Media – INT Global

How Technology and New Media Are Shaping the Future of Advertising

September 10, 2018

In recent years, the advertising industry has experienced often painful changes and has found it difficult to keep up with the pace of technology. What used to be dominated by TV (video format) and print, is now increasingly chaotic, and different media are used to reach the target audience. Usage of data and personalization of data to create more specific ad content has forced many agencies to get into a survival mode. The future of ad agencies and advertising as a profession lies in the ability to swim in the direction of technology while remaining creative at the same time. Of course, this is no easy task, and there are multiple ways technology is shaping the future of advertising every moment. Let us take a brief look at the future of advertising shaped by technology, and the new media you might want to consider if you are an agency looking to advertise. Here are the top trends. Location data to influence advertising Currently, location data is mostly used for marketing purposes. However, in the near future, more advertisers will look at launching campaigns specifically based on location data. GDPR may work out in favour of advertisers because many people do give permission for their location data to be used. What was earlier a grey area will now be a clear pathway to target people in specific locations and send them ads. Mobile devices will spur location-based advertising further afield and will help predict trends as well. In fact, ad strategy will begin to rely on location data more than ever before. A paradigm shift from offline to online Digital advertising has actually caught up with TV advertising. The share of advertising budget by channel is exactly equal to each other at 41% for TV and digital ads. Print comes at a distant 10% in ad budgets. What this really tells us is, there is a paradigm shift taking place in the ad industry, where campaigns are now written by default for digital channels, and TV and print are going to become after-thoughts. What we will also witness is the convergence of digital and traditional advertising, which actually has taken place if you notice the figures. In the near future, the share of TV is likely to fall further, with a potential for print to increase. Richer graphics and return to creativity offline With online advertising getting busier and more serious, creative will find more freedom to experiment in print. Online advertising has already become mainstream and is subject to decision makers’ opinions and strategy, leading to less elbow room for creative professionals. On the flip side, print will see a gradual return to creativity, and more expensive ad campaigns may actually be run via print media, simply because those who still tend to stick to print medium tend to be better educated and more affluent. In other words, digital will encourage print to become more niche, and that is not something bad. Application-based advertising Digital advertising is fueled by mobile users, and it is no surprise that the future of advertising will depend on how agencies tap into this medium. App usage has increased dramatically even in the last few months when we consider emerging economies like Brazil and China. In the US and Europe, much of advertising growth has taken place in the realm of mobile applications, and this is something that cannot be ignored. In-app ads and users’ geo-location together can transform the way we understand advertising today. Ads are going to be personalized further Much of the changes taking place in the ad industry due to technology is because of data. Data is helping ad managers to access insight that was previously impossible, and that’s leading to a greater degree of personalization. Personalization of ads is also important because digital ads rarely enter the periphery of perception of web users. Many of them have begun to use ad-blockers and to make sure that an ad reaches the intended viewer, personalizing it is very important. Without personalizing, you stand the risk of being blocked or just being ignored. Focus on content Finally, another important trend is the quality of the content. As content developed for online usage is searchable, it is very different from creating ad content for print or TV media. Advertisers will need to focus on the quality of content and ensure that they are filled with rich media in order to attract the attention of consumers. In fact, ad content will tend to become more informative and realistic than persuasive. Persuasive and creative campaigns may find better use in print media offline. Here are some new media to consider Location-based mobile technology While mobile ads are nothing new, you might want to focus more on location-based mobile ads in the future. Consumer lifestyle is defined by mobile usage, and people move from one place to another, and they are always connected via their mobile phones. This makes location-based advertising very important and crucial to ad success. Focus on developing ad campaigns that take this into consideration. Use location data to create ad campaigns that are super specific and targeted. In fact, using predictive analytics may even help you predict when the intended target audience is going to be in a particular location. In-app advertisements The most important of all the new media are the applications themselves. Mobile applications present a challenging but very lucrative medium to advertise. In-app advertisements can very well race past TV ads and they come in a number of types. However, making in-app ads attractive to consumers while also being non-intrusive depends on the ad interface designer. Make sure that in-app ads focus on user interface and intuitiveness so that consumers do not feel intruded upon. App usage tends to be a private activity and the perceived intrusiveness of your ad can seriously affect your campaign. Social media advertisement Without a doubt, social media advertising will continue to remain the most important platform for advertisers. Ad agencies will need to

How to A/B Test the Home Page of Your Media and Publishing Site?

