Blogging is a raging web trend and with more and more people trying hands at it, sailing through the cut throat competition gets tougher by the day. The key to survival lies in implying technical innovations that pull the blog through a down phase.

When you see your blog traffic slipping, don’t panic. Instead, imply this five point strategy to perk up your blog during a slowdown:

Socialize your posts

Link, Digg, Tweet or Stumble some of your posts to create a buzz. Share your posts through your network on social media sites and attract viewers to your blog.

Revitalize the dead headings

Even the most engaging articles may fail to attract eyes if they suffer a poor heading. Slowdown is the best time to analyze posts that were not well received and give them a facelift with a new heading or introduction. Be a SEO pro and use keywords in your headings and intros that rank your blog high during relevant searches.

Follow suite

Check out what is selling the best and follow the trend. Simply following what readers are liking and blogging about it can be a very effective traffic booster. Whether it is an outfit, person, place or concept, if it’s a hit, it should be on your blog too.

Blockbusters that weren’t

You perceived some of your posts as stalwarts, but your readers thought otherwise. May be it was a case of wrong timing, may be you did not use the right key words, or may be you simply chose a wrong subject. Dig your blog archive for such posts and refurbish them. Give them a contemporary touch and calibrate them with the SEO tools. Edits may give some boost to these posts, as well as to your blog.

Set the timing right

Survey and analyze the time that people tend to spend over reading blogs. It could be weekends or working days. See what the trend for your genre is and set the frequency of your posts accordingly. Coming up with a new post every weekend is a good idea. This would not only cover the weekend visitors, but also help in developing a long term habit in your readers for checking your blog every Monday for something new.

With the whole world flocking to the social media sites like Twitter, Digg and LinkedIn, making your business visible on them has become extremely challenging. Social Media Optimization (SMO) is your only chance to remain afloat in a swarming pool of competitors. SMO is novel marketing strategy that has rapidly gained popularity in recent times. The concept is simple, get your website refurbished so that it is easily linkable to social media sites, is found on all popular blogs and podcasts and is extensively bookmarked.

Why Social Media?

A marketing study conducted by WhitePaperSource.com reveals that marketers are increasingly drawn towards social media marketing because it yields better results with lower investment. According to the report, the primary benefits of promoting your business through social media are:

• enormous attention from prospects
• increased number of qualified leads
• fruitful business partnerships
• reduced marketing expenses

Who doesn’t want to see their business grow by leaps and bounds in minimum cost? Social media is a fabulous opportunity for doing this and you should just not miss it!

However, only knowing about it and creating accounts on Twitter and LinkedIn will not get you the desired results. Marketing through social media needs extensive planning and effective SMO to ensure that your business is visible wherever your clients may look for it.

How do I make my SMO activities effective?

The answer is simple- proper planning and a well executed SMO strategy. Optimizing your website to ensure that it qualifies all parameters of social media marketing, coupled with effective management and maintenance of the same is what will get you maximum eye balls.

Here are some tips for a perfect SMO that will get you maximum attention on the Internet:

1.    Increase your linkability – Mobilize your website. Update it regularly and imbibe blogs and whitepapers to enhance its linkability.

2.    Make tagging and bookmarking easy – Tag and bookmark your pages with all popular websites.

3.    Help your content travel – SMO goes beyond modifying structure and content of your website. If you have content that is in portable formats like PDF, audio-video files, PPTs etc, the same can be submitted to sites like YouTube, SlideShare, etc..

4.    Make web friends – Go ahead and exchange content and videos with other websites. Experiment with RSS and facilitate others in driving more traffic towards your web content.

Give your website the SMO power and see its presence grow in every corner of the World Wide Web!

Simplicity is the keyword for website design these days. The current trend sees designers moving away from complex designs towards simpler and unique layouts with an out of the box approach. These innovative layouts and designs are in-vogue for websites and blogs.

Here are some examples of innovative website designs that harbinger the concept of creative simplicity:

Last, but certainly not the least, yours truly, Tangence. (You see we are sincere followers of the clean is in suit, and therefore had to feature on the list)

Following are some innovative blog and community designs:

Information is key to making a big sale and database marketing allows every marketer the opportunity to gather as much information they can about the prospect, customer or partner. In the current economic scenario with budgets being frozen and sales cycles extending, it pays to know your customer better.

So what exactly is database marketing? Database marketing is the activity of gathering data about your prospects and customers and then use this data to market your products and services more efficiently and effectively to them. Every business, from a small mom-and-pop shop to the big publically traded companies have databases of some kind – used in a multitude of ways in order to generate a need for the services offered by the company.

How to build up your database?

