Tag: Strategy

Top 10 Blunders You Must Avoid on Twitter

April 17, 2012

While Twitter is an amazing tool to drive traffic to your website or to market yourself as a professional, it can also become a liability if you do not follow certain rules. In fact, there are certain blunders that many people commit, and end up wasting their time on Twitter and worse, harming their own business and credibility. Here are the top 10 blunders that you must avoid while using Twitter. Being Impersonal One of the biggest blunders on Twitter is bring impersonal. Agreed, that it is a micro-blogging service where you do not need to engage in personal conversations. However, it is still a social network where certain aspects of who you are need to be projected. First off, it is important to have a clear picture and then have links to your blog or website. Secondly, do tweet at times about your life and not just about the product or business you want to promote. Try and be nice to people, and maintain cordiality and a degree of familiarity. Not Customizing Background There are several great businesses and professionals who just do not use a custom background for their Twitter profile. This is a unique space where you could give out a lot of information that is not possible within the 140 characters bio. Also, don’t go overboard and write a story about yourself in the background image. That really is a blunder. Not Being Active There are great Twitter accounts that I unfollowed because they were just not tweeting anymore. It is very important to remain active and tweet at least a few times in a day. Consistent tweets that are informative, fun and useful are always appreciated. However, tweeting 10 times within a span of 10 seconds and not tweeting for the rest of the day is a blunder too. Space your tweets across the day. Don’t be Noisy One of the most annoying blunders is to tweet too much. How much is too much? Well, that is a difficult question but no one likes to see your tweets and links constantly appearing in their stream. It is important to resist tweeting all the time. If you really have to tweet anything that comes to your mind, have a different Twitter account for that. Do not confuse your business, personal and anonymous Twitter accounts. Each has its special purpose! Following too Many People The idea is not to follow everyone you see on Twitter. The trick is to follow only the most useful people in your industry and a few others from other areas of life. Following too many people will send a wrong signal that you are not an important business who has authority or influence. Being Full of Yourself Of course, Twitter is a great place to market yourself. However, it would be a nasty blunder if you tweeted only about yourself, your business or what you want to market. 70% of the tweets must not be self promotional. Only around 30% of the tweets could be used to promote yourself. Otherwise, you will come across as a hustler. Being Cold Many twitter users tend to be cold and non-responsive. It is not only rude, but a big blunder not to engage with your audience and talk to them. If you do not connect with your followers and audience, they will eventually get bored of you and will unfollow you. It is important to engage in Twitter conversations and participate in them. Not Being Helpful One of the most selfish acts could be to not help others on Twitter. Whether they ask for it or not, if you come across questions in your stream that you are in a position to answer, make sure you do so. Otherwise, you might be mistaken for a cold and profit minded business that cares about no one but promoting oneself. Not a great strategy to drive traffic to your website. Spamming Your Followers No matter how tempting it is to share links related to your products, your blog posts and just about anything that is related to you, you must not overdo it. You will come across as a spammer who has more malicious intent than just self-promotion. You can get blocked for appearing as a spammer. Being Irrelevant There is nothing worse than being irrelevant. If you are a design company and start tweeting about politics, you will confuse your followers, who may eventually unfollow you. The idea is to stick to what you claim is your mission on Twitter. If you need to tweet about other things, you can always have a second Twitter account that can be used for non-professional purposes.