June 29, 2015

With the onset of digital era, the most important challenge for the Media, Publishing and Entertainment (MPE) industry is to go digital. This newly evolved age has not just brought in a number of new challenges but has even changed the way this industry used to work. Presently, you as a part of this industry have to cope up with a completely new set of user behaviour and meet highly competitive industry standard; and the first thing that you need to do to capitalize new opportunities in this consumer-driven, fast-paced industry is to have a properly functioning home page, if not a easily navigable website. Now, how to know whether you have the perfectly running homepage for your website? It’s easy! All you need to do is A/B test the home page before launching it. Here are some excellent ideas that can help you A/B test your media, publishing and entertainment site’s home page: Testing a Home Page Being the point of entry to your website, the home page gives visitors an idea about your brand value and products & services offerings. Hence, it’s highly important to have a proper home page that can encourage return visits. Here is how to test the homepage of your website: Content that Encourages Return Visits It is said that “Content is the King”. So, the first thing that you need to ensure is that your home page has got content interactive enough to not just attract and engage visitors but even to force them to come back to your site again and again. It’s always better to use short content modules in media and publishing sites as the separate headings attract more attention. Once you become sure that your home page has got interactive content, check whether it is able to increase the number of return visits and page views of your website. Page Navigation Make sure that your home page allows visitors to navigate around the website by category, without having to click on any particular category. This helps visitors consider content that they otherwise wouldn’t have checked. Hover states are even quite effective for attracting visitors’ attention to sections, which they might not explicitly look at. Hence, before testing the hover state, ensure that it includes sub-categories, top stories and imagery. However, too many categories and sub-categories might have a negative effect. Once done with the categorization, check if it has increased your page views or decreased the bounce rate of your home page. Though the test might sound a little difficult, however, you can simplify it by deploying the following methods: Choosing top five clicked sections Selecting top sub-categories in each section Hover displaying of those sub-categories Value Propositions Value prop is another essential aspect to be considered while A/B testing your home page. After all, it is highly important to make the visitors realize what value they would get, if they subscribe to any of your online publications. However, make sure that the content of the main value propositions are descriptive and clear. Once you have promoted the value props of your home page, test the page with and without value props & check which one has an increased subscription conversion rate. Now that you know how to A/B test your home page to get a better customer attention, it is no longer difficult for you to take your publishing business to a new height by going digital. All you need to do is follow all the aforementioned steps carefully.`

