James Stanway

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Posts by James Stanway

Social Media Marketing : Increasing Popularity despite Confusions

All the net savvy people who are simply hooked on to the Internet for personal as well as professional reasons will definitely be using the term Social Media Marketing. Social Media means connecting with people, by the people and for the people it works just like democracy. The site may be owned by some company but what is uploaded solely depends upon its logged members, online communities etc. The website could always have a web master who can always work on improvising the site and information available on it.

You Tube, Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Reddit and Del.icio.us are some of the most favored social media marketing sites. Though most of the people have begun using these sites to gain a viable presence on the net, they themselves are at a loss as to how to monitor their benefits.

These sites offer a great platform to conduct business through building connections and maintaining them – this could be a cool informal way of conducting business. Maybe that’s the trend of conducting business though as a business owner you have to be twice as alert and careful as you would be dealing with a prospective customer.

To begin with after you open an account with a social network site such as Facebook, Twitter, Digg etc you could post a small content or even a video talking about your business along with your website link and email address. If you have uploaded good content or video, you definitely stand to gain a lot and as people begin to connect with you, you will find increasing business queries. In a way, you could be dealing with customers virtually but still interact with them.

Revolutionizing the world with Web 2.0 and even more with Web 3.0, you will be amazed with marketing avenues opening up. Now you can also have videos and maps uploaded stating and explaining a particular concept of product or service. When you can visually see a product or service live along with audio, it but naturally adds value to its authenticity and capability. If it has caught the eye of the consumer, that consumer is definitely going to get back to you. So, once again social media serves its purpose.

Once again you could try posting your press release on various press release sites along with popular social media sites, you fill find increasing traffic coming to you from these social media sites and even an enhanced search engine presence through them… So again, things definitely work in your favour.

Various studies have revealed that people are increasingly relying on social media for internet marketing as they are spending considerable time on them. Well, you could put well over and above 70% who are spending time ( 50% of the time when using the Internet ) and considerable money on social media sites with a definite aim to gain traffic and expanding business contacts.

Finally before winding up, you will need to spend more and more time on the social media marketing sites but in a productive way. You could be available most of the time through them which help you to connect and stay in touch, not only on one but quite a few of them showing that you are very much in the market. Your words, style and product should speak for itself in a very impressive way and at the same time let others commend and recommend you and your products or services which will truly bear the stamp of customer satisfaction and appreciation. The customer’s reviews and suggestions go a long way in building goodwill and a lasting impression on the third party. So you very need to be aware of your business style and services offered by you. Never for the slightest moment forget the consumer is the king.

Though at a nascent stage, Social Media Marketing is a powerful tool which has yet to develop fully. Yet, the Internet marketing gurus have yet to devise and design full proof measuring techniques and tools to ascertain its performance. Certainly, Social Media Marketing has arrived on the marketing scene and will surely set the stage for future marketing practices.

Keyword Research : Basic Steps leading to a Successful Internet Marketing Campaign.

As you all know that content is the king for any website…. And for any campaign to be a successful hit, most attention has to be paid to it. Thoroughly researching the site for keywords which earn good traffic and their effective placement becomes crucial and extremely important. If proper efforts are taken in this direction, the chances of earning good traffic are excellent and well rewarding….

While planning on the keyword research strategy, thinking from a layman’s point of view is extremely crucial and at times gives though provoking insights into your campaign. As you prepare a list of keywords both primary and secondary, you can enlist the aid of keyword research tools too. The keyword research tools give you a list of most popular searched words and phrases in relation to your primary and secondary keywords as you have entered in the tool search box.

It would be better option to take up the keyword research exercise through some reliable and exhaustive keyword research tools such as Google Adwords Keywords Tool, Google Suggest, Trellian Keyword Discovery Tool and not to miss out on Wordtracker

Let’s begin with Wordtracker which was launched in 1997 by Andy and Mike Mindel aided the marketing campaigners to gain valuable insights about the keywords researched in relation to their websites and also display the competing sites too along with high fetching traffic keywords and phrases. Most searched for keywords are referred from Dogpile and Metacrawler.

The Trellian Keyword Discovery Tool is equally wonderfully, as it shows you a compiled report of keyword data available on numerous search engines. Here, you can take into account not only generic keywords but also industry keywords which reflect dynamism as well.

The Google Suggest tool generates 10 other related keywords as per the word entered in the tool box. Google Suggest makes use of algorithms and does its level best to predict what the users would like to see and hence it displays a plethora of suggestions which you can scroll over and select.

