and social causes. Whether it is feeding the homeless or taking care of stray dogs, make sure that you, as a business, have something to return to your community. When people get to know that you are more than just a money-making business, they will begin to respect your business on the whole. Whether you operate online or offline, you still operate within the jurisdiction of a community. Be grateful to that community and show your love & respect by trying to improve the place; and share those pictures for ensured goodwill. Follow the trends Instagram has trending topics just like Twitter does and it is a good way to understand what is popular at the moment. With that in mind, it is a good idea to follow some trends and participate in them as well. It might take a little while for you to understand how to use these tools but with practice, you will be able to learn how to post images that will gather more likes and comments, encouraging people to actually follow you & engage with you. Engage with your audience Just because you are a business does not mean you need to be dry and guarded. Let loose and engage with your audience. Make sure that you also stray off your own hashtags and keywords once in a while. It is a social media platform after all and not just a tool to add filters to photos and bombard your audience with them. Engage your audience and talk to them often like their pictures & even leave behind witty comments. People are bound to click on your ID and arrive at your pictures too. Have fun when you do it Do not use Instagram as if it were a duty to do so. Enjoy using it and have fun while you do so. By having fun when you use Instagram, you will be able to spread cheer and

Of the three major social networking sites, LinkedIn is probably the most serious and professional. While Twitter is more journalistic in nature, when it comes to making business connections, LinkedIn proves to be far more important. LinkedIn not only serves as a platform to look for business opportunities and hire people but it is also a great platform to look for leads and connect with them. Lead generation activity on LinkedIn is one of the primary methods to boost sales in today’s world. LinkedIn has proven to be consistently important and managers & social media experts have often relied heavily upon this tool alone. In this article, let us take a look at how one can use LinkedIn to boost sales and generate leads. After all, 2014 is the year of digital and one will need to start using these tools every day. It is no longer just another method to generate leads but one of the crucial methods to generate leads and be successful in whatever you are trying to do. LinkedIn has certainly come a long way and those who have been using it for the last few years will vouch for its growing importance. Let us take a look at how LinkedIn can be used for lead generation: • Ask for introductions Sift through your contacts and visit profiles of people that you might want to connect with. If you run into people who are not yet connected to you, ask a common friend to introduce you to them. It is perfectly OK to do so, if you ask nicely. You can make a list of names that you would like to be connected with and when you are ready, ask your friend to introduce them on LinkedIn to you. Send a message with a blurb that will help your friend to simply copy and paste & introduce you to their connections. It might seem a little embarrassing but it’s a good way to connect with people that might prove to be important leads. Most people hesitate to ask for introductions but it is never a bad practice to do so. • Search for possible connections Just search on Google for possible people that you want to connect with. You need to go to Google and type in keywords & Linkedin.com in order to allow Google to fetch a list of results. Sift through this list and add people that you want to. If you are unable to do so, join Groups that they have joined and checked whether they have made that information public. • Engage in discussions There is nothing worse than creating a LinkedIn profile and not engaging with your audience. Engage and participate in conversations so that people get to know that you exist as a person & as a business entity. Targeted group discussions on LinkedIn are a great way to appear successful, knowledgeable and important enough. People, usually, try and get back to you when they realize you have a lot to offer to them. Contribute to the group’s discussion and offer your knowledge. Do not be stingy about revealing information. • Find interests you have in common Once you realize whom you want to talk to, make a list of common interests. Then, check if they are members of any group. Once you know in which groups they are taking part, you can quickly send them a private message using Group Messages. LinkedIn Groups offer a unique feature wherein you can send messages to perfect strangers even if you are not yet connected. • Utilize Lead Collection Lead Collection is a unique feature of LinkedIn. When you opt for LinkedIn Ads, you can choose Lead Collection as well. This lets people to click on a certain ad of yours, arrive at a landing page and then ask to be contacted. That is enough proof for you to know that they are not only going to be leads but also prospective clients or customers as well. • Stalk your stalkers There is nothing more thrilling than to know that someone is stalking you online in a professional and harmless way. When someone visits your profile on LinkedIn, visit their profile back and see if your interests match. If they do, contact them right away with a message that asks if you could help them, as they had visited your profile. This is a great way to not only arrive at potential leads but also ensure that you are being courteous. Of course, do not indulge in stalking that might come across as creepy. Do not stalk your former employees or your clients, especially, if you had a thing for them. • Use advanced filters LinkedIn comes with a number of filters, when it comes to searching for people. Use these advanced filters to get a list of people that closely match your tastes and needs. If you have subscribed to premium advanced search, it becomes all much easier to find people that truly matter. Advanced filters help you to weed out unnecessary leads that might not be forthcoming or useful. By ensuring that you filter out those who are not promising enough, you will be left with a pool of small but important leads that are bound to be useful for your business. • Remain active After you create your LinkedIn profile, do not go silent. It is imperative that you remain talking and sharing information. Your status updates matter a lot and people can easily come to know what you are up to & why they need to engage with you. Share information that you are an expert of and talk to people as well. Most people update their status only when they edit their profiles and some do not even do that. LinkedIn is a social networking site, which needs to be updated constantly. It is only prudent to remain active on LinkedIn so that you can engage with your audience and remain in their unconscious memory so