Indian Programmers Need Nurturing, Not Arbitrary Judgments

June 17, 2015

A few weeks ago, Snapdeal cheerfully declared that “right programmers are rare in India” and the tech world went abuzz about how right or wrong that statement was. Javed Anwar, in an article published on the India Today, a leading Indian magazine, came to certain arbitrary conclusions that many faculty members in India with great CVs did not know even the basics of what they were teaching and that they also lacked insight about the implications of plagiarizing research. The author concluded that Snapdeal had to look for people from outside and that “that is the only way for it to grow”. How much of these conclusions are valid and how many of these claims are without biases and prejudices? If we scratched the surface, it is quite evident that a single company’s decision to recruit programmers from abroad does not say anything about the actual situation in hand. To begin with, some of the largest and most important companies of the world have recruited Indian programmers. For example, Zoho built its entire product team from the scratch in India. Whether in India or in the U.S. or just about any country in the world, what is truly important is nurturing talent where it is found, taking corporate culture seriously and shouldering industry responsibility. These factors can be religiously followed by companies who are in the game for long haul, as we do at Indus Net Technologies. Existing problems and possible solutions It is an often repeated attempt at humor that Indians first become engineers, and then proceed further toward planning their futures and careers. This is mostly because of affordable education because of which more people can access higher education even if they do not have passion for certain subjects. Moreover, software engineering has always been the surest ticket out of poverty, as The Atlantic magazine noted way back in October, 2013. In an insightful article titled “Behind the ‘Bad Indian Coder’”, The Atlantic discussed what is now being discussed post-Snapdeal fiasco – that Indian education system has failed its citizens. It is not the Indian programmers that lack skills but the way they are taught that makes them think in slightly different ways than their western counterparts. This includes rote-learning, lack of researching and Gestalt skills & an inability to be innovative even while they possess the talent. While overhauling Indian education system is going to take time, what really needs to be understood is that the responsibility of nurturing talent falls squarely upon Indian service providers. Indian IT companies that recruit these poorly paid programmers are often in a hurry to churn out codes rather than encourage real talent to grow from within organically. What really happens at the end of the day is, Indian programmers are fired by their Indian employers if they do not meet or achieve targets. Consequently, there is no real room for innovation or nurturing talent. The companies that really excel in India are those that actually take time to nurture their employees and sort of provide a second education. Indian companies that realize the problems are focusing more on polishing and nurturing their existing employees, instead of forcing them to produce code, just as they were forced to produce homework in school. Thankfully, companies that nurture talent, speak for themselves and their employees are in demand internationally, whether they are Indian or not. What do we do at Indus Net Technologies to nurture talent? If companies feel there is a dearth of quality programmers, it is often their own responsibility to train their employees and nurture existing talents. At Indus Net, we nurture skilled resources and use that as a differentiator from the persistent noise in the industry. With more than 550 talented employees in two distinct units, we are able to focus on encouraging each individual to achieve a sort of self-actualization in their professional field. Among the two groups, one focuses on SMBs and the other on the enterprise grade projects. We follow a protocol when it comes to quality bench-marking. This process involves training new recruits and allowing them to form internal teams & build something on their own, under the leadership and guidance of a seasoned project manager. The project manager ensures that skilled resources are individually trained and nurtured before they interact or start working on client projects. The process includes cross-cultural sensitization, technical skills, focus on innovation and creativity & honing one’s existing skills and talents. Indus Net Labs is one of our unique ways to encourage our employees to spend 20% of their time creating something on their own. This is inspired by Google’s similar projects. Some of the products that resulted from Indus Net Labs initiative are SocialFire (a WhatsApp for businesses and organizations), Mobileafs (a digital publishing solution) and InfraFix (an eGovernance and maintenance solution). Let us not be prejudiced and biased To say that Indian programmers are not talented is a prejudiced and biased way of looking at things, to the point of sounding colonial. What really is ailing today’s programmers is lack of opportunities to innovate and nurture their own talent. This can be made possible by following our example of allowing individuality, creativity and ideas to be nurtured. While there are certain cultural problems that seem to portray Indian programmers in an unfavorable light, the onus remains on companies to hire and nurture promising IT talent. With a keen sense of technology and already-existing English skills, Indian programmers can be groomed into world class professionals, just like we have been doing for several years at Indus Net Technologies.

Will Net Neutrality Receive its Due Justice?