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How to Hire a Web Designer

April 12, 2012

Any business or individual will need to have a professional website in order to have an Internet presence. With internet access spanning tablets, smartphones and computers, it is important that someone who designs your website is experienced, qualified and knowledgeable in an array of factors. Thenceforth begins your search for a web designer. Let us take a look at the scenario. Why Hire a Web Designer? Web designers are professionals who build web pages and are responsible for the creative aspect of it. A website has to look as different as possible, and must reflect the character and personality of a company and the business it’s involved in. Web designers make sure that a website is visually and sensually attractive and eye-capturing. They also save time and enquire with clients what they imagine their ideal website to look like Most web designers have knowledge not only in designing attractive web pages, but also know certain amount of web development, programming, graphics, managing and maintaining websites, and marketing the website that you have just got created. While pure web developers can still create websites that look good, they may just use certain templates to do as, as they are more interested in the functionalities and programming that go behind creating a website. A web designer is specifically concerned with how a website looks and feels. Thus, it is crucial to hire a web designer to save time, personalise your website and create a unique brand identity over the web. When to Hire a Web Designer? When a company or individual requires a new website, blog or a webpage Web designers need to be hired when an existing website needs to be revamped or given a new look Altering the structure of an existing website and making it more social media friendly, or more visually attractive When there are aesthetic and interface issues with a website When there are issues with an already designed website What are the “Must” Qualities to Look for in a Web Designer while Hiring? Before hiring a website, one needs to look at a number of factors, ranging from academic, financial to previous work. Here are some of the basics that you need to explore before hiring a web designer. Portfolio: One needs to look at a web designer’s portfolio whether he is experienced or a fresher. Live websites of what is given in the portfolio would help you to gauge how good a web designer is at his work. You might want to see if there are broken links within any of the websites mentioned in the portfolio, design errors, aesthetic blunders, typography and such. Business Website: A good web designer would always a business website. He or the web designing company is an advertisement for the kind of work that you can expect. However, it doesn’t necessarily mean that a great business website translates to great work. However, it is one of the indications. Skills: A web designer would of course have Flash, Dreamweaver, Photoshop and other graphic tools’ expertise. However, you need to confirm if they also know HTML, CSS and JavaScript. They should also be able to bring someone who can write content or know about Ajax, graphics creation and such. Finances: You must enquire how much they cost. In web designing, it is usually what you get for what you pay. However, it is important to know that this shouldn’t be your primary concern. Accessibility: You would need to make sure that you can contact them after the work is completed and that they are always approachable. Look for a business telephone number in the place where they are based. References: References can help you a lot. While you may not get the best designer in town, you certainly won’t get the worst either. Personal Interaction: Interact with the designer, talk about designing, what they like, etc. general conversations can tell a lot of things about a person. Whom Should You Never Hire? Basically you must not hire a web designer who doesn’t meet the criteria above. To elucidate: Lack of portfolio and references: There are many freelance web designers who either do not have portfolios or have a shoddy collection of templates in the name of a portfolio. Avoid them. Some also hesitate giving references. Again, a big no. Business Website: A web designers website says a lot about him or his firm. If there are broken links or if the site doesn’t feature a sitemap there is no guarantee your website will be perfect. Avoid them too. Price: If a web designer demands more than 50% of the total sum upfront, you should avoid them as well. Web Designers who are Graphic Artists in Disguise: While graphic artists can build basic web pages, they are not web designers. Anyone who doesn’t know HTML, CSS, JavaScript and doesn’t give you marketing support should be avoided. Hiring Individual Designer vs. Hiring from an Outsourcing Agency There are many advantages to hiring a web designer from an outsourcing agency than hiring an individual designer. Access to Other Professionals: When you hire a web designer from an outsourcing agency, you are also getting connected to web developers, graphics designers, SEO professionals, programmers and engineers who may not be accessible through a single web designer. Lower Cost: An outsourcing agency tends to receive a lot of work and thus the cost of designing a website would be significantly cheaper than getting it done from an individual designer. Quick Turnaround: An outsourcing agency takes its business very seriously. With more hands at work, your website would be ready quickly. Experience: A firm always receives more work than an individual designer. Thus, they carry that experience and knowledge. Versatility: An outsourcing agency would be used to dealing with all kinds of clients. This leads to versatile thinking and creative solutions.

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Top 10 Tips to Optimize LinkedIn Pages to Drive Traffic