On the other hand you can take also study the keyword research from Google Adwords : Keyword Tool which takes into account multiple entries of keywords and phrases offering you a wider overview of the keywords or phrases that you have entered.

Furthermore, when you subscribe for a particular keyword research tool, you can enjoy much more vital information and statistics about the keyword, its value and its performance in relation to your website. This feature will enable you to take strategic decisions which will further intensify your social media marketing campaign.

Strategies for a Successful E-commerce Business

E-commerce Business is becoming increasingly important and vital for any business to compete and survive. For an e commerce entrepreneur, it becomes extremely crucial to attract online buyers and enjoy a steady stream of online purchasing activity.As e-commerceslowly emerges as a dominant player over other markets, different strategies and avenues have evolved which effectively work to strengthen the position of your business. Similarly it becomes imperative to continually study consumer behavior and deliver just what the customer wants.

Multichanneling, mobile solutions and social networking are becoming the current trends of digital marketing strategy. The consumer patterns show instances of opting into something different over what has been used or tried out in the past.

The internet market scene has almost been set and most online businesses are being managed by clever SEO campaigns, PPC search marketing and keyword bidding in order to stay well ahead of the competition. In fact most online businesses prefer to opt for search engine campaigns rather then stay connected through emails with their customers.

In the UK, affiliate marketing has been a great accelerator and has helped to boost online sales i.e. almost 12% of the entire retail sales in the UK are online. Similarly shoppers love to access comparison sites which aid them in making a final decision and they are also useful in directing the customer to the main site. Emails work their way in influencing the customer’s decisions too, especially when they are slightly personal and give account details and preferences when being sent across.

Moving on to technological advancements, the latest Web 2.0 technology has gone a long way in popularizing the concept of streaming video ads and promotional films to web users through You Tube and other social networks. With the latest internet savvy phones being available in the market at affordable prices such as the G1 phone, iPhone, Blackberry and decreasing rates of mobile Internet access, people are even accessing the Internet to check out products, prices and reviews while physically present at the store itself. It won’t be long before people find offers depending upon the location where they are present. The mobile service provider companies may also provide customers with double offers and schemes.

Meanwhile, it becomes imperative for online retailers to keep communicating with their customers from time to time. This can be done through various means such as promotional SMS, calls or even use the Internet and chat features. At the same time, they may also send mails regarding promotional offers, new launches and even invite them to review new products. Its pays if all possible efforts are undertaken to highlight how important he or she is for your business and their opinion equally valuable.

Recommendations and experiences expressed and posted on the companies’ website goes a long way in attracting customers too. It is all the more important that customers are treated with care and attention. A negative experience or a feedback is detrimental to business and cannot be afforded at any cost.

Another trend which is emerging and creating a strong presence in the e market zone is the interactive video advertising. This looks set to impress and conquer the hearts of prospective customers. The key lies in sending across the right offer or promotion at the right time enabling the customer to make the purchase decision in your favour and at the same time reinforcing brand loyalty.

Innovative and interactive advertising tools and reaching out to the customer does pay off. It certainly proves fruitful when online retailers consider making the effort to reach out to the emotional side of potential customers.

However, in the initial stages, the internet market is going to perform alongside other markets with its role and importance fluctuating to a certain extent. This will largely depend upon the customers and how their purchasing patterns shape up in the next few years.

When conducting online business, you should always have the capacity to convert a visitor into a potential customer and then a customer. By providing an exceptional service, you can influence him/her to revisit again in the future and thus ensure customer loyalty.

Search Engine Optimization – Strategic Marketing of Today & Tomorrow

The advent of Internet and the World Wide Web has rather revolutionized the marketing strategy. New vistas and ever expanding markets are easy to access and capture all at the click of a mouse. What is required at this juncture is the best online marketing strategy to take your campaign forward.

A company website which is attractive and informative not only serves the purpose but at the same time you also need to optimize the site for the search engines. A well versed search engine optimization will ensure your site you appear on the top in most of the search engines such as Yahoo, MSN and Google.

As search engine optimization gets more and more technical, additional exposure to the company products or services can be provided through press releases, blogs and articles.
These press releases and articles are submitted on special press release sites and article sites designed specifically for that purpose ensuring wider viewership and visibility.

Mind you, the entire campaign of online marketing and search engine optimization has led to the evolution of certain specialized techniques on the basis of search algorithms and the end user requirement. So an online marketing campaign will take into account the following criteria:

• Keyword research
• Site evaluation and optimization
• Design, structure and technology recommendations
• Content and meta-tag optimization
• Link building
• Directory Submissions
• Analytics and tracking

Here, the role of a well versed search engine optimizer or a search engine marketing company becomes extremely essential in order to carry out the task in a structured and uniform manner.