May 25, 2015

Now your experience of watching videos online could soon become a hit or flop experience….you might experience either a flawless and smooth network or it could be extremely frustrating with interrupted services; and the reason behind this uncertainty has nothing to do with technology but with money making policy. It is to check how much a company is willing to pay to provide content faster onto internet connections. New Regulation against Net Neutrality Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voiced their concern against Net Neutrality as whether all content need to be treated equally or not. They emphasized on ‘paid prioritization’. They are trying to create a two-tier internet system – two virtual lanes; one fast and one slow internet. Now, this is something which is not fair enough! Recently, many internet service providers including Time Warner Cable, Verizon or AT&T strike deals with YouTube, Facebook and other web content firms for priority internet access to consumers. This means a content providing company can pay to an internet service provider company like Verizon or AT&T to have its traffic on the fast lane for better user experience. Similarly, many such other companies will follow the same rule. In a way, the internet service providers make more money and the costs for content providers shoot up. Now, the question lies how would the content companies recover these costs? They are left with no choices but to charge their customers more. The net result is that you and I will have to pay more for everything on the internet. Nonetheless, the start-up businesses will have a tough time to compete in the market. In fact, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) planned to block apps and websites to extract more money from businesses and consumers. It supported extreme violation of Net Neutrality. Airtel and Internet.org are two entities that were a threat to Net Neutrality. Both of them were offering plans that involved using websites and apps free of cost. Apparently, they looked like good plans; however, the real cleverness lies in their strategy to charge more money from you for data packages. The Ongoing Debate However, the FCC’s and TRAI’s attempts to execute enforceable and sustainable rules to prioritize internet access to its users have been twice struck down by the court. The debate is still persisting as what’s good for corporations vs. what’s good for citizens of the nations? Net Neutrality is not only a fight between the big tech companies but its existence will highly affect the future of how billions of people access the internet. The Cause behind Net Neutrality Network Neutrality or Net Neutrality is the concept of treating all traffic equally, regardless of what data is being sent – it could be VOIP calls, emails, web searches or streaming videos. Internet Service Providers cannot block traffic to certain sites, in order to allow higher traffic to some other sites to get through. Any individual who have access to the internet needs to be able to find what they need online without any kind of hindrances. Net Neutrality advocates that internet is too important to the economy and democracy. It is a critical tool to conduct commerce, communicate, educate, innovate and engage in the world around. Supporters of Net Neutrality Supporters believe that consumers are already paying for connectivity and they certainly deserve to get a quality experience. Violating the core rule governing the internet will be a ruinous way of delivering justice. They say ISPs… Need not be allowed to accept money from companies to make internet service run faster for subscribers Need not strangle user’s bandwidth, if they reach a fixed data cap Need not block competing websites from subscribers Need not exempt companies from data cap for paying more money The Open Internet Order The order is in support of transparency when it comes to broadband providers’ responsibilities. They need to be sincere when it comes to management practices, performance reviews and terms & conditions of the services. Also, they cannot discriminate transmitting lawful internet traffic to websites. Absence of Net Neutrality and Its Impact on the World of Commerce If companies providing internet service makes it difficult to get access to internet, numerous commerce platforms would have a negative impact on hundreds and thousands of SMEs that rely on them as a means to reach their existing customers & prospects across the world. Net Neutrality reduces the barriers of entry for entrepreneurs, by ensuring that the web is a fair field to work on. It is only because of Net Neutrality that entrepreneurs have been able to thrive on internet. The internet needs to be open to foster job growth, innovation and competition; and without Net Neutrality, ISPs would seize every possible opportunity to earn profit. Letter to FCC (Source: Bussiness2Community) Major tech companies including Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Amazon and more asked FCC to encourage Net Neutrality. The letter says, “Instead of permitting individualized bargaining and discrimination, the Commission’s rule should protect users and Internet companies…against blocking, discrimination and paid prioritization….” What’s Next? With opponents challenging the new rules in the court and some Republicans in Congress upholding open-internet legislation that would supplant the new regulation against Net Neutrality, the Federal Communications Commission finally approved the policy of Net Neutrality by a 3-2 vote. They ensured that no corporate or governmental body should rule free open access to the internet. In fact, Mark Zuckerberg says he is no enemy of Net Neutrality. On the other hand, over 10 million emails have already been sent to TRAI to prevent Net Neutrality in India from being manipulated. It has also received around 7-8 lakh comments on its discussion paper to preserve the Internet’s free and open character in India.