April 10, 2012

If you thought LinkedIn was a place to upload your resume and forget about it until someone contacted, you are missing out on one of the most important social networking tools available today. LinkedIn is a great way to make sure that organic and free traffic is driven to your blog or website with little effort. Let us take a look at how you can optimise your LinkedIn page to drive traffic to your blog. Complete your Profile Most people and companies are usually quick to open accounts and enter a few details in social media sites, and forget about them. An incomplete profile gives a very bad impression to you or your company. LinkedIn allows you to enter as many details as possible and in fact encourages you to fill in 100% of what it believes to be important. One of the most important steps for a complete profile is adding a great picture of yourself or that of your company’s infrastructure or logo. When people search for your company or your name in Google, your LinkedIn profile is one of the first results to show up. It only makes sense to have a complete LinkedIn profile and never incomplete or shabbily filled out profiles. Build your Network LinkedIn allows you to add people that you do not know personally but may have worked with you in the same company. It also allows you to add people who are your friends, colleagues, or just about anyone as long as you know their email address. The more number of people you add on LinkedIn, the more number of clicks you can expect when you share stuff on your company page. Remember to ask for recommendations whenever possible, and return the favor. Optimize Links LinkedIn allows you to share 3 links of your choice, which can also be customised to look in a certain way. For instance, you could have something like ‘My Blog’, My Company’ and ‘My Portfolio’. Instead of typing the domain name of websites, or just name them as your blog or website, it is better to describe what exactly the web link is all about. Custom headlines to these links can be altered to attract more attention of your visitors. Participation Like any other social network, it is important to participate in conversations and engage in discussions. LinkedIn groups allow people to post questions when they need information. Depending on what your area of expertise is, it helps to answer questions and help people genuinely. Not only will the person who asked the question get interested in you, but also other people who are viewing your answer. Update Status It is important to update your status at least twice a day. This helps your updates to appear in the LinkedIn stream, and people might click on the links you share in your updates so that more traffic is driven to your blog or website. Twitter updates can be automatically published over LinkedIn, which actually can be a very smart thing to do, unless you tweet a lot of irrelevant stuff. Join Specific Groups Depending on what your company or blog is all about, you can join similar groups on LinkedIn. People who are within the group you join can be easily added to your contacts, and that again builds your connections. Participating and engaging in conversations in niche LinkedIn groups will almost certainly help drive traffic to your website. Only, you must not spam the group with links to your website. Start your Own Group Starting niche groups is a great way to drive traffic to your websites and blogs. LinkedIn allows you to start a group, which can welcome those who are interested in the niche area. A LinkedIn Group can raise you to an authoritative position. This would automatically encourage group members to click on links that you share. RSS Feeds It is also important to add RSS feeds of your blog or website to the group you start. Each time you publish new content on your blog or website, the feeds show up in the LinkedIn group automatically, which helps people to click on those links. Blog Application There are WordPress and Blog Link applications that post the title and first paragraphs of your most recent articles. These widgets offer a sneak peek to your blog posts and other content, which encourages people to click on the links to read it completely. Again, this helps in driving traffic too. The blog applications can be downloaded from the “applications” link. Importance of Keywords Nothing is more important than adding keyword rich status updates, and filling your profile with keyword rich text. It is important not to stuff your updates and profile text with keywords, as that will definitely put off people. The idea is to intelligently use keywords to reflect what your company or business is all about. LinkedIn can prove to be an extremely useful tool to drive niche traffic to your websites. It is important to note that the demographics of LinkedIn are very different from that of Twitter or Facebook. You get more directed and specific traffic which would be helpful for your business goals.

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Introduction to M-Learning

April 4, 2012

M-Learning or “Mobile Learning” is a form of learning through mobile devices. It is a flexible form of learning as you do not need to be at a predetermined location at a predefined time. You can take up learning at your own convenience even while you are on the go using portable devices like Mobile, Mp3 players or tablets. Like any other forms of learning m-learning also offers collaboration among students and instructors and instant tips and feedback can be shared. M-learning is the next big revolution in mobile technology. E-Learning is a passe and M-Learning is the beckoning future. The capabilities of mobile devices are gradually increasing which is facilitating further development in M-Learning technology. When the concept of M-Learning evolved a decade ago, no one imagined that it will undergo such phenomenal development. Thanks to the rapid growth in mobile technology and evolution of mobile phones into Smart phones. Types of M-Learning M-Learning comes in various flavors as discussed below: mVLE Based Learning This is an extension to Virtual Learning Environment like Moodle and Atlas. These E-learning providers have started offering Mobile Apps for facilitating learning through Smart Phones. So Mobile users can take advantage of activities happening in the non mobile version of the environment. Apps based learning There are specific mobile apps that help in improving vocabulary, mathematics and other skills. This is kind of discrete learning. This method supports interactive learning and hence works pretty well. There are free and paid apps available on different platform in the app stores which can be installed on the smart phone to begin study. Podcasting It is a form of passive learning where in the study materials are provided in the form of audio files. These can be played using mobile phones or mp3 players. Podcasting is more effective if it is accompanies with related slides and videos. If the audio podcast is instructional and allow users to follow certain instruction and perform task while listening to the podcast it becomes more effective. Augmented Reality Based Learning Augmented reality is a direct or indirect view of a real world based on the images captured through mobile phone camera and using the GPS. This technology can be utilized to impart M-Learning in a sophisticated way. Through Augmented Reality based learning users can input information and interact with other users as well. The HARP (Handheld Augmented Reality Project) project from Harvard University is based on an Augmented reality game to teach students Math and Science. Experience Based Learning This is a mode of learning that utilizes the device functionalities like GPS, Camera to enhance the user experience while learning. Students can share information on the fly while on a field visit. Content Delivery Based Learning This is another passive learning. The learning materials can be distributed in the form of ebooks, SCORM packages or html files to be read in mobile devices. These method is mostly available for Smart phones. Game Based Learning Game based learning is a very effective way of teaching with highest memory retention. This method is quite popular in offline learning as well as in E-learning. Due to the development in mobile technology it has now been offered through mobile too. Social Learning Social learning is also known as collaborative learning. This involves users networking with other users as well as peers using social network. Social Networking sites like Facebook and Twitter are facilitating this with their mobile apps. Technical Approach to M-Learning While building M-Learning products and services the sole goal is to reach the maximum possible audience. This means the technology used to build it, should be supported on wide range of devices. With that said, cross platform technology for building apps or relying on mobile web is the only option at hand. The existing web standards like HTML, JavaScripts and CSS can be used in imparting M-Learning through mVLE and content delivery methods. The rapid development in Cross platform Frameworks like PhoneGap and Titanium enables cross platform applications to access device features which were only recently been possible through native apps. This approach is fulfilling much of the limitations offered by web approach. However for Game based learning or Augmented Reality based learning which requires sophisticated 3D technology no other substitute is available then going through the native apps and porting it to different platforms. The image below shows technical approach for various M-Learning techniques: Few M-Learning Mobile Apps As we discussed above, there are variety of M-Learning techniques. Some may require you to download an App and some can be done without use of any dedicated apps. Given below are few useful mobile apps related to M-Learning: Moodle Mobile Moodle Mobile is an extension of Moodle web. With the help of this app, you can get connected to your Moodle account and track progress of your course as well as take up course from your mobile. You can even download many courses for offline viewing. Teachermate As not all the students in a class posses same capability, it is very essential to impart them individual instructions while teaching. Teachermate differential instruction system helps teachers in imparting individualized and targeted reading and math instructions to students. Martha Speaks Dog Party This is an app for children to improve vocabulary. A study indicated that children, who played this, were managed to improve vocabulary by 31 percent. Dictionary Apps Dictionary.com is a quite popular mobile apps available in all of the smart phone platform. Orient Longman and Cambridge have also come up with paid mobile app based on their paper dictionary Johnny Grammar’s Quizmaster Johnny Grammar’s Quizmaster for Android is a grammar related app in a quiz form. It has everything related to English grammar like spelling, vocabulary and grammar. Managing Content for M-Learning People often think that mobile learning is delivering e-learning on smaller devices, which is not exactly true. M-Learning has much more potential than eLearning. There are Mobile Learning Management Systems (MLMS) which can be used to create interactive contents suitable for