When we talk about a B2B marketing database, it may require more information that a normal consumer database in the form of annual revenues, SIC codes, organization structure, etc. The most effective database creation tools are:

• Buy a list: Considering the customization that is required for a B2B list, purchasing the list is the best option for increasing the number of leads in the database. Custom lists can be created depending on your specifications of demographics, industries or even specific companies.
• Append your list: You may have an existing list of prospects but without the complete information, it may be useless as it may not allow any opportunity for your company to market to that list. Appending the list with the requisite data will make an existing list that much more fruitful and at the fraction of the cost of a new purchase.
• Registrants of web events: With the popularity of webinars, companies can now use their registrants and attendee lists of various events as sales leads and tailor their offerings to these prospects based on surveys, polls etc.
• Leads from the web, events, etc.: To create a wealth of Opt-in database, the website is prime real estate that can help you generate hot leads for the sales follow up. Also, collecting contact information in trade shows and conferences is an age-old technique that is still viable.

How to market to the database?

With a robust database, the company can utilize the information available to them in many ways. Marketing to a complete database allows marketers to pitch the right product at the right time to the correct contact. Email marketing still remains a powerful tool available to B2B marketers as it practically costs less and delivers high on ROI. Telemarketing still holds onto its allure while direct mailings can deliver results if approached in a targeted segmented manner.

How to keep your database current?

The major hurdle in database marketing is the dynamism of the B2B industry. With constant movement of contacts between companies and also, within the same organization, your database can become redundant if not refreshed time and again. Technologies to overcome this are now available to marketers in ways of lead nurturing programs. Lead scoring and lead nurturing helps marketers to keep track of leads and their buying stages while also concentrating on generating new business from old customers.

Lead verification is also a technique whereby older databases can be checked for relevant contacts and enhancement of the old database can help generate a fresher, more current database to market to.

CVM Solutions has got a facelift! At least its online persona has. The leading provider of supplier management sofware, CVM has a new website that is more vibrant, fresher and still very sophisticated - a true representation of the company, where it is right now and wants to be in the future.

CVM Solutions - New Website Design and Creation

Tangence was involved in the complete design and development of the new website. The Tangence team created a clean and appealing design which allows easy navigation. Tangence was also involved in creating all the graphics and diagrams for the website that makes the content easier to follow and understand. A set of graphic icons were created for visual representation of the main solutions provided by the client.

CVM Solutions - Diagram

Some people swear by Twitter whilst other just cannot stand it. Both sides make some compelling statements and astute observations.

The Love:

According to a recent Nielsen survey, Twitter has grown 1328% since February 2008. With over 4 million Twitter users answering the simple question - “What are you doing?” Twitter has been transformed from a simple stay-in-touch-with-your-network website to a network building tool being used by businesses, celebrities, political figures, any everyone else in world. People ant to connect with others, get information, ask questions and get instant answers from a diverse population. The best part is the simplicity of design and application, all you need to do is type your message in 140 characters and you have a voice that can be heard by millions.

The Hate:

Not everyone is such a fan! According to another study by Nielsen, 60% of Twitter users do not return after the first month. What is driving away these new users? Are they not giving this application the chance it deserves? Twitter users have complained of many things - excessive downtime, too simple  design, disinterest in sharing all their minute-to-minute updates with the world, followers and followings, following conversations, etc.

The interesting thing is that Twitter (and others) have listened to these problems and have come up with a plethora of applications and website tweaks to address issue and then some! Whether you love it or hate - that is a personal choice, just like who you wish to follow, what you wish to tweet, what short 2 sentence story you wish to share with the world.

So what do you think of Twitter? Love it or hate it?

Tangence has recently redesigned the home page for our client LucidEra (www.lucidera.com). The launch of the new design was a big success and the refurbish of the complete website was received very well. The redesign has lead to a fresher looking, visually appealing and a much more easily navigable website for LucidEra.

Tangence Home Page Design - LucidEra

Flash has been used to generate more interest while conveying the most important message of the company to the audience directly.

Meanwhile, Tangence aslo created a new microsite for LucidEra Spring ‘09 - the latest solution by the client that makes it possible for sales management to get high-definition visibility into where to focus and what to focus on in their Sales Pipelines.

Tangence Microsite Design - LucidEra Spring'09

The Microsite is intrumental in the launch on this SaaS BI solution and is designed and developed to provide complete information to the visitor and continue the brand guidelines of the client - LucidEra.

Tangence has recently completed an E-Book project for Oracle Corporation and this e-book is like no other.

The Oracle e-book is designed and created to be completely dynamic - the client can edit the content, change the navigation table, add or delete pages and basically make multiple revisions to keep their e-book current and fresh at all times.

View this dynamic e-book here.