Tumblr vs. Pinterest for Web Designers

April 20, 2012

The hottest social networking site right surely is Pinterest and it is known to drive a lot of traffic to websites. Tumblr on the other hand is a popular microblogging platform, which has been around for quite a while. There are similarities among both the services, and each works for different purposes, users and situations. Differences between Tumblr and Pinterest Tumblr is a micro-blogging platform that can behave like Twitter, act as a simplified version of WordPress and is a place to engage in discussion. Pinterest on the other hand is a visual bookmarking tool, that allows you to collect images and videos (and the links therein) on various categorized boards. Both of them depend more on media than text, but are fundamentally different. However, people do use Tumblr to collect pictures and images much like Pinterest. Both the tools can be astonishingly useful to web designers and developers. Let us compare the two services in order to understand which one could be better than the other. Team Collaboration Pinterest allows users to add contributors, which means collaborative collection of images found on the Internet or images that are originally taken can be easy. Pinterest can allow web designing companies to allow several designers to pin images that they like, in a form of visual brainstorming. Commenting and liking images, or pinning them back allows for socializing as well. Tumblr on the other hand is a fully functioning blogging platform that allows for lengthier discussions in the form of comments, and also in the form of text posts. As it follows a blogging structure, web designers can easily publish their strategies, ideas, tutorials etc easily. Collaboration in the real sense may be easier on Tumblr if we were to talk about combining blog posts, images, textual content and videos. Pinterest can be used as bookmarking tool or a place to showcase templates and designs you have created, before or after brainstorming. Marketing and Promotion Pinterest discourages self-promotion, whereas Tumblr doesn’t frown upon it. It is easier to promote oneself explicitly on Tumblr than on Pinterest. On Pinterest, you will have to use tricks and covert methods to promote your products or services. It might be a good idea to drive traffic from Pinterest to your Tumblr blog, where you actively promote your products. Pinterest has a majority of female users, where as Tumblr’s target audience is mostly youngsters. It depends who your target audience is before launching a marketing campaign. However, Tumblr seems to have a better marketing traction. SEO and SMO Both Tumblr and Pinterest are valuable SEO tools. They drive traffic to your company website, help you to generate organic traffic, and also achieve better search engine rankings. Interface Tumblr has more freedom to publish content, and doubles up as a blogging platform as well. Pages can be added and a simple website can be created within the Tumblr platform. On Pinterest, one can pin images found anywhere on the website, or upload original images and categorise them under various boards. Pinterest is more visually oriented than Tumblr, where as Tumblr is more of a publishing platform. Engagement, Discussion and Participation Tumblr allows better engagement and discussion. Thanks to its micro-blogging platform, it not only allows likes and re-blogs but lengthy discussions can happen in the comments section. Pinterest on the other hand allows commenting too, and images can be re-pinned or liked, but lengthy discussions are just not great enough. Web designers who need to discuss projects, tricks and tips, cheat sheets would do better on Tumblr. Web designers who need to showcase their templates, and basically offer visual eye-candy would gain more on Pinterest. Handling Design Projects Web designers can collect templates they like on Pinterest and also pin websites, portfolios of other designers and logos that they come across while browsing the web. Pinterest can serve as a place where web designers can find all the images that inspired them to design their own website. Tumblr on the other hand can be used to promote and market one’s own design projects. It could also be used to upload HTML5, CSS and other coding files in order to discuss with clients or team members. It serves as a collaborative, publishing and media sharing platform, all put together in a minimalist environment. It all depends on which part of the designing process one is handling. Both the tools are equally important and are not mutually exclusive.