The best part of a search engine optimization and an online marketing campaign is that each and every move or happening can be closely monitored and studied in detail. This enables you to take the right action at the right time and thus ensure a high rate of success of the campaign

Is There Any Difference Between SEM and SEO?

Yes, of course there is a difference between the two techniques. People often get confused by search engine optimisation (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) as, these terms are frequently used interchangeably. In this article, you will find out how each method is different?

SEM is a form of Internet marketing technique that is employed to promote web sites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages. On the other hand, SEO is the first step in SEM that allows for broad reaching site promotion. SEM not only includes SEO strategies, but also various other methods to increase the web site’s targeted traffic and exposure. Some other SEM methods consist of: paid inclusion, paid advertising, and pay-per-click.

SEM refers mainly to the text advertisements that are published at the top or on the right hand side of the search engine results pages. These ad links are purchased mainly from the major search engines like Google and Yahoo.

SEM also includes any banner ads or ad placement advertising at authority related sites. With SEM, you can have full control over your budget, keywords, and web sites you wish to target.

As above mentioned SEO is the foremost step in SEM and is aimed to increase a site’s organic and natural ranking in the search engine results pages. Furthermore, SEO involves On-page optimisation and Off-page optimisation.

On-page optimisation elements are: keyword density, keywords in the content, title tag optimisation, keywords in hyperlinks and URL, meta tags, sitemap, and link structure. And Off-page optimisation elements include: back links, link exchanges, traffic, keywords in the anchor text, and much more.

Therefore, SEO focuses on increasing the volume as well as quality of the traffic to your web site from the search engines. As the Internet marketing method, SEO considers how the search engines work and what people look for.

Optimising your web site would involve editing its content and HTML coding to improve its relevance to definite keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of the search engines.

Thus, both the techniques-SEM and SEO are important to help you promote your web site through better visibility in the search engine results pages.

Web site

Onset of Internet and opening up a new area for business expansion has got most of the business owners groping to get hold of basic knowledge and functioning of a virtual market which can simply weave magic and enhance your business prospects to unimaginable magnitudes.

First and foremost for a business or any other identity to establish a presence on the Internet requires a website. Website is simply a collection of Web pages which could contain images, graphics and even videos to enhance its visibility and content.

Creating web sites requires a certain level of planning to be done. One needs to be thoroughly sure of extent of information to be displayed and at the same time how to display it on the website. At the same time to what extent should the user be allowed to access the website is another criterion to be considered?

As you begin with conceptualizing the web sites, you need to be aware of certain different varieties of sites such as news sites, gaming sites, corporate sites, personal sites, social networking sites, academic sites to name a few. Each of them differs in extent of look, design and even in terms of accessibility.

There are certain websites which require a user subscription in order to access special information such as news sites, academic journals, game sites, stock market monitoring sites, social networking sites and so on. Here, the user is supposed to authenticate his or identity before gaining access to the site.

Web pages are written in HTML or XHTML and can be accessed through HTTP which transfers information from the Web server to the user’s browser. For public websites you can make use of the World Wide Web. The homepage or the common root is called the URL through which the web user can access through the internal pages of the website. Here, it becomes extremely crucial to determine the flow of the navigation or the flow of the website.

Websites need to be prepared in methodical and well planned manner as they are going to be the gateway to you, your work, your organization – hence they not only need to be user friendly but pretty impressive too.

E commerce sites

Search Engine Marketing involves changes to be done in the right way at the right time. Here, a good seo needs to have the ability and the vision to read the minds of the buyer with clarity and distinctness. With may be experience and practice a seo, can clearly predict what the buyers are looking out for and at the same time show what they exactly wish to buy for on the computer screen.

All changes though seemingly minor are extremely vital in pushing forth the targeted keywords to highly successful bided words and thus a highly successful marketing campaign. Generating reports on the basis of old keywords, new keywords, geographic location wise and any other change in trend irrespective of the degree of significance is of utmost importance…. these help in understanding the market and the forces which affect its behavior, which in turn go a long way in influencing the social media marketing strategy

With regards to ecommerce sites product description when displayed with product images works best and proves to be a good decision making tool. This effort not only leads to display of vital product information but enables the viewer to quickly compare two similar products.