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Indus Net Academy – A dream rolls out

May 17, 2007

There has been a lot of talk over the BIG IT talent pool in India. Every bureaucrat and market research agency in the country shows towering numbers of colleges and students that they produce. But the burning question is – Is this talent employable? The biggest challenge Indian IT industry faces today is the ever-growing gap between graduating engineers and employable graduates. If not checked in time, it might result in a lost opportunity for India Inc. as opportunities will not wait and move towards economies that provide more employable talent at the best ROI. The main reasons for this gap are: Low motivation for top experts to take up teaching as a profession. Outdated syllabus, course curriculum, infrastructure, teaching methodologies and content! Little or no emphasis in making people “life long learners”, primarily because education is spoon fed in most institutions. Privilege to “best education” has been made available to selected class. Poor use of technology to spread education to rural areas There is a lot to rant about the negatives, which we all do. I never liked the way education is imparted in our country and always wanted to grab the first opportunity to change the same. I am taking a humble step towards my dream project by launching Indus Net Academy in the third week of June 2007. I have coined the slogan as “New Age Education”, which is timeless and conveys the feeling behind the project. The initial academic setup will be in a small area of 1000 sq feet, which will be extended as we mature and generate more demand. Indus Net Academy has been housed in SDF Building, Sector V, Salt Lake, Kolkata for the following reasons: Close to the industry! Easy availability of successful professionals who might like to share their experience and knowledge. Ease of management, since Indus Net Technologies(INT.) is also located on 4th and 5th floor of the same building. The purpose of Indus Net Academy can be summarized as follows: Create employable talent Continued education for working professionals Accumulation & distribution of knowledge Rural education (From now onwards the team behind Indus Net Academy is being termed as “We” instead of “I” since many key members of INT. thinks about the academy the same way that I do and are working tirelessly to make it a success. Initially, Indus Net Academy will start with career oriented professionally taught courses on:- Web Design, Web Development & Internet Marketing. The course will be taught by experts who are practicing these subjects at Indus Net Technologies and serving clients from all over the world. Teaching methodology will be a mix of classroom based core concept delivery, self paced study, research and discussion on important ideas, lab sessions and practical tips from practitioners of “how things are done in real life”. We are further backing up the courses taught in Indus Net Academy with guaranteed jobs by joining hands with companies who need the “industry-ready talent”. Since we have in-house professional talent available in Indus Net Technologies, we chose to start with subjects related to Internet industry. As we move ahead, we expect professionals from different walks of life to be a part of this movement and make a difference – to make the “new age education” dream a reality! Will keep you posted. Looking forward to a bright future… Keep an eye on http://www.indusnetacademy.com/ Â

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