Mobile Advertising 101

April 18, 2012

Introduction Mobile advertising is the most popular form of advertising. It is the most exciting frontiers in interactive advertising. Part of the success of mobile advertising can be attributed to the growing demand and reach of mobile devices in addition to the evolution of sophisticated smart phones. Internet has now been reinvented on mobile devices, so as the advertising. Mobile advertisement is an essential pillar of online marketing strategy. Each and every company/business is trying to reach to as many customers as possible and mobile as a medium is successfully catering to the need. Advertisers are shifting focus from mainstream computers to Mobile devices, hence smaller, personalized and interactive form of advertisement is also gradually gaining popularity. In the latest “Mobile Advertising and Marketing 3rd Edition” report by Berg Insight the global mobile marketing and advertising market will grow from € 1 billion in 2008 to € 8.7 billion in 2014 which is a 43 percent Compounded Annual Growth Rate. At that value it will be 11.7 percent of total digital advertising. The number presented above gives an idea about how mobile advertising is gradually playing an important role. Mobile Advertising ecosystem The mobile advertising ecosystem involves several intermediaries between the “Advertisers” and the “Consumers”. When a message has to be conveyed from an Advertiser to an intended consumer, it has to be processed through Ad agency, Content publishers, Mobile Carrier and finally to the Consumer. The figure below gives workflow of a typical mobile advertising campaign: Types of Mobile Advertisement Mobile advertisement is of various types. They vary from a simple SMS to rich media ads like animated graphics and video. These ads can be highly targeted and can be displayed based on user’s behavior. Let’s discuss below the various forms of mobile advertisement: SMS (Short Messaging Service) This is the primitive and simplest form of mobile advertisement and exists from a long time ago. This kind of advertisement is supported by all the mobile phones and hence it has the highest reach. But the conversion rate for SMS ads is very low. Whatever information a brand wants to convey to the consumers is composed in short message and sent via a SMS gateway. SMS advertising is suitable for sending coupon and special discounts. Retail, restaurants and entertainment markets get benefitted through this form of mobile advertising. If this SMS ad is used excessively by sending same message to a number multiple times, it cause irritation among customers and can be fatal to a brand. Text Ads These kinds of ads are displayed like a normal text on mobile websites. These ads are currently responsible for 50% of mobile Internet traffic as they fit in almost any mobile device and mobile web browsers having Internet access. The Text ads like normal desktop ads contain 3 lines of text and a URL that links to the advertiser’s website. Image Ads The image ads can be of 2 types. One that is served through MMS and another served through Mobile websites. This is a popular method of advertising. The image ads include both static and animated images. In image ads via MMS, the advertisers load static and animated images to an ad server and the ad server identifies the mobile device and serve related ads. In the image ads via mobile sites, the ads images are embedded on the mobile web pages and appear while browsing the mobile sites. Graphical Banners There are various types and size of graphical banner ads available for mobile. These ads may be quite interactive and can have call to action button placed on it. The difference between image ads and banner ads is that image ads might not have a clickable component whereas the graphical ads have a clickable component. Video Ads These kinds of ads are usually supported by high end mobile devices and resemble mainstream advertisement. The ads that are displayed on TV or websites can also be displayed on mobile devices. For example while playing videos in sites like youtube, few of the videos want you to see the video ads before the actual video is played. Embedded Ads These kinds of ads are generally part of free mobile games or apps and displayed during game play. Push Notification/Scroll Ads These kinds of ads are pushed to your mobile device and appear when the mobile device is idle. Usually these ads ask you to perform some action to deliver further content. These ads are served through the mobile operator. Mobile Ads Transmission Options Mobile ads can be served via various medium as given below: Short Messaging Service Multimedia messaging Service Premium SMS Subscription based SMS service Wireless Access Protocol sites Mobile Web Mobile Operator (via caller tunes and IVRS) Streaming media Broadcast Media Mobile Ad Network In order to facilitate the mobile advertising, the mobile ad networks play an important role. These ad networks are the one where advertisers meet the publishers. Below are a list of global renowned ad networks: Admob Admob has been acquired by Google in 2009. It is one of the world’s largest mobile advertising platform. It serves as high as 40 billion banner and text ads per month across mobile web and mobile apps. iAds iAds is a mobile advertising platform from Apple. iAds has been a part of iOS 4. It helps third party application developers to embed advertisement into the apps they build for iPhones and iPads. inMobi Founded in India, inMobi is the largest independent mobile advertising network in the world. It is a performance based mobile advertising network and helps advertisers reach their target audience and publishers monetize their content. It started as an SMS based search platform. Microsoft Adcenter Mobile advertising solution from Microsoft offers both display ads and search advertising. According to Microsoft the mobile display ad solution connects to nearly 50 million unique users and the mobile search ad solution leverage the partnership with Bing and Yahoo and reaches to almost 28 million users. Apart from the above list of ad

What are Twitter Hashtags?

