Is Your Website Customer Friendly?

In a rush to make websites visually appealing and search engine friendly, most of the businesses forget a very important aspect of website designing – customer friendliness. The result is a narcissist website that dwells greatly on the business’s products, team, offerings, locations etc. but has no place to deal with customer issues.

Most customers do not have enough time to read every word on a website. They simply scan it for ‘relevant info’ and this is simply what narcissist websites miss!

In contrast, an intelligent website has the right information, at the right place and does not leave the customer stranded. Here’s what an intelligent website must do:

• Provide to-the point statements
• Proactively address common concerns and questions
• Offer active online self service support
• Encourage a dialogue with customers

While designing your website the focus should be the anticipated needs or concerns of your customers rather than self praise. Too much of “me me” stuff may simply irritate them away. Tell customers about yourself but do it in a way that is helpful for them as well.

Despite Recession, Social Media Hot Favorite of 94pc Enterprises

Despite the economic slowdown, a majority of enterprises continue to invest in Social media – reports a Deloitte Survey. Creating a successful community, getting people to join and stay engaged, and keep returning are the three biggest social media challenges faced by a company. Interestingly, though 94% enterprises are investing in social media and the awareness about social media best practices is profound, yet organizations continue to struggle with harnessing social media’s full potential. Read more.

Time spent on social networking up 3-times

Social media is at its all time high with over 17 percent Internet time being spent on social networking and blogging. A report by the Nielsen Company suggests that the time spent on social networking has gone up by 3-times within a year’s time. Jon Gibs, Vice President, Media and Agency Insights, Nielsen’s Online Division feels that though video and text content remain the focal point of the Web experience, the desire of online consumers to connect, communicate and share is increasingly driving the growth of social networks. Read the report here.

Microsoft may Offer Web Analytics Solution

Microsoft is soon planning to jump the social media band wagon with its Looking Glass.  According to a report by Tech Crunch, the product would be able to aggregate feeds from Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr and other social media sites and connect with CRMs, databases, service centers and more.  Empowered by Microsoft’s Silverlight technology, Looking Glass would be a product to watch out for. Read more about it here.

How to Save Your Blog on a Bad Hair Day

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.

Go Social…Internet is No Longer Only for Geeks!

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!

Oracle Has Become Dynamic!

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.

What is Content Marketing?

‘What is content marketing?’ – A general user of Internet, after hearing the words ‘content marketing’ will have this first question in his mind.

” Content marketing is an umbrella term encompassing all marketing formats that involve the creation or sharing of content for the purpose of engaging current and potential consumer bases. In contrast to traditional marketing methods that aim to increase sales or awareness through interruption techniques, content marketing subscribes to the notion that delivering high-quality, relevant and valuable information to prospects and customers drives profitable consumer action. “ As described under  Wikipedia entry for content marketing.

In a layman’s language, whenever you read, see or listen to something that interests you, the content that engages you, whether it be a post on a blog, an article published on a magazine, an informative video, an interesting menu card in a restaurant, the striking headline in your local newspaper that fetches your interest, the newsletter or the content in a website, is a form of content marketing.

Importance of Content Marketing: The USP (Unique selling point or quality) of content marketing is, its unique and your very own engaging content, that talks distinctly about the entity whether it be you, the company, or the product/services you want to sell. This USP really is important as well to engage your customer/visitor reading something new & interesting and making you stand out of the rush of other related product/service providers. The content marketing, if its USP is retained, helps you positioning your business as the trusted resource in you niche.

“ Marketers may use content marketing as a means of achieving a variety of business goals, such as thought leadership, lead generation, increasing direct sales, improving retention and more .” says Wikipedia page for Content Marketing, this itself shows the importance of content marketing in retaining your customers.

Another important USP of content marketing is that it is permissive not disruptive to consumer. Unlike the old interruption marketing, content marketing is based on the user permissions, if a user want, he/she reads or uses the content that might be on your blog, website, e-zine, magazine, newsletter, white-paper, email, social media content or elsewhere.

Basically, content marketing is the art of communicating with your customers and prospects without selling. It is non-interruption marketing. Instead of pitching your products or services, you are delivering information that makes your buyer more intelligent. The essence of this strategy is the belief that if we, as businesses, deliver consistent, ongoing valuable information to buyers, they ultimately reward us with their business and loyalty.

Yes, you really can create marketing that is anticipated and truly makes a connection! You can develop and execute “sales” messages that are needed, even requested, by your customers. To retain your customer, you need to have a successful content marketing in place and to market your content successfully either you should write content yourself, keeping in mind your targeted readers, customer base, or should take  content writing service  from such experts who really understands and knows your niche and knows what interests your customer base. The intriguingly written, unique content can help retaining your business customers as well as building the new consumer base.

Author: Kitz S