Another critical point to make note of here is the display of items on the page should be crystal, clear and in uniform manner. Use of clear cut shapes and designs and use of few colors go a long way in enhancing the look of the product page.

Similarly the flow or the navigation of the website should be the user friendly to the highest degree. The user should in no way feel blocked or have reached a dead end while browsing for a product.

The final process of the viewer involves in purchasing a product online. The steps involved in him registering his/her choice and providing the essential personal details should be minimal and quick. At no point should he feel disinterested and bored, making him leave the payment procedure halfway.

E commerce sites are very much going to rule the market scene. For any marketing campaign on the Internet, what is crucial is an accurate understanding consumer behavior, a high degree of navigation within the website and constant reviewing of changing consumer behavior.

Internet Marketing

Business new ones and old ones are adopting new business strategies in order to expand their market base and also earn more profits…. Internet marketing is the new and latest business strategy which is widening its roots all over the world.

Internet marketing has redefined the boundaries of marketing a particular product or service and made the entire globe a potential client or customer. Surprisingly, this market never sleeps or never shuts down but is always open 24×7 and 365 days of the year.

A lot goes into Internet marketing, in fact the entire product and its marketing strategy is designed to meet the requirements of an Internet campaign, in fact, your corporate identity rests on this, you could say. The sales goal, business model and its entire operation and functioning of a company is structured to comply with the Internet Marketing strategy.

Within the Internet Marketing model, your product could be phased out in a step by step manner by including search engine optimization, search engine marketing, email marketing, lead generation, banner advertisements and so on.

The best part of any internet marketing campaign is that each move and each hit is monitored closely and you stand to earn money depending upon the clicks, pay, action and impression too whichever is the option chosen by you.

Similarly you can get accurate knowledge regarding the area or the geographic location from where the maximum hits have been recorded can be known which comes very handy in modifying the internet marketing campaign in time so as the maximize your returns.

Apart from e-commerce sites which are doing quite well at present in selling good online, you could also opt for affiliate marketing, lead generation and other online marketing tools which are pretty for your successful internet marketing.

Internet Marketing has changed working patterns of many companies and sectors. Be it banking, tourism, hospitality, pharmaceuticals, music and even entertainment – the entire scene in each one of this has undergone a sea of change. Now the companies can provide the companies with enhanced customer support and after service care making after sales care even more effective and worthwhile.

What are Web Crawlers and Spiders in Search Engines?

To perform search engine optimisation, web crawlers play a pivotal role. A web crawler (also known as a web spider or search engine robot) is a programmed script that browses the World Wide Web in a methodical, automatic manner. This process is called as web crawling or spidering.

Search engines and many web sites make use of crawling as a means of providing the latest data. Web crawlers are generally used to create a copy of all the visited pages for subsequent processing by the search engine that will index the downloaded pages to facilitate fast searches. To put it simply, the web crawler or web spider is a type of bot, or a software program that visits web sites and reads their pages and other information to create entries for a search engine index.

When the web spider returns home, the data is indexed by the search engine. All the main search engines, such as Google and Yahoo, use spiders to build and revise their indexes.

Moreover, the spiders or crawlers are used for automating maintenance tasks on the web site. For example, the crawlers are used to validate HTML code, gather certain types of data from the web sites, and check links on the web page to other sites.
Furthermore, what the crawler sees on a web site will determine how the site is listed in its index. The search engines find out a web site’s relevancy based on an intricate scoring system, which they try to keep secret

Pay per Click Management Services

Pay per Click is a fast growing Online Marketing tool used by several enterprise including small business establishments. Due to rising competition, the cost of keywords has increased resulting in the increase in cost per click (CPC). In such swiftly evolving and challenging market it becomes necessary to efficiently manage your pay per click advertisements. A Pay Per Click management company helps in optimizing these services for a profitable campaign and better returns.

A PPC advertisement management service program includes the following task:

Keyword Selection: Extensive market research and selection of appropriate keywords.
Creative titles and adverts: Properly coined titles and well conceptualized adverts help to maximize click-through and conversion rates.
Setting destination URL: Landing page of any searched keyword is the mirror of your website and product/service. Choosing the appropriate URL increases the prospect of increasing the conversion rate.
Campaign Tracking: Outcome of a PPC advertisement can be measured. This service aids to the process of tracking codes to measure the conversion rate. These in turn help to analyze the ROI.
Bid Management: Bid performance monitoring, bid price changes etc.
Regular Performance Analysis: Analysis of various aspect of the campaign like keyword costs, conversions, text ads etc…and providing a performance report