April 9, 2012

Twitter is one of the most difficult social networks for people to learn. They say, you either get it or you just don’t. Many of us do not have the choice of ‘not getting it’, and hashtags only make the learning curve more difficult. What Are Hashtags? You might have noticed words beginning with # symbol in individual tweets. These are known as hashtags, something extremely central to the way Twitter functions. A Hashtag is a tag that is prefixed with the # symbol, and helps to categorize tweets that are unimaginably dissimilar and non-cohesive. With millions of tweets out there, it becomes difficult to categorize individual tweets, and that is where the hashtag comes to work. Hashtags are used to categorise tweets, and also to give a direction to otherwise random tweets that may eventually get lost. How to Use Hashtags? Hashtags must be used next to relevant keywords without any spaces. If your tweet is related to how HTML5 can improve the quality of websites you deisgn, #webdesign and #HTML5 can be appropriate hashtags. This helps your tweet to appear in search results when people type #HTML5. Hashtags can be used anywhere within a tweet and can even be part of the sentence. Hashtagged words that become really popular are said to be ‘trending topics’. While very tempting to do so, you must make sure that you do not stuff your tweet with hashtags. It may appear spammy or downright unprofessional. Ideally, you should not include more than two hashtags per tweet. Identifying and Tracking Hashtags Hashtags can be identified in various smartphone applications even as you type. However, if you use the computer to use Twitter, there are several tools which can help you to identify popular hashtags. Twubs uses a wiki system to disseminate information on a hashtag. It has an attractive way to display hashtags and the tweets associated. Hashtags.org has been around for a while, and suggests tags that may be relevant to what you are looking for. Tagalus is a dictionary of sorts for hashtags. There are several other tools to discover hashtags on Twitter. Monitter and Twitterfall help you to track tweets from a hashtag in real time. Twilert sends you a daily email of specific hashtag’s uses. You can take a look at some of the popular hashtags for web designers here. Popular Hashtags for Web Designers and Developers #design and #webdesign cater to web designing and designing in general. #wp and #wordpress relate to tweets that pertain to WordPress. #win and # windows are about Microsoft Windows, where as #linux and #mac are self explanatory If you are a developer, you would hashtags like #htm, #css, #htm, #xml, #java and #php would interest developers #webdesigner, #typography, #UX talk about fonts, web designing jobs and user experience. If you are looking for templates, all that you need to do is search for #template! If you are lacking inspiration, you might perhaps want to type, “Badly need some #webdesign #inspiration!” Chances are, you might meet a fellow web designer who would tweet back to you, and give you ideas. #jobs, #gigs, #freelance, #openings can be used along with your area of specialization to search for clients or jobs. For instance, if you are looking for a job and would like to offer PHP coding services, you could search for #jobs #PHP. #fail usually refers to something, well failed or is just not good enough. It can be used in a humorous or derogatory way., depending on the context. Hashtags can be used to organize your own tweets, so that you could go back and search for them easily. You would need to search for a particular hashtag within your own stream in order to retrieve earlier tweets. It can also help in organizing chats, conferences, or events both online and offline. At the end of the day, it depends on you how you use hashtags. It is now being used on Pinterest and elsewhere as well, so it helps to learn popular hashtags without having to look for them when you need to tweet spontaneously. Finally, don’t forget to use a hashtag for your own company, as that can be a powerful identifier on Twitter!

What Are Twitter Chats and How to Get on One?

April 9, 2012

It is common to come across Twitter Chats and not know how to participate in one of them. Most people remain blissfully unaware of what Twitter chats are, and how they could use it to their benefit. What is a Twitter Chat? A Twitter chat is a pre-scheduled and pre-arranged interaction that takes place on Twitter. Everyone who participates in a Twitter chat remain online at the designated time, and use certain predefined hashtags, which link all tweets with those hashtags in a Twitter chat. Twitter chats may have a leader, who moderates the discussion with a specific agenda, or it could be a free flowing conversation that takes place amongst those who have common interests, or it could be a combination of both. Join a Chat The first thing that you would need to do is join a chat in order to participate in it. You would need to type in the hashtag of a chat in the search box and choose the one that is most active. If you cannot find a twitter chat, you could take a look at this exhaustive spreadsheet of chats and their schedules. It has hundreds of chats, their timings and the interest areas. Once you find a chat of your interest, begin to read what people are talking. Try to assess the mood, context and the level of enthusiasm among participants. Participate in the Chat A chat is meant to be participatory and two-way. Twitter is random, one-way and difficult to organize. Hashtags do the bit for organizing a particular chat, and participation comes from being proactive, listening to what people are tweeting and responding or reflecting with your own tweets. Twitter chats tend to be very open and informal, and it is also the right place to get people to follow you so that you can DM (Direct Message) them later on. Use Chat Tools There are several tools that help you to get a grasp of Twitter chats. These tools reveal only those tweets that have the hashtag designated for the chat. Thus, you will be able to filter out the rest of the tweets that appear in your timeline. One such tool is Tweetchat. You might also want to use Hootsuite or Tweetdeck, both of which are pretty popular tools. TweetChat has the advantage of adding the appropriate hashtag at the end of your tweet automatically, which can be very helpful. Start Your Own Chat While there are already hundreds of scheduled and designated chats that take place on twitter, there are chances you might not find one that suits your interest area. You can go ahead and start your own Twitter chat. You would first need to choose a time, topic and hashtag. You can then choose a format for your chat. The format could be question based, where people ask questions and you reply. It could also be a single topic with free flowing discussion. In such a case, everyone adds their opinion during a Twitter chat. Once you choose the format. You would need to launch and promote your Twitter chat. You could announce it in a blog post, tweet the announcement to your followers, or choose any innovative method available for your perusal. One of the ways that you could successfully run consecutive chats is to bring celebrities or industry leaders as guests. These guests can offer valuable information to discerning Twitter users. Take the Chat beyond Twitter It is not necessary that a Twitter chat must remain transient and be lost in the sea of tweets that appear in your stream. You could create a LinkedIn group for your chat and continue serious and lengthy discussions which perhaps are not possible on Twitter. Using multimedia attracts a lot of Twitter users to join tweets as well. Twitter Chat for Designers and Developers There are several twitter chats that exclusively take place for web designers, and web developers. In fact, one shouldn’t be surprised if one found web designing chats dedicated to a particular city or even a particular area of web designing. #devchat, #freelanceChat and #DesignChat might probably interest you. For instance, when it was active, #devchat covered software development, and was dedicated to all developers and programmers who want to learn, share and network. It used to take place 7-8PM MST on Wednesdays. There are literally hundreds of Twitter chats dedicated to web designers and developers. You just need to look around, or create one on your own!

Meet us at Technology for Marketing & Advertising 2009 in London

January 31, 2009

Hello Friends, We will be present at the Technology for Marketing & Advertising (popularly known as TFMA) @ Earls Court 2 in London on 24th and 25th February 2009. Our Booth Number is H15. Feel free to contact us for free tickets and registration. If you are already our customer, please contact your personal account manager and if you are a prospective new member in our family, get in touch with info@indusnet.co.in Do drop in for a casual chit-chat (we will love to know your business) or a serious consultation about putting together the right Internet strategy for your company. If you are a digital marketing agency, let us meet and work out a solid, workable model for offshore outsourcing (using on-site project managers in the UK) to reduce your cost and add scalability to your business so that you can grow your business during this tough time. Remember, tough times always come with an opportunity. It depends who chose to take it and who wants to ignore it. You can meet myself (CEO), our VP-Operations & Marketing and Sr. Manager – UK Operations during the show. I look forward to see you at Earls